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ARCHIV FÜR INDISCHE PHILOSOPHIE
MARGINALIA TO DHARMAKIRTI'S PRAMAŅAVINISCAYA I-II
By Christian Lindtner, Nærum
I
If the general task of historical-philological inquiry - as in contradistinction to purely philosophical inquiry is to acquire a knowledge of what happened and an understanding of what was understood – primarily from autopsy of literary sources - and if it absolves this task roughly through three interrelated phases: 1) linguistic interpretation dealing with textual criticism, lexicography, etc., 2) higher criticism dealing with authenticity, date, etc. of texts, and, 3) hermeneutics, or interpretation, dealing with the background, circumstances, motives, content, form and meaning, etc. of the texts, and if, finally, it is the ultimate task of a historically orientated philologist to present a systematically reconstructive interpretation of his text (and its author)', then, surely, any philologist or philosopher taking an interest in Indian logic and epistemology is in a debt of gratitude to ERNST STEINKELLNER, TILMANN VETTER and the late ERICH FRAUWALLNER for the pains-taking efforts and results achieved by them concerning the works and the thought of the Buddhist philosopher Dharmakīrti (ca. 530-600)2.
In these methodological reflections I am mainly following the Danish classical philologist J. N. MADVIG, for an account of whose views on the method and tasks of philology see PoVL JOHS. JENSEN, Johan Nicolai Madvig. Et Mindeskrift, København 1963, pp. 16-43.
2 FRAUWALLNER'S contributions are collected in GERHARD OBERHAMMER and ERNST STEINKELLNER, Erich Frauwallner. Kleine Schriften, Wiesbaden 1982. The most important monograph on Dharmakirti we owe to TILMANN VETTER, Erkenntnisprobleme bei Dharmakīrti, Wien 1964. Among ERNST STEINKELLNER'S contributions special mention may be made of his Die Entwicklung des Kṣaṇikatvānumānam bei Dharmakirti, WZKS 12-13 (1968) 361-377 and Wirklichkeit und Begriff bei Dharmakīrti, WZKS 15 (1971) 179-221. The celebrated pioneer works of F. TH. STCHERBATSKY are now largely superseded. For the date ca. 530-600 (against FRAUWALLNER's ca. 600-660) and for further references see my paper Apropos Dharmakīrti - Two new Works and a new Date, AO 41 (1980) 27-37.
