Marginalia To Dharmakirtis Pramanaviniscaya I II

Author(s): Christian Lindtner
Publisher: Christian Lindtner

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CH. LINDTNER
of bhāvanā in his extant works. There are, however, historical grounds for this apparent omission. As shown elsewhere there are reasons to believe that Dharmakirti composed a work entitled Tattvanişkarṣa in which, inter alia, he discussed the necessity of bhavana for realizing tattvärtha. (I shall revert to this lost work of his below.) Moreover there are reasons to assume that Dharmakirti was familiar with a text in which the significance of bhāvanā is stressed, viz. Kambala's Alokamālā. And, of course, we should not forget that the importance of bhāvanā was a matter of common consent within Mahāyāna. On this background there was no need for Dharmakirti to delve further into the matter.
II
After this attempt of interpretating a part of the background and some of the basic motives in the formation of Dignaga's and Dharmakirti's epistemology we shall now direct our attention to some more specific historical and textual problems posed by the first two chapters of PVin as edited and translated by VETTER and STEINKELLNER.
In PVin I, 19d (!) and 21-27 Dharmakīrti discusses the third form of pratyaksa, viz. svasamvedana. To some extent his discussion is based on the one given in his earlier work PV. This is clear from the fact that some of the verses are taken over from that work, sometimes without change, sometimes with slight or considerable modifications and sometimes they are even rendered into prose. Moreover PVin expressly refers to PV 32. But apart from this well-known fact there is reason to assume that he is also basing this paragraph on an earlier work of his. This may be shown as follows. In the Nyāyāvatāravārtikavṛtti (NAVV) of Śantisūri3 we come across the following quotation dealing with vijñāna as svasamvedana:
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(1) tadatadrūpino bhāvās tadatadrupahetujāḥ /
tat sukhadi kim ajñānam vijñānābhinnahetujam || (2) aviseṣe 'pi bahyasya viseṣāt pritiṭāpayoḥ/
bhāvanāyā viśesena nārtharūpah sukhādayah || (3) prajñādivad visisyante bhavanabalabhāvataḥ /
nārthena janitākāro buddhau bhogas tadātmanaḥ || (4) niyataviṣayatvena jñānākāro nivartitaḥ /
arthānvayatirekena vyāpto nīlādibhāsavat ||
32 PVin I, p. 74, 1. 5 (read gtan la phab); II, p. 62, 1. 8; II, p. 96, 1. 19 (read 'grel du).
33 Nyāyāvatāravārtika-vṛtti of Śrī Santi Sūri. Critically... edited... by Pandita DALASUKHA MALWANIYA, Bombay 1949, p. 20, 1. 31-32 and p. 21, 1. 1-10.