Marginalia To Dharmakirtis Pramanaviniscaya I II

Author(s): Christian Lindtner
Publisher: Christian Lindtner

Page 13

Marginalia to Dharmakīrti's Pramāņaviniscaya
161
(5) bhinnābhaḥ sitaduḥkhādir abhinno buddhivedane /
abhinnābhe vibhinne ced bhedābhedau kimāśrayau // (6) nānātvaikatvalopah syād evam sati jagattraye /
tasmād antarbhavā ete cetanās ceti sādhitam // Now two of these stanzas are already known to us from PV (1 = PV III, 251 and 5 = PV III, 279) and they also occur as PVin I, 22 and I, 27, q.v. But what is the source of the remaining four stanzas? Where does the NAVV quote them from, directly or indirectly? To answer this question we may have a closer look at PVin I, 22-27 (VETTER's edition, pp. 64-72). The second verse of our quotation proves to be identical with PVin I, 23:
phyi rol khyad par med na yan || dga'dan yons su gdun ba dag/ goms las khyad par 'gyur bai phyir /bde sogs don gyi ran bżin min /34
Stanzas 3, 4, 6 of the quotation do not occur as verses in PVin but there are unmistakable traces of them all in the prose; compare 3 and 4 with VETTER's edition, p. 66, 1. 20–22. ... sňon po la sogs pa'i snan ba'i khyad par bżin no de'i khyad par la mi ltos par goms pa'i khyad par dari rjes su 'brel pa de dag ni blo ñid yin te / ses rab la sogs pa bžin no ll, and 6 with op. cit., p. 75, 1. 24: de'i phyir bde ba la sogs pa nan yin zin myon ba yan yin no ll.
Thus we see that all the verses of our quotation occur in some form or other in the prose of PVin, but also that their source is neither PVin nor PV. On the other hand they are certainly by Dharmakīrti. Hence we seem forced to assume that they hail from another of Dharmakīrti's works - now lost. The most natural thing to assume is that the NAVV is here quoting Dharmakīrti's Tattvanişkarşa, a text from which another fragment, four couplets dealing with bhāvanā, are already known from Bhavya's Madhyamakaratnapradīpa 35. This conclusion is important in several respects: First of all it gives us a vague general idea of the nature of his Tattvanişkarşa. It must have discussed svasamvedana and bhāvanā (most probably in connection with yogipratyaksa). In other words one of its main topics was the various forms of pratyakşa and, as we may assume from the title of the work, their relationship to tattva. As shown above this is exactly what we would have expected Dharmakīrti to deal with more extensively than he did in any of his
34 Emend PVin I, p. 66, 1. 14 to gdun ba; 1. 19 to gdun ba'i; 1. 30 to 'brel pa'i; p. 68, 1. 12 to gdun bar; 1. 25 to sin tu dan ba (D); p. 78, 1. 7 to logs sig tu.
35 See AO 41 (1980) 29. - For Dharmakīrti tattva is equivalent to dvayaSūnyatā (cf. especially PV III, 213; 360 and Vimsatikā, 28-29). It is in this sense we have to understand PV II, 253cd: muktis tu sūnyatādrstes tadarthāh sesabhāoanā (v.1.). So for Dharmakirti (as for Kambala, etc.) ũngata is grāhuagrāhakābhāva, i.e. parinispannasvabhāva.