Marginalia To Dharmakirtis Pramanaviniscaya I II

Author(s): Christian Lindtner
Publisher: Christian Lindtner

Page 18

166
CH. LINDTNER
The Tibetan version of PVin II, 33 reads as follows: | snan ba mthon ba med pa dan // dños po mi dmigs pa la ni /
| rgyu mi srid par gyur pa na || dños po med par rtogs par 'gyur / This, as STEINKELLNER notes, has its parallel in PV I, 203 (= 205): drsyasya darśanābhāvakāraṇāsambhave sati / bhāvasyānupalabdhasya bhāvābhāvaḥ pratiyate ll. The Tibetan version of this PV verse is:
snan run mthon ba med pa'i rgyu // mi srid par ni gyur pa na /
snan ran dros po ma dmigs pa'i || dños po med pa rtogs par 'gyur /
In a note to his translation STEINKELLNER (p. 58) remarks: “Dharmakīrti hat den übernommenen Vers offensichtlich nicht nur umgestellt, sondern auch den Sinn geändert. Im PV hat der Vers die Aufgabe, die Nichtbeobachtung des Wesens (svabhāvānu palabdhi) zu beschreiben. Hier, im PVin, hat er aber die Aufgabe, alle eben besprochenen Arten der Erkenntnis des Nicht vorhandenseins zusammenzufassen. ... Eine Rückübersetzung des problematischen Verses wäre folgend denkbar: *dréyadarśanābhāve bhāvasyānupalabdhasya ca / kāraņāsambhave sati bhāvābhāvaḥ pratīyate //”. This reconstruction is scarcely possible: The reading kāraṇāsambhave sati would give the impermissible ja-vipulā if taken as pāda c. It must be retained as pāda bwhich, as it stands, violates the metre - just as pāda d must be retained unaltered. Moreover if dréyadarsanābhāve was correct we would have to have mthon ba med na for mthon ba med pa in the first pāda of the PVin version. Consequently we are forced to admit that the Sanskrit form of PVin could not have differed from that of PV (given above). Still it is clear that the Tibetan version of the PVin verse is peculiar and requires an explanation. What has happened, in my opinion, is that the translators here - as elsewhere 43 - were under the influence of Dharmottara's exegesis (cf. STEINKELLNER, loc. cit.). The result, as we see from their version of PVin 33, was an unsatisfactory compromise which is neither faithful to the Sanskrit nor to Dharmottara's exegesis (which does, it should be added, not pretend to be verbatim).
Again on p. 100 there seems to be a problem of verse "67" ( = 66 according to the revised numbering) consisting of five pādas. Here ldog pa sgrub pa ma mthon tsam (1.5) obviously - as STEINKELLNER notes - corresponds to vyatirekasādhanasyādarśanamātrasya. It is, however, quite impossible to reduce this passage to a pāda of eight syllables. So again the translators (or scribes) have mislead us by writing mthon for mthon ba, etc. Verse 66 then should read: yasyādarsanamātrena vyatire
rendering of khyad par can). In fact nothing has been changed: atiśayo is simply to be taken as an adjective.
43 Cf. VETTER's observation, PVin I, p. 104, n. 37 and p. 106, n. 65.