Svabhavarat Bandha Again

Author(s): Ernat Steinkellner
Publisher: Ernat Steinkellner

Page 1

SVABHAVAPRATIBANDHA AGAIN
By E. Steinkellner, Vienna
Substantial improvement in our understanding of Dharmakirti's thought depends on a considerable increase in research on various details of his theories and theorems, mainly on details of his linguistic and conceptual usage-not to speak, of course, of the philological toil still being owed to a respectable body of unedited and uninterpreted texts. A gratifying effort of this sort was recently made by Matsumoto Shiro with respect to the term svabhavapratibandha. In a stimulating paper he examined the meaning of this term which is of significant importance in the context of Dharmakirti's logical theory. Although his minute observations decidedly enlarged the scope for an interpretation of the term, his results are still not convincing and, moreover, methodologically problematic. I would, therefore, like to try once more to clarify the meaning of the term.
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To begin with, the following is a summary of the main points of Matsumoto's article. In its first part (4981.) M. shows that Dharmottara's interpretation of the compound svabhavapratibandha as an instrumental-tatpuruşa is not the only interpretation to be found within the commentators, but that we also find an interpretation as a locative-tatpuruşa with Sakyamati (M.: Sakyabuddhi), the oldest commentator of the relevant text,
⚫ I wish to thank Prof. Albrecht Wexler, Hamburg, who in a very helpful letter kindly explained to me the meaning of Durvekamiśra's remarks in connection with sadhanam rteti (DhPr 110, 14-19).
This paper was written in the spring of 1982 while I stayed in Kyoto as a guest of the Uni versity of Kyoto, invited by the Japanese Ministry of Education I wish to thank the Japanese authorities, my colleagues, students and friends in Japan, and above all my host, Professor Kaji yama Yuichi, for a most interesting, motivating and fruitful period of life.
Abbreviations used are the same as in Matsumoto's article (cf. note 1) and in my edition and translation of the Pramanaviniscaya, 2nd chapter.
1 Svabhavapratibandha. Indogaku Bukkyogaku Kenky 30, 1981, 498-494.
2 This is the interpretation on which I based my translation of the term in previous publications as refered to to by M.