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XVII. THE BUDDHIST DOCTRINE OF EMPTINESS
Then, ridiculing the maintainers of 'emptiness'), a class of Buddhists, who deny the usual tetrad of ?) Demonstrant, etc., which systematises reality, and prefacing on both the alternatives, videlicet acceptance and non-acceptance of a Demonstrant establishing the alternative pocketed by them, a statement of the non-establishment of the things approved by them, he says - XVII. Without a demonstrant the "empty', like any other,
would not get a foothold for the establishment of his own alternative. His tenet would be angry with him if he touched a demonstrant.
Ho! Well viewed the view of our contemners! The tempty', the maintainer of emptiness; without, lacking; a Demonstrant, perception, etc.; for the establishment of his own alternative, the making out of the emptiness' doctrine, which he accepts; a foothold, a base (pratisthā); would not get, would not obtain. (145) As how ? Like any other, like others, exponents of Demonstrants. This is an example by way of difference: as others, exponents of Demonstrants, get establishment of their own alternatives by Demonstrants as most-effective; not so this one, since in his view the usage (vyavahāra) of Demonstrant and Demonstrand is not ultimate truth; because of such texts as, "This entire usage of inference and thing inferred being a thought (buddhi) - based on relation of attribute and thing qualified, does not refer to external existence and non-existence"). And an admission of the emptiness' doctrine without Demonstration, however will it be acceptable to the discerning? Because of the consequence of a violation of their discerningness. Or, if for the complete establishment of his own 'alternative this person adopts some Demonstrant or other, in that case there is this criticism, 'would be angry, etc.'. If he touched, if he had recourse to, a Demonstrant, one or other of perception, etc.; from the context, with 'this
1) These are the Madhyamika Buddhists of the school of Nāgārjuna, which holds the doctrine of śün yata, "emptiness', repudiating all acceptance of substantiality, external or mental. By Professor Stcherbatsky the sünyata is regarded as a complete relativity (see Buddhist Logic, II, pp. 31-2, nn. 1-2, 33-4 n. 4, and reff.), and this is perhaps not out of harmony with the recognition of an ultimate suchness' (tathatā), an absolute', wherein all relativities and unrealities meet and expire.
The tenets of the Madhyamika Buddhists should have excluded them from all discussion, and in fact they aver that they advance no proposition. But even this statement must be taken as belonging to the sphere of 'convention' (samurti), i. e. the fundamentally unreal world of practical life, speech and thought. Apparently the rules of debate allowed, as in the case of other philosophies irreconcilable with the fact of their own discussion, such, so to speak, derisive interposition on the part of the debaters for whom it was essentially only a game and who expatiated largely in linguistic sophistry.
From the mass of modern literature, concerning the Madhyamika views it may be sufficient to cite Prof. T. R. V. Murti's The Central Philosophy of Buddhism (1955), which gives all the necessary references to the editions and translations of original texts.
*) Sc. means of knowing (pramāna), knower (pramätr), thing to be known (prameya), and act of knowing (pramiti), as in pp. 113-114.
" The quotation is from Dignāga (see Randle, Fragments from D., pp. 51-4), it is cited in various Nya ya works and also in Sammati-tarka pp. 377, and Haribhadra's Anekanta-jaya pataka, p. 299.
