Vadnyaya

Author(s): Shantrakshit Acharya
Publisher: Mahabodhi Sabha

Page 6

VADANYAYA
INTRODUCTION
Several attempts have been made to fix the date of Buddhist logicians and write a systematic history of it. Owing to the nature of the materials, which are few and scattered over many languages like Chinese, Tibetan and Sanskrit, there are still many gaps and in many places chronology seems broken. So, there is still room for a fresh attempt but as the text of Vādanyāya with its commentary is ready and there is not sufficient time to deal with the whole history of Indian Buddhist logic, I am jotting down only a few points, leaving others for the introduction to the Pramāņa Vārtika of Dharmakirti, the first three chapters of which, with missing texts restored from Tibetan, is in the press.
From Chinese translation, we know some of the minor treatises on Buddhist logic by Nāgārjuna; and though the complete works of Aśvaghoșa are not available in their original form or translation, we are not in a position to say if Asvaghoșa wrote any work on logic or not, but reading his two works, Saundarananda and Buddhacharita, we find that he knew the art of debate and on account of his many-sided activities, one should expect from his pen some work of this nature. But it is a mere hope, no such work is to be
1 See appendix D.