Religious Dimensions of Buddhist Logic and Epistemology

The wider research context of the project is the question whether Buddhist epistemology is a secular science like medicine, grammar or architecture, or whether it is fundamentally religious and an integral part of the Buddhist religion. This question has been debated not only by modern scholars over the last 100 years, but also within the Buddhist tradition itself. In the post-Dharmakirtian period, two towering figures took opposing positions on it: Dharmottara (8th c.) and Prajñakaragupta (9th c.). The former maintained that Buddhist logic and epistemology constitute a worldly science, while the latter evoked their religious presuppositions and implications. Although the importance of Prajñakaragupta’s Pramanavarttikalankara (PVA) for the history of Buddhist philosophy is widely recognized, it has hardly been studied in modern scholarship, inter alia because no commentary on it had survived in Sanskrit. However, a voluminous Sanskrit manuscript of the first chapter of Yamari’s commentary, the Pramanavarttikalankaranibandha (PVAN 1), unexpectedly became available through photocopies kept at the China Tibetology Research Center, Beijing.
Based on a diplomatic edition of PVAN 1 and provisional critical edition of part of it prepared in an earlier project, the project has five objectives: (1) to provide a critical edition of the Sanskrit text of PVAN 1, accompanied by a critical edition of its Tibetan translation; (2) to recover Yamari’s thought through the translation and study of selected parts of PVAN 1; (3) to make available a tool for better understanding PVA 1 and (4) to offer improved readings of its often problematic Sanskrit text; and (5) to contribute to the understanding of Jayanta’s commentary on the PVA (PVAT), lost in its Sanskrit original, of whose text hundreds of quotations can be identified in PVAN 1.
The project’s approach will mainly be a philological one. The critical edition of the Sanskrit text will strive for the highest philological and editorial standards, with consideration of the primary evidence of this unique ms., the secondary evidence of the Tibetan translation, and independent witnesses of the text in Buddhist and non-Buddhist Sanskrit literature. The relationship between the texts of PVAN 1 and PVAT 1 will be analyzed and innovatively visualized with the help of tools developed in the DH. The philological–historical studies, with translations of selected parts of the sophisticated Sanskrit prose, will focus on Yamari’s interpretation of foundational topics of the Buddhist religion, his original perception of the intellectual history of Buddhist logic and epistemology, and his contribution to central topics of controversy with non-Buddhist philosophers.
The primary researches in the project will be Eli Franco and Hiroko Matsuoka who will cooperate with international specialists, such as Shinya Moriyama and Mai Shida (née Miyo). National cooperation partners will be Patrick McAllister and Karin Preisendanz.