Table Of ContentBhartrhari and the Buddhists
Studies of Classical India
Editors:
Bimal K. Matilal
Spalding Professor ofE astern Religions and Ethics. Oxford University. England
J. Moussaieff Masson
Professor of Sanskrit. University of California. Berkeley. Calif.. U.S.A.
Editorial Board:
R. P. Goldman
University of California at Berkeley. Calif.. U.S.A.
Daniel H. H. Ingalls
Harvard University. Cambridge. Mass .. U.S.A.
A. K. Ramanujan
University of Chicago. III .. U.S.A.
Volume 8
Bhartrhari
•
and the Buddhists
An Essay in the Development of
Fifth and Sixth Century Indian Thought
by
Radhika Herzberger
Director of Studies, Rishi Valley School, India
D. Reidel Publishing Company
A MEMBER OF THE KLUWER ACADEMIC PUBLISHERS GROUP
Dordrecht / Boston / Lancaster / Tokyo
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Herzberger, Radhika, 193B
Bhart~hari and the Buddhists.
(Studies of classical India; v. 8)
Bibliography: p.
Includes index.
1. Dignaga, 5th cent. 2. Bhartthari. 3. Language and logic.
4. Buddhist logic. I. Title. II. Series.
B133.D654H47 1986 181'.4 86-1011
ISBN-13: 978-94-010-8574-8 e-ISBN-13: 978-94-009-4666-8
DOl: 10.1007/978-94-009-4666-8
Published by D. Reidel Publishing Company
P.O. Box 17, 3300 AA Dordrecht, Holland
Sold and distributed in the U.S.A. and Canada
by Kluwer Academic Publishers,
190 Old Derby Street, Hingham, MA 02043, U.S.A.
In all other countries, sold and distributed
by Kluwer Academic Publishers Group,
P.O. Box 322, 3300 AH Dordrecht, Holland
All Rights Reserved
© 1986 by D. Reidel Publishing Company, Dordrecht, Holland
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 1986
No part of the material protected by this copyright notice may be reproduced or utilized
in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying,
recording or by any information storage and retrieval system,
without written permission from the copyright owner
For my mother
and my daughters
CONTENTS
Preface. . IX
Foreword. XI
Introduction. . . . . . XVII
Abbreviations. . . . . xxv
I. The Historical Background I
2. Bhartrhari on Individuals and Universals 9
Translations from the JatisamuddeSa . 71
3. Dignaga against Bhartrhari ..... 106
Translations from the Prama1}asamuccaya, Chapter 5 145
4. Dignaga ................... 164
Translations from Prama1}asamuccaya, Chapter 2.8-11 . 195
Translations from Nyayavarttika 1.1. 5 197
Translations from Slokavarttika 5.4. 34-47 198
Translations from Prama1}asamuccaya 2.30-36 201
5. Dharmakirti .... 211
Conclusion 241
Selected Bibliography 243
Index ..... 249
PREFACE
The Viikyapadiya of Bhartrhari and the Pramii1Jasamuccaya of Dignaga •
are seminal texts in the history of ancient Indian philosophy. One text
deals with grammar, the other with logic, both are the work of committed
metaphysicians. Written within a span of less than a hundred years,
between the fifth and the sixth centuries A.D., these texts have generally
been treated separately, as representing independent schools of thought.
This essay attempts to interpret these texts jointly, as a dialogue
between a grammarian and a logician. This way of approaching these
texts highlights unexpected facets of Bhartrhari's and Dignaga's theories
of language and is intended to identify the individual achievements of
each. Above all, this treatment is an exercise in writing the intellectual
history of a period in time, rather than a history of a school of philosophy.
The prevailing view of Bhartrhari holds that his linguistic techniques
are not intrinsic to his metaphysics. The conclusions reached in the
present essay are that Bhartrhari's metaphysics underlie his linguistic
techniques and articulate their presuppositions.
The prevailing view of Dignaga maintains that for him language
deals with illusory entities and must falsify what is real. The conclusions
reached in the present essay are that Dignaga's logical rules are designed
to ensure that in using language one is not committed to a belief in
fictional entities.
My debt to modern scholarship in the field is considerable.
Professor Maasaki Hattori's work on Dignaga's theory of perception;
the late Professor Tucci's rendering of the Nyiiyamukha and, above all,
Muni Jambuvijaya's reconstruction into Sanskrit of parts of Dignaga's
Pramii'}asamuccaya form the basis of my interpretation of Dignaga's
thought. The late Professor Subramania Iyer's critical editions of the
Viikyapadiya support my exposition of Bhartrhari.
I am very much indebted to Professor B. K. Matilal for his patient
.a nd generous guidance of several earlier versions of the work, one of
which was submitted as a doctoral dissertation to the University of
• Note: I follow the current practice of spelling the logician's name Digniiga rather than
DiIiniiga.
ix
x PREFACE
Toronto in the Spring of 1982. I would especially like to thank him for
his skilful and painstaking help in my translation of HeHiraja's text.
I am grateful to a number of scholars for giving valuable advice
and stem criticism. Among them are Professor Kamaleshwar Bhatta
charya, Professor Daniel Ingalls, Professor T. Venkatacharya, Professor
Shoryu Katsura and Professor Stella Sandahl.
In the course of writing this essay, I have incurred other obligations.
I am grateful to the librarians of the Adyar Library of the Theosopical
Society in Madras and to India Institute Library of Oxford University
for courtesies extended to me.
Dharmaklrti's stanza translated by Professor Daniel Ingalls in
An Anthology etc (An Anthology of Sanskrit Court Poetry: Vidyiikara's
"Subhii~itaratnakosa" by Daniel H. H. Ingalls, Harvard University
Press, 1965) is reprinted by permission of the publishers.
Radhika Herzberger
Rishi Valley
India
FOREWORD
The history of the development of Indian logical and epistemological
theories constitutes an important chapter in the global history of philo
sophy. Radhika Herzberger has chosen a very interesting period in the
history of Indian logic - the period of the two most outstanding and
creative philosophers, Bhartrhari and Diimaga. The former was a gram
marian, but from his pen we have probably for the first time a philos
ophical treatise, Viikyapadfya, which presented a systematic philosophy
of Sanskrit grammar in the broader perspective of what we call today
philosophy of language. Concerns over language and meaning led to
the problem of universals as well as to the discussion of the reformulation
of logical theories and rules of inference embodied in the language.
Thus, DiIinaga, father of the school of Buddhist logic and epistemology
(pramiin.a ), coming immediately after Bhartr.h ari, systematized the logical
doctrines from the Buddhist point of view deriving insights from Bhartr-
hari's writings but critically examining and refuting Bhartrhari's fun
damental view of language and meaning. What was, to begin with, the
Buddhist point of view became, with some modification and under
standable adjustments, the general point of view from which the logical
doctrines in India were examined, modified and reformulated for about
eight or nine centuries after DiIinaga. DiIinaga therefore holds un
questionably a key position in the history.
Recent researches on, and interpretation of, DiIinaga's philosophy
have been generally based upon the writings of his well-known follower
Dharmakirti as well as some of his Nyaya and Mimal!lsaka opponents
who came after him. Dr. Herzberger has followed a slightly different
course. She has gone very deeply into the text of DiIinaga's predecessor,
Bhartrhari, in order to identify the purvapak~a, the opponent's view,
and thereby to throw more light upon the exegesis of the logical and
linguistic theories of DiIinaga. That DiIinaga reacted against the views
of Bhartrhari on several occasions now goes without saying. In the fifth
chapter of the PramiifJa-samucc{/y([. Diimaga quotes a few verses from
Viikyapadfya. Besides, as the late E. Frauwallner has shown, DiIinaga
wrote an earlier treatise called Trikiilaparik~ii, which was based upon a
portion of Ka~~a III of Viikyapadfya. But while in the earlier treatise
DiIinaga was more sympathetic towards Bhartrhari's position (he adopted
xii FOREWORD
some of the verses of Bhartrhari with slight modifications), in PramiilJa
samuccaya, Chapter V, he was mostly critical of Bhartrhari as he de
veloped his unique theory, the apoha or the 'exclusion' theory of names.
Dr. Herzberger has taken great pains to analyse portions of Bhartrhari's
texts that were relevant to the problem of universals and the theory of
names (see her Chapter II) as well as to underline the fundamental
difference between Dinnaga and Bhartrhari on such matters (see
Chapter III).
Dr. Herzberger's challenging thesis is that Dinnaga's apoha doctrine
was meant to ensure that names (general names such as 'cow') 'apply'
directly to the (perceptual) objects. Here the word 'directly' is empha
sized. For according to the usual interpretation of the Buddhist apoha,
which might have percolated through the elaborate writings of Dharma
kirti and some later Nyaya opponents, names cannot mean or express
anything real but they express only concepts, the imagined universals.
Dr. Herzberger has chosen to refer to the views of M. Hattori as re
presentative of this usual interpretation. She could have chosen any other
scholar including the writer of the present Foreword, for indeed I have
followed to some extent Prof. Hattori's interpretation and claimed that
the names cannot 'express' the particulars 'directly' but 'the only way a
name can identify, or refer to, a particular is through negation and
elimination of other concepts'. (See my Epistemology, Logic and Grammar
in Indian Philosophical Analysis, Mouton, 1971, p.4l.) I shall not choose
to defend my formulation here, but instead I shall indulge in a more
fruitful enterprise - that of explaining briefly how I understand
Dr. Herzberger's thesis. The arguments she has presented here are un
doubtedly powerful and very complex, being frequently interwoven with
interpretative translations of Sanskrit texts. With much of them I am in
agreement. I am also in agreement with the point that Dinnaga did not
want his doctrine to be understood as that "names cannot bridge the
gap between the perceptual and the conceptual", but rather he wanted
to insist that the gap between the perceptual and the conceptual is bridged
by the apoha doctrine. In fact it would be a mistake to think that the
world of percepts and that of concepts should be totally exclusive of each
other like two water-tight compartments where information never flows
into each other. For then it would indeed be like the situation obliquely
visualized and criticized by Immanuel Kant: our conceptions are blind
and our perceptions are mute. I believe Dinnaga at least did not fall into
this error, although the Nyaya opponent would like to attribute such a
view to the Buddhists.
