Dharmakīrti (fl. ) was an influential Indian Buddhist philosopher who worked at Nālandā. He was one of the key scholars of epistemology (pramāṇa) in Buddhist philosophy, and is associated with the Yogācāra and Sautrāntika schools. He was also one of the primary theorists of Buddhist atomism. The Chinese monk, Yijing, who was a resident at Nalanda between the years of 675 and 685 CE, refers to Dharmakīrti as a “recent” teacher. Yijing also mentioned that a Chinese traveller called Wuxing, was studying Dharmakīrti's teachings at the Telhara monastery which is just a short distance away from Nalanda which indicates that Dharmakīrti had attained fame as a logician in Magadha around 650–660 CE.

Tibetan hagiographies suggest that Dharmakīrti (Tibetan: ཆོས་ཀྱི་གྲགས་པ་; Wylie: chos kyi grags pa) was born into a Brahmin family of South India and later moved to Nalanda where he interacted with the 6th century Buddhist scholar Dharmapala.

However, the accuracy of the Tibetan hagiographies is uncertain, and scholars place him in the 7th century instead. This is because of inconsistencies in different Tibetan and Chinese texts, and because it is around the middle of 7th century, and thereafter, that Indian texts begin discussing his ideas, such as the citation of Dharmakīrti verses in the works of Adi Shankara. Dharmakīrti is believed by most scholars to have lived between 600 and 660 CE, but a few place him earlier.

Dharmakīrti is credited with building upon the work of Dignāga, the pioneer of Buddhist logic, and Dharmakīrti has ever since been seen as influential in the Buddhist tradition.

Philosophy

Historical context

The Buddhist works such as the Yogacarabhumi-sastra and the Mahāyānasūtrālaṅkāra, composed before the 6th century, on hetuvidyā (logic, dialectics) are unsystematic, whose approach and structure are heresiological, proselytical and apologetic. They aimed were to defeat non-Buddhist opponents (Hinduism, Jainism, Ājīvikism, Charvaka (materialists), and others), defend the ideas of Buddhism, develop a line of arguments that monks could use to convert those who doubted Buddhism and to strengthen the faith of Buddhists who began to develop doubts. Around the middle of the 6th century, possibly to address the polemics of non-Buddhist traditions with their pramana foundations, the Buddhist scholar Dignāga shifted the emphasis from dialectics to more systematic epistemology and logic, retaining the heresiological and apologetic focus. Dharmakīrti followed in Dignāga's footsteps, and is credited with systematic philosophical doctrines on Buddhist epistemology, which Vincent Eltschinger states, has "a full-fledged positive/direct apologetic commitment". Dharmakīrti lived during the collapse of the Gupta Empire, a time of great insecurity for Buddhist institutions. The role of Buddhist logic was seen as an intellectual defense against Hindu philosophical arguments formulated by epistemically sophisticated traditions like the Nyaya school. However, Dharmakīrti and his followers also held that the study of reasoning and its application was an important tool for soteriological ends.

Epistemology

thumb|Buddhist epistemology holds that perception and inference are the means to correct knowledge.

Dharmakīrti's philosophy is based on the need to establish a theory of logical validity and certainty grounded in causality. Following Dignāga's Pramāṇasamuccaya, Dharmakīrti also holds that there are only two instruments of knowledge or 'valid cognition' (pramāṇa): "perception" (pratyaksa) and "inference" (anumāṇa). Perception is a non-conceptual knowing of particulars that is bound by causality, while inference is reasonable, linguistic, and conceptual. Tillemans sees him as holding to a weak form of correspondence theory, which holds that to "confirm causal efficacy" (arthakriyāsthiti) is to have a justification that an object of cognition has the causal powers we expected.

Metaphysics

According to Buddhologist Tom Tillemans, Dharmakīrti's ideas constitute a nominalist philosophy which disagrees with the Madhyamaka philosophy, by asserting that some entities are real. Dharmakīrti states that the real is only the momentarily existing particulars (svalakṣaṇa), and any universal (sāmānyalakṣaṇa) is unreal and fiction. Both, however, are objects of knowledge. Particulars are known through perception and universals are known through inference. He criticized the Nyaya theory of universals by arguing that since they have no causal efficacy, there is no rational reason to posit them. What is real must have powers (śakti), fitness (yogyatā), or causal properties which is what individuates a real particular as an object of perception. Dharmakīrti writes "whatever has causal powers (arthakriyāsamartha), that exists (paramārthasat)." Dharmakīrti held the mindstream to be a beginning-less yet also described the mindstream as a temporal sequence, and that as there are no true beginnings, there are no true endings, hence, the "beginningless time" motif that is frequently used to describe the concept of mindstream.

Affiliation

There is disagreement among Indian and Tibetan doxographers as to how to categorise Dharmakīrti's thoughts. The Gelug school asserts that he expressed Yogācāra views, most non-Gelug Tibetan commentators assert that he expressed Sautrāntika views and, according to one Tibetan source, several of renowned later Indian Madhyamikas asserted that he expressed Madhyamaka views.

Among modern scholars, some like Tillemans argue that Dharmakīrti represented the Yogācāra school, while Amar Singh argues that he was a Sautrāntika. For Christine Mullikin Keyt, Dharmakīrti represents a "synthesis of two schools of Indian Buddhism, the Sautrantika and the Yogacara." Likewise, Dan Arnold argues that Dharmakīrti's alternating philosophical perspectives of Sautrāntika and Yogācāra views are ultimately compatible and are applied at different levels of his 'sliding scale of analysis.'

There is also a tendency to see Dignāga and Dharmakīrti as founding a new type of Buddhist school or tradition, which is known in Tibetan as "those who follow reasoning" () and sometimes is known in modern literature as pramāṇavāda.

Writings and commentaries

Dharmakīrti is credited with the following major works:

  • Sambandhaparīkṣā and Sambandhaparīkṣāvṛtti (Analysis of Relations)
  • Sambandhaparīkṣāvṛtti (Analysis of Relations auto-commentary)
  • Pramāṇaviniścaya (Ascertainment of Valid Cognition)
  • Pramāṇavārttika-kārika (Commentary on Dignāga's Pramāṇasamuccaya)
  • Pramāṇavārttikasvavrtti (auto-commentary on the above text)
  • Nyāyabinduprakaraṇa (Drop of Logic)
  • Hetubindunāmaprakaraṇa (Drop of Reason)
  • Saṃtānāntarasiddhināmaprakaraṇa (Proof of Others' Mindstreams)
  • Vādanyāyanāmaprakaraṇa (Reasoning for Debate)

There are various commentaries by later thinkers on Dharmakīrti, the earliest commentators being the Indian scholars Devendrabuddhi (ca. 675 CE.) and Sakyabuddhi (ca. 700 C.E.). Other Indian commentators include Karṇakagomin, Prajñākaragupta, Manorathanandin, Ravigupta and Śaṅkaranandana.

He was extremely influential in Tibet, where Phya pa Chos kyi Seng ge (1182-1251) wrote the first summary of his works, called "Clearing of Mental Obscuration with Respect to the Seven Treatises on Valid Cognition" (tshad ma sde bdun yid gi mun sel). Sakya Pandita wrote the "Treasure on the Science of Valid Cognition" (tshad ma rigs gter) and interpreted Dharmakīrti as an anti-realist against Phya pa's realism. These two main interpretations of Dharmakīrti became the foundation for most debates in Tibetan epistemology.

See also

  • Dignāga
  • Hetucakra
  • Trairūpya
  • Buddhist logic
  • Pramana
  • Buddhist atomism
  • Epistemology
  • William of Ockham

References

Bibliography

  • extensive discussion of the Dharmakirti's Tibetan reception
  • Pecchia, C. (ed., with the assistance of Pierce P.). (2015). Dharmakīrti on the Cessation of Suffering. A Critical Edition with Translation and Comments of Manorathanandin's Vṛtti and Vibhūticandraʼs Glosses on Pramāṇavārttika II.190-216. Leiden, Brill.
  • Shcherbatskoy, Fyodor (1932) Buddhist Logic, introduced the West to Buddhist logic, and more specifically to Dignaga. Although pioneering, this work is now regarded as outdated by some Buddhist scholars. — David Loy complains about viewing Buddhist philosophy "through the categories of another system – Stcherbatsky's Kant, Murti's Vedānta, Gudmundsen's Wittgenstein – which (as with earlier interpretations of nirvāṇa) reveals more about the interpreter than the interpreted." ().
  • Dharmakirti from Study Buddhism