Indian Buddhist Theories of Persons: Vasubandhu's "Refutation of the Theory of a Self.".

• Author: Kapstein, Matthew
• Position: Book review

Indian Buddhist Theories of Persons: Vasubandhu's "Refutation of the Theory of a Self." By JAMES DUERLINGER. London: ROUTLEDGECURZON, 2003. Pp. xii + 308. $170 (cloth), $37.95 (paper).

The present volume usefully collects, but at the same time revises and develops, materials first published by the author in a series of six articles appearing in The Journal of Indian Philosophy: "Vasubandhu's 'Refutation of the Theory of Selfhood'" (JIP 17 [1989]: 129-37); "A Translation of Vasubandhu's 'Refutation of the Theory of Selfhood': A Resolution of Questions about Persons" (IJP 17 [1989]: 137-87); "Reductionist and Nonreductionist Theories of Persons in Indian Buddhist philosophy" (IJP 21 [1993]: 79-101); and "Vasubandhu's Philosophical Critique of the Vastiputriya's Theory of Persons," parts I, II, and III (IJP 25 [1997]: 307-35; 26 [1998]: 573-605; and 28 [2000]: 125-70). In the work under consideration here, as in the original articles, the aim is to present a detailed philosophical reading of Vasubandhu's Pudgalapratisedhaprakarana, an important treatise on the Buddhist anatma doctrine that forms a sort of appendix to the same author's Abhidharmakosabhasya. It was the famed Russian Orientalist, Theodore Stcherbatsky, who first took note of the text and its interest in relation to Western discussions of personal identity, and who published a pioneering translation of it in The Soul Theory of the Buddhists, first issued in 1919 in the Bulletin de l'Academie des Sciences de Russie (6/13: 823-54, 937-58), and reprinted several times since.

In his first chapter Duerlinger provides an introduction to Vasubandhu's treatise, his translation of which is given in chapter two. Duerlinger divides the translation of the Pudgalapratisedhaprakarana into four main sections--"Vasubandhu's Theory of Persons" (pp. 71-72), "Vasubandhu's Objections to the Pudgalavadins' Theory of Persons" (pp. 73-85), "Vasubandhu's Replies to the Objections of the Pudgalavadins" (pp. 86-95), and "Vasubandhu's Replies to the Objections of the Tirthikas and Objections to Their Arguments" (pp. 96-110)--followed by the concluding verses (111). Each of the four substantive sections is then supplemented by an entire chapter (chaps. 3-6) offering Duerlinger's comments upon it. The structure of the book as a whole, therefore, has the merit of adhering to a pattern of exposition that will be familiar to students of the Western philosophical classics.

Duerlinger's "Introduction to the Translation" (pp. 1-72) surveys many of the topics that are fundamental background for the study of Vasubandhu's work: the Sanskrit text and its varied translations (pp. 4-8); Pudgalavada and Nyaya-Vaisesika theories of persons, which are Vasubandhu's main purvapaksa-s (pp. 8-15); the...