Dharmottaras kurze Untersuchung der Gultigkeit einer Erkenntnis: Laghupramanyapariksa, vol. 1: Tibetischer text und Sanskritmaterialien: vol. 2: Ubersetzung.

• Author: Hattori, Masaaki
• Position: Review

By HELMUT KRASSER. Vienna: VERLAG DER OSTERREICHISCHEN AKADEMIE DER WISSENSCHAFTEN, 1991. Pp. 162 + 150. DM 50 (paper).

In recent years remarkable progress has been made in the studies of Dharmottara's works. Some Sanskrit fragments of his Pramanaviniscayatika have been collected from Durvekamisra's Dharmottarapradipa and some other sources, and the portion of the same work dealing with the definition of pramana (valid cognition) has been translated into German by E. Steinkellner and H. Krasser.(1) A critically edited Tibetan text with a German translation of the Paralokasiddhi has been published by Steinkellner.(2) The present work by Krasser is an important addition to the literature of Dharmottara studies.

Dharmottara composed two treatises on the validity of cognition (pramanya), a longer (*brhat-) and a shorter (*laghu-) Pramanyapariksa (BPPar and LPPar). Both of them have come down to us only in Tibetan translation. In the present work the author provides scholars a critically edited Tibetan text and a copiously annotated German translation of the *Laghupramanyapariksa.

The title of the treatise is tshad ma brtag pa in Tibetan, and pra ma na pa ri ksa in transliterated Sanskrit. The author has adopted the title Pramanyapariksa, which is attested in the Dharmottarapradipa (p. 24) with the remark that pramanya is often translated by tshad ma instead of tshad ma nid (vol. 2, pp. 11-12; 34, n. 24).

That Dharmottara was an independent and original thinker rather than a faithful elucidator of Dharmakirti's theories was pointed out by Th. Stcherbatsky and E. Frauwallner,(3) who made some of Dharmottara's works accessible in modern languages in the 1930s. In his two commentaries on Dharmakirti's works, viz, the Nyayabindutika (NBT) and the Pramanaviniscayatika (PVinT), it is noticed that he, unlike Devendrabuddhi and some other commentators who closely followed Dharmakirti's ideas, expounded his own views on philosophical problems that were treated by Dharmakirti. The same is the case with LPPar. In this treatise Dharmottara puts forth his interpretation of Dharmakirti's definition of pramana as reliable cognition (avisamvadakam jnanam). According to him, the reliability of a cognition consists in its causing a person to obtain (prapaka) the indicated (pradarsita) object, which is capable of fulfilling his purpose (arthakriyasamartha). That is to say, pramana has the function of indicating (pradarsaka) to a person the object of activity...