Jnanasrimitra's Vyapticarca: Sanskrittext, Ubersetzung, Analyse.

AuthorPatil, Parimal G.
PositionBook review

Jnanasrimitra's Vyapticarca: Sanskrittext, Ubersetzung, Analyse. By HORST LASIC. Wiener Studien zur Tibetologie und Buddhismuskunde, vol. 48. Vienna: ARBEITSKREIS FUR TIBETISCHE UND BUDDHIS-TISCHE STUDIEN UNIVERSITAT WIEN, 2000. Pp. 188.

Jnanasrimitra (ca. 1000 C.E.) was a Buddhist intellectual who lived and worked in the monastic and educational complex of Vikramasila during the final phase of Buddhism in India. He is said to have been one of the famed gatekeepers (dvarapandita) of Vikramasila University and is one of the last Buddhist philosophers whose work was known to non-Buddhists. As Frauwallner discovered in the 1930s, Jnanasrimitra is referred to by the Nyaya philosopher Udayana (ca. 1025), the Jaina philosopher Devabhadra (ca. twelfth c.), and the Vedantin Sayana-Madhava (ca. 1350). Jnanasrimitra's work also heavily influenced that of his student Ratnakirti (ca. 1025) and was well known to Moksakaragupta (ca. eleventh/twelfth c. C.E.), the author of the Tarkabhasa, a handbook of late Buddhist logic and epistemology. Until Anantalal Thakur's pioneering edition of 1957, almost nothing was known about Jnanasrimitra's twelve philosophical works. Jnanasrimitra's work on metrics, the Vrttamalastuti, was edited in 1956 by Yogi Naraharinath and studied by Michael Hahn in 1971. In his twelve philosophical essays Jnanasrimitra discusses the most important topics of his day including momentariness (ksanikatva), the existence of Isvara, the theory of exclusion (apoha), the nature of mental images (akara), yogic perception, and topics in the theory of inference such as non-apprehension (anupalabdhi), causality (karyakaranabhava), and inference-warranting relations (vyapti), the subject of the book being reviewed here.

Horst Lasic's book is a critical edition and minimally annotated translation of Jnanasrimitra's Vyapticarca, a work devoted to the critical examination of a specific type of inference-warranting relation (vyapti)--the relation between two distinct entities such as smoke and fire (tadutpatti). In this text, Jnanasrimitra does not discuss the other inference-warranting relation that is accepted by Buddhist epistemologists, i.e., 'identity' (tddatmya). In his essay Jnanasrimitra argues against the views of unnamed Mimamsa philosophers--whom he refers to only as the "old-timers" (purastanah)--and two Nyaya philosophers, Trilocana (ca. 940) and Vacaspatimisra (ca. 960). In critical dialogue with these opponents, Jnanasrimitra defends...

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