A Millennium of Buddhist Logic, vol. 1.

• Author: Gillon, Brendan S.

A Millennium of Buddhist Logic, vol. 1. By ALEX WAYMAN. Buddhist Tradition Series, vol. 36. Delhi: MOTILAL BANARSIDASS, 1999. Pp. xxiv + 349. Rs 395.

This book is the first volume of a projected two-volume work by Alex Wayman. The volume is essentially a collection of translations of either the entirety or portions of seven texts in Buddhist logic. Five of the texts were originally written in Sanskrit, while two were originally written in Tibetan.

The first text translated is a very lengthy extract from the Srutamayibhumi of the Yogacarabhumisastra of Asanga (fourth century A.D.). This extract, which goes by the contemporary label of Hetu-vidya, was originally brought to light by Wayman in the 1950s when he discovered it misplaced in the middle of another chapter of Asanga's work. (See his "The Rules of Debate According to Asanga," JAOS 78 [1958]: 29-40.) As Wayman reports, this text has been edited twice already, once by Jagadhisvara Pandeya (in Homage to Bhikkhu Jagdish Kashyap, ed. P. N. Ojha [Nalanda: Siri Nava Nalanda Mahavihara, 1986], II: 315-49) and once by H. Yaita (Naritasan bukkyo kenkyusho 15: 505-76). In a number of places, the text and its translation are rather obscure. Regrettably, Wayman does not provide footnotes to assist us in understanding either. The text presented contains a number of typographical errors, ranging from misplaced dandas (e.g., p. 19 passim), to transposed letters (e.g., p. 5, line 21 contains "savro" instead of "s arvo"), to missing letters (e.g., p. 9, line 25 contains "visesasya" without its "s"), to missing diacritics (e.g., p. 7, line 32 contains "kathayah" without its second macron), to superfluous letters (e.g., p. 14, line 6 contains "gam" with "va" added before "m"), to spurious words (e.g., p. 6, line 4 contains "vibadhya-" instead of "vinibandha-").

The second and third texts translated are Dharmakirti's (first half of the seventh century) very brief treatise on logic, the Nyayabindu, and a commentary thereto by Kamalasila (second half of the eighth century), Nyayabindupurvapaksamksipti. Wayman presents and translates the Tibetan translation of the latter. Previously, only H. Tosaki's edition and Japanese translation of the Pratyaksa chapter had appeared in print (Acta Indologica [Indo koten kenkyu] [Narita] 6 [1984]: 477-94). (1)

There are, of course, several editions and English translations of the former text, including the editions by P. Petersen (Calcutta: Asiatic Society of Bengal...