Conclusions

Abstract

It was pointed out in section 1.3 of the first chapter of this book that various scholars have taken different positions with respect to the question of what Diṅnāga’s principal motivations were in writing his treatises on logic and epistemology. Scholars whose main familiarity with the Buddhist epistemologists was with the works of Dharmakīrti and Śāntarakṣita quite naturally concluded that the chief preoccupation of the Buddhist epistemologists was apologetic and polemic, their agenda being to show the correctness of Buddhist teachings and the falsity of all teachings that were incompatible with Buddhist teachings. Thus such scholars as S. Mookerjee and D.N. Shastri were inclined to characterize the Buddhist logicians as a whole as warriors in an ideological battle with the Brahmanical philosophers over a number of classical metaphysical issues such as the criteria of reality, the existence of God, the existence of universais, and the nature of potentiality. Questions of logic and epistemology were in this view ancillary to the more central metaphysical questions.