Abstract
Ratnakīrti flourished early in the 11th century A.D. at the University of Vi-kramaśīlā, a member of the Yogācāra-Vijñānavāda school of late Buddhist philosophy. Thakur characterizes Ratnakīrti’s writing as “more concise and logical though not so poetical”1 as that of his guru, Jñānaśrīmitra, two of whose dicta are focal points of the present work.2
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References
See Jñānaśrīmitranibandhāvali (Buddhist Philosophical Works of Jñānaśrīmitra) (ed. by A. Thakur), Patna 1959, p. 31.
For an account of the life, work, and influence of Ratnakirti’s guru, see Thakur’s JN, pp. 1–42.
See Y. Kajiyama, ‘Buddhist Solipsism. A free translation of Ratnakirti’s Saṁttānānta-radūsaṇa’, Journal of Indian and Buddhist Studies 13 (1965) 435–420. N.B. Solipsism is provable only from the vantage point of the highest truth, and, in his discussion of our knowledge of the everyday world, Ratnakīrti emphatically disavows solipsism. See his Iśvarasādhanadūṣaṇa, in Ratnakīrtinibandhāvali (ed. by A. Thakur), Patna 1957, pp. 29–52.
Thus there can be no real relationship (because there is not really any distinction) between the merely fictitious conceptual apparatus of an illusory subject and an absolutely real svalakṣaṇa.
H. Ganguli’s citation of a conclusion of Prajñākaragupta. H. Ganguli, Philosophy of Logical Construction, Calcutta 1963, p. 193.
Called by the Yogācāra Buddhists the svasaṃvedana-svalakṣaṇa (self-defined self-experience). And, of course, to say that a svalakṣaṇa is definable only in terms of itself is tantamount to saying that it is not really definable at all. (See Ganguli, Philosophy of Logical Construction, p. 133.) A svalakṣaṇa simply, inexplicably, occurs — even this much cannot properly be asserted. It is an indivisible unique unity, the discrete psychic fact of the moment — not a substance at all, but a quantum of energy, a fortiori not a material or a spiritual substance. And this unity is falsely bifurcated into aspects by the inveterate illusoriness of the human conceptual apparatus.
The members of Ratnakīrti’s philosophical school (as is true of Indian philosophers in general) do not make a sharp distinction between logic and epistemology.
Within the Yogācāra-Vijñānavāda tradition, Ratnakīrti belongs to the subschool of interpretation of Dharmakīrti’s Pramāṇavārtika begun by Prajñākaragupta (whose probable floruit was in the early part of the 8th century A.D.). The Pramāṇavārtika, written by Dharmakirti in the 7th century A.D. is a highly original recasting of the basic tenets of the great Buddhist logician Dignāga (ca. 480 A.D.) into a system of logic and epistemology which became the point of departure for all subsequent developments in Buddhist logic. See The Pramāṇavārttikam of Dharmakīrti. The First Chapter with the Autocommentary (ed. by R. Gnoli), Rome 1960. See also T. Stcherbatsky, Buddhist Logic, II (Dover edition), 1962, which is a translation of Dharmakīrti’s short logical treatise, the Nyāyabindu. M. Nagatomi’s doctoral thesis (which I have not seen) is also pertinent: A Study of Dharmakīrti’s Pramāṇavārttika. An English Translation and Annotation of the Pramāṇavārttika, Book I (Pramāṇasiddhi), Harvard University, 1957.
Here any psychologists overtones which sometimes accompany the word ‘concept’ must be ruled out. Ratnakīrti construes a concept as a logical construction, a synthesis (see p. 76), not as the private adjunct of some individual mind.
As has been said (p. 1, footnote 4), from the standpoint of paramārtha there can be no real relationship between an only apparently existent concept and an absolutely existent svalakṣaṇa. Nonetheless, in assuming the standpoint of saṃvṛti (spawned and pervaded as it is by a primordial illusion), Ratnakīrti perforce attempts the analysis and pragmatic assessment of the fabricated and merely indirect ‘relationship’ between a fictitious conceptual construct and a sequence of self-annihilating staccato bursts of energy. (See p. 76, footnote 94.)
A jug, qua stock example of phenomenon in KBI, is also alluded to in KBII.
Does it, for instance, make any sense to seek a raison d’être for the primordial, dichotomizing illusion? I leave it to a more metaphysically oriented study of Yogācāra philosophy to render intelligible that school’s received doctrine that there is nothing except for staccato discrete cognitions — i.e., that “knowledge alone exists; the projection of an external world is an illusion of knowledge brought about by beginningless potencies of desire (vāsanā) associated with it” (S. Dasgupta, A History o f Indian Philosophy, Vol. I, p. 411). Such a study ought also to resolve (if, indeed, they are resolvable) the ambiguities in the notion of dynamism (arthakriyākāritva), the dynamism of each staccato point (svalakṣaṇa) being, according to Ratnakīrti, the hallmark of its real existence.
The disparate opinions of the critics are legion. To a certain extent the problem is a pseudo-problem, engendered by a failure on the part of critics and commentators to distinguish a pan-fictional idiom from a literal one. In addition, some critics have a tendency to extrapolate full-blown metaphysical doctrines from incidental remarks in treatises primarily concerned with logic. Apropos, see the insightful observations of A. B. Keith, Buddhist Philosophy in India and Ceylon, pp. 308–9. To the extent that the problem is a real one, the first step towards solving it would seem to be a clarification of some of the more refractory material in Dharmakīrti’s Pramānavārtika. M. Nagatomi’s soon to be published translation and exegesis of this extremely difficult work promises to dispel much of the obscurity and confusion which surround it.
Yat sat tat ksaṇikam (Reality is essentially cinematographic). See p. 9 for a formal symbolic expression of this thesis. The contrapositive of the foregoing is, of course, the thesis that whatever is nonmomentary does not exist (expressed in symbols on p. 9).
Contemporary Western philosophical literature abounds in discussions of the same sort. To name a few: B. Russell, ‘On Denoting’, Mind 14 (1905) 479–93; P. Strawson, ‘On Referring’, Mind 59 (1950) 320–44; K. S. Donnellan, ‘Reference and Definite Descriptions’, The Philosophical Review 75 (1966) 281–304; W. V. O. Quine, Word and Object, Cambridge, Mass., 1960.
See pp. 1 and 36.
Although Ratnakīrti expressly mentions philosophers of the Mīṃāmsaka, Yoga, and Cārvāka schools in his other writings, in KBII he is concerned to rebut Saṃkara, Bhāsar-vajña, Trilocana, and Vācaspati Miśra, all of whom are members of the Nyāya school (‘Naiyāyikas’). The Nyāya school is generally conceded to have bred the logicians par excellence of the six orthodox Hindu philosophical schools. Inimical scholarly encounters between the heterodox Buddhist and the orthodox Brahmanical logicians have fructified systematic logical developments on both sides ever since the dawn of Buddhist logic. S. Dasgupta gives an account of the earliest beginnings of Nyāya philosophy in A History of Indian Philosophy, Vol. I, Cambridge 1922, pp. 274–310. For a detailed discussion of Nyāya epistemology and logic, see S. C. Chatterjee, The Nyāya Theory of Knowledge, Calcutta 1939. A. Thakur details the parallel growth and mutual influence of pre-Ratna-kīrti Hindu and Buddhist systems in his JN, pp. 15–23, and in his RN, pp. 23–7. For post-Buddhistic developments in Nyāya philosophy see D. H. Ingalls, Materials for the Study of Navya-Nyāya Logic, Cambridge, Mass., 1951. See also K. Potter, The Padārtha-tattvanirūpanam of Raghunātha Sromani, Cambridge, Mass., 1957, pp. 1–20. C. Goekoop’s Introduction to The Logic of Invariable Concomitance in the Tattvacintāmani, Dordrecht 1967, is also informative.
See Ratnākarasānti’s Antarvyāptisamarthana in Six Buddhist Nyāya Tracts, Calcutta 1910. See also p. 55. Antarvyāpti is a late Buddhist modification of the traditional notion of vyāpti (concomitance, pervasion). For details on the ascertainment of vyāpti as the basis of valid inference, see p. 12.
Referring, as it does, to a concept not explicable in terms of actual existents.
And KBI purports to provide a demonstration for (1).
To say that Ratnakīrti’s speculations constitute a system is perhaps to wax hyperbolic, since Ratnakīrti does not make a sharp enough distinction between what is presystematic and what falls within the confines of his system. But this piecemeal attacks on a related class of problems do amount to (at the very least) ‘systematizing’, if not to a fullfledged system.
Routley’s system R* appears in its entirety in his article ‘Some Things Do Not Exist’, Notre Dame Journal of Formal Logic 1 (1966) 251–76. Note that while crucial similarities between portions of KBII and R* make R* a tool par excellence for elucidating certain passages of KBII, I am far from claiming a point-for-point correspondence between Ratnakīrti’s results and the more sophisticated full-blown system of Routley.
The writings of e.g., J. F. Staal, S. Schayer, I. M. Bocheński, D. H. Ingalls, and C. Goekoop comprise the most cogent arguments I know of in favor of utilizing formal structures to trace out the logic in both Nyāya and late Buddhist texts.
Should this assumption prove to be ill-founded, perhaps a variant of Lesniewskis ‘ontology’ (see, e.g., A. N. Prior, Formal Logic, pp. 293–9) might be more profitably applied as an analytical intermediary. The trouble is that late Buddhist epistemology sorts out entities via a more or less ‘psychologistic’ possibility criterion, which effects the following trifurcation of entities: (1) phenomenally real (for example, a jug); (2) ‘conceivable’ but not phenomenally real (for example, a nonmomentary entity, a hare’s horn, the son of a barren woman); (3) inconceivable (for example, Nirvāṇa). Whether or not there are significant differences between the subvarieties of kind (2) must be gleaned from the context, which, as I have said (pp. 69 and 80) seems to warrant making a distinction between the (nonactualized) nonmomentary entity and the (inconsistent) son of a barren woman. Though there is a modicum of arbitrariness in holding Ratnakīrti to a distinction only implicit in his writings, it seems to me preferable to do so, if necessary (despite the longueurs of qualifications and reservations), than to abandon altogether the enterprise of explicating his theory.
As in, e.g., W. V. Quine, Mathematical Logic, New York 1940, or A. Church, Introduction to Mathematical Logic, Vol. I, Princeton 1956.
See below, p. 8.
‘nīla’ + ‘tva’ =dt’blueness’; ‘ghaṭa + ‘tva’ = dt’jug-ness’.
While Ratnakirti makes free use of this format in his paraphrases of ordinary sentences, both the ‘locus’ and the ‘attribute’ dissolve in the course of his reductive analysis, so that his employment of these locutions amounts to a mere façon de parler, which does not, in the long run, commit him to any perduring entitative correlates thereof. See pp. 64ff.
This means that loci characterized by the occurrence of logically inconsistent combinations of attributes will not be possible substituents for variables — i.e., our quantifiers will not take account of such loci. Hence the relatively unimportant example of the son of a barren woman must be excluded from our analysis. (Alternatively, perhaps one might employ a constant to refer to the son of a barren woman.) This constitutes a very minor (and it seems to me unavoidable) distortion of Ratnakīrti’s thought.
The by now familiar point that no logical obstacles stand in the way of taking ‘exists’ as a predicate need not be belabored. See, e.g., G. Nakhnikian and W. Salmon, ‘“Exists” as a Predicate’, Philosophical Review, 1957, 535–42. But it must be kept in mind that there are significant differences between ascribing the term ‘exists’ (or ‘does not exist’) to a certain subject term and ascribing a more mundane attribute term such as ‘blue’ to that same subject term. In fact, in Buddhist epistemology ‘exists’, ‘is efficacious’, and ‘is momentary’ all require special handling, since none of the three refers to an ordinary qualitative property. What is important is that Ratnakirti’s theory is capable of handling them.
In the absolute sense, neither a phenomenally real nor a phenomenally unreal entity exists. Hence, even a phenomenally real jug possesses whatever efficacy it has in a merely derivative sense, by virtue of the jug’s indirect relation to svalakṣaṇāni. The latter, while efficacious in the primary sense are also translinguistic and cannot, strictly speaking, be said to be efficacious at all.
Notation, terminology and abbreviations are adapted from A. Church, Introduction to Mathematical Logic, Vol. I, Princeton 1956.
N.B., ‘relative truth’. Yogic intuition, providing (as it does) access to absolute truth (paramārtha), need not be considered further in this discussion. Here again the parsimonious tendencies of late Buddhism are in evidence, for Ratnakīrti’s Naiyāyika adversaries posit four means of valid knowledge.
Nonperception (anupalabdhi), the source of our knowledge of what is ‘unreal’, is not a separate means of cognition at all; rather, it is inferential in character. Nor does anupalabdhi involve the apprehension of any peculiar sort of ‘negative’ entity. See the notes to (85.5) and those to (85.15).
In the case involving fire and smoke, fieriness serves as sādhya and smokiness as hetu.
In a given inference, S may also be termed the ‘pervader’ (‘vyāpaka) relative to H, which is then termed the ‘pervadendum’ (‘vyāpya’), whereupon, in the contraposed (vyatireka) version of that same inference, the nonoccurrence of S (i.e., the nonoccurrence of the vyāpaka) is pervaded by the nonoccurrence of H (i.e., by the nonoccurrence of the vyāpya). For alternative symbolizations of this relationship employing the correlatives ‘hetu’-’sādhya’ ‘vyāpya’-’vyāpaka’, respectively, see conditions (d’) and (d”) below and formulae (1) and (2) of the notes to (80.29).
These cases are called ‘sapakṣa’ or ‘similar’ or ‘homologous’.
So-called ‘heterologues’ — ‘vipakṣa’ or ‘dissimilar’ cases.
This fact has been noted by J. F. Staal in ‘Contraposition in Indian Logic’, in Proceedings of the 1960 International Congress for Logic, Methodology, and Philosophy of Science, Stanford 1962, pp. 634–9.
I.e., realizing that deductive necessity cannot be arrived at by a mere inductive compilation of experienced examples and counter-examples. Here, perhaps, Stcherbatsky’s Kantian reading of late Buddhist logic seems less far-fetched than it usually does. One almost wants to say that, for Ratnakīrti, inference represents the mind’s constructive activity and is, to that extent, a priori.
It goes without saying that neither is a concept reducible to a mere compilation of the instances which fall under it; otherwise one would have to resort to tallying homologues and heterologues after all. I.e., blueness is not to be identified with the class of all blue things. Rather, blueness is a rule of synthesis in the sense explained on p. 76.
In Ratnakīrti’s anticipation of Ratnākaraśānti’s theory of antarvyāpti.
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McDermott, A.C.S. (1969). Introduction. In: An Eleventh-Century Buddhist Logic of ‘Exists’. Foundations of Language. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-6322-6_1
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