papers of th.stcherbatsky,gupta,1975

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S O V I E T I N D O L O G Y S E R I E S N o . 2

P A P E R SO F

T h . S T C H E R B A T S K Y

Translated for the first time into Eng lish by' H A R I S H C . G U P T A

" Edited with an Introduction byD E B I P R A S A D C H A T T O P A D H Y A Y A

I N D I A NS T U D I E S

PAST & PRESENT


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Printed by A. Gu ha from Q uality Printers &Binders , 84 Ra sh B ehari Avenue, Calcutta 26and published by R. K . M aitra on behalf ofIndian Studies : Past and Present,3 Sambhunath Pandit Street , Calcutta-700020

Price Rs. 35.00

Date of PublicationNovember 30, 1969Reprinted^November 25, 1975


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in this volume

Translator's PrefaceAcknowledgementIntroduction

P AP E R S OF S T C HE R B AT S KYA BUDDHIST PHILOSOPHER ON MONOTHEISMText, Translation with Critical Introduction of Ngrjuna'sIsvara-kartrtva-pirakrtih-visnofy-ekakartrtva-nirkarana l

ON THE HISTORY OF MATERIALISM IN INDIA 12

THEORY OF POETRY IN INDIA 18

SCIENTIFIC ACHIEVEMENTS OF ANCIENT INDIA 42

'ESTABLISHMENT OP THE EXISTENCE OF OTHER MINDS'Free Translation of Dharm akirti'sSantanantara-siddhiwith Vinltadeva 's ,' .?Santriantara-siddhi-ka,' - 55^

AP P E NDI C E SA. Select Bibliography 93B. Arehive Materials ' 97


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T RANS L AT OR' S P R E F A C EThanks to Dr. I . D. Serebryakov, we now possess a fine selection of the outstandingcon tributio ns of the Ru ssian IndologiSts of t h e r 19th and early 20th centuries, wh ich,as edited and anno tated by him is published und er the t i tle Izbrannye trudy russkikhIndologov-filologov (Mosco w, 1962). Stcherbatsky's paper on Scientific Achievements

of Ancient India has been translated by me from this^y^J^e^ ^.^s^.jjregards the othe rpapers included here, thank s are due to Prof. Debiprasad Chat topadhyaya wh o,on his last visit to Russia, had the vision and the initiative to procure th e microfilms oftheir Russian originals with a view to study and publish them.In translating these papers; I have been fully aware of the presumptuousness of thetask. A nd I migh t n ot have take n it up , if it were no t for the boun dless enco uragem entand learned guidance of Professor De biprasad Cha ttopadhy aya himselfw ho, withhis first-hand know ledge of th e wo rk of Soviet Indo logists, was the m ost ap pro pria teper son to guide such a project. In th e m idst of his manifold activities, he very kindly

scrutinised th e m anu script, rectified my erro rs and suggested su itable revisions. An dfor this , I canno t adequately express my profound grati tude to him. Th e errors , whichstill survive, are obviously due to my own inade quac ies. * . . '*Professor Ch attop adh yay a wa!s also kind eno ugh to accede to my reque st for acomprehensive Introduction to this volume.

. I am also indebted to Professor M rinalk anti G ango padh yaa of Vidyasagar College,Calcutta, for kindly going through the entire mauscript and making very useful suggestions.CalcuttaNo vem ber 30, 1969 ' Harish C. G upta

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTAmong the innumerable Soviet friends and scholars from whom I have receivedhelp and active support in this venture, I am particularly anxious to express my deepgratitude to Professor V. V. B alabush evich, Professor V. I. KaV yanov, Dr. I. D. Sere-bryakov, Dr. E. E. Tyomkin, Dr. A. D. Littman, Dr. G M. Bongard-Levin and Dr. N P.

Anikeev. I would also like to take this opportunity to thank the mem bers of the Instituteof Philosophy. Academ y of Scinces US SR, on whose kind invitation I had the opportunityof visiting the Soviet Union in 196$ and of meeting the Soviet philosophers and Indologists.". . 9Apart from Sri Harish C. Gupta who insists on putting some highsounding wordsabou t me in his Translator's Preface and thereby makes it most embarrassing for me evento acknow ledge the elementary fact that withou t his help it wou ld have been simply absurdfor me to work on this project / am m ost gratefi to Ifypfe$$or -Mrinalkanti Gango-padhyaya9 Dr. Ma hadevprasad Saha and Dr. Alaka\ Chattopadhyaya for help in variousforms. Debiprasad Chattopadhyaya


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I N T R O D U C T I O NTheodore Stcherbatsky 1 was bo rn on O ctobe r 1 [September 19, o.s.] , 1866,at Kielce, Po lan d, where his father was then wo rking . He died on Ma rch 18, 1942,at Borovoi in N or th Ka zakh stan. His epitaph , translate d into English, reads : "H eexplained to his country the wisdom of the ancient Indian thinkers ."A n epitap h is, of cou rse, only an epita ph and it is no t intended to be anexhaustive description of the total contr ibu tion of the pe rson whose m emory i tcherishes. So are the w ords inscribed on Stche rbatsky 's to m b, which are mo reoverchosen specially from the poin t of view of his cou ntrym en. T o the In dia ns ,however,and part icularly to those of our countrymen who want to make a serious

study of ou r own philosoph ical tradition- the urge to say a great deal m ore ab ou tStcherbatsky is alm ost irresistible. The ir gratitud e to him is imm ense. In anim po rtan t sense, Stcherba tsky did help us the Indians-to discover our own pastan d to restore the righ t perspec tive of our own philosop hical heritage. Yet thiswas only one aspect of his grand contr ibution to Indology, though at ths same t imeone cann ot also help won dering how immensely the impo rtance of this part icularaspect of his con tribu tion would have increased bu t for his perso nal fascination forthe p hilosophy of Im ma nuel K an t and his consequent eagerness to read K antia nphilosoph y or the pote ntials thereof---in medieval India n texts where these couldno t have histo rica lly be lon ged. ,-.-Th us for example^ the greatest tribute Stcherbatsky could think of paying toD ha rm ak lrt i [c. 7th century A.D.] , his favourite Indian philosopher, was todescribe him as "th e Indian K an t." Tho ugh eloque nt was his personal adm irationfor both D ha rm ak irt i and K an t, such a description has not even a figurative valuefor those for wh om K an t is not the me asure of philosop hical g reatness. Tak en inits literal sense, on the other hand , it is likely to interfere with an objective unde r-standing of D ha rm ak irt i 's actual p hilosophical posit ion in i ts conc rete his toricalcon text. But m ore of this later.N otw ithstan ding this, how ever, it is impossible to underestimate^ in any waythe significance of Stcherbatsky's recogn ition-r-and even a passio nate defence of th estupendous imp ortance of D ha rm ak irt i or , mo re s trictiy, of the epis temological andlogical tradit ion associated with the nam es of D ha rm ak irt i and his grand preceptor

1. According to Russian orthograp hy Fedo r Ippoli tovich Shcherbatskoi.The Russ ian name Fedo (Feodor) is derived from the Greek Theodor.Stcherbatsky himself used the form Theodore, which is retained here.SInt. 1


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ii . IntroductionDi gng a [c. A .D . 500] in the development of Ind ian philosophical activity in itsm ature st phase. Per haps in default of a mo re satisfactory description of it and alsofor the pur pos e of a convenient form of reference, Stcherb atsky called this thetradition of "Buddhist logic", though, rightly enough, without attaching anylop-sided religious significance to the word "Buddhist" in this particular context.2

Ou r knowledge of "Bu ddh ist logi c" is inextricably connected with the wo rkof Stche rbatsky an d we could have called him its only discoverer bu t for the facttha t when he was wo rking on the subject, the Indi an historian of Indian logic,S. C. Vidyab husana, quite independently of Stcherbatsky bu t following the sameline as followed by Stcherbatsky himselfworked as ano ther pioneer worke r on thesubject.3 W hile speaking of the discovery of "Bu ddh ist logic ", therefore, we have

2. Steherbatsky, Buddhist Logic i. 2 : "The Buddhists themselves call this theirscience a doc trine of logical reas ons ( hetu-vidy ) or a doctrine of thesources of right knowledge (pramna-vidy) or simply, an investigation ofright knowledge {samyag-jfina-vyutpdan). It is a doctrine of tru th anderro r. In the intention of its pro m ote rs the system had apparen tly nospecial conn ection w ith Bu ddh ism as a religion, i.e. a s a teaching of a path*towards salvation".3. I t may be useful to have here a brief account of the work s on the samesubject by Satischandra Vidyabhusana." I n 1901", wrote Sir A shuto sh M ukherjee, " I had come across amonograph on Hindu Logic as preserved in China and Japan by SadajiroSug iura w ho ha d offered it as a disse rtation for the Deg ree of D oc tor ofPhiloso phy at the University of Pennsylvania. This work seemed to me offascinating interest as opening up \ new field of inv estigation full of unt oldpossibilities. I suggested to Satis cha ndra , wh o at tha t time was engagedin the study of Tibe tan, tha t he should undertake to explore the materials

available from Tibetan sou rces." (Fore wo rd to A History of Indian Logicby S. C . Vidyabh usana , Ca lcutta, 1921, pp . xix-xx). Evidently, SirAs huto sh did no t know at tha t time tha t this possibility was alreadybeing extensively explored by Stcherbatsky 1902 being the date of thepublication of his first paper on the subject. How ever, Vidy abhusan a,trained in Tibeta n by no less a Tibetologist tha n Sarat Ch and ra D ashimself, too k up the suggestion of Sir Ashutpsh. in right earnest and ,thoug h showing no awareness of S tcherbatsky's wo rks (perhaps becausethe earlier of these were in the Ru ssian language), started reconstructingthe "B udd hist Lo gic" from the Tibe tan sources. His first m onog raphon the subject, History of the Medieval Schoo l of Indian Logic appeared


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Introduction illto add the nam e of Vidyabh usana t o that of Stcherbatsky, thoug h there had beensome basic differences in the app roa ch as well as in the outco m e of the wo rks ofthese two scholars . W hile Vidyb husana's a pproa ch had on the whole been tha t ofa dry his torian, Stcherbatsky wanted to rat ionalise "B udd hist logic" in mo derntermino logy and to offer a vigorou s philosop hical defence of it . H e severelycrit icised those Europ ean scholars wh o claimed "t ha t the ancient Indians wereincapab le of exact thinkin g an d lucid pres enta tion an d attribu ted these qualitiesexclusively t a ancient Greek and m odern science" .4 "There is a widely spreadprejudice", he argued "t ha t positive philosophy is to be found only in Euro pe. I tis also a prejudice tha t A ristotle's treatm ent of logic was final; tha t having had inthis field no predece ssor, he also ha d n o need of a co ntin ua tor. Th is last prejudiceseems to be; on the wane . Th ere is as yet no agreed opin ion on wha t the future logicwill be , bu t ther e is a general dissatisfaction with wh at it a t presen t is. W e are onthe eve of a reform. The consideration at this junctu re of the independent an daltogether different way in which the problem s of logic, forma l as well as epistem o-logical , have been tackled by Digng a an d D ha rm ak lrt i will possibly be found ofsome impor tance" .6 In thus trying to discover and ^defend "Buddhis t logic" .Stcherbatsky perh aps wen t to th e extent of reading too mu ch of later philosop hical

in 1909, and his magnum opus, A History of Indian Logic in 1921nineyears earlier tha n Stche rbatsky 's m ature st wo rk on the subject, viz. theBuddhist Logic, in which therefore, Stcherbatsky freely used Vidyabhusana'srusults . Vidyabhu sana also wrote a con siderable num ber of ar t icles on"Bu ddh ist Lo gic" before the publication of his m ono graph s. Thu s : inthe "Jo uo na l of the Asiatic Society of Bengal" Dignga and his Pramna-samuccaya (1905), Indian Logic as preserved in Tibet (1907), Nyya-pravesaor the earliest work extant on Buddhist Logic by Dignga (1907), Hetu-cakra-hamaru...of Dignga (1907) ; in the "Jo urn al of the Budd hist TextSociety" The Philosopher Dignga9 a contemporary of poet Klidsa( iv. 3, 1896 ) , The influence of Buddhism on the development of NyyaPhilosophy (vL 3 , 1898) , The Buddhist version of the Nyya Philosophy( v i i . 1 , 1 9 0 0 ) ; in the "Jou rnal of the M ahabo dhi Society" Life ofDignga (1899 ) , Influence of Buddhism on the development of the HinduNyya Philosophy (1902 ) , e tc .

4. Stcherbatsky's , Theory of knowledge and Logic According to the LaterBuddhist ( i n Russ ian ) , quoted by N . P . Anikeev, Modern IdeologicalStruggle.:. 34.5. Stcherbatsky, Buddhist Logic, i. perface xii.

SInt. I/a


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iv , ^ Introductionsignificance in the writings of Dignga and his followers* but the fact remains thatthis produced an impact on the academic world which it would have ben otherwisedifficult to produce. Secondly, as we shall presently see, Stcherbatsky trained ageneration of briliant scholars to follow up his line of research, while in India therehad practically been no outstanding scholar to cont inue Vidyabhusana 's work, at leastn o t in any big way.

The word discovery is being deliberately used, for the grand tradit ion of"Bud dhis t log ic" was lost ancKorgotten in India. Excepting for a solitary text alongwith a commentary on i tabout #h ich we shall presently speaknothing of theenorm ous l i terature produced by these logicians is so far known to have survied inIndia . Evert th is text remained as some kind of a sealed work at the t ime of itsdiscovery and, after being discovered, it drew a desultory at tention of the scholarsthen specialising in Indian philosophy. In the India n philosophical trandit ion itself,the names of these Budd hist philosophers were remem bered vaguely and often notwithout a stigma attached to them prompted by an intense sectarian animosityagainst the Buddhists . Only a few scraps of their statements remained qouted inthe writings of their]* opponents ; but since these were quoted invariably for thepurpose f t>eing refuted and ridiculed, the statements^ torn out of their actual con-texts, were presented in the m ost adverse settings and necessarily not without thetendency of attaching some perverse significance to these.Such a deplorable condit ion of the survival of "Buddhis t logic" had the most

serious repercussion on the unders tandihg of the Ind ian philosop hical situation assuch, inasmuch as even the writings of the rival philosophers that survived in thecountry could not be fully understood in default of the knowledge of the writings ofthe / 'Budd his t logicians" . In other words, the loss of "Buddhis t logic" meant muchmore than a mere insufficiency of the knowledge of the Buddhist t radit ion itself. Itmeant also a serious insufficiency of the unders tanding of the other philosophersbelonging particularly to the more developed phase of the history of Indianphilosophy.The reason for this is not difficult to see. In the more sophist icated periodof the history of Indian philosophy, the significant texts of tbe r ival philosopherswere largely inspired by the zeal to refute the views of these "Buddhist logicians".O r, in Indian terminology, they represented the main purvapaksa ("the posit ion ofthe opponent" ) of the other philosoph ers . Evidently, it is iippssible to unders tandfully any philosophical text without also having an adequate idea of the views whichit is above all intended to refute. 'Here is jus t an example. Uddyotakara [c. 6th-7th century A.D.] wrote hisNyya-vrtika with the ostensible purpose of expounding the significance ofVtsyyana 's [c. 4th century A.D.] commentaiy on the Nyya-sutra. But the bookwas polemical throught and the polemics ,directed mainly against Dignga, who


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. Introduction .vha d m ade a ' bold effort to set up a new system of logic an d epistemology bydem olishing the position of V tsyyan a. In such a circum stance, one cann ot hope toun der stan d the full significance of U dd yo tak ara's w ork by depend ing on it alone.One has also to study Dignga in ordr to understand w hy Ud dyotak ara w as takingso much pain to refute certain views, often digressing long and even apparently goingo u t of his way for this pu rpo se. Incid entall y, from this text itself it is even difficultto form an ade qua te idea of the actual views he wa nted to refute, for U ddy ota karahimself did not maintain an exemplary objectivity in his writings, or, as Steherbatskyput it, ihe "does not mind at all to distort the opinion of his adversary and to answerhim with some bluffing sophistry".0 /

It follows, therefore, that not even the acutest analysis of Uddyotakara's workis by itself eno ugh to und ers tan d it,~not to speak of arriving at an actu al idea of thephilosophical situation of his. As Rah ulla Sankrityay an puts the poin t : "Th eold ma sters are . to be re-edited, giving the full qu ota tion s or references from theirpredecessors, where the hints are not clear enoug h. F o r Exam ple, if an edition ofth& Nyya-vrtika is published with copious quotations from the Pramn-samuccayand the Nyyamukhd, or if the student has already studied these two masterpieces ofDignga before going to Uddyotakara, the study of the Nyya-yrtik will become ajoy an d no t a cause of headache to the teacher and to 4he stu dent".?W ha t is said of Ud dyo taka ra 's text is on the whole true of the stupendousworks f Kumrila [c. 8th eeiltury A . D . ] , Ak alank a [c. 750 JD.'j , VcaspBti MiSra[c. 9th century A.D. ] , U dy ana [c. 10th century A.D .] and other s, which owe one oftheir main im pet us to the vital clash of ideas with the later Bud dhist philo sophe rs.Of these philosophers, Kumrila represented the Mimms view, Akalanka the Jainaviewy Udayana the Nyya-Vai&esika view, while Vcaspati MiSra was supposed to bea master of all the (Brahm anical) philosophies thou gh perhap s with a prono uncedbias for the Ve dnta. Their nam es are specially men tioned, because durin g them atur est period of Ind ian philos oph ical activity, ma inly these views retained fullvigour. I t was interaction and interconnection of these views with the philosophyof the later Buddhists- th at im parted real life a nd vigour to the p hilosophical situationas a whole. The re was, therefore* n o chance of unders tanding this philosoph ical. situation in spite of rem aining almo st completely igno rant of the Ja te r Buddistphiloso phers. But the fact is tha t "on ly a few decades ago Vas uban dhu , Digngaand D ha rm ak irti were mere legendary nam es, which were only hear d, when the longforgotten tomes of the old masters were dusted on ceremonial occasipns". 8

6.7.8.

Ib. i. 49.Rahula Sankrityayan,p . 10.Ib . p. 8-9.

preface of th e Pramana-vrtika (Allahabad 1943)


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vi IntroductionW e can now see the stupend ous significance of the discovery of "Budd histlogic ". Of the five living comp onen ts of the comp aratively later phase of the Indianphilosophical thought as a whole, only fourviz. the M im m s, Vedn ta, Jaina andthe Nyya-V aiSesikaactually survived in the country. But the fifth i.e. the one

N represented by the later Buddh ist philosoph ers did no t. As a result, even thesurviving trends cou ld at best be incom pletely understood an d there was no questionof arriving at a picture o f th e total ph ilosoph ical situation. Stcherbatsky, alon gwith Vidyabhusana, lifted the veil of oblivion on "B uddhist logic". It was by itselfthe discovery of a long-forgotten but by the far the most vigorous aspect of the Indianph ilosoph ical activity. But it wa s som ething more than that. It created the firstreal possibility of restoring the correct perspective of the Indian ph ilosophica lsituation.Since I have been using the word discovery rather freely, I may as well try tobe clearer about it.Neither Stcherbatsky nor Vidyabhusana discovered any original text ofDign ga or Dh arm akiti. As for Dign ga, the modern scholars have practicallygiven up the ho pe of ever finding the Sanskrit original of his magnum opus, th e

Pramna-samuccaya beyond some fragments of it. 9 A few decades after the majorwo rks of Stcherbatsky and Vidyabhu sana surveying "Budd hist logic", efforts weremade to reconstruct some other logical treatises of Dignga. 10 W e are a little morefortunate with regard to the original works of Dh arm akirti. The honour of firstfinding a copy of his Nyya-bindu belongs to Bhagvandas Kevaldas,11 though it wasfirst edited and published by P. Peterson in 1889 as an appendix to Dharm ottara'scommentary on the text itself.13 And the much greater honour of finding theSanskrit original of Dharmakirti's magnum opus, th e Pramna-vrtika, belongs toRahula Sankrityayana, who discovered it during his expeditions 13 to Tibet (1934 and1936) and published it in 1943. Besides these, some other writings of Dharm akirti

9. H. N. Rndle, Fragm ents from Dignga (Pram na-samucca ya), London ,1926. "10. G. Tucci, Nyya-m ukha, the oldest Buddh ist text on Logic after Chineseand Tibetan Materials, Heidelberg 1930; Nyya-pravesa (ed. Part IAnandasankar B. Dhruva ; Part IIV . Bhattacharyya). GO S N o . 38-39,Baroda 1927-30.11. P. Peterson, Nyya-bindu-tik%..9 Calcutta 1889, preface p. xiv.12 . P.Peterson, Nyya-bindu-tik..., to which is added the Nyya-bindu.Calcutta 1889.13 . For the account of Rahula's Tibetan expeditions and of the discovery byhim of the Buddhist manuscripts, see Journal of Bihar and Orissa ResearchSociety, 1935 & 1937.


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Introduction vii - 0are published by the mo dern scholars ,14 though compared to the literally staggeringb u l k 1 5 of the actual output of the "Buddhist logicians", their original writings so farrecovered are really insignificant.W ha t is m ost rem arkab le abo ut Stcherbatsky is that long before Ra hu la'sdiscovery of the Pramna-vrtika, practically the entire tradit ion of "Buddhist logic"was reconstructed by him and this based no t only on the thorou gh study of Digngaand Dharmakirt i but also of a large number of commentators and sub-commentatorson them.Ho w could this be at al l po ssib le? Fo r a n answer to this , we have toremem ber an old controversy am ong the Europ ean Indologists and this is perha psbest retold in the words of Stcherbatsky himself. "A t the dawn of European

Indo logy ", he observed, "th ere has been a controversy between the great Frenchscholar E. Bournouff an d the great Ru ssian scholar V. Vasil 'ev on the questionwhether Buddh ism could be better und erstood from the Indian or also from theChinese an d Tib etan source s. Ac cording to the first, only Ind ian sources provide devidence on genuine Bu ddh ism ; according to the second, Bud dhism in the totalityof its development ean be best understood only from the Chinese and Tibetan sourcesin addi t ion to the Indian on es " . 1 6 And he added that working on the tradit ion ofVasil 'ev an d Mina ev excellent results had already been reached by himself as well ashis talented pup il O. Ro zen berg [1888-1919], who se early dea th m ean t a great lossto the world of Indology.

Th is con troversy is now date d, of cou rse, an d it is generally adm itted tha t nostudy of Buddhismparticularly of the later phase of its historycan be satisfactorywithou t depending on the Chinese and Tibetan ma terials . Several thousan ds ofwo rks prod uce d by the later Bu ddh ists are lost in their Indian originals bu t rem ainpreserved mainly in Chinese and Tibetan translat ions.^ Of these translat ions, a gain,the Tibetan ones have a special im portanc e. W hiie the Chinese translat ions arecom paratively free, the Tibe tan ones are no t so. As a result, it is com parativelyeasier and even safer to retu rn back to the lost Indian texts from their survivingTibetan translat ions.

14. L. de la V allee Pou ssin, Nyaya-bindu with commentary of Vinitadeva(Tibetan) , Calcut ta 1907; Sukhalal Sanghavi and J inavi jaya Muni ,Hetu-bindu'prakarana with commentary of Arcata Bhatta, Baroda 1949 ;Dalasukha Bhai Malavaniya Svrthnumna-priccheda with author's owncommentary , Be nare s 1959.15. See Vidyabhusana, A History of Indian Logic, 270-346. / .16. Stcherbatsky, Preface to the Madhynta-vibhahga p. iv-v.


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viii IntroductionIt is im por tant to emphasise this poin t, particularly because in India to-daythe study of classical Tib etan is on the decline and its bearin g on the know ledge ofBud dhism somew hat ignored. It will, therefore, be relevant here to have a fewwords on this .Since the t ime of the f irst imp ortant Tibetan king Sro n-btsan -sgam -po 1 7 , theentire Tibe tan culture was sought to be consciously modelled on Indian culture : theTib etan script was fashioned after the Indian sc rip t 1 8 , the Tibetan grammar wasmodel led on Indian grammar 1 9 , the academic ambition of the advanced Tibetanscholars was to be trained in some Indi an centre of learning, the Tibe tan centres oflearning were simply the imitations of the Indian centres 5 0 and even Tibetan historywas sough t to be explained as a contin uation of Indian history. 5 * When, a fewcenturies later, translatio n work on a grand scale of th e Indian textsspecially

Bud dhist texts was taken u p by the Tibetan s unde r the patrona ge of themonk-ru ler Ral-pa-can ,2 2 absolutely rigid and me chanica l principles for choo singTibe tan equivalents for India n words were legally enforced by the State, so thatthe supreme sanctity 2 3 of the Ind ian texts was no t to be affected in any way. Asa result, the Tibetan trans lations are some kind of mechanical replica of theIndi an originals. As Stcherbatsky himself explained, "T he imp ortance of Tib etan17. A. Chattopadhyaya, Atlsa and Tibet, Calcutta 1967, 180ff.18. Ib . 198ff. 19. Ib .20. Even the names of some of the Tib etan monasteries Hke Potala and'Bras-spuns (= Dhnyakataka) are simple imitations of Indian names.21. A. Chat topadhyaya, op-cit. 152ff.22. Ib . 250ff.23. Bu t the negative result of such a reverential attitude to the Budd hist textsmu st not be overlooked. See Ra hula Sankrityayana in Journal of Bihar &Orissa Research Society, 1935, 22-3 : "The devout people consider it a greatme ritorious deed to enshrine the palm-leaf M SS inside a stupa or image.

In this w ay, hun dreds of bo oks are now beyond our reach. I heard atSa-skya that a palm-leaf M S copy of Dh arm ak irti 's great work Pramana-vartika is enshrined in an imag e of him , kep t in one of the chapels of theLh a-khan -chen-m o of Sa-skya. A few years back , and old stucco imagein bSam-yas had fallen down and inside it ma ny such M SS were found.Th e image was reconstructed and the M SS were pu t back into it again.Th e other practice is mo re atroc ious. In some of these mo nasteries, La ma scut the M SS in pieces a nd offer the m to tho se pilgrims wh o bring richpresents. These small pieces are said to possess the miraculous power ofhealing all kin ds of diseases when a dr op of wa ter in which the piece hasbeen dipped is administered to the patient."


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Introduction ixtran slatio n for the righ t in terpre tation of the ancient Bud dhist texts is generallyadm itted. These translat ions were always prepa red by a com mittee compo sed ofIndian pandita-s and a learned Tibetan transla tor {lo-tsa-ba). The greatest care wasbestowed on the right und erstan ding of the original. Special expeditions were sentou t to India for search of old and trustw orthy m anu scrip ts, translatio ns were thencorrected by the comm ittee accord ing to the new finds. Needless to say tha t both theIndian pandit as and Tibetan lo-tsa-ba-s were profoundly versed in the technicaldifficulties of San skrit gra m m ar, poe tics, philoso phy and other medieval India nsciences. Fo r the sake of uniformity, bilingual dictiona ries were prep ared at an earlydate . The terminology established by them had been authorised by the T ibetangovernment and severe punishments were proclaimed against trespassers to therenderings enforced by the state law. U nd er these circum stances, the Tibe tantransla tions afford invaluable assistance for establishing the text of every ancien tBuddhist work of which insufficient or corrupt manuscripts are available' ' .2 4

W e can now easily see how Stcherbatsky could reconstruct "B udd hist logic"in spite of the dep lorable con dition of the availability of the original texts on it.His first article on the subject, Logic in Ancient India, app eared in 1902 and it wassoon followed by the two volum es of The Theory of Knowledge and Logic Accordingto the Later Buddhists, pub lished durin g 1903-9. D urin g these years, excepting forDh a r m ak i r t i ' s Nyya-bindu and Dharmottara 's commentary on i t , no original workon "Bu ddh ist logic" was know n to the academic world, and , thoug h Peterson'sedition of these app eared in 1889, in the wo rds of Stcherb atsky himself, i t "didno t prov e sufficiently reliable to allow a clear com prehe nsion in ma ny im po rtan tpassages. Th e task of an English tran slatio n attem pted by the learned editor himselfand after him by the late Professor C. Bend all, had to be given up for wa nt of asufficiently reliable text. Ad dition al great help was then derived from the Tibe tantran slatio ns. Acc ordingly, an edition of the Tib etan text and a new edition of theSan skrit original were beg un by m e in this series [i.e. the Bibliotheca BuddhicaSeries] and at the same time a translation (in Russian) and an analysis of the systemwere publ ished".

2 5

The expression analysis of the system was of course a modest one. W hat i tactually meant was much more than a mere exposit ion of Dharmakirt i 's Nyaya-bindu.It me ant the expo sition of the entire traditio n of epistemology and logic associated

24. Preface to Obermiller 's Index Verborum (Bibl iotheca Buddhica 1927)p . i . Ital. added.25. Ib . p. ii .

SInt. 2


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x Introductionwith the names of the later Buddhists based on the writ ings of Dignaga, Dharmaklrt iand a ho st of their com m entato rs a reco nstructio n which received its final form inthe first'volme of the Buddhist Logic.

Th ank s to the magnif icent tradit ion of Sanskri t , Tibetan and M ongolianstudies already set up in St. Petersburg an d largely inspired by I. P . M inaev[1840-1890], Stcherbatsky acquired a gran d proficiency in Tib etan , M ong olian an dothe r languages and thus became mu ch inore tha n a first-rate San skritist. H e mor e-over extensively toure d M ongo lia w here, und er the guidance of the learned Lam as,he vastly improv ed the knowledge of the Tibe tan languag e and read the Bud dhisttexts preserved in the mo nasteries, It w$s a pity that the political consid erations ofof the t ime led the then Dalai Lama to refuse him the permit to vis i t Tibet , 2 6 thoughthis could no t preven t Stcherbatsky from acquiring the ma stery of Tibe tan langu agean d thu s to have a free access to the eno rm ous literature on logic an d epistemo logyproduced by the later Buddhists .

N ot tha t Stcherbatsky was the f irst InJo logist who worked for the recons-tructio n of later Bud dhism on the basis of the Tib etan ma terials. ' Already beforehim , Alexander Csom a de K oro s, H . A. Jaschke, Sarat Ch and ra D as, I . J . Schm idt,W . V. Vasil 'ev, A. Schiefner and othe rs magnificently con tributed to this recon s-truc tion . W ha t was nevertheless distinctive of Stcherbatsky was tha t while othersbefore him used the Tibe tan sources mainly for the purp ose of und erstand ing laterBu ddh ism in its religious, metaph ysical an d - mystical aspects, Stcherbatsky was thefirst to be seriously dra w n to the essentially ration al and logical con tribution s of thelate r Bu ddh ists. In this he differed no t Qnly from the Tibetologists preceding himbu t also from the general run of the Europ ean thinkers taking notice of Ind ianphilosophy , or , mo re broadly, of the Indian cultural heritage from Schope nhaur,Heg el, De ussen, M ax Mller and others who were al l building up a somewh atperverted picture of India n wisdom by way of em phasising only the religious,"s pi rit ua l" *and the mo st extravagan tly idealistic tendency of the Upanisads an dS am k ar a Ved n t a .2 7 Fo r them , the growth of these tendencies in Indian culturewas so overpowering that the Indian mind could pay at best a desultory at tention tothe problem s of logic and ratio nal analysis, i .e. philosop hy as fully em ancipated fromma gic, my thology and religion. Of course , Stcherbatsky did no t go to the otherextreme of denying these trends in the Ind ian philosophical heritage. Ackno wledgingthe fact tha t all these were there , he cam e out with a bold protest against the

26. See infra note 43.27. I need no t go here into muc h detafls of this, because N . P. Anikeev in his

Mod ern Ideological Struggle for "the Ancient Philosophical H eritage ofIndia, Calcutta 1969, has discussed it.


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introduction xiessentially unscientific an d non-objective- tende ncy th en pre vailing in Eu rop e ofseeing only these in Ind ian wisdom . Th us he insifted th at "th er e is a strugglebetween th e purely religious an d philosop hical tre nd s" 2 8 in Indian thought and hewas happy that the Russian Indologists "we re able to dis tinguish Budd hism prope rfrom various alien, mystic and even fanatic theories which in the course of timefused into Buddhism and enwrapped i t" . 2 9

But the impo rtance of Stcherbatsky's wo rk on "Bu ddh ist logic" does byno means m ean that he was dis interested in Buddh ism in i ts total i ty. His adm irationof the con tributio ns of the later Bnd dhists to logic and e pistemology was of coursevery great. But he did not at all ignore the theological, metaphysical and even mysti-cal views developed by the followers of this creed. Tw o of his w ork s, The CentralConception of Buddhism and the Meaning of the word 6Dharma\ and The Conceptionof Buddhist Nirvana still rem ain for us am ong the illuminating expositions of thetheology and metaphysics of the so-called H ina y na and M ah yn a Buddh ism.His translat ion and exposit ion of the Madhyntavibhahga attr ibuted to Maitreya[c . 400 A .D.] is for us an in di sp en sa bl e work for the s tudy of the philosophy ofthe Yog cra school of Buddh ism. So also are his edit ion of M aitreya'sAbhisamaylahkra'prajn-pmmit-sstra and, his exposition and translation ofDh a r m ak l r t i ' s Santnntara-siddhi. An d how vague indeed w ould have been ourknowledge of Budd hist niysticism but for his work on Va suba ndh u's Abhidharma-kosa along with Y a^o m itra 's com men tary on i t . Incidentally^ when the greatesthis torian of Indian philosophy S. N . Dasgupta was w orking on the f irst volumeof his History, he had to rely on the ma terials supplied by Stcherba tsky for thediscussion of Vasubandhu's Abhidharma-kosa. As Dasgupta acknowledged, "I amindebted for the above account to the unpublished translat ionirom Tibetan of a smallport ion of the Abhidharma-kosa by my esteemed friend Professor TheodoreStcherbatsky of Pe trog rad. I am grateful to h im th at he allowed me to utiliseit".3 ; " " . - ' ''" ''. - " " '" '

All these give us some idea of the bre adth of Stche rbatsky 's interest inBud dhism . Surprisingly, how ever, his first published pap er ha d no thing to do28. Stcherbatsky, Theory of Knowledge and Logic of the Later Buddhists ( inRuss ian) i i . p . ix .29. Stcherbatsky, S, F. OVdenbu rg as ah Indologisf ( in Russ ian ) , Leningrad1934, p . 80. Qu oted by Anikeev , op, cit.935.30. S. N. Dasgupta , History of Indian Philosophy, Cambridge 1922-55,

i. p, 117n.SInt. 2/a


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xii Introductionwith the Bu ddhist religion and p hilosop hy. It was instead a technical study of anIndian inscription, published in the Epigraphia Indica, as a jo int work with V. G.Ojha, who is now know n as one of the foremost authori t ies on Indian pa leography.And here are a few more examples to show what a broad range of the Indian culturalher itage he wanted to cover. H e w ro te on The Theory of* Poetry in India, on TheCategorical Imperative in the Brahmanas, on The Scientific Achievem ents of AncientIndia, and he was one of the first am ong the m ode rn scholars to discuss The Historyof Ma terialism in India a subject to which he later engaged his pupil M . Tubya nsky[1893-1943] to wo rk more intensively and by utilising the hitherto unutilised Tibetanmater i a l s . 8 1 Besides these, he translated Dandin's Dasakiimara-carita, led a teamof translators of Kauti lya's Arthasastra rand edited with a Ge rma n translat ion thepoetical work of Hari Kvi, alias Bh nu datta . An d, notwithstanding the scope todiffer on ma tters of evaluation a nd interpretation -which inevitably exists am ong th eleading scholarsnowhere in this wide range of Indian studies covered byStcherba tsky is there any scope of grading his co ntrib utio n as second-rate or to viewit as being based on secondary sources. T ha t is why , n o tribute paid to him as anIndo logist funs the risk of exagg eration. An d great tribute s had indeed been paidto him by some of the leading scholars of our time . Th us , for exam ple, Ra hu laSankrityayana wro te, "I n 1929, w hen I asked Professor Lude rs of Berlin, whom Ime t in Cey lon, 'W ho is the greatest scholar in Eu rop e of Indian particularlyBuddh ist philosophy ? ' , he, withou t a m om ent 's hesitat ion sa id , 'D r. Stcherbatsky' .In 1932, Sylvain Levi also told me the same th in g ". 3 2 Rahula himself, whilededicatinghis edit ion of the Pmmana-vartika to the mem ory of S tcherbatsky, de s-cribed him as "the greatest Orientalist of his time", adding in Sanskrit verse :

akarnitamtavayasovahusahsuhrdbhyo\dhltasca vismitatayakrtayastvdlyahvaidusyamiksitamaho nitarmgabhiramlokottareva vidit tvayik vibhtih...%s

31. Stch erba tsky refers to this in his Buddhist Logic i . 15n, though I have notbeen able to ascerta in wh ether the w ork is pub lished so far. If it stillremains unpublished, the Soviet colleagues would to do an excellent serviceto Indian studies by making it available in print.32. Rahula Sankr i tyayana, Jin-ka main krtajna{ in Hindi j , Allahabad 1957,; .P . 195. ' . ^ ' ';; .'" . . . / ' . . / . . '.. . " : \-3J V ', '33. In English tran slatio n : " I have hea rd of you r fame again and again fromthe friends. I have studied your works with great amazement and am struckby you r extremely profoun d scholarship. I wo nder if you acquired somesupper-normal faculty. . ."


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Introduction . xiiiBu t perh aps the greatest tribute to Stcherbatsky is the accom plished fact th atafter him it has becom e impo ssible to discuss Ind ian philosop hy adeq uately and atthe same t ime to remain innocent of his contr ibutions to our understanding of i t .But the trib ute paid to Stcherb atsky is also a tribtfte to his teache rs, for hecould acqu ire such an all-round proficiency in India n studies largely because he ha dthe fortune of being trained by som e of the foremo st scholars of his time. Am onghis teachers three m ust be mentioned in pa rt icular . They were I .P. M inaev, G.Bhler and H. Jacobi.M inaev was one of the pion eers of Ind ian studies in Russia and it will bespecially relevant to qu ote wh at Stcherb atsky himself said ab ou t him in 1934."T he study of Sansk rit began in Russia in the early forties^of the last centu ry. Th efirst teacher was Kossovich.34 H e was succeeded by I.P. M inaev. H e (M inaev)was no t only a first-class Pali and S ansk rit schola r, to wh om science is indeb ted formany valuable editions of texts and works on the history and geography ofInd ia, bu t he also was a great traveller and an authori ty on his torical geography ofthe cou ntries lying between India and the Russian em pire. H e visited India threetimes and only a prem ature death s topped his prepa rations for a fourth long journeyto India thro ug h Afgha nistan a jou rney which if realised wo uld have lasted fouryears. U nd er the cover of a rigid scho larship, with a rath er sceptical, sarcastic tur n

of mind, I .P. M inaev concealed a wa rm heart , which was deeply concerned with thepas t, presen t an d future destinies of India as well as with the destiny of his ownc o u n t r y " . 3 5A t ab ou t the age of eighteen (in 1884), Stcherbatsky joine d the Unive rsity ofSt. Petersbu rg and became a pupil of M inaev. Th is was a turn ing po int of his life.Before joining the Universi ty, he s tudied Gothic, Anglo-Saxon and Ge rma niclanguages under Professor F . A- Braun and the Chu rch Slavonic an d Serbo-Croatianlanguages under* Professor I. V. Y agich . U nd er Professor M inaev he ha d his firstlessons in Pali an d San skrit an d this in a sense determ ined the major interest for th erest of his life. Professor V. I. K aPy ano v, the seniorm ost of Stche rbatsky 's perso naldisciples now living, ob se rv es : " It is no t kno w n if the scientific interests ofStcherbatsky wou ld still h ave been directed to the study of Ind ian philology an d

34, Sri H , C. G up ta tells me th at, evidently eno ugh , Stcherba tsky here has inmind only his alma-mater, the University of St. Pete rsburg , where in theFaculty of Oriental Languages, Kaetan Kossovich [1815-1883] was the firstProfessor of Sanskrit.35. Stcherbatsky in Indian Historical Quarterly, Vol. x, pp. 81-Iff;


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xiv Introductionphiloso phy ha d he no t come in con tact with Professor M inaev in the faculty ofcomparative linguistics in the very early years of his student life". 3 6

In 1889, Stcherbatsky com pleted his course at St. Petersb urg Un iversity andwen t to Vienna to study und er G. Bhler [1837-1898], ano ther veritable giant in thefield of Indo logy . I am tem pted to qu ote here wh at M ax Mller said a.bout Bhler,part icularly because the same words apply perhaps with an addit ional emphasis toBhler 's pupil Stcherbatsky : "I t was the fashion for a tim e" , said M ax M ller, "t oimagine that if one had learnt Sanskrit grammar and was able to construe a few textsth at ha d been published and transla ted before, one was a Sansk rit scholar. Bhlerlook ed up on this kind of scholarship as good enou gh for the vulgus profanum, b u tno o ne was a real scholar in his eyes wh o could not stand on his own feet, and fighthis own way through new texts and comm entaries , who could not publish what hadnot been published before, wh o could not translate what had not been translatedb e f o r e" .3 7

Inde ed, Stcherbatsky too could stand on his own feet and fight his own waythroug h not only new texts and comm entaries bu t even throug h those the originalsof which were? long lost to the Ind ians themselves. Of cou rse, he could do thisprim arily because of his mastery of the Tib etan , witE the know ledge of which hisstudies und er Bhler had little to d o . But this study was vitally im po rta nt , for th eshaping of Stcherbatsky into an all-round Indologist. Under Bhler he studied Indianpoetics , Pan im's gram ma r, the Dharmas stras'and Ind ian palaeography:in sho rt,thos e branc hes of Ind ian studies in which Bhler was the n considered the mo st ou t-s tanding scholar in Europe.

Professor Kal 'yanov 3 8 says tha t the study of Ind ian poetics und er Bhlerhelped Stcherbatsky to have a stable foun dation for his subsequ ent research inIndian philosophy and that the intense interest he developed in Indian gram ma radde d to his interest in Ind ian logic, the two being organically related. Ho wev er,for the technical ap pa ratu s which enabled him to mov e freely thro ugh the ma ze ofthe abstru se argum ents and coun ter-argum ents of the Ind ian philosophical texts>which mo reover were written in a peculiarly laconic form Stcherbatsky m ust havebeen mo st indebted to H . Jaco bi, the m aker of a generation of specialists in Ind ianphilosophy. " In Professor Jaco bi", says Professor Kal 'yan ov, "Stcherbatskyfound a scholar w h o w as closer to h im in spirit. T o Professor Bhler, India n

36. V. I . Ka l 'yanov in Izvestiya AN SSR ( i n Russian ) 1946, Vol. 5, N o . 3,p . 245.37. M ax Mller in JR A S 1898. Reprinted in Indian Studies : Past & Present,Vol. i , p. 2.38. Kal 'yanov, op, cit;9 245-6. v I


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Introduction xvphilosop hy was a supplem ent to the historical an d literary studies, whereas toJacob i it was an object of study in itself. . ..By his studies und er Professor Jaco bi, hehad a solid foundation for the s tudy and interpretat ion of the Indian phiolosophicalsastra-s"*9

M inae v, Bhler, Jacobihow soever im posin g such a list of teachers mayap pe ar to us , S teherbatsky's hu nger for the know ledge of India was apparentlyinsatiable and so in 1910 he m ade his long desired trip to Ind ia. W e know some -thing about i t f rom his paper, A Short Report on the Trip to India, "The object ofmy tour of In di a" ,-sa id he , "i s , besides a general acquaintance with the country,prim arily the quest of the relics of the Bud dhist philosop hical literature in th ewritings of the Bud dhists themselves and also in' those of the Bra hm ana s and J aina s,inasm uch as these throw light on the period of the flourish of Bud dhism in thehistory of the Bu ddh ist civilization (5th to 10th centuries A .D .). At the same tim e,I intended to familiarise myself with the prQsnt pos ition in Ind ia of the study ofSansk rit language and literatu re, specially of those branc hes of literature which tillnow have not been taken up by European scholars and are for them mo re or less ar i d d l e " . 4 0

Th e best way to accom plish this, second purp ose , Stcherbatsky evidently k new ,was to study some Indian philosop hical text in the traditio nal Ind ian style and un dera tradit ional Indian pandita. Th e languag e of these texts is often extremely crypticwhile the, po ints an d c oun ter-po ints raised particu larly in their polemical par tsare often m ost difficult to follow. It is only thro ug h the trad itio n of direct oraltransm ission from teacher to studen t prevalen t in the cou ntry for centuries tha t thesubtle significance of these texts ha s someho w or other survived. He nce , am ong themany other things Stcherbatsky wanted to do in India , one was to s tudy Indianphiolosophy under an Indian pandita. How ever, when Stcherbatsky came to India,this tradit ional mo de of s tudy had already m uch dis integrated and i t was noteasy to find a really competent pandita who fully retained the age-old tradition.Fortun ately for Stcherbatsky, he could f ind one in Bom bay, wh om he mentioned asthe Maithila pandita. "H e hailed f rom D urbh ang a", said Stcherbatsky, "an d wasin Bom bay only by chan ce, because of the famine in his own prov ince. Th is faminehad mad e almost half the popula tion to leave his province. The autho ri ty of thispandita am ong the local Ind ian castes was so high tha t with ou t prejudicing his ownposition in any way he could freely live with m e. W e lived in a com pletely India natm osph ere in a locality whe re there was no t a single Eu rope an and w here the onlylanguage of co m mn ication was San skrit. Everyday, from m ornin g till evening, w e

39. Ib . 246.40. Quoted by Kal 'yanov, op.cit., 248.


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xvi v Introductionspent our time in philosophical discussions with only two breaks in a mo nth thedays of the new moon and full moon". 4 1

This shows how keen Stcherbatsky was to establish a real rap por t with theInd ian mind for the purpose of unde rstandin g traditio nal India n thou ght. But hismission was also tha t of a scientific Investig ator. H enc e, he tou red Ind ia exten-sivelyvisited Ben aras, C alcutta, M ahaba leshw ar and other placesand collectedmaterials for his own studies. In Calcutta, for example, he found a new m anuscriptof his m ost favourite subject. As he said in the Preface to h is Tibetan edition ofthe Nyaya-bindu, " A t the time of my stay in Ca lcutt a in 1910, I also discoveredanother manuscript of the Nyya-bindu-tlk not used by Peterson in the libraryof the Asiatic Society. D ue to the kindn ess of the Secretary of th e Society, D r.De nison Ro ss, this m anusc ript was sent to us for my use in the Asiatic M useu m,Academy of Sciences".4 2H e also went to Darjeeling in search of the Budd hist ma nuscripts and tocollect inform ation abo ut the Bud dhist monasteries there. Because of some politicaldevelopm ents in Tibe t, the D alai Lam a was at tha t time staying at Darjeeling. F ro mthe writings of Sir Charles Bell 4 3 wh o referred to Stcherbatsky simply as "t heRu ssian professor" we learn how Stcherbatsky took the opp ortun ity of meeting theDa lai La m a and entreated his best for a perm it to visit Tib et. But th e Da lai La m acould no t gran t him the permission, because of the then political considerationsconcerning the relation between Chin a and Tibet. v

W ha t is unfortun ately lacking in our knowledge of Stcherbatsky's relationswith India is an adequate informa tion of his personal India n friends and colleagues.W e have only some stray hints of this. T hu s, from the description of Stcherbatsky'scollection preserved in the Archives of the Academ y of Sciences, US SR , weknow of mo re tha n thirty eminent Indian s whose persona l letters to Stcherbatskyare preserved ift the archives. These correspo nden ts included R abi ndr an athTago re, S. N . asg upta, D . R. Bha ndarkar, V. Bhattacharyya, D . Ko samb i, B. C.Law, N . N . Law , G. Jha , Ragh u Vira, P. L. Vaidya, N . D utta , S. K. C hatterji ,Ra hu la S ankrityayana and other s. Stcherbatsky w as certainly keeping himselfin close touch with the eminent Indian s of his time and with their progress in therediscovery of Ind ia. H e mu st also have been writing back to his India n friends,thou gh we know of such letters only in scraps. S. N . Da sgup ta qu ot es 4 4 one atlength in his History of Indian Philosophy, in which Stcherbatsky wanted to explain

4L Quoted by Kal 'yano v, op. cit., 248.42. Stcherbatsky, Preface ( in Russian ) to Nyaya-bindu, p. ii.43. C. Bell, Portrait of the Dalai Lama, London 1946, p. 106.44. S. N. Dasgupta, History of Indian Philosophy, i. 409n.


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Introduction xviihow he proposed to unders tand D harm aklr t i ' s concept ion of the svalaksana. B utthere is no reaso n to thin k tha t his letters to the Ind ian friends were necessarilyimpersona l . The last let ter received by Ra hu la Sa nk ritya yan a 4 5 from him showshow deeply Stcherba tsky was mo ved by the purely perso nal conc ern for his Ind ianfriend. It was written in 1941, wh en Ra hu la was in th e British jail and Stcherbatskywould not simply believe the senselessness of indefinitely detaining such a finescholar : "A re you still in jail ? H ave you been informed how long you will be k ep tin detention ? Ho w is your health ? Y ou have writ ten nothing abou t your health inyour letter, Y ou m ust kno w w hat is going to hap pen hereafter. Is it really possiblethat nothing has been intimated to you about the future ? Did you enquire ?>"

Th e Archives also con tain letters to Stcherbatsky from the leading Euro pea nscholars like L de la Vallee Pou ssin, M . W intern itz, W . Ru be n, R G arb e, S. Levi,P . Pell iot , E. Senart and many others . I t thus app eals that he worked in his ownway to build up some sort of international coordina tion in Indology, aud though w edo not fully know wh at he w rote back to his corresponden ts , there is enoughindication to think tha t one of his po ints was to help his colleagues ab roa d with thematerials of his own researches. Th us, when W internitz was working on the secondvolume of his History of Indian Literature, very little was really kno wn ab ou t theactual writ ings of Dign ga. But the auth or wanted to assure his readers that moreknowledge was forthcoming. "Tra nslat io ns of D ign ga's w or ks ", he said, "a re toappear shortly by Professor Stcherbatsky, who wrote tome on 26th April 1929 :'Y ou will be astonished to f ind am ong the Indian s, specially Dign ga, a comp rehen-sive system of cr i tical philosoph y. I t has long been m y conviction tha t w eh e rehav e before us a m ost excellent achievem ent of the Ind ian m ind ; this convictionhas now grown stronger than even before, and I hop e to be in a posit ion to presen ti t c l ear ly ' " . 4 6

Correspondences apart , Stcberbatsky worked in direct collabomtion withsome of the leading Indo logists of his time. After return ing from India , he under*took a systematic s tudy in Yasubandhu's Abhidharma-kosa ( as preserved in Tibetantranslat ion ) along with Ya Som itra 's com mentary on i t This s tudy was facil itatedby an Uigur translation of the work discovered by A* Stein in Central Asia.

45. Quoted by Rahula Sankrityayana in Jin-ka Mem Krtajna, Allahabad1957, 195.46. M . Winterni tz , History of Indian Literature, Vo l. ii , ( Eng , Tr . Calc utta1933 ) 363 n.

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xviii IntroductionS. Levi, L. de la Vallee Poussin, U . W ogihara, O. Rozenberg and D . Rossjoine d him in this great project. Th e result was the magnificent edition of the tex tp u b l i s h e d i n t h e Bibliotheca Buddhica series.

This ser iesthe Bibliotheca Buddhica had indeed been a landmark inmo dern Indplogy and i t cann ot but remind us of anoth er imp ortan t colleague ofStQherbatsky though a little senior one and, in a sense, one of his early te ac he rs, 4 7H e was S. F . Ol'de nbu rg [ 1863-1934 ], th e original architect of the BibliothecaBuddhica, which was started by th e Acad emy of Sciences of Russia in 1897 tocoordinate the work of the scholars all over Ihe world devoted to the history, culture,literature of Ind ia, China , Tibet a nd M ong olia. A large num ber of significantwo rks came out in this series during the lifetime of O l'denb urg and it is well kn ow nth at shortly after tlie series was started , Stcherba tsky too k an intense interest in itand worked jointly with Ol 'denburg to make i t a grand internationalsuccess .Ol 'de nburg 's own wo rk was primarily on the folk-lore, ethnology and art ofthe peoples of Russia, W estern E urope and a num ber of eastern c ountr ies l ikeIndo nesia, China and Afghanistan and the subject of his doctora te dissertat ion wasBu ddh ist legend s. F or twentyfive years [ 1904-1929 ], he rem ained the perp etualsecretary of the Russian A cadeny of Sciences and in 1917 he beeam e the M inister ofEdu cation of the Provisional Gove rnm ent.Ho we ver, from the po int of view of the con tem pora ry Soviet Indo logists,one of the m ost im porta nt things to remem ber abo ut Ol 'den burg is that i t waslargely throug h him tha t Lenin himself maintained his connection with the Ind o-logists of his time. "L en in repeatedly too k interest in the developm ent of Ru ssianOrie ntal studies and extended active help to the wo rkers on his field. It iswell kn ow n th at L enin received th e senior Ru ssian Orientalist S. F . O l'den burgan d discussed with him the significance of Orien tal st ud ie s" .4 8 What Leninis rep orte d to have said to O l'denb urg still rem ains the ma in source of inspiratio n

of the Indologists in the Soviet U nion to-day. "W ell" , said Lenin, "he reis your subject. It seems far aw ay. Y et it is close. G o to the m asses, to thew ork ers, an d tell them ab ou t the history of Indiaand see how they will resp on dto it. An d you yourself draw inspiration from it for fresh research, w ork and studyof great scientif ic importance".4 9

; 47. Ka l 'yanov , op.cit,, 245.48 . N. P. Anikeev, op.cit., 57.49. V. V. Bonch-B ruevich, V. I. Lenin in Petrograd and Moscow ( in Russian) ,M oscow 1956, p. 32. Qu oted by Anikeev, op. cit., 60-1.


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Introduction xixIn the Soviet period, when Indological s tudies in USS R took a new turnu n d e r the guidance and inspirat ion of Lenin, Stcherbatsky, along with a num ber ofother (A d guardsMVv V. Ba rtol 'd, I . Y u. Krach kovsky , N . I . K n rad a nd othersethusiastically resp on de d to the call of the new tasks envisaged by Len in and too k

active part in organising the new Institutes; - M x in r G ork y initiated the idea of set ting up a new Insti t ute for an al lroundstudy of the Orien t an d Lenin^ imm ediately decreed tha t the Pe ople s' Co m m issaria tof N ationa lities should take urge nt steps t o set up such an Institu te. Acco rdinglyWere set up the Moscow Insti tute of Oriental Languages and the Petrogra d Ins ti tuteof M ode rn Oriental Languag es. In the m ature st period of his l ife, Stcherbatskyhimself used to lecture in this new Lenin grad Institu te an d thu s wo rked to build npthe new generation of Soviet Indologists.F ro m w hat is discussed it is allready obviou s tha t the im age of Stcherbatskywe have is mu ch mo re than that of an individual scholar . Stcherbatsky became aninstitu tion, as it were. This becom es all the m ore obviou s whe n we consider thenum ber of brilliant scholars trained up by him . In this , his con tribution differedsignificantly from th at of S. C. Vid yab husa na, w ho , like Stcherbatsky, was one ofthe earliest scholars to have worked o n "Budd hist logic" based on Tibetan materialsbu t wh o, unlike Stch erbatsk y, left practically no im po rtan t scholar in India tocontinue the wo rk in the same l ine. Fo r the unde rstanding of Steherbatsky's full

statu re, therefore, it is essential to have a few wo rds on the outstan ding studen ts heprod uce d, w ho , mo reover, quite early in life, w orked their way up to becom e hisable colleagues and collaborators.Th e mo re significant nam es from this po int of view are those of ProfessorO. Rozenberg, whose Problems of Buddhist Philosophy Stcherbatsky so muchadmired ; Academ ician B. Y a. Vladim irtsov, wh o worke d mainly in the f ield ofM ong olian studies an d wro te extremely significant wo rks on the langua ge, historyatad culture of the M o n g o ls ; P. V. Ernshted t , w ho specialised in the Cop tic an d

Classical languages ; A. A . Friem an, who worked in the f ield of Indo -Iranianlanguages ; V . I. K al'ya no v, w ho is now the Professor of Sansk rit in the Len ingradUn iversity an d is continu ing to prod uce first-rate studies on the different aspects ofancient Indian his tory and culture.Stcherbatsky reared up indeed a whole generation of Russian Indologists .Bu t I am specially anx ious to speak here ab ou t the activities of two of them ,becau se, thou gh bo th of the m died in their early thirties, bo th becam e so m uchproficient in Indian studies that Stcherbatsky himself substantially depended on themeven in the ma turer ph ase of his own activities. They were E. Obermiller [1901-1935]and A. Vostrikov [1904-1937].S - - I i i t .3 /a : -->:> \ . :* ,-' ^ * .* ' - { < .- . .; =' ., :..


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xx IntroductionInspired and guided by Stcherbatsky, Obermiller too k up the s tudy ofBu ddh ism at an early age and acquired for this pu rpos e an excellent proficiency inSanskri t , Tibetan and Mo ngolian langu ages. His health was extremely poo r andhis person al resources at best me agre. Still he extensively tou red Tran sbaik al an d

Bu ryatia for studying the Bu ddh ist texts preserved in the mo nastaries there . Thesewere no t merely the Ind ian texts preserved in Tib etan language bu t included textswritten originally by the Tib etan scho lars, w ho , after the practical extinction, ofBudd hism in India, preserved and continued the Buddh ist t radit ion in a veryim po rtan t sense. Already in his early twenties, Obe rmiller prepa red the Sanskrit-Tibetan and Tibetan-Sanskrit 'Index Verborum' to Dharma kirtVs Nyaya-bindu andDharmottartfs Nyyabindu-tlk (published in 1927-28), which was m ore exhaustivethan Vidybhusana's Bil ingual Index of the Nyaya-bindu published in 1917. H e w asaccepted by Stcherb atsky as a collab orato r for editing, translatin g and explainingMait reya 's Abhisamaya-alamkra-prajn'pramit-upadesa-sstra, published in1929 an d it was on this youn g studen t tha t Stcherba tsky entrusted the responsibilityof seeing through the press the second Kosasthna of YaSomitra 's Sphutarth. In1935, the year of his dea th, was published his magnificent study of Ts on -kh a-p a, thegreat Tib etan scholar and religious reformer who founded the dGe -lugs-pa sect andwh o was also a volumino us w riter o n B uddhism . The year af ter this wasposthumously published his work How to study the Tibetan Medical L iterature*But Obe rmiller 's greatest contr ibu tion to our knowledge of Buddh ism was hismagnificent English translation of Bu-ston's chos-byuh [His to ry o f Buddhism] , awo rk unde rtaken directly under the advice of Stcherbatsky. "I n the years 1927 and1928", w rote Stcherbatsky in the Preface to this , " I have interpreted th e wo rk to m ypup il E. E. Obe rmiller m akin g it the subject of our seminary study. H e then ha sm ade an English translat ion which was revised by me and is now pub lish ed ". 6 0This translat ion work was much m ore tha n a mere m atter of changing the language.Bu-ston was one of the redactors of the bKa'-'gyur and bsTan-'gyur great collectionsan d his know ledge of the Bud dhist texts was m ost profo und . The wo rk is full ofquotation s from the lost India n texts . But, as was the practice of the Tibetanhisto rian s, Bu-ston referred to these texts by their abbreviated form s, from which itis mo st difficult to reco nstruc t their full titles. Oberm iller no t only recon structedthese titles bu t mo reover traced to their sources practically all the passages q uote dby Bu-ston a feat which app ears to us all the mo re incredible wh en we remem berth at he becam e an invalid at the age of twenty-seven : his right han d was paralysedand he had to remain completely bed-ridden up to the t ime of his death.

M ore imposing perhaps was Vo str ikov's s tature part icularly as a Tibetologist,tho ug h his proficiency in San skrit an d the ma stery of the technicalities of India nphilosophical discussions were nothing short of being amazing.50. Stcherbatsky, Preface to Obermiller 's History of Buddhism, Vol. i , p. 4


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Introduction xxiIt is well kn ow n th at Stcherbatsky usually consu lted him for the elucidationof the m ore difficult Tibeta n texts, or, as S tcherbatsky himself ack no w ledg ed, 5 1 fo rthe translat ion of "several h ard p assag es" of the Madhynta-vibhahga, he wasindebted to Vo str ikov. In the Buddhist Logic, again, Stcherbatsky said that , thanks

to the researches of Vo strikov, the app aren tly baffling pro blem of the textual orderof Dh arma ki r t i 's Pramna-vrtika wa s no m ore baffling after a ll . 6 2 Vostr ikovedited the T ibeta n v erson of the Pramna-vrtika along wi th Debendrabuddhi 'scom men tary on i t , bo th of which he also translated. In 1935 appeared his s tudy,The Nyya-vrtika of Uddyotakara and the V adany ay a o f Dharmakirti. I t wasVostr ikov's work on the Logic of Vasubandhu, again, that Stcherbatsky foun d mo sthelpful for unde rstanding the h is torical backg round of the thoug hts of Dign ga.The Grammar of Tibetan Language, wh ich V ostrik ov left unfinished becau se of hisearly death, was later completed by Stcherbatsky.In the field of Tibe tan studies, how ever, the m ost significant con tributio n ofVostr ikov was his Tibetan Historical Literature, published in the BibliothecaBuddhica series in 1962, i.e. a bo ut twenty-five years after his de ath . Th is m on u-m ental study a classic on the subjectcould have easily been the life-work of anyfront-rank scholar, particu larly of one wh o died so early. Bu t Vo strikov was m oreversatile. He edited the text of the Kalacakra ( in Sanskri t) based on two manuscripts(one of which was recovered by M inaev in India ) and a Tib etan transla tion . Jointly

with Ol 'den burg, Stcherbatsky, Obermiller and Semichov, he worked on the transla-tion of the Arthasstra. From the announcement of 1930 concerning the publicationsunder progress in the Bibliotheca Buddhica series it appears that he alsotranslated the enormous Nyaya-vartika-tatparya-tika of Vcaspati MiSra, though thetranslat ion is not yet published.W e have thu s som e idea of Stcherba tsky as well as of his teach ers, colleaguesand pupils . W hat led him to take such an al l-absorbing interest in the Indiancultural heritage is no t fully kn ow n. Th is m uch is certain, how ever, that it w as

no t any rom antic fascination for the half unk no wn my stic East in which some of hisEurop ean contem poraries were seeking an escape from the s ickness and degradation oftheir own capitalist society. Certainly, again, it had no thin g to do with the peculiarlyperverted m ora l sanction for colon ial exp loitation w hich an oth er section of hisEurope an contem poraries was trying to derive by depicting Indian culture as beinginherently stunted in m atters of science a nd ration alism : it helped them to feelsuperior by imagining tha t the India ns had never been any better tha n idle dream ersof the pa th leading to an escape from the wo rld or samsra and were therefore51. Stcherbatsky, preface to the Madhynta-vibhahga,p, iv.52 . Stcherbatsky, Buddhist Logic, i 38.


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xxii Introductionnaturally doomed to servitude and slavery. Stcherbatsky had positively andabsolutely nothing to do with any such tendency.

On the con trary he showed definite distaste for any rom antic fascination forthe mystic East and he was the first am ong the Eu rope an scholars to haveinsisted on the importance of recognising India's contribution to science and rationa-lism. Alon g with O l'den bu rg, one of the remedies he suggested for the pervertedbu t po pu lar notio n of the India n cultural heritage was to wo rk for m aking availablem ore ade qua te and objective data ab ou t Ind ian thoug ht, specially in its logical andscientific aspec ts. "A t the suggestion of S. F . O Pd en bu rg" , w rote he, "t he Acade myof Sciences decided to un derta ke the pub lication of transla tions of m onu m entalworks on Indian philosophy from Sanskri t and other Oriental languages. . . .Ourknow ledge in this field still could not be deemed to be m ore than a mere conjectureon the natu re of Indian philoso phy . . . .The main Indian philosophical system, theone that diligently worked out Indian logic and epistemologythe Nyya systemstiilrem ained to be studied and its ma in treatises were yet to be translated into anyEu rop ean langu age. Bud dhism an d Jainism still rem ained prima rily religiousteaching s, and their philosophioal principles vague a nd inconsistente Th e In dianthou gh t on the who le still rema ined enveloped in the mist of Orien tal fantasy andthe orderly forms of its consistent logical theories were hidde n from the keen sightof the historian s of philosop hy owing first to the inadequ acy of the ma terialsavailable to them and second to the lack of any systematic metho ds of its scientificstud y. Besides this stage of scientific kno wle dge , there could be discern ed, in thewider circles of reading public, a morb id interest in Indian philosophy caused by thehazy state of our know ledge of the subject and the variou s fables of supe rnatu ralpow ers ram pa nt therein. Of course , the latter circum stance also springs from th efact that com pared to Europ ean philosophy, the Indian thoug ht is pervaded bymystic m ood s, s tates of philosophical imm ersion into pure thou ght, ecstasy andsimilar states to a mu ch greater extent Ecstatic states alm ost invariably play somerole in m ost of the India n philosoph ical systems. Bu t my sticism in the object of ourstudy does no t at all give us the right to convert our know ledge of it into some newmyst ic ism 9 '.53 Elsewhe re h e w arn ed against an over-simplified view of Ind ianphilosophy, pervaded throug hout by mysticism as i t were : "Ju st as the Europe anmin d is no t altogether an d always free from my sticism, so is the Ind ian mind notat ail necessarily subjected to it . N ot to speak ab ou t the num erous ma terialisticdoctr ines, the orthodo x M im m saka s themselves held abo ut yoga an opinion whichprob ably represents just what all of us, so far as we are no t my stics, think ab ou t it ,viz, that yoga is sheer ima gination , just as any other ordin ary fan atic ism ."5 4

53 . See the present collection of papers : Preface to Santanantara-siddhL54. Conception of Buddhist Nirvana, 19 .


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Introduction xxiiiW e have in these statem ents some idea of Stche rbatsky's app roac h to India nphilosop hy in general. H e did no t overlook or ignore the influence of mysticismand religion in Indian philosophy, bu t he had absolutely nothing to do with thosewho saw only these in Indian philosophy. On the con trary, what made the Indian

philosop hical tradition really im po rtan t for him was the solid logical core of it andthe discussion of vital philosop hical prob lems in term s of philosop hy prop er. T oignore this was to show only a "m orbid interest in Indian philosophy" the kindof interest which was mo st pop ular amo ng his Europ ean c ontem poraries .

Bu t w hat it was tha t helped Stcherba tsky himself to avoid such a mo rbidinterest ? N . P. Anikeev suggests tha t at least an im po rtan t factor tha t c ontribu tedto the m ental ma ke-up of Stcherbatsky was the growing strength of the dem ocraticmo vem ent in Ru ssia which heralded the Octob er Re volu tion. Th e Russian intellec-tuals connected with this dem ocratic mov ement themselves struggling againstexploitations and impe rialist designs of the Czarist regime of their time felt noneed to evolve any ration ale for colonial exploitation of the Ind ian peop le or todeny them the hu m an dignity, to po rtray them as inherently stunted in science andrationa lism. On the con trary, these intellectuals created in their cou ntry an atm os-phe re of bro ad sym pathy for the oppressed people of India and thus helped th eRu ssian Indolo gists to develop a different me thodolog ical app roac h to the Ind iancultural heritage : "W ha t is the reason for this adva ntage of Ru ssian Indolo gistsover m ost of their W estern cou nterp arts ? This question is in need of a detailedcon sideration . Ye t we can m ention here o ne o bvious re ason for this difference.U nd ou bted ly, it is because of the general atm osp here of symp athy a nd friendlyfeelings tow ards the oppressed peoples of the East nurtu red in Russia in the 19thcentury under the influence of Ru ssian revolutionary dem ocracy in which th eprogressive intelligentia was brou ght up . It is sufficient to me ntion tha t the organ sof revolution ary dem ocrats like Otechestvennye Zapisky and Sovremennik regularlypublished in their pages m aterials and reviews on the life of the Eastern peop les,including tha t of India "N , G. Chernyshevsky and N . A. Do brolyub ov were highlyinterested in the East, particularly in Ind ia, and devoted m any mov ing articles toInd ia, in which, by exposing the ground lessness of Euro peo-c entrism , they highlyestimated the achievemen ts of th e peop le of East in the field of culture , warm lysupported them in their s truggle for national independence and condem ned thecolonial ram page of the capitalist 'civilizers '--Chernyshev sky was one of the firstRus sian think ers w ho , even in the middle of the 19th century oppo sed the thenwidely prevalent view-point tha t Greece was the hom elan d of philoso phy . H eemph atically argued tha t 'all this is only due to the lack of know ledge ab ou t theEast in thos e times 9. Like m ost of the Ru ssian sc holars, Chernyshevsky highlyestimated the level of scientific and philosoph ical thou gh ts of the Indian natio n.


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xxiv IntroductionIn his opin ion, the ancient Ind ians were no t only in no way inferior to the an cientGreeks but in many respects were undoubtedly superior to them' 5 . 5 5

Sharing as he did the intellectual a tm osph ere created by the Ru ssian revolu-tiona ry dem ocra ts, Stcherbatsky could easily avoid "th e m orbid interest in Indianphilos oph y" and work for the grand reconstruction of the Indian logical tradit ionwhich was largely forgotten to the Indians themselves.

Yet w e canno t he lp wondering to-day how immensely the impo rtance ofthis reco nstruc tion would have increased but for Stche rbatsky's perso nal bias for thephilosophy of K an t. In the Buddhist Logic we freely come across "the thing-in-itself?% "th e schematism of the catego ries", "t he synthesis of Ap percep tion", thedivision of judgments into a priori and a posteriori as well as into analytic andsynthetic-and so on . A nd no t merely K an t. In the writings of the same medievalIndian philosophers , he reads Bergson's duration, Russell 's sense-data and a wholeho st of ideas of Eu rop ea n ph iloso ph y. All these crea te serious difficulty foran objective u nde rstand ing of " Bu dd hist log ic" in its conc rete historical contex t,an d, wh at is perh aps worse particularly from the poin t of view of the contem pora rySoviet historian s of wo rld-philosoph y, this tendency of Stcherbatsky tended toobscu re the basic struggle in India n ph ilosoph y, which was inevitably the strugglebetween idealism and m aterialism. Bu t I need no t go here into the details of allthese particularly because the con tem pora ry Soviet philo sop hers, with all theirrespect for Stcherbatsky as the builder of the generation of m ode rn Indolo gists, havethem selves discussed thi s lim itatio n of Stch erba tsky an d have given us sufficientcritical caution against it . 5 6

Calcut ta Debiprasad Chat topadhyayaNovember 30? 1969 EditorIndian Studies : Past & Present

55. N. P. Anikeev, op. cit., 38-40.56. See for exam ple, I. M . K utas ov a, Buddhist Philosophy and Logic in theworks of Academician Stcherbatsky (in Russian),"Sovetskoe vostokoved e n i e " / l 9 5 8 , 35 pp. 136-143.


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A B U D D H I S T P H IL O S O P H E R O N M O N O T H E I S MText with Translation and Critical Introduction of

N G R J U N A ' SIsvara-kartrtva-nirkarana-visnoh-ekakartrtva-nirkarana

INTRODUCTION

Of the numerous works at tr ibuted to the famous Buddhist reformerNgrjuna, a small one 1 , with the title Refutation of the view of God being thecreator of the world and of the view of Visnu being the sole creator of the who leworld, is extan t in San skrit original an d Tibe tan trans lation . It co ntains anexposition of the Bud dhist view on mo notheism , a view wh ich, as is evident fromthe title, is clearly negative.

. . .I n the end of 1902, Aca dem ician S. F . O ld en bu rg gave me a copy of a smalltreatise of the famous Bu ddhist reformer N grju na. Th e copy was ma de inSansk rit and Tib etan languages by the late orientalist W enzel from the Lo nd onedition of the bsTan-gyur (Tanjur), It was prop osed to collate this bsTan-gyuredition with the Tibetan and Chinese editions available in St. Petersb urg and , ifpossible, to translate and publish it. Since Mr. Wenzel died soon after, the workrema ined unfinished and was passed on to S. F . O ld en bu rg for being don e byme. I have comp ared the Lon don text with the bsTan-gyur edition in theAsiatic Mu seum of the Im perial Academ y of Sciences and have found th at onlywith the exception of two or three places the Lo nd on text, both in Sanskri t andTib etan , is fairly accu rate and clear. This m ade it possible for me to transla tei t . Un fortunately, however, when my paper was ready, though not yet pu b-lished, F . W . Th om as printed the text bo th in Sansk rit and Tibe tan (the latterin Ro m an translat ion) but without any translat ion. Nevertheless , we decidedto pub lish the text over aga in, first beca use of its intrinsic interest an d secondlybecause some port ions of the translat ion depended upo n the corrections in thereading of the text which we considered relevant.

Stc. 1


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A Buddhist Philosopher on Monotheismvery first day s of their na tio na l life.4 The same writer, though in a different place,1 says tha t we are no t indeb ted to the Semitic peop le either for ou r political institu-tions or for our art or poe try or philoso phy or science ; we are indebted to themfor religion.5Such views are widely prevalent in some form or other* Th e idea of m on o-theism is considered as the sole prop erty of the Semitic peo ple, particularly of theJewish peop le. Re na n is of opin ion tha t th e Semites did no t rende r any otherservice to humanity.W itho ut denying in any way the great historical role of tha t conc eption ofm ono theism which was pu t forward by the Sem ites, it is necessary to adm it tha t theconc eption itself was no t at all their exclusive possession. Th e con trapo sition ofthe Aryans an d the Semites in the sense tha t the Aryan s occupied themselves ma inlywith secular affairs wh ile the Sem ites w ith religious ones is an un ten ab le gen erali-sation tha t has developed with some reference to India . On the con trary, thepolitical weak ness of this cou ntry is usually explained by the circum stance tha t thethou gh ts of her peop le were mainly directed tow ards sp eculation and religion. M axMller rightly called India a labo rator y in which the m ost diverse religious andphilosophical systems were worked out. Am ong them, monothe ism played a s igni-ficant role.In the Vedic hym ns the m ost ancient documents of Indian religionw e com eacross the con ception of polytheism , thou gh no t in the same form as tha t of theclassical antiquity. The Vedic religion is characterised by Max Mller as henotheism,i.e. the view acco rding to which in the different gods peop le wo rshipped only onedivine source and therefore each god could be a higher and the abso lute G od onwhich all others depe nded . In the U pa nisad s, the second of the most ancien tdocum ents of Indian religion, we come across an unm istakable conception ofmo notheism. G od is viewed in these as om nipresent, om nipoten t and omniscient ,the crea tor of all th at is visible as well as invisible. G od is conceived here in adua l aspec t. On the on e ha nd , H e is conceived as a pu re soul perceiving everything,thou gh witho ut a body . In this aspect, H e is called brahman. On the other han d,H e is conceived as a perso n possessing a definite will with which H e creates thewo rld. In this aspect, He is called isvara, i .e. as distinct from the popular deitiescalled the deva-s The latter (i.e. the deva-s) do not have any independent role,4. Qu and et com m ent la race semitique arriva-t-elle a cette notio n de Funite divine,que le m ond e a adm ise sur la foi de sa pred ication . Je crois que ce fut pa r uneintuition primitive et des ses premiers jours, Ibid, p. 86.5. D e la pa rt des peuples semitiques dan s Fhistoire de la civilization, p . 21 .(Paris 1862).6. A bo ut theism, pan theism and other teachings found in the Up anisad s in a mixedform, See Deussen, Allgemeine Geschichte der Philosophie, Vol. I, Part ii ,pp . 143-162.


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A Buddhist Philosopher on M0theismare created by G od and are sub ordinate to H im , exactly l ikeev erything else increation . Their significance, therefore, corres pon ds to the Ch ristian conc eption ofgood and evil souls and does not at all contradict the spirit of monotheism.In India or the soil of Brhmanism-we come across in historical times sixma in philosophical systems, of which three acknowledge mo notheism and the otherthre e deny it. Th e m ost widely pro pag ated of all these is the panthe istic system ofV edn ta. In the course of t ime, i t ousted and absorbed almost al l the rem ainingreligions of th e A ryan po pu lation of Ind ia. This religio-philosophical system wasredacted som etimes ab out the b ir th of Chris t , though the date of. redac tor Bda rayanais not precisely determined.7 His wo rk contains the ma in dogm as of the Ved nta,wh ich, even at the presen t time , form the basis of the faith of the India n followersof Brhmanism.Ho wev er, it did no t acquire such a wide prevalence all at once . D urin g thefirst ten centuries of our era , tKere was no end to the hea ted debates between thefollowers of Brhmanism and the Buddhists and also between the Vedntis ts and theother Brhmanical systems.On e of the questio ns on which these debates were centred was tha t of mo no -theism The refore, each system had to pu t forward argum ents either in sup port orin refutation of the existence of G od . N g rjuna 's wo rk discussed here presents tous Ind ian m ono theism from the negative angle, as it were, i .e. from the angle fromwhich the 'Buddh ists tried to refute this co ncep tion.

Professor Deu ssen, one of the outstanding scholars of Vedn ta of our t ime,argue s th at tlie Ind ian con ception of one Go d is no t inferior in loftiness to any thingth at we kno w of in this field. H is view is based on the study of the original sources,on the person al experience of the posit ion of Ve dnta in Id ia and on a profoundstudy of the his tory of philosophy in general .0 An d Professor Deussen asserts that ,7. It ma y be no ted tha t this au tho r belongs to a mu ch later period tha n is usuallyr supposed. In the stra-s (ii. 2.18-23), B dar aya na argues against the teachingsof the Buddhists and devotes some stra-s (29-32) to the refutation of the

idealis tic trend in Budd hist philosophy know n as the Vijnna-vda. Th e othertren d, wh ose founder is usually considered to have been ^Ngrjuna, ca nn ot beearlier than the 1st or 2nd century of our era. . .8. System des Vednta, p . 132ff. Besides being a S anskrit scholar, ProfessorD eussen occupies the Ch air of Philoso phy in Kiel Un iversity. In his lectures,as also in his wo rks (Die Elemente der Metaphysik. Allgemeine G eschichte derPhilosophie) he widens the scope of the generally accepted m ode of teachingphilo sop hy by way of including in it also Ind ian philo sop hy. ^Unfbrtuijately,his familiarity w ith his subject is limited to one system only, which h e considersthe highest creatio n of the Ind ian intellect. Prpfessor Garfoe's position withregard to the Smkhya system is also the same. ;


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A Buddhist Philosopher on Monotheismin its thelfeticl part, the V eda nt offers proo fs for the existence of one God, whichare somew hat reminiscent of those accepted in Christian theology. : ;

The first of these is the cosmological proo f so-called. According to it, Godcannot have any beginning, because He is pure being. He cannot be created byanything else, because He Himself has created all. The second argument is tlieideological proof so-called. It refers to the law which we experience tooperate in the whole world. Tfhis law cannot be the creation of material factors.I t can l iave its origin only in God, who is the rule* of everything and the designer ofthe world. How ever, as we shall presently see, from the same premise the Buddhistsarrived at an opposite conclusion.The third proof, which Deussen calls psychological, has mugh in commonwith the well-known formulation cogito ergo sum. The existence of God can never

be negated, inasmuch as He is the all-pe rvad ing. spirit, pervading even tha tperson who may think of negating Him. To negate God means to negate our ownexistence. .. Such is the theoretical basis of monotheism in the Vednta system. As forits practical importance, all the leading scholars of modern India agree that theYedntic view forms the basis of the great majority of the Aryan population ofIndia . Thig belief is often called pantheistic. But ,the term can be easily mis-undjer-stood .. Pan theism generally m eans the identification of the world with a singlespiritual substance and the negation of the possibility of God having any specialattr ibute. The doctrine of, the brahman, on the other hand, implies thp worshipof the spiritual source as a personal being, the creator and designer of the world.The modern fSaivas and Vaisnavas worship Siva and Visnu as the sole and supremeG od in the Vedntic sense. The difference between them and the monotheism ofthe Semitic people is tha t , in the latter , the contrast between the human soul andG od is more clearly emphasised. According to the teachings of the Vednta ,G o d as well as the human souls are appearances of the same all-pervading spiritualsubstance., The Vednta apart, there existed in ancient India ano ther philosophicalsystem which made the defence of monotheism its special peculiarity as it were.This school is known as tha t of the Naiyyiks , to which also goes the credit offounding Indian logic.9 In the teachings of this school, there is no shadow ofpantheism. The spiritual substance is assumed to exist in two forms,as God and

9. cf. S. V. Athalye's exposition of the view of the Naiyayikas on this question*-the Tarkasamgraha, Bombay 1897, p. 317ff. Cf. also Kusumanjali, the work'specially devoted to the proofs of the existence of God (ed. Cowell , Calcut ta1864). :,->> i


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A Buddhist Philosophen oni Monoth&smhu m an souls . Th e divine at tr ibutes are a s fo llow s: H e is on e, , .omniscient ,om nipresent, om nipotent . H e is the eternal creator and designer of the world. Thefeelings of jo y and sorrow are unk now n to H im . Of all these qualities, theJhu m ansouls po ssess "only tw o, nam ely e ternality a nd all-pervasiveness.

Log ic and dialectics being the specialities of this scho ol, it devo ted itself tothe special task of offering proofs of the existence of G od . , .Uda ya na -c ry a, one ofthe later w riters, enu me rated eight such special proo fs. W e need no t re-enu me rateall these. Instead of tha t, we shall m ention only that wh ich is im po rtan t for- following th e Buddhist polem ic against G od .The first of these corresponds to the cosmological argument of the Vedantistsan d is form ulated a s follows : The world mu st have its cause , because noth ing com -posite can exist with out a cause ; bu t the cause of the who le wo rld mu st be anomniscient , omnipresent and omnipotent being.Th e second argum ent is of

papers of th.stcherbatsky,gupta,1975

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