Dissertation Abstract

Dissertation in Buddhist Studies submitted at Hamburg (Sanskrit/Tibetan), 2022

The research findings for this study can be grouped under the following three Categories: 1. First of all, this study includes a thoroughly annotated translation of the opening sections of the fourth chapter of Yaśomitra’s Abhidharmakośavyākhyā IV.1–4, an early sixth century commentary on of Vasubandhu’s Abhidharmakośabhāṣya, wherein Vasubandhu offers a basic exposition of Buddhist causality that has remained a pivotal resource in the traditional dissemination of Buddhist thought on that topical cluster. To date, said section in the Abhidharmakośavyākhyā had only been available in the original Sanskrit, its Tibetan and Chinese Translations, and, more recently, as a modern translation in the Japanese medium. Burnouf (1876, p. 399), amongst other scholars, had already by the mid-to-late nineteenth century understood Yaśomitra’s commentary to be a philosophically significant and historically impactful work, an early Buddhist commentary that is not only deeply embedded in the academic tradition of Nālandā-University, but that is also the only fully extant Sanskrit commentary to the Abhidharmakośabhāṣya known to date. The extract chosen for translation centers on an exposition of early Buddhist causal models that contextualizes and elucidates early conceptions of the relation-ship between cause and effect; Abhidharmakośavyākhyā IV.1–4 has hereby been rendered accessible, for the first time, to the wider academic community, therein allowing for further philosophical, historical, and linguistic analysis by contemporary scholarls. 2. Secondly, this study assesses the philosophical debate between the Sarvāstivāda-school on the one hand, andn the Yogācāras on the other. The former posit that any phenomenon can be broken down into a clearly defined, limited number of ‘basic building blocks’ (dharmā) that in turn, by dint of their causal efficacy, need to be based on a positively established ontology (Dhammajoti 2015b, p. 74); the latter expend effort to refute any inherent link beteween causal efficacy and any such reified, positively established, ontological status. The extract contained in this study has been chosen with a focus on the exposition of the Sarvāstivādin concepts of vijñapti, avijñapti, and avijñaptirūpa—avijñapti in particular being considered by the Sarvāstivādins as indispensable and immutable ‘sustaining link’ between cause and effect. The counterarguments fielded by the Yogācāra-school, are likewise rendered, together with an assessment of the degree and scope of their cogency. 3. The translation of Abhidharmakośavyākhyā IV.1–4 contained in this study is based on a philological study and text-critical edition both of the Sanskrit original and its Tibetan translation. A fully positive apparatus records all variant readings of the seven Sanskrit manuscripts and three Sanskrit Editions, taking into consideration scholarly observations made by Funabashi, Sako, and others. Likewise, the principal transmission lines of the Tibetan commentarial canon (Bstan ’gyur)—inter alia Cone, Derge, Narthang and Peking—have been critically collated and certain readings amended, taking into account novel insights provided in secondary literature. URN: urn:nbn:de:gbv:18-ediss-112160 URL: https://ediss.sub.uni-hamburg.de/handle/ediss/10483

Routledge Handbook of Indian Buddhist Philosophy, 2022

The Routledge Handbook of Indian Buddhist Philosophy is the first scholarly reference volume to highlight the diversity and individuality of a large number of the most influential philosophers to have contributed to the evolution of Buddhist thought in India. By placing the author at the center of inquiry, the volume highlights the often unrecognized innovation and multiplicity of India’s Buddhist thinkers, whose unique contributions are commonly subsumed in more general doctrinal presentations of philosophical schools. Here, instead, the reader is invited to explore the works and ideas of India’s most important Buddhist philosophers in a manner that takes seriously the weight of their philosophical thought. The forty chapters by an international and interdisciplinary team of renowned contributors each seek to offer both a wide-ranging overview and a philosophically astute reading of the works of the most seminal Indian Buddhist authors from the earliest writings to the twentieth century. The volume thus also provides thorough coverage of all the main figures, texts, traditions, and debates animating Indian Buddhist thought, and as such can serve as an in-depth introduction to Buddhist philosophy in India for those new to the field. Essential reading for students and researchers in Asian and comparative philosophy, The Routledge Handbook of Indian Buddhist Philosophy is also an excellent resource for specialists in Buddhist philosophy, as well as for contemporary philosophers interested in learning about the rigorous and rich traditions of Buddhist philosophy in India.

Prabuddha Bharata or Awakened India [Vol. 115, Issue 8, August, 2010, Kolkata], 2010

Tibetan Schools trace their lineage to Indian tantric masters: Drupchcn or Mahasiddhas. Monks like Zanabazar sculpt Mongolian monasteries as late as the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. Tibetan teachers like Rinchen Tsangpo employ Kashmiri artists at Alchi and Tabo monasteries in Ladakh and Himachal Pradesh. Such pre-eminent personages stand out as bearers of the trans-Himalayan dialogue. Kumarajiva heads the translation bureau in China in the fourth century CE. Bodhidharma founds Shaolin boxing at the Loyang monastery in China. The Guhyasamaja Tantra, Arya Manjusri Mula Kalpa, Sadhanamala, Rasamanjari, Chaurapanchashika, Karandavyuba Sutra, Astasahasrika Prajnaparamita Sutra, Suvamaprabbasottama Sutra, and many Vajrayana texts and Vaipulya sutras are translated and retranslated into mystical dharanis, songs, mudras, hand gestures, cave paintings, cloth scrolls, wood-block paintings, masked Chamb dances, yantras, and mandala designs. The stories of Pancatantra—Kalila wa Dimna in its Arabic version— Vetalapancavimsati, Kathasaritsagara, and Lalitavistara are translated into sculpture or murals in the Himalayas and in Central and South East Asia. Vedic, Zoroastrian, Nestorian, Manichaean, Buddhist, and Islamic texts have entered a cauldron for shaping the Indian mindscape. The article provides a background to the great surge of philosophical speculations and cerebration, which was inherited by Swamy Vivekananda and transmitted to the future generations through the Advaita Ashrama at Mayavati. Prabuddha Bharata was established by Swamiji to transmit Indian Philosophical thought to the entire world.

1986

2000

MA thesis, University of Texas at Austin, Asian Studies, 2000. This thesis consists of a critical edition and translation of the Tibetan version of the Caityapradakṣiṇa Gāthā. It is based upon six versions of the text found in the various Kanjurs. The introduction details the methodology and format of the preparation of the Tibetan critical edition and a discussion of the textual parallels found in other Buddhist texts and their implication for the cult of the ståpa in Indian Buddhism. The critical edition consists of the Tibetan texts, along with the translation and the textual parallels.

Buddhism Across Asia, 2014

Of the two great divisions of the Śaiva tradition, the Atimārga (2nd century CE+) and the Mantramārga (5th century CE +), the first shows Śaivas adopting ever more radically counter-brahmanical forms of religious asceticism, passing from the Pāñcārthika Pāśupata phase to the Lākula and finally to that of the Kāpālika Somasiddhānta, while the second ('Tantric Śaivism') shows a progressive effort to accommodate the brahmanical system, attempting to establish a Śaiva-brahmanical socio-religious order. This reformation led by the ninth century to a widespread acceptance in orthoprax brahmanical circles that the Śaiva scriptures and the practices that they ordain are after all valid. This 'Hinduization' was not welcomed by the Śaiva theorists whose works have reached us. They reacted in the manner of a counter-reformation with various strategies designed to keep alive the threatened sense that Śaivism, like Buddhism for Buddhists, offered a path to a true liberation that lay far beyond the goals achievable by following the 'mundane', brahmanical religion of Śruti and Smṛti (laukiko dharmaḥ). Among the mainstream Mantramārgic Śaivas, those of the Saiddhāntika tradition—it was this that had become acceptable in brahmanical circles—this reaction was entirely on the level of theory designed to indoctrinate their co-religionists with the conviction that their rituals were operating in spite of appearances and now widespread belief on an entirely higher level. But among the Śaivas of the Śākta persuasion, who inherited and further refined the radical rejection of brahmanical values developed in the Atimārga, the sense of transcendence was kept alive through modes of counter-cultural practice. However, with the entry of this tradition into the highly learned culture of Kashmir in the tenth century we see an attempt on the part of its greatest theorist, Abhinavagupta, to provide an intellectually coherent critique of what he perceived as the basis of brahmanical orthopraxy, namely the uncritical belief that the properties of relative purity and impurity ascribed by brahmanical regulation to persons, things, and acts, are objective, real properties (prameyadharma-). Elaborating on this basis a theory of the subjective nature of such ascribed properties while at the same time rendering their cultural objectivity intelligible, he shows how the Śākta practices that he advocates in accordance with his scriptures make sense as the means of escaping from what he saw as the bondage of the soul imposed by the brahmanical tradition.

Goodreads.com, 2020

This is a review of volume eight of a 25 volume series on the philosophy of India, a project directed by professor Karl H. Potter. It reviews the second of five volumes on Buddhist philosophy in the series.