Guide to This Part¶
Where this part stands. Part 18 set the whole proof of the Mūlamadhyamakakārikā on its feet; this part follows the fortunes of that proof over the several centuries that came after. Those fortunes run along two lines. On the Indian line the keepers of the proof divided into two camps, and what they contested was not the theorem itself but the manner in which the theorem is to be obtained: whether reductio is its one legitimate syntax. On the Chinese line the proof entered, along with the translation of scripture, a linguistic world in which there was no tradition of Buddhist logic; the first digestion took place at Chang'an, the mature form appeared in the Three Treatise school, and the main battlefield was the twofold truth. Put together, the two lines make a history of reception and equally a history of remaking: the tools were reinvented in the course of being handed on, in some places built clearer than the original, in others built out of true. For telling which places are clarification and which are distortion, the theorem and the tools that Part 18 handed over serve exactly as the gauge.
Length and specification. The two set pieces of Part II, Part 13 and Part 18, are behind us, and the bulky Part 15 is behind us as well. The four parts that begin here (later Madhyamaka, Yogācāra, Tiantai, Huayan) are all handled at the "in Brief" specification, on the same plan as Parts 16 and 17: the length kept tight, the skeleton alone set up, the verdict delivered as usual. This is a ruling about scale and not a judgment of worth. Yogācāra deserves a far larger allowance than it is given here, and the remaining Chinese schools deserve a part apiece; this volume stops for the present at Part 22.
Scope. On the Indian side, as far as Kamalaśīla; on the Chinese side, as far as Jizang; the Tibetan development is mentioned only where it touches the interfaces, and is given no chapter of its own.
Format. The parallel convention of the earlier parts returns, and each chapter can be read on its own; the two-register split of Part 18 was the special form of that part and is not used here.
How the seven chapters run. Chapter 1 states the case: Buddhapālita's pure reductio and Bhāviveka's reform on the model of Buddhist logic, the point at issue writable in one sentence in Part 18's notation. Chapter 2, Candrakīrti: the completed form of the consequence line, the refutation of independent inference, and the lawfulness of the conventional. Chapter 3, Śāntarakṣita and Kamalaśīla: the Yogācāra-Madhyamaka synthesis, which prepares the door for the next part. Chapter 4, the Zhaolun: the actual state of China's first digestion, with On Things Not Shifting read against the chapter on motion. Chapter 5, Jizang: truth-for-someone (truth as it holds for a hearer) and truth-as-teaching, and the twofold truth in four tiers. Chapter 6 brings the debate over the two truths up onto the testing bench of the theorem: the contest among the several schools' readings, promised in Chapter 6 of Part 18, is here faced head on. Chapter 7: the verdict and the handoff.
The state of the materials, said plainly at the outset. The documentary position of this part is unlike that of the parts before it. Buddhapālita's commentary has no ancient Chinese translation, and his words exist in Chinese only in the form in which a critic transcribed them, preserved in the Prajñāpradīpa; of Candrakīrti's two principal works, one has no ancient Chinese translation and the other survives in the Tibetan transmission alone; and of the writings of Śāntarakṣita and his disciple, ancient China translated nothing at all. What stands present in Chinese in full equipment is Bhāviveka (the Prajñāpradīpa and the Karatalaratna), together with the works of the Three Treatise line itself. This asymmetry is no obstacle to the present part; it is one of its topics. Chinese Madhyamaka grew up by itself with half the original file missing, and what it grew into, and on the strength of what, is precisely the question Chapters 4 and 5 have to answer.