Essay Nineteen: Later Madhyamaka in Brief—A Guide¶

The place of this essay. Essay Eighteen established the proof of the Middle Treatise in full. This essay follows its fortunes over the next several centuries, along two lines. In India, the proof's custodians divided into two camps. They disputed the means of obtaining the theorem, not the theorem itself: was reductio its only legitimate syntax? In China, the proof entered, through scriptural translation, a linguistic world without a tradition of Buddhist logic. Its first assimilation took place in Chang'an, and its mature form emerged in the Three Treatise school, with the two truths as the principal battleground. Together the two lines form a history of reception and of remaking. Tools were reinvented in transmission, sometimes made clearer than the originals, sometimes distorted. The theorem and tools handed over by Essay Eighteen provide just the measure needed to distinguish clarification from distortion.

Length and format. Part II's two main events, Essays Thirteen and Eighteen, are behind us, as is the lengthy Essay Fifteen. The four essays beginning here—later Madhyamaka, Yogācāra, Tiantai, and Huayan—will all receive brief treatment, in the same format as Essays Sixteen and Seventeen: a tight compass, only the main structure, and judgments as usual. This is a decision about scale, not an assessment of value. Yogācāra deserves a much longer treatment, and China's other schools each deserve an essay of their own. For now, this volume ends with Essay Twenty-Two.

Scope. The Indian line ends with Kamalaśīla; the Chinese line with Jizang. Tibetan developments are mentioned only at points of contact, without a separate chapter.

Organization. We return to the parallel arrangement of earlier essays, whose chapters can be read independently. Essay Eighteen's two-level dividing line was a format peculiar to that essay; it is not used here.

The route through seven chapters. Chapter One sets out the question: Buddhapālita's pure reductio and Bhāviveka's recasting through Buddhist logic. Essay Eighteen's notation can express the dispute in a single sentence. Chapter Two concerns Candrakīrti: the completed form of the reductio approach, the refutation of autonomous inference, and observance of conventional rules. Chapter Three covers Śāntarakṣita and Kamalaśīla: the convergence of Yogācāra and Madhyamaka, preparing the way for the next essay. Chapter Four turns to the Zhaolun: the first Chinese assimilation as it happened, reading its account of things not shifting alongside the chapter examining going and coming. Chapter Five concerns Jizang: truths relative to their audience, teaching truths, and the four tiers of the two truths. Chapter Six brings the two-truths debate before the theorem for testing, directly addressing the dispute among interpretations promised in Chapter Six of Essay Eighteen. Chapter Seven gives the judgments and hands the discussion onward.

The state of the sources, stated at the outset. This essay's documentary situation differs from that of earlier essays. Buddhapālita's commentary has no premodern Chinese translation; his words survive in Chinese only as quoted by a critic in the Lamp of Wisdom. Of Candrakīrti's two principal works, one has no premodern Chinese translation and the other survives only through Tibetan transmission. The first of Kamalaśīla's three Bhāvanākrama texts has a Song-dynasty Chinese translation; Śāntarakṣita's Madhyamakālaṃkāra and the other two Bhāvanākrama texts have no old Chinese translations. What is fully present in Chinese is Bhāviveka—the Lamp of Wisdom and the Treatise on the Jewel in the Palm—and the Three Treatise lineage's own works. This asymmetry is one of the essay's subjects, hardly an obstacle. Chinese Madhyamaka grew independently with half the originals missing. What it grew into, and what enabled it to grow, are precisely the questions Chapters Four and Five will answer.