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Buddhist Philosophy in India and Ceylon c26.s2: 2. Dignāga

Buddhist Philosophy in India and Ceylon c26.s2

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2. Dignāga

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The date of the great Buddhist logician Dignāga is still uncertain, though there are grounds on which he may be assigned to not later than A.D. 400, and in any event a much later date is out of the question. His services to logic are difficult to estimate precisely, because a vital question is involved of his relative priority or posteriority to the Vaiçeṣika authority, Praçastapāda, in whom appear very important changes in the logical doctrines hitherto professed in the Nyāya and Vaiçeṣika schools. Reasons for the probable priority of Dignāga have been advanced elsewhere;² the suggestion that these innovations of Praçastapāda are in fact to be found in Kaṇāda is clearly erroneous;³ the logic of Kaṇāda is unquestionably primitive, and would have been very different had it been inspired by the much more mature ideas which appear quite openly in Praçastapāda. There remains, however, the possibility of derivation of both advances in Buddhism and in the Nyāya-Vaiçeṣika from a school not yet known to us.

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² ILA., pp. 93 ff.; Ui, VP., p. 17, n. 3. He is said to have been a pupil of Vasubandhu.

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³ Dasgupta, Ind. Phil. i. 351. That Kaṇāda is pre-Buddhistic (i. 280) is quite impossible.

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As a philosopher Dignāga appears a champion of Vijñānavāda idealism, but his work on logic is interesting, because it is inspired by other than epistemological and metaphysical considerations; from his logical works, so far as known from Dharmakīrti, it would be impossible to learn precisely his conception of reality.⁴ But we know that in perception he distinguished sharply between the element of sensation and imagination; each idea requires both sensation and the activity of the imagination to give any result;

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⁴ His Vijñānavāda position appears clearly in his Ālambanaparīkṣā (preserved in Tibetan); Poussin, JRAS. 1903, ii. 383, n. 2. On logic we have in Tibetan his Pramāṇasamuccaya; Hetucakraḍamaru; Trikālaparīkṣā; and his or Çaṅkarasvāmin's Nyāyapraveça (Ui, VP., p. 68, n. 2); see MSIL., pp. 82 ff.

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the mere percept is inexpressible and a momentary experience, which imagination presents as a series of moments (kṣaṇa-saṃtāna), and therefore capable of expression. This view is already attacked by Praçastapāda, without naming its author, whose identity with Dignāga is affirmed by Vācaspati Miçra.

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Still more important was Dignāga’s doctrine of inference; it seems to have rested on the assurance that knowledge did not express real relations of external character; the relation of ground and conclusion (anumānānumeya-bhāva) rests upon the relation of inherence and essence, quality and subject (dharmadharmi-bhāva), which is imposed by thought (buddhyārūḍha). The doctrine harmonizes entirely with his doctrine of perception, for the product there is a creation of imagination (kalpanā, utprekṣā), and all that is left undecided is the nature of the contact in simple perception with some reality; nothing hinders¹ to accept this reality as merely a mental creation, a projection of the basic consciousness (ālaya-vijñāna), but for logic the point is unimportant. The power of the mind to impose laws on phenomena affords us the possibility of those general prepositions (vyāpti) on which all reasoning rests, and enables Dignāga to develop a true syllogism: Sound is non-eternal, because it is produced; all the produced are non-eternals, like a pot; no non-produced are non-eternals, like ether. The examples serve to illustrate, but the general law is one of the intellect.

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¹ Cf. BSB. I. iv; AKV. (Paris MS., f. 267a) in Poussin, JRAS. 1910, p. 136, n. The something (vastu-mātra) at the basis is the Vijñāna or Ālayavijñāna; JRAS. 1906, p. 953. All determinations as substance, attribute, action, universality, and particularity (Vaiçeṣika categories) are in a sense false as conceptual and mediate (savikalpaka); Hetuvidyānyāyadvāraçāstra in Ui, VP., p. 67.

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Dignāga also defined the essential conditions of the middle term or cause (hetu); it must be present in the subject or minor term, e. g. smoke on the mountain; it must be comprehended in the major or predicate, e. g. where there is smoke, there must always be fire; the middle must not exist in things heterogeneous to the major term, e. g. smoke is entirely absent where there is no fire. The doctrine, like that of universal connexion, is criticized by Nyāya writers of the orthodox school, like Uddyotakara. On defects in this relation are based the fallacies of the middle, and Dignāga recognizes also fallacies of the thesis and the example, which the later logicians reject, but which influenced Praçastapāda. The logical advance in rejecting these fallacies is obvious.

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To Dignāga further belongs the credit of establishing the distinction between the actual process of reasoning for the ascertainment of truth and the reasoning for another, which takes the form of communication by the syllogism of three members.¹ He based this distinction on the rejection of the authority of the teacher's utterance as such (çabda).² If we are asked to accept authority, we ask: Is the person who uttered the saying credible, or is the fact itself credible? If the former, then our belief in his sayings is inference from his credibility; if the fact is credible then it is a case of perception. The only value, therefore, to be assigned to syllogism is indirect; the word has value, therefore, only as a conclusion or consequence of the fact; real fact gives a true conclusion. Thus the sources of knowledge are reduced to two, perception and inference. Comparison, a separate source of knowledge in the Nyāya theory, he also rejected; when we recognize a thing by similarity to something else, the operation is essentially perception.

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¹ Cf. Ui, VP., p. 82, n. 2; Keith, ILA., pp. 85 ff., 122 ff.

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² NV., p. 260; NVT., p. 286. On the Apta, cf. NB., p. 117; BC. ix. 66; MKV., p. 268; see AKV. (MS. Burn., f. 470a), JA. 1902, ii. 264, n. 2. Dignāga accepts, of course, Buddha's authority; see Kumārila's refutation, Tantravārttika, pp. 169 ff.; JRAS. 1902, pp. 369 ff.

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We must, however, remember that, despite the elaboration of logical doctrine and the stress laid on attaining correct results, we are not to suppose that we are actually in touch with reality; the one point of contact with something not certainly and immediately mental is inexpressible;³ what we deal with, as far as we can express ourselves, is mental concepts, which present a regular system of discourse, but whose relation to reality lies outside the province of Dignāga's logic.⁴ 3. *Dharmakīrti's Doctrine of Perception and Knowledge.*

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³ This is regular Vijñānavāda doctrine; BSB. I. iv; the ultimate and only real is void thought.

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⁴ It is possible that Maitreyanātha, author of the Abhisamayālaṃkāra, preceded Dignāga in rejecting comparison (Upamāna), as certainly did Asaṅga; Nāgārjuna mentions all four, as equally invalid; cf. MKV., p. 75; Ui, VP., p. 86 (Vigrahavyāvartanī).

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The misfortune which has reduced us to mere translations of Dignāga's works has been escaped by Dharmakīrti,¹ who falls in the seventh century A. D., and whose *Nyāyabindu* with the commentary of Dharmottara (ninth century A. D.) still remains the premier source for our knowledge of the details of Buddhist logical development. In this case again there is some doubt as to the philosophical tenets which lay at the base of the author's contentions, for, while he appears in another text as a definite adherent of the Vijñānavada, it is held by the author of the *Nyāyabinduṭīkā-ṭippaṇī*,² a commentary on Dharmottara's commentary, that the *Nyāyabindu* is written from the Sautrāntika point of view—that is, recognizing the reality of an external world, known to us by inference only from the content of our experience. The point is hardly soluble with our evidence; the similarity of the views of Dignāga and Dharmakīrti, as we have them, is very close, and, assuming that Dignāga wrote as an idealist,³ the issue resolves itself into the question whether Dharmakīrti has so modified the view of Dignāga as to allow of reference to an external reality which Dignāga would have declined to accept. But it is obvious that it would be extremely difficult to decide this point without express intimation of the author's definite views;

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it is not enough to make a man a realist in metaphysics, because in a logical treatise he speaks of an element as fact (*artha*), external (*bāhya*), or having a distinct character (*svalakṣaṇa*). His metaphysical views, he is entitled to ask, shall be gathered from treatises in which he has set them out, not inferred from logical doctrines which do not formally discuss the metaphysical nature of the given element in presentation. As regards, however, the question of knowledge, there is no point in urging the question; it is perfectly clear that the Sautrāntikas accepted the existence of ideas only as known to us, whence we infer an external reality; if, then, we accept the suggestion that Dharmakīrti was an adherent of that school in the ordinary sense of the term, we cannot suppose that he held the doctrine that ideas copy reality. In fact, whether Dharmakīrti was a Sautrāntika or a Vijñānavādin, his position might be expressed in the same terms; equally in either case all knowledge is of ideas; logical analysis must accept this fact; whether the source of the sensation is external or results from the action of consciousness, the sensation as such is unknowable and momentary. This is the essence of the doctrine of Dharmakīrti; the sensation (kṣaṇa) cannot be grasped (kṣaṇasya jñānena prāpayitum aśakyatvāt);¹ it becomes an object of knowledge only in so far as imagination gives it the necessary characteristics for knowledge.

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This is done by the action of the intellect in clothing the momentary impression with the result of past and the presage of future experience; it is the intellect which concerts the sensation into a knowable object, a moment series. Take away the work of the imagination (niścaya,² kalpanā, adhyavasāya), and you have nothing knowable left; you have merely the bare fact of sensation. The parallelism with the Kantian conception of the synthesis of apprehension is quite clear, however less effectively brought out. There is, however, the vital difference that in the view of Dharmakīrti, as of Dignāga, the addition of the intellectual element deprives perception of the truth of sensation (abhrānta); that is, he fails to realize the inconsistency of introducing the idea of error; truth being obviously an ideal conception, it is absurd to attribute error to it because it is not something different from itself. The expression of the idea of mere sensation by Dharmakīrti is doubtless faulty,³ but it is not necessary to deny him credit for following Dignāga in recognizing it. The particular sensation is unique, and it is developed by the imagination (vikalpa)⁴ into the knowledge of the object; when we are told that the sensation of blue is thus transformed into the perception ‘This is blue’, we must understand the doctrine in the light of common sense.¹ It is clear that the sensation as such cannot be described as blue;

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it is an immediate feltness, which results in our perception that the object is blue, and the sensation therefore can properly be called one of blue ex posteriori. It is not really because we have an awareness of blue that we speak of having perceived a blue object; it is because we have a perception of blue that we describe our ineffable sensation as an awareness of blue. This is seen by the avoidance of the term cause and result for the relation and the preference for determinant and determined (vyavasthāpana, vyavasthāpya).² The momentary sensation is absolutely real (paramārthasat),³ and is grasped in sensation alone; inference cannot reach the moment; it deals only with generalities (sāmānya-lakṣaṇa).

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¹ ILA., pp. 28, 48, 71, 84, 97, 101 ff., 127, 136 ff. Cf. TRD., pp. 32 ff.; NK., pp. 189 ff.; NM., pp. 93 ff.

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² ed. Petrograd, 1909. It cites views of Vinītadeva and Çantabhadra (seventh century A. D.). Cf. MSIL., pp. 119 f.

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³ The solution of the difficulty, pointed out by Poussin (JA. 1903, ii. 308, n. 2), is probably the fact that, as Wassilieff (*Bouddhisme*, p. 290) states, Dignāga accepted the reality of sense knowledge, i. e. of the *paratantra*, and did not treat it as illusory.

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¹ NBT., p. 16.

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² NBT., p. 30; TRD., pp. 33, 41.

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³ NBT., p. 16; NB., p. 103.

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⁴ NBT., pp. 4, 14.

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¹ Cf. Stcherbatskoi in Dasgupta, Ind. Phil. i. 409, n. 1. For a Sāṃkhya critique of the Buddhist doctrine of perception, see Aniruddha on SS. i. 89; for a Madhyamaka critique, see MKV., pp. 73 ff., where it is shown that it is illegitimate and too narrow.

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² NBT., pp. 19 f.

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³ NBT., p. 17; NB., p. 103.

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The idea of the process of knowledge in perception thus suggested is that of an object as endowed by the activity of the imagination with a definite ideal character, which is represented to us in the idea of the object; there is therefore sameness between the object and our idea, and we have not the absurdity of an idea copying something non-ideal. It is the experience or realization of the sameness which results in the assertion ‘This is blue’. The ground of this state, if inquired into, can be answered on the Vijñānavāda basis, as Dharmakīrti does in his Pramāṇa-viniścaya preserved in Tibetan; consciousness develops itself into the ultimately unreal complex of the object, subject, and consciousness of the object by the subject.⁴ In this may lie the apparent outwardness of the presentation.

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⁴ See cit. in SDS., p. 13; Poussin, JRAS. 1910, p. 132.

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The idea of truth or correctness in relation to knowledge is clearly not possible of statement as accordance with the object, which is known only in idea, and with this accords admirably the fact that the criterion adopted is not correspondence, but one applicable to both perception and inference,⁵ namely, verification by experience on acting upon the knowledge. If we have a perception, or arrive at some proposition by inference, then we put it to the test of fact, and, if that agrees with our perception or inference, we have assurance that our knowledge is right. We have the presentation or idea; we are prompted to act upon it; we realize the object in accordance with our endeavour based on the presentation or percept. Only in this way can we be assured of the correctness of our knowledge; otherwise we have knowledge which may be true or false. That we have illusory percepts, e. g. when through derangement we see as yellow the white conch shell or have dreams, we know by experience; if we act on the faith of the presentations we do not attain what we should. True, we cannot possibly realize the precise object which gave the presentation, since all is momentary; but the imagination supplies the belief in the absence of difference between the aspect of the series which is gone and that which is realized in the present.¹ Of course we must not think that right knowledge is the direct cause of our realization of anything, for that is effected through the desire, which itself is a product arising from memory of past experiences evoked by the presentation. The pragmatic nature of truth is thus strongly asserted, but it must be remembered that we are merely dealing with empirical matters, not with ultimate reality.

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⁵ Cf. TRD., pp. 33, 41; NB., p. 103; NBT., pp. 6 ff.; NBTT. pp. 16 ff.

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¹ NBTT., p. 11 : abhedādhyavasāyāt, NBT., p. 5; cf. TRD., p. 40.

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