Some Logical Aspects of Nagarjuna's System

Abstract

THE MADHYAMIKA SCHOOL, founded by NSigrjuna (2nd century A.D. ), has been known to modern scholarship since the time of Emile Burnouf, over a century ago. During the past six decades, it has been studied by Indian, European, and Japanese scholars, who have generally conceded that this school is crucial for the history of Indian philosophy, both Buddhist and non-Buddhist. Ndg;rjuna has been widely praised as a great dialectician. However, a large residue of bafflement has remained after each attempt to elucidate the true message of the Midhyamikas. This is inevitable in the nature of the case, since the pioneers have had to grapple with more or less corrupt texts in Sanskrit, Tibetan, and Chinese; to compare the Midhyamikas with their Buddhist, Naiyiyika, and Sirihkhya opponents, whose systems were almost equally ill-known; and to render the Mddhyamika texts intelligible in terms of Occidental philosophy. The most productive period of Mddhyamika studies commenced with the publication of Th. Stcherbatsky's The Conception of Buddhist Nirvana in 1927. The ontological problem, the question of the Absolute in the Midhyamika system, then became central. Louis de La Vallee Poussin, Stanislaw Schayer, and others debated this theme somewhat acrimoniously with Stcherbatsky. La Vallee Poussin's death and World War II interrupted the debate. The task of translating the Prasannapadt was continued by J. W. De Jong,' who also wrote the most lucid of all articles on the Midhyamika conception of the Absolute.2 T. R. V. Murti's The Central Philosophy of Buddhism, published in 1955, continued the work of Stcherbatsky and his opponent-colleagues, and brought the metaphysical phase of investigation to its point of maximum returns. The metaphysical debate has exhibited extreme variety of opinion, and the attempt to describe Midhyamika as an ism has led various people to call it nihilism, negativism, monism, relativism, irrationalism, criticism, and