History Of Indian Philosophy Research Articles

Буддийская критика обоснования варновой системы брахманистами. О русском переводе «Ваджрасучи». Игла с алмазным острием (Ваджрасучи). Пер. с санскр. и примеч. Р.В. Псху

In the later period of the development of Indian philosophy (VII century), one of the most interesting questions marked the boundary of Brahmanic thought and its most categorical opponent, Buddhism: the question of the existence of universals. Despite the fact that at first glance this dispute seems purely philosophical and therefore comparable to a similar phenomenon in Western European philosophy, nevertheless, in the history of Indian philosophy, the problem of universals arises in a certain context, explaining their appearance as a ‘situational’ phenomenon. In the VII century, Kumārila Bhaṭṭa, in a dispute with the Buddhist Dharmakīrti, resorted to universals in justifying the legality of the Varṇa system: all brahmins are united by one common property or universal – brahmanism, due to which brahmins differ from all other people. We can talk about the existence of a certain paradigm in the Brahmin culture, which explains the social structure of ancient Indian society, and the affirmation by all philosophical systems of classical Indian philosophy, united by the name of āstika (recognizing the Vedas), and the grammatical structure of Sanskrit in Pāṇini’s work, and many other realities of Brahmin culture. The article examines the text of Vajrasūcī attributed to the early Buddhist author Aśvaghoṣa, in which a condensation of possible arguments against the Varṇa system and the exclusive status of the Brahmins is proposed. The article presents the translation of Vajrasūcī from Sanskrit into Russian.

ЛЕКСИЧНІ РЕПРЕЗЕНТАНТИ КОНЦЕПТУ "БУТТЯ" У АНГЛО-САНСКРИТСЬКОМУ СЛОВНИКУ МОНЬЄ-ВІЛЬЯМСА

The article is devoted to the study of the etymology and semantic connotations of Sanskrit terms: sat, bhāva, sambhava, bhavitṛ, bhavya, bhavat, bhūti, bhūta, sarvabhūta, bhavaka, sattva, sattā, saṃvṛtti, jāstāmātā sampatti, vartamāna, āvitta, āvinna as lexical representatives of the conceptosphere of being in the Sanskrit-English dictionary of Monier-Williams. The method of conceptual analysis is implemented based on the assumption of the determining influence of language culture on the content and nature of philosophical creativity. This study is only the first stage of the project to reveal the way of interpreting "being" in the history of Indian philosophy. The key semantic connotations of this concept in the Monier-Williams English-Sanskrit dictionary are revealed. The semantic connection of the concept of "being" with the concepts: "life" and "time" is defined. In this context, "to live" is to be "someone" in order to embrace "one's place" and play "one's role" that can provide "possession" for "subsistence", and the relationship between "being" and "time" is the concreteness of the existing event that is happening or has happened and belonging to the future that is about to happen. Although we do not trace a transparent connection between the concepts of "being" and "space" in Sanskrit, there are reasons to believe that the first of all, the etymology of the terms of our chosen conceptosphere clearly presents the interpretation of being as a long and a spatially defined location. Noticeable is the fact that the connection between the interpretation of the concept of "being" in Sanskrit and the ethical concept of "good" and aesthetic "beauty" we trace only in terms derived from as and bhū, and at the same time only the terms sat and bhava can be translated as "truth", and the meaning of "essence" we find only in the translation of the terms sat and sattva. This explains the fact why the term sat is considered as close as possible to the "Western" interpretation of the concept of "being". It has been suggested that the polysemy of lexical representatives of the concept of being in Sanskrit and the complexity and variability of the grammar compliance of this language can be interpreted as an obstacle to the extreme problematization of this concept.

Bhagavad Gita: The Paradox of Dharma and its Ontology

In the history of Indian philosophy, dharma has been re-evaluated and challenged multiple times by various schools of thought: is it is an injunction from above or one codified in scriptures? What happens when a scripture is authorless and what is then the validity of dharma? Can one follow dharma if it brings unfavorable results? It is in this context that Bhagvad Gita attempts to deal with dharma in a fictional context of a battle and in doing so raises more complex questions - it addresses the very paradox laying at the heart of dharma in a paradoxical manner. This paper looks at dharma in an ontological sense: the living dharma of Gita is a significant intervention, since Gita attempts to explain and thus justify the paradox of one’s being by proposing life of living dharma (not living a life of dharma).

Review of History of Indian Philosophy, by Purushottama Bilimoria, Editor-in Chief; J.N. Mohanty, Amy Rayner, John Powers, Stephen Phillips, Richard King, and Christopher Key Chapple, Associate Editors, Routledge History of World Philosophies

Review of History of Indian Philosophy, by Purushottama Bilimoria, Editor-in Chief; J.N. Mohanty, Amy Rayner, John Powers, Stephen Phillips, Richard King, and Christopher Key Chapple, Associate Editors, Routledge History of World Philosophies

Purushottama Bilimoria (with Amy Rainer Rayner) (Editor): History of Indian Philosophy

Purushottama Bilimoria (with Amy Rainer Rayner) (Editor): History of Indian Philosophy

To the Statement of a Question on Periodization of History of Indian Philosophy

To the Statement of a Question on Periodization of History of Indian Philosophy

“We Want to Use the Word Vedantist instead of Hindu”: An Interpretation of History of Indian Philosophy in the Works by Swami Vivekananda

“We Want to Use the Word Vedantist instead of Hindu”: An Interpretation of History of Indian Philosophy in the Works by Swami Vivekananda

A Survey on the Note of History of Indian Philosophy Lectured by Inoue, Tetsujiro for the First Time in Japan

A Survey on the Note of History of Indian Philosophy Lectured by Inoue, Tetsujiro for the First Time in Japan

Philosophy in the Mahābhārata and the History of Indian Philosophy

The study of philosophical terms and doctrines in the Mahābhārata touches not only on important aspects of the contents, composition and the historical contexts of the epic, but also on the historiography of Indian philosophy. General ideas about the textual history of the epic and the distinction between “didactic” and “narrative” parts have influenced the study of epic philosophy no less than academic discussions about what is philosophy in India and how it developed. This results in different evaluations of the place of philosophical texts in the epic and their relationship to the history of Indian philosophy. While some scholars have suggested that there is a “philosophy of the epic” its composers wished to propagate, others have argued that “philosophy” is included in the epic either in a “proto” form or in a variety of doctrines (often presented is “mixed” or “unsystematic” ways) they deemed relevant. The article discusses these views and some of the heuristic assumptions on which they are based. It proposes to widen the scope of analysis by paying more attention to the interplay of narrative and didactic passages, the various ways in which philosophy is presented in the epic, and its connection to a larger spectrum of the reception of philosophy in textual genres and by audiences outside the expert circles of the philosophical schools.

An Anthology of Philosophy in Persia, Vol. 5: From the School of Shiraz to the Twentieth Century ed. by Seyyed Hossein Nasr and Mehdi Aminrazavi

Reviewed by: An Anthology of Philosophy in Persia, Vol. 5: From the School of Shiraz to the Twentieth Century ed. by Seyyed Hossein Nasr and Mehdi Aminrazavi Muhammad U. Faruque An Anthology of Philosophy in Persia, Vol. 5: From the School of Shiraz to the Twentieth Century, ed. Seyyed Hossein Nasr and Mehdi Aminrazavi, 2015. London: I. B. Tauris in association with The Institute of Ismaili Studies, 544 pp., $63.66. isbn: 978-1-84885-750-6 (hbk). The multi-volume project An Anthology of Philosophy in Persia (APP) is the most comprehensive anthology of ‘philosophy’ in the Persian world to date, filling as it does nearly twenty-five hundred pages in print. Although the series gives coverage to philosophy in pre-Islamic Persia, the bulk of it (well over ninety percent) actually documents ‘Islamic philosophy’, and as such the editors were careful not to call it ‘Persian philosophy’, thereby fuelling the sentiment of ‘Iranocentrism’ in the process. The result appears to be an achievement which is unprecedented in scholarship on Islamic philosophy, and somewhat analogous examples can only be found in other fields, such as that of Surendranath Dasgupta’s A History of Indian Philosophy (in five massive volumes published by Cambridge University Press [1922-1955]) and Frederick Copleston’s 11-volume A History of Philosophy (Western philosophy), although it should be noted that these latter studies were the fruit of individual labour. APP has been some thirty years in the making, and it brings together nearly fifty scholars, including some of the most well-known names in the field to bring to light Persia’s nearly twenty-five hundred years of rich philosophical thought. Volume V (From the School of Shiraz to the Twentieth Century), which is also the final volume, deals with some seven centuries of continuous Islamic philosophical activity down to the twentieth century. The book opens (Part I) with the School of Shiraz whose celebrated figures include Jalāl al-Dīn Dawānī (d. 1502), Ṣadr al-Dīn Dashtakī (d. 1497-8), [End Page 95] Ghiyāth al-Dīn Dashtakī (d. 1540) and Shams al-Dīn Khafrī (d. 1550). The Dashtakīs, together with Jalāl al-Dīn Dawānī, are the three best-known scholars who were teaching philosophy and theology in late fifteenth century Shiraz. Jalāl al-Dīn Dawānī is the author of twenty works that display his erudition of a broad range of topics, viz. logic, Peripatetic and Illuminationist philosophy, natural science, theology, lettrism (jafr and ͑ilm al-ḥurūf), and Qur͗anic exegesis. Ghiyāth al-Dīn, the oldest son of Ṣadr al-Dīn, is the author of some eighty works that demonstrate the encyclopaedic scope of his thought, as he wrote on astronomy (e.g. al-Ma͑ārij), logic, natural philosophy (physics), medicine (e.g. Tarjumāt al-Shāfiyah), ethics (e.g., Akhlāq-i Manṣūrī), Qur͗anic exegesis, theology and philosophy. Many would consider him the foremost Islamic philosopher of the sixteenth century, preceding Mīr Dāmād (d. 1631) and Mullā Ṣadrā (d. 1640). One of the distinctive marks of the School of Shiraz is that it not only produced important philosophers, but also gave birth to the flourishing of scientists and astronomers. Thus, philosophy in this era cannot be separated from the history of science. Among a number of scientists of this era, Shams al-Dīn Khafrī is perhaps the most important astronomer of this period whose ‘planetary theories’ were likely to have influenced Nicholas Copernicus.1 At any rate, another characteristic feature of the School of Shiraz, which is also seen in schools that came after them, is its tendency to integrate Peripatetic philosophy with the doctrines of the various schools of Illuminationism, theology (kalām), and philosophical Sufism (͑irfān). Part II is devoted to the School of Isfahan in which philosophy in Persia reaches its full-flowering at the hands of Mīr Dāmād and Mullā Ṣadrā. Although Mullā Ṣadrā has received serious scholarly attention in the last few decades, the same is not true of some other important figures of this school such as Mīr D...

Translating the “Exact” and “Positive” Sciences: Early Twentieth Century Reflections on the Past of the Sciences in India

Inductivist theories of science dominated the landscape of the philosophy of science in nineteenth century Europe. This paper explores their vocation in late nineteenth and early twentieth century India. In the first half of the nineteenth century British Indologists and educationists introduced scholars at the Oriental colleges in India to Francis Bacon's Novum Organum Scientiarum . Baconian inductivism was simultaneously interpreted as a methodology that highlighted the distinctiveness of the method of the modern sciences, as well as its similarities with the constellations of knowledge in South Asia. The paper attempts to show that in the second half of the century and later, inductivism as formulated in the writings of William Whewell and J.S. Mill sets the stage for the debate on the inductive nature of the sciences in India. Two Bengali scholars, the philosopher B.N.Seal and the social scientist Benoy Kumar Sarkar, turn to the writings of Whewell and Mill as resources as well as offering a `Kuhnian exemplar’ to mine the history of Indian philosophy for cognitive homologues in order to reconstruct the specific nature of `the exact and positive sciences of the `Hindus’. In other words, the corpus of writings of Whewell and Mill, notwithstanding the differences amongst them, provides these two South Asian writers with a lens to embark on a comparative history of philosophy and present the knowledge systems of India as scientific.

Paśyantī, Pratibhā, Sphoţa and Jāti: Ontology and Epistemology in the Vākyapadīya

Eli Franco has recently suggested to distinguish the two main periods in the history of Indian philosophy, i.e. the older ontological and the new epistemological. In the Vākyapadīya, however, ontology and epistemology are evidently intertwined and interrelated. In this paper ontological and epistemological features of the concepts of paśyantī, pratibhā, sphoţa and jāti are analyzed in order to demonstrate that all these concepts, while being ontologically different, are engaged in similar epistemological processes, i.e. the cognition of a verbal utterance. Thus the identification of sphoţa and jāti as well as of paśyantī and pratibhā met with in some passages of VP and the commentaries implies not the absolute identity of these concepts, but only their overlapping in the sphere of epistemology. Considering concepts of different origin in one epistemological perspective enables to escape controversies in interpretation and provides a kind of consistency in a bit but amorphous work of Bhartŗhari.

The Typology of Jāti-s Indicated by Diṅnāga and Development of Diṅnāga’s Thought

The exhaustive explications on jāti-s (sophisticated ripostes) and their seemingly chaotic arrangement in early Indian philosophical texts arouses an expectation for a systematic taxonomy or typology. Such taxonomy would enormously increase the heuristic value of the list of jāti-s. The present article aims to reveal some interpretational problems relevant to the understanding of the jāti-s’ historical development, as well as the theoretical implications of their typology. Focusing historically on the early texts of debate manuals of Nyāya and Buddhist circles, this article will excavate and explicate the vague and the obvious attempts to establish a typology of jāti-s. Given that Diṅnāga was the philosopher who shifted the history of Indian philosophy into the era of macro theory by integrating ontology and epistemology into a general system, the minimal changes of the order of the jāti-s in the list given in the Pramāṇasamuccaya, in contrast to the one found in the Nyāyamukha, will be interpreted as a paradigm shift. The rearrangement of the jāti list in the Pramāṇasamuccaya represents the paradigm shift from the debate (vāda) manual to the epistemological (pramāṇa) treatise, confirming Frauwallner’s ideas regarding the development of Diṅnāga’s thought.

History of Indian Philosophy from the Perspective of the Influx of Non-Aryan Factors in the Formation of the Vedas*26)

History of Indian Philosophy from the Perspective of the Influx of Non-Aryan Factors in the Formation of the Vedas*26)

Ethics and the History of Indian Philosophy (review)

Reviewed by: Ethics and the History of Indian Philosophy Sundar Sarukkai Ethics and the History of Indian Philosophy. By Shyam Ranganathan. Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 2007. Pp. 402. The engagement of the West with Indian thought is marked by constant challenges to claims that Indian traditions were concerned with themes and disciplines that are [End Page 410] and were a part of the Western intellectual world. Most radical is the view that there is nothing called Indian philosophy, a view in various disguises that was held by many leading philosophers ranging from Locke to Heidegger. These opinions about the significance of Indian philosophy continue even today in the academic world. Thus, most attempts at comparative philosophy in one way or another engage with this and related problems. In spite of seminal works over the last few decades, there is still a lot more that needs to be done to respond to the constant challenge from the mainstream West regarding this "absence" that apparently marks Indian thought. In the case of logic, this trend has been well documented. Early responses to Indian logic were about how it was not logic in the way that the Greeks and later Western traditions understood it. The point was not that it was a different kind of logic but that it was not logic at all, particularly since it seemed to conflate categories such as deduction and induction, logic and epistemology, the formal and the empirical, and so on. While there has been sustained defense of Indian logic as logic by some philosophers, the real validation of this logic comes, ironically, from developments in contemporary logic that query the artificial distinction between the formal and the empirical or the logical and the epistemological. There are many ways of responding to these challenges. One could begin, for instance, by critically evaluating the claims of the Western traditions especially with reference to the ideas they find problematical in other traditions. For example, the argument against Indian logic has two important elements: the relation between the empirical and the logical (thus conflating logic and epistemology) and the relation between cognition and logic (thus conflating psychology and logic). One response to these observations is to illustrate how concepts that characterize Indian logic were also an integral part of the history of Western logic. Another way is to find a new vocabulary to explain the conceptual world of Indian logic. In so doing, the emphasis is on finding points of difference with the Western traditions instead of trying to reiterate points of similarity. Ethics and the History of Indian Philosophy by Shyam Ranganathan is a book that is essentially a response to the challenge posed to Indian philosophy, this time in the context of ethics. As Ranganathan rightly notes, there is a long line of thinkers who take the position that there is no ethics in Indian thought. Even Matilal, who championed Indian logic, claims that philosophers in India did not discuss "what we call 'moral philosophy' today" (p. 4). Such a blanket statement sounds, at the first instance, unreasonable. For, after all, all cultures and civilizations must have had a strong notion of ethics, and to say that a comparatively advanced civilization had no ethics seems problematical. However, to say that there was no ethics is not to say that ethical concerns were not debated but that particular formulations of ethics were not developed. By definition, the statement that Indian philosophy did not develop moral philosophy makes sense only if we have an idea of what constitutes ethics—its vocabulary, themes, central concepts, argumentative and discursive strategies, and so on. Matilal seems to suggest that while the Indians had texts like the Dharmaśāstra, which [End Page 411] engaged with matters of ethics, there was no discussion of "morality." The problem that these philosophers find is the lack of a theoretical/philosophical engagement with the notions of morality and ethics, although in both philosophy and literature the discussion of ethical issues abounds. Deutsch clarifies the problem thus: "If by 'ethics' one means a rigorous, independent inquiry into problems of, and questions concerning, the meaning of value, the justification of judgements, and the analysis of moral concepts and concrete existential modes...

Reply to Nicholas Gier

I must thank Professor Gier both for his kindness toward me in his response and his invitation for me to write a full-fledged essay on the topics that our exchange has raised. While I have not written on Gandhi's thought as such, much of what I have to say on Gier's book is influenced by the research and arguments I put forward in my Ethics and the History of Indian Philosophy (Motilal Banarsidass, 2007) and my forthcoming translation and commentary, originally titled The Moral Philosophy of Pata?jali's Yoga S?tra, to be published as Pata?jali's Yoga S?tra (Penguin). Gier's closing comment not only serves as an invitation?and challenge?to me to system atically defend my views on these topics but also encapsulates what might be the locus of disagreement between Gier and myself. He suggests that it is I who have foisted a syllogistic argument onto the task of interpreting Gandhi's thought, whereas my original complaint was that I thought that this was the only way to make sense of Gier's arguments. If Gier were not offering such a disjunctive syllogism, the extended and recurrent criticisms of Jain and Advaita interpretations do nothing to positively make the case for a Buddhist interpretation of Gandhi and are gratuitous within the structure of his presentation. But let us take some of Gier's responses to me in order. Gier appears to be lieve that the fact that he notes Gandhi's devotion to R?ma and his Vaisnava background (which I did not mention in my review) shows that he was sensitive to theistic in his analysis. My complaint was that he did not fully con sider reading Gandhi in terms of Visist?dvaita?a very specific school of Ved?nta, and not synonymous with theistic as such. Moreover, that Gier noted Gandhi's devotionalism is hardly evidence that he considered theistic seriously. Even Sahkara in his commentary on the Brahma S?tra betrays a devo tion to R?ma and an affinity for Vaisnava religious practices (see his Brahma S?tra Bh?sya, l.ii.7), but this hardly means that Sa?kara advanced theistic Ved?nta. Gier claims that his reference to an article that recognizes the Neo-Ved?nta leanings of Gandhi refutes my claim that he conflates with Advaita Ved?nta. My claim was not that Gier never makes a distinction between different types of Ved?nta, but that he is not careful in his talk of Ved?nta given that the only form that he seriously considers is Advaita and that he refers to it simply as Ved?nta.1

Saving the Self? Classical Hindu Theories of Consciousness and Contemporary Physicalism

Saving the Self?Classical Hindu Theories of Consciousness and Contemporary Physicalism C. Ram-Prasad This is a highly programmatic essay. It aims to provide some suggestions on how classical Indian philosophical material may contribute to current discussions in consciousness studies, but does not attempt to provide either a textual exploration of that material or a detailed taxonomy of issues in consciousness studies. It is premised on the claim that, at this early stage of such work, merely suggesting systematically as to where the Indian material provides scope for contribution is itself a worthwhile task. The situation is this: classical Indian theories of consciousness generally evolved within a soteriological context in which the ultimate goal was some transcendental spiritual state. Contemporary consciousness studies, apart from where it is approached from the specifically religious concerns of Christianity (and, increasingly, Buddhism), is generally oriented to scientific goals that allow no place for transcendental concerns. Of course, it is time that the religious dimensions of consciousness be approached from Hindu perspectives as well, to join those of other traditions. But this essay is concerned with the interpretative possibilities of Hindu-derived systems within the nonreligious, physicalist paradigm of consciousness studies. A note on a terminological inexactitude: I have stayed with the conventional but misleading term "Hindu" when initially describing the systems or schools. I take it for granted that the reader will keep in mind the problems associated with this word and the difficulty of reading it back into the history of Indian philosophy. It would be more accurate to call these systems "brahmanical," to distinguish them from Buddhist and Jaina systems, since socioreligious circumstances stopped all but brahmin men from having access to the intellectual culture of the philosophical tradition. (It is no accident that Indian Mahāyāna schools, deeply engaged as they were in debates with the brahmanical systems, tended to be represented by brahmin converts.) "Hindu" looks to be a simpler and more readable term for those not primarily concerned with the facts of Indian religio-philosophical history, while "brahmanical" is more accurate. I will use both. Physicalism and Classical Indian Material: A Challenge I will take physicalism in the ontological sense, as the thesis that all occurrences and entities are constituted by the (literal, i.e., inorganic) material of physics. It can be added that the majority of physicalists also hold the epistemological thesis that all occurrences and entities are constituted by the logical material of physics, that is, that they can be described and explained by physics. However, some ontological [End Page 378] physicalists or materialists reject such reductive (or even eliminative) strategies, and so I shall not take this second conception as part of the basic framework within which I assume the Indian material should work. Now, as ontological physicalism is generally accepted as true in (nonreligious) consciousness studies, it is assumed that whatever consciousness is, it is made up of physical elements and their interactions. (This assumption is common even to many of those who hold that some features of consciousness cannot be [re-]described in the terminology of physics.) It would seem prima facie that this leaves no space for classical Hindu concerns about consciousness, in terms of its logico-metaphysical relationship with the self (ātman), which is the focus of soteriological endeavor. The goal of the classical philosophy is the attainment of liberation for that self from the flawed conditions of a material existence. The focus of that philosophy is, in other words, something that precisely is not a physical entity, that precisely seeks liberation from the physical (howsoever subtle and sophisticated the accounts of such liberation). Classical Indian philosophy, then (and that includes the Buddhist systems that, even though they deny a metaphysical self, nonetheless have the soteriological goal of liberation), has concerns that are simply incompatible with the framework of physicalist consciousness studies. On the other hand, it is undeniable, for those who know anything about the classical Indian texts, that there is much in these texts on issues of selfhood, consciousness, self-consciousness, mind, mental activity, and so forth that appear germane to contemporary concerns. What sorts of responses may be given to this situation? Three Responses 1. The robust dismissal...

Of Intrinsic Validity: A Study on the Relevance of Purva Mimamsa

Of Intrinsic Validity:A Study on the Relevance of Pūrva Mīmāṃsā Daniel Arnold Introduction As one of the six "orthodox" schools of brahmanical thought that are often taken to represent the main philosophical options of India, Pūrva Mīmāṃsā is usually thought to warrant at least cursory treatment in discussions of Indian philosophy; after all, the six orthodox schools collectively represent Indian "philosophy," so if Mīmāṃsā is to be discussed, surely it is under the rubric of "philosophy."1 However, Mīmāṃsā seems in this regard rarely to receive much more than cursory treatment, a fact that is explained, if at all, by its having contributed little of "philosophical" relevance. Indeed, Mīmāṃsā's constitutive concern with demonstrating the authority of the Vedas prompts many Western observers to characterize this tradition as virtually antithetical to truly philosophical inquiry. Thus, despite its signal influence in the intellectual milieu of classical India, Mīmāṃsā receives relatively scant attention in the Western literature on intellectual practice in India. In Surendranath Dasgupta's History of Indian Philosophy, for example, Mīmāṃsā receives a review about one third the length of those accorded to the traditions of Nyāya-Vaiśeṣika and Śaṃkara's Vedānta. In introducing his review of the Mīmāṃsā doctrine concerning the authority of Śabda ("language" or "testimony"), Dasgupta apologizes for thus introducing a topic omitted from his discussions of other schools, saying that discussion of this topic "has but little philosophical value and I have therefore omitted to give any attention to it in connection with the Nyāya, and the Sāṃkhya-Yoga systems." This discussion, he continues, "has but little value with us, though it was a very favourite theme of debate in the old days of India."2 The philosophically sophisticated B. K. Matilal, though advancing a helpful discussion of the doctrine that we will consider, dismissively observes that "the scriptural way of knowing is by definition infallible! This is a sort of fundamentalism."3 Even so sensitive an observer as Francis Clooney, in discussing the relation between Pūrva Mīmāṃsā and Uttara Mīmāṃsā (also known as Vedānta), in one place refers us to one of his earlier works for "a description of the non-philosophical Mīmāṃsā which is the true predecessor to Advaita."4 Finally, in the context of Buddhist studies (where, it seems to me, much of the philosophically rich discussion of Indian thought currently takes place), there has been rather considerable attention to the significance of Naiyāyikas as interlocutors of Indian Buddhists, but very little analysis of the role played by Mīmāṃsakas in this regard. As a modest corrective to this imbalance, I would like to develop a sympathetic account of one of the chief doctrines of Mīmāṃsā, namely that of svataḥ prāmāṇya, [End Page 26] or "intrinsic validity." This doctrine is the cornerstone of Mīmāṃsāka attempts to explain the authoritativeness of the Vedas, and, insofar as that project is deemed a fundamentalist exercise antithetical to true "philosophy," it is no doubt central to the widespread perception that Mīmāsā has "but little philosophical value." And indeed, a glib characterization of this idea of "intrinsic validity" might well lead one to consider this among the less serious contributions to issue from Indian discussions of pramāṇa, or "criteria of valid knowledge"; for the doctrine, too briefly stated, is that verbal testimony (śabda)—like all other forms of knowledge—is to be judged an intrinsically valid criterion of knowledge, until and unless proven otherwise. I would like to suggest, however, that there is an important philosophical insight here, and that it is one that was developed with some sophistication in the course of the tradition's elaboration. Specifically, the doctrine of svataḥ prāmāṇya can fruitfully be seen as a compelling critique of foundationalist epistemologies.5 Understood as such, this insight can come to be seen as an important contribution to a discussion in which foundationalist options (those of the Naiyāyikas, and particularly those of Indian Buddhists in the tradition...

The Fundamental Wisdom of the Middle Way: Nagarjuna's Mulamadhyamakakarika

BLA new translation from the Tibetan, with a verse-by-verse philosophical commentary in English Mulamadhyamakakarika is the foundational text for all Mahayana Buddhism and is one of the most influential works in the history of Indian philosophy.

Intercultural Relevance of Some Moments in the History of Indian Philosophy

Etude des aspects de l'histoire de la philosophie indienne, caracterisee par sa dimension dialogique, qui contribuent a la comprehension de la philosophie dans un contexte interculturel: 1) la signification du debat et l'emergence de regles du debat qui engendrent des discussions logique sur un argument, 2) la signification de l'epistemologie pour la vision du monde et la definition du sujet et de l'objet de la connaissance. Examinant les differentes ecoles de pensee qui constituent la philosophie indienne (hindouisme, bouddhisme, djainisme), l'A. montre que la possibilite de discuter de la difference des theories de chaque ecole garantit un rapport positif dans un contexte interculturel