Buddhapālita (; , fl. 5th-6th centuries CE) was an Indian

Mahayana ''Mahāyāna'' (; "Great Vehicle") is a term for a broad group of Buddhist traditions, texts, philosophies, and practices. Mahāyāna Buddhism developed in India (c. 1st century BCE onwards) and is considered one of the three main existing br ...

Buddhist Buddhism ( , ), also known as Buddha Dharma and Dharmavinaya (), is an Indian religion or philosophical tradition based on teachings attributed to the Buddha. It originated in northern India as a -movement in the 5th century BCE, and ...

commentator on the works of

Nagarjuna Nāgārjuna . 150 – c. 250 CE (disputed)was an Indian Mahāyāna Buddhist thinker, scholar-saint and philosopher. He is widely considered one of the most important Buddhist philosophers.Garfield, Jay L. (1995), ''The Fundamental Wisdom of ...

and

Aryadeva Āryadeva (fl. 3rd century CE) (; , Chinese: ''Tipo pusa'' ��婆菩薩 = Deva Bodhisattva, was a Mahayana Buddhist monk, a disciple of Nagarjuna and a Madhyamaka philosopher.Silk, Jonathan A. (ed.) (2019). ''Brill’s Encyclopedia of Buddhi ...

.Ruegg 1981, p. 60. His ''Mūlamadhyamaka-vṛtti'' is an influential commentary to the '' Mūlamadhyamakakarikā.'' Buddhapālita's commentarial approach works was criticised by his contemporary

Bhāviveka Bhāviveka, also called Bhāvaviveka (; ), and Bhavya was a sixth-century (c. 500 – c. 570) madhyamaka Buddhist philosopher.Qvarnström 1989 p. 14. Alternative names for this figure also include Bhavyaviveka, Bhāvin, Bhāviviveka, Bhagavadviv ...

, and then defended by the later

Candrakīrti Chandrakirti (; ; , meaning "glory of the moon" in Sanskrit) or "Chandra" was a Buddhist scholar of the madhyamaka school and a noted commentator on the works of Nagarjuna () and those of his main disciple, Aryadeva. He wrote two influential w ...

(c. 600–650). Later Tibetan scholasticism (11th century onwards) would characterize the two approaches as the prasaṅgika (Buddhapālita-Candrakīrti) and svatantrika (Bhāviveka's) schools of

Madhyamaka Mādhyamaka ("middle way" or "centrism"; ; Tibetan: དབུ་མ་པ ; ''dbu ma pa''), otherwise known as Śūnyavāda ("the emptiness doctrine") and Niḥsvabhāvavāda ("the no ''svabhāva'' doctrine"), refers to a tradition of Buddhi ...

philosophy (but these terms do not appear in Indian

Sanskrit Sanskrit (; attributively , ; nominally , , ) is a classical language belonging to the Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-European languages. It arose in South Asia after its predecessor languages had diffused there from the northwest in the late ...

sources).Ruegg 1981, pp. 58-59.

Overview

Little is known about Buddhapālita's life. According to some sources, he is believed to have been born in South India. Buddhapālita's only work that survives is his ''Buddhapālita-Mūlamadhyamakavṛtti'', a commentary on Nagarjuna's '' Mūlamadhyamakakarikā'' (MMK). The commentary survives in Tibetan (not in the original Sanskrit) and contains 27 chapters and divided into ten sections. The Tibetan translation was completed by Jñānagarbha and Klu'i rgyal mtshan in the beginning of the 9th century. According to

Taranatha Tāranātha (1575–1634) was a Lama of the Jonang school of Tibetan Buddhism. He is widely considered its most remarkable scholar and exponent. Taranatha was born in Tibet, supposedly on the birthday of Padmasambhava. His original name was Kun ...

and to the colophon to Buddhapālita's commentary, Buddhapālita composed various other commentaries, but they have not survived.Saito 1984, p. ix. The ''Buddhapālita-Mūlamadhyamakavṛtti'' (Tibetan: ''dbu ma rtsa ba'i 'grel pa buddhapalita)'' is closely related to the earlier commentary on Nagarjuna's MMK called the ''Akutobhayā.'' Indeed, in various places (particularly the last five chapters), the Tibetan texts are very similar or identical and about a third of Buddhapālita's commentary comes from the ''Akutobhayā''. In this text, Buddhapālita also sometimes quotes Aryadeva. As noted by Jan Westerhoff, Buddhapālita's method exclusively relies on the ''prasaṅgavākya'' (''reductio ad absurdum,'' literally "consequentialist") philosophical method. This method relies on drawing out the necessary but undesired consequences of an opponent's thesis without maintaining any counter thesis or proposition to be established in turn. As

David Seyfort Ruegg David Seyfort Ruegg (August 1, 1931 – February 2, 2021) was an eminent American-British Buddhologist with a long career, extending from the 1950s to the present. His specialty was Madhyamaka philosophy, a core doctrine of Mahayana Buddhism. Ed ...

explains:

Buddhapālita represents a conservative current in Madhyamaka thought that resisted the adoption of the logico-epistemological innovations which were at the time being brought into Mahāyānist philosophy (e. g. by Dignāga, c. 480—540). Thus he did not make use of independent inferences to establish the Madhyamika’s statements; and he employed the well-established prasanga method, which points out the necessary but undesired consequence resulting from a thesis or proposition intended to prove something concerning an entity. From the Mādhyamika’s standpoint this method has the advantage of not committing the critic who uses the prasanga to taking up a counter-position and maintaining the contradictory of what he has denied, which as a Mādhyamika he would consider to be just as faulty as the position he has negating. Buddhapālita’s procedure appears accordingly to be in keeping with Nāgārjuna’s as expressed in the MMK and the ''Vigrahavyavartani''.

Similarly, according to Saito, the "fundamental rule of inference" which Buddhapalita uses in his commentary is the

reductio ad absurdum In logic, (Latin for "reduction to absurdity"), also known as (Latin for "argument to absurdity") or ''apagogical arguments'', is the form of argument that attempts to establish a claim by showing that the opposite scenario would lead to absu ...

based on

Modus tollens In propositional logic, ''modus tollens'' () (MT), also known as ''modus tollendo tollens'' (Latin for "method of removing by taking away") and denying the consequent, is a deductive argument form and a rule of inference. ''Modus tollens' ...

. Buddhapālita's main philosophical methodological approach consisted of his explaining the philosophy of Nāgārjuna by the method of ''prasaṅgavākya'' (''reductio ad absurdum'' ). That is, without himself maintaining any thesis or proposition to be established, he tried to point out the necessary but undesired consequences resulting from a non-Madhyamaka opponent's thesis. Another Madhyamaka thinker,

, criticized Buddhapālita's method of commentary, for not making use of logical autonomous inferences (''svatantranumana''; ) in developing Madhyamaka arguments. A later commentator, Candrakīrti (7th century CE), wrote the ''Clear Words'' (''Prasannapadā'') commentary to the MMK based on Buddhapalita's work. Candrakīrti defends Buddhapalita's method and refutes Bhāviveka's assertion of autonomous

syllogisms A syllogism ( grc-gre, συλλογισμός, ''syllogismos'', 'conclusion, inference') is a kind of logical argument that applies deductive reasoning to arrive at a conclusion based on two propositions that are asserted or assumed to be true. ...

.Saito 1984, p. x. Due to this debate, Tibetans name Bhāviveka as the first svatantrika (a modern back-translation from the Tibetan term ''Ran rgyud pa'') distinguishing his Madhyamaka system from prasangika (Tibetan: ''Thal 'gyur ba''), the system of Candrakīrti and Buddhapalita. However, these classifications of Madhyamaka philosophy do not exist in Indian sources and were invented by Tibetan scholars.

References

Sources

*Ruegg, David S. (1981) ''The Literature of the Madhyamaka School of Philosophy in India''. Otto Harrassowitz; Wiesbaden. *Saito, A. (1984) "''A Study of the Buddhapālita-Mūlamadhyamakavṛtti''. Ph.D. diss.; Australian National University. *Ian James Coghlan (2021) ''Buddhapalita's Commentary on Nagarjuna's Middle Way: Buddhapalita-Mulamadhyamaka-Vrtti (Treasury of the Buddhist Sciences)''; Wisdom Publications.

External links

* Mulamadhyamaka-Vrtti-Buddhapalita Translation Project {{DEFAULTSORT:Buddhapalita 470 births 550 deaths Madhyamaka Indian Buddhists Indian Buddhist monks 5th-century Buddhist monks 6th-century Buddhist monks 5th-century Buddhists 6th-century Buddhists Indian scholars of Buddhism Mahayana Buddhism writers Monks of Nalanda