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Dharmakīrti

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Dharmakīrti (ཆོས་ཀྱི་གྲགས་པ་)

The most influential figure in Buddhist epistemology. His works became the reference point for all subsequent Buddhist logico-epistemological thought in India and Tibet.

Life

Dharmakīrti studied dignaga’s pramanasamuccaya with the latter’s disciple Īśvarasena, forming the lineage Vasubandhu → Diṅnāga → Īśvarasena → Dharmakīrti. Īśvarasena recognised that Dharmakīrti’s understanding surpassed his own and equalled Diṅnāga’s, encouraging him to compose the pramanavartika (westerhoff-dignaga-dharmakirti, p. 218).

Dating

Frauwallner dates Dharmakīrti to 600–660 CE, based mainly on the fact that the Chinese pilgrim Xuanzang (mid-7th c.) did not mention him while Yijing (late 7th c.) did. Balcerowicz, drawing on Jaina sources, suggests 550–610 CE (westerhoff-dignaga-dharmakirti, p. 218).

Legendary Debates

Traditional accounts describe Dharmakīrti infiltrating Kumārila Bhaṭṭa’s household incognito as a servant in order to learn all his doctrines before later defeating him in debate. He is also said to have defeated Śaṅkara, who drowned himself in the Ganges — only to be reborn and defeated again, twice (westerhoff-dignaga-dharmakirti, pp. 219–220).

Bu-ston’s version of the Kumārila episode adds a striking detail: in his telling the teacher is not named Kumārila but identified as Dharmakīrti’s maternal uncle, and Dharmakīrti is said to have learned his uncle’s most guarded doctrines by having the uncle’s wife relay difficult questions to her husband during intercourse, with Dharmakīrti listening in and “pulling on a cord tied around her leg” when subtle subjects were broached (westerhoff-dignaga-dharmakirti, p. 219 n. 9). Stcherbatsky reads the entire cycle of Dharmakīrti’s debate stories as “an indirect confession that these great brahmin teachers had met with no Dharmakīrti to oppose them” — i.e. as evidence that Buddhism in his time was already in decline relative to the era of Asaṅga and Vasubandhu (westerhoff-dignaga-dharmakirti, p. 220 n. 11).

These biographies reveal the increasing importance of inter-doctrinal debate with non-Buddhists as the primary arena of philosophical activity, and the corresponding emphasis on epistemology and logic as tools for establishing common ground with opponents (westerhoff-dignaga-dharmakirti, p. 220).

Dharmakīrti’s Own Assessment

Dharmakīrti’s opening and closing verses of the Pramāṇavārttika reflect on his work’s limited reception among non-Buddhist contemporaries: “Like the water of the sea, his work will remain in itself, without being absorbed by anybody” (westerhoff-dignaga-dharmakirti, p. 249).

Philosophical Position

Dharmakīrti’s system is described doxographically as Sautrāntika following reasoning (རིགས་པའི་རྗེས་འབྲང་གི་མདོ་སྡེ་པ་) in its primary orientation, with Yogācāra elements in certain passages. Tibetan thinkers recognise that this characterisation is somewhat awkward — it reflects the difficulty of pinning down his metaphysical commitments within the standard four-school doxography (dreyfus-recognizing-reality, pp. 20–21).

Ontology

Dharmakīrti holds a sharply antirealist ontology:

  • Reality consists exclusively of momentary (སྐད་ཅིག་མ་, kṣaṇika), causally effective individual thing-events
  • The real is defined as the specifically-characterised (རང་མཚན་, svalakṣaṇa) — that which has definite spatio-temporal location and individual essence
  • All universals, commonsense enduring objects, and abstract entities are conceptual constructs — generally-characterised (སྤྱི་མཚན་, sāmānyalakṣaṇa)
  • This creates a fundamental tension: his system needs universals to ground inference, yet his ontology excludes them from reality

Epistemology

  • valid-cognition (ཚད་མ་, pramāṇa) is defined as nondeceptive cognition (མི་བསླུ་བའི་ཤེས་པ་, avisaṃvādi-jñāna)
  • Two types: perception (མངོན་སུམ་, pratyakṣa) and inference (རྗེས་དཔག་, anumāna)
  • Nondeceptiveness involves both a practical dimension (readiness to perform a function) and a normative/intentional dimension (revealing a hitherto unknown object)
  • The novelty requirement excludes memory from being valid cognition
  • Unlike Diṅnāga, Dharmakīrti makes immunity from error (abhrānta) part of the very definition of perception (Pramāṇaviniścaya 1.4: pratyakṣaṃ kalpanāpoḍham abhrāntam) (westerhoff-dignaga-dharmakirti, p. 224 n. 23). Errors are accordingly all relegated to the mind. A curious consequence noted by Eltschinger is that “as far as perception is concerned, there is no difference between an ordinary mind and one that is liberated”: once awakening is obtained, the Buddha enjoys direct, error-free perceptual contact with reality (tattvadarśana), and only resorts to concepts when teaching others (westerhoff-dignaga-dharmakirti, p. 224 n. 23).
  • Dharmakīrti’s perception theory connects the perceiver to the world through both causation (the external object causes the ākāra via the sense faculty) and resemblance (the ākāra has the form of the external object) — a structure conventionally associated with the Sautrāntikas (westerhoff-dignaga-dharmakirti, p. 224 n. 24).

Philosophy of Language

  • Developed dignaga’s apoha theory: words and concepts function by exclusion (སེལ་བ་), not by picking out positive properties
  • Concepts are fundamentally mistaken — they superimpose a false unity on reality’s discrete particulars — yet they can be pragmatically valid
  • Innovation over Diṅnāga: Dharmakīrti anchors apoha in causal power relativised to human desires. What grounds our grouping of objects under a single concept (e.g. “fire”) is not a shared positive property but the fact that all the particulars in question fulfil one and the same human desire (e.g. warmth) — even when they do so through causally distinct mechanisms. His standard example: antipyretic drugs all answer to the desire for fever-reduction, but they act through different causal pathways. The grouping requires no shared object-type (westerhoff-dignaga-dharmakirti, pp. 237–238).
  • Against Mīmāṃsā’s view that the connection of words to referents is “primordial” (apauruṣeya), Dharmakīrti argues that a statement’s truth, like its falsity, must derive from properties of its speaker: an authorless statement would be either false (because not backed by a reliable speaker) or simply meaningless (westerhoff-dignaga-dharmakirti, pp. 265–266). The argument doubles as a refutation of the Vedas’ authority as Mīmāṃsā construes it.

Seven Treatises on Valid Cognition

Dharmakīrti is credited with seven treatises (ཚད་མ་སྡེ་བདུན་), of which the pramanavartika (Commentary on Valid Cognition) became the primary text in Tibet thanks to sakya-pandita’s influence.

Sliding Scales of Analysis

Westerhoff attributes to Dharmakīrti four levels of philosophical analysis in ascending order of sophistication (westerhoff-dignaga-dharmakirti, pp. 253–254):

  1. Ordinary beings — pragmatically successful but philosophically flawed (satkāyadṛṣṭi)
  2. Abhidharma reductionism — persons and partite objects are mere verbal designations on conglomerations of dharmas
  3. Particularism (Sautrāntika) — spatial, temporal, and conceptual extension are all cognitive errors; reality consists only of utterly distinct momentary particulars
  4. Idealism (Yogācāra) — the duality of perceiving subject and perceived object is illusory; all phenomena are mental

Dharmakīrti argues mainly from level 3, which he knows to be false — it serves as the lowest common denominator offering the best balance of conceptual sophistication and broad acceptance for inter-doctrinal debate (westerhoff-dignaga-dharmakirti, p. 255). Only one chapter of the Pramāṇavārttika (Ch.3) consistently adopts the idealist perspective.

Mipham quotes Dharmakīrti: “When I investigate outer phenomena, I take the Sautrantika as my starting point” (shantarakshita-madhyamakalankara-intro, p. 27). But reasoning demonstrates that philosophical consistency demands idealism: the difficulties of the aspect theory (sākāravāda) forced Dharmakīrti to shift from a Sautrāntika to a Yogācāra framework. This logically induced progression mirrors the historical development from Bhāviveka’s Sautrāntika-Madhyamaka to shantarakshita’s Yogācāra-Madhyamaka (shantarakshita-madhyamakalankara-intro, pp. 26–27).

Crucially, the causal relation is itself unreal by Dharmakīrti’s own particularist criteria — relations, like object-types, are subject to the neither-one-nor-many argument (westerhoff-dignaga-dharmakirti, p. 257). This paradox (the mark of the real is itself unreal) is resolved by the sliding-scales framework: the particularist position need not be defended against every charge of inconsistency.

Double Readings and Apologetic Drift

Westerhoff highlights two features of Dharmakīrti’s writing easily missed by readers approaching him as a system-builder. The first is the double nature of his project: many passages are phrased so that they can be given both a Sautrāntika and a Yogācāra reading, leaving it to the interpreter to decide which is dominant. This is consistent with his stated practice of presenting his ideas in vocabulary acceptable to non-Buddhist interlocutors, occasionally borrowing concepts from rival traditions but assigning them altered senses — achieving at least the appearance of conceptual continuity across the boundary (westerhoff-dignaga-dharmakirti, pp. 246–247).

The second feature is the increasingly apologetic character of his writings (and of the later school): the system is recruited to defend not only general epistemological theses but specifically Buddhist claims — the four noble truths, karma, rebirth, momentariness, the Buddha’s omniscience, and innate Buddha-nature. Westerhoff treats this as part of a broader drift in the logico-epistemological school away from Diṅnāga’s relatively neutral epistemology and toward the defence of Buddhist orthodoxy. The shift may help explain why Dharmakīrti’s reputation among Buddhists was the inverse of his reception among Naiyāyikas and Mīmāṃsakas, who reacted overwhelmingly negatively — and may itself have hardened the boundaries of Indian philosophical “schools” (westerhoff-dignaga-dharmakirti, p. 247). Eltschinger argues that, more broadly, both the logico-epistemological school and Buddhist tantra arose in part as Buddhism’s response to mounting sixth-century brahmanical pressure — dialectical and ritual counter-moves against an increasingly powerful Brahmin establishment (westerhoff-dignaga-dharmakirti, p. 234 n. 53).

Scriptural Authority

Dharmakīrti subsumes scripture under inference — no need to posit testimony (śabda) as a third epistemic instrument. He proves the Buddha’s authority by unpacking Diṅnāga’s opening verse of the Pramāṇasamuccaya: compassion → practice → teaching → embodiment of epistemic instruments. “Compassion is the proof” (westerhoff-dignaga-dharmakirti, p. 240).

Yet Dharmakīrti is deeply sceptical about scriptural inference: we cannot know that the Buddha truly has the qualities making him authoritative, since mental states are supersensible. Scriptural authority is a practical necessity (agatyā) for those who wish to follow the Buddhist path — a rationally defensible, fallible choice, not an objective epistemic instrument (westerhoff-dignaga-dharmakirti, pp. 242–244).

Yogic Perception

For Dharmakīrti, yogic perception (yogipratyakṣa) is not an epistemic super-power but a three-stage process: intensity (prakarṣa), termination (paryanta), and yogic perception proper. It is directed at concepts, not at momentary particulars. Dharmakīrti compares its vividness to that of dreams and fantasies — it is validated not by revealing ultimate reality but by its soteriological goal (bringing about liberation). It therefore cannot stand alone but must be combined with scriptural authority (westerhoff-dignaga-dharmakirti, pp. 247–250).

Indian Commentarial Traditions

Following Stcherbatsky (as modified by later scholars), four schools of Indian commentary:

  1. Literal exegesis: Devendrabuddhi (630–690 CE), Śākyabuddhi
  2. Religious school: Prajñākaragupta (740–800 CE)
  3. Philosophical school: dharmottara (750–810 CE), Śaṅkarananda
  4. Mādhyamika interpretation: Śāntarakṣita (725–783 CE), Kamalaśīla (740–795 CE)

Tibetan Reception

Dharmakīrti’s influence on Tibetan philosophy is immense. His vocabulary (valid cognition, elimination, specifically/generally characterised) pervades all Tibetan philosophical discourse, including Madhyamaka discussions. The debate format still practised in Tibetan monasteries is based largely on his logic.

Two rival interpretive traditions emerged:

Sources

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