Three Lectures on Dignāga

Three Lectures on Dignāga — Shoryu Katsura (2007)

Three lectures delivered at Taipei, 21–23 June 2007, by Shoryu Katsura (Ryukoku University). This file contains Lecture 1 only: “Dignāga on What Exists and How to Know It.”

Summary

Lecture 1 provides a comprehensive overview of dignaga’s epistemological system as presented in the pramanasamuccaya, covering:

1. The pre-Dignāga history of Indian logic — the two distinct traditions of debates (vāda) and epistemology (pramāṇa) and how Dignāga integrated them
2. Dignāga’s ontological presuppositions — his dual stance as Sautrāntika on the conventional level and Yogācāra at the ultimate level
3. Dignāga’s theory of perception — including his definition, the classification of perceptions, mental perception, and self-awareness (svasaṃvedana)

Key Arguments

Integration of the Two Traditions

Katsura traces two distinct pre-Dignāga traditions in Indian logic:

• The debate tradition (vāda): from Brahmanical brahmodya debates, through the Points of Defeat (nigrahasthāna) in the Carakasaṃhitā and Nyāyasūtra, to Buddhist vāda manuals attributed to Nāgārjuna (Upāyahṛdaya/Prayogasāra) and Vasubandhu (Vādavidhi, Vādahṛdaya, Vādavidhāna)
• The epistemology tradition (pramāṇa): from the Carakasaṃhitā’s five pramāṇas, through the various orthodox schools, to Vasubandhu’s three pramāṇas in the Abhidharmakośa-bhāṣya

Dignāga integrated these by introducing the terms svārthānumāna (inference for oneself) and parārthānumāna (inference for others), demonstrating via the trairūpya theory that inference and proof are essentially the same thing — the former a mental process, the latter its linguistic expression.

Dignāga’s Ontological Stance

Katsura notes that Dignāga never discusses ontology directly in the Pramāṇasamuccaya, suggesting he was presenting a logic system acceptable to philosophers of any background. He identifies Dignāga’s background influences:

• Initiated in the Vātsīputrīya tradition; later studied Sarvāstivāda Abhidharma
• Deeply influenced by the Grammarian philosopher Bhartṛhari (his Traikālyaparīkṣā nearly copies a section of the Vākyapadīya)
• Operates as a Sautrāntika for epistemology/logic (admitting external reality) and as a Yogācāra-vijñānavādin at the ultimate level (e.g., Ālambanapārīkṣā)

Dignāga presupposes Vasubandhu’s two levels of svalakṣaṇa:

• dravya-svalakṣaṇa — svalakṣaṇa as a real entity (atoms)
• āyatana-svalakṣaṇa — svalakṣaṇa as an objective support (e.g., colour-form, sound)

He accepts the Abhidharmic distinction between ultimate existence (paramārthasat/dharma) and conventional existence (saṃvṛtisat/prajñapti), as per Abhidharmakośa VI.4: if the notion of something disappears when it is destroyed, it is conventional; if not, it is ultimate.

Perception: Definition and Classification

Dignāga defines perception as “a cognition free of conception” (kalpanāpoḍha), where “conception” means association with proper name, genus, quality, action, and substance — the last four corresponding to four Vaiśeṣika categories.

Katsura classifies Dignāga’s perceptions:

1. Sense perception (five types) — object-awareness
2. Mental perception (mānasa) — further divided into object-awareness and self-awareness
3. Yogic perception — object-awareness
4. Self-awareness of concepts — the crucial innovation

Mental perception plays a connecting role between sense perception and conceptual cognition: like sense perception in being object-directed and non-conceptual, yet like conceptual cognition in not requiring an external sense organ. Katsura notes this is essentially a hypothetical assumption — we are not conscious of it, and dharmottara considered it “known merely by scriptural tradition.”

Self-Awareness (svasaṃvedana)

Katsura identifies two distinct usages of self-awareness in Dignāga:

1. As the result of cognition (pramāṇaphala): cognition has two aspects — possession of the form of an object (the means) and awareness of that object (the result). Alternatively, cognition arises with two appearances (dvirūpa): that of the object (arthābhāsa) and that of itself (svābhāsa). The result is then self-awareness — cognition of its own appearance
2. As the essential operation of all cognition: since perception arises with the form of an object, it is always “cognition of its own appearance” — i.e., self-awareness. This extends to conceptions as well: every cognition is characterised by self-awareness

This theory connects to Dignāga’s sākāravijñānavāda (the doctrine that cognition arises with a form/shape of its object), formally expressed in the Ālambanapārīkṣā through two conditions for an objective support: it must cause its cognition (tadutpatti), and it must have a form similar to its cognition (tatsārūpya).

Fallacious Objections and Reductio

Dignāga rejects reductio ad absurdum (prasaṅga) as a proof, since his proof formulae presuppose a topic admitted by both parties, whereas in reductio the topic is normally not accepted by the proponent. However, he admits it as a means of refutation (parihāra). Katsura traces the origins of the fallacious objections (jāti) back to Nāgārjuna’s Vaidalyaprakaraṇa and the Upāyahṛdaya, noting that the Nyāyasūtra’s 24 fallacious objections were largely a response to Nāgārjuna’s arguments.

Scholars Mentioned

• dignaga, Vasubandhu, Nāgārjuna, dharmakirti, dharmottara, Bhartṛhari, Kumārila, Śaṅkarasvāmin, Īśvarasena, Bimal K. Matilal, Yuichi Kajiyama, Ernst Steinkellner, Toru Funayama

Translation-Relevant Material

None. The source discusses the Pramāṇasamuccaya extensively but does not contain verse translations from Tibetan root texts. A few Sanskrit verses and definitions are quoted (e.g., PS I.10 via Xuanzang, the definition of perception), but these are from secondary sources, not from the Tibetan.

Sources

• Steinkellner, Ernst (2005) — referenced for the critical edition of the Pramāṇasamuccaya
• Funayama, Toru — referenced for the classification of perception standpoints
• Kajiyama, Yuichi — referenced for the study of the Upāyahṛdaya