Nagarjuna's influence...

[kellner at ue.ipc.hiroshima-u.ac.jp]

Regardless of whether a Nagarjunian influence on Dharmaki at rti's deviation
from Digna at ga (if there is such a thing) exists, actually,
regardless of any eventual result from textual inquiry, I find it
methodolocigally unsound to credit one author with neglecting
another's position, simply because he does not seem to allude to it.
If one author does not mention another's position, first of all,
let's assume that there is a reason for this which does not force
us to discredit that author (irrelevance, different topics, different
perspectives etc.). This is why I would not attribute any
systematical significance to an alleged lack of reference from
Dharmaki at rti to Na at ga@rjuna (Hayes seems to do so).

And, I find it equally methodologically unsound to credit an author
with simple logical fallacies, or inconsistencies (Hayes seems to do so).
If we stop presupposing that philosophical authors write consistent
texts and propose consistent logical systems, we might as well read
their texts as poems and forget all about that philological-historical
rigour.

Birgit Kellner
Institute for Indian Philosophy
University of Hiroshima

....who attributes historical significance to the fact that the
photocopy of Hayes' article has obviously vanished from her room...