negations and their names

[Raffaele Torella]

>> On Mon, 16 Feb 1998, jonathan silk wrote:
>>
>> > I recently was warned by Katsura Shoryu that it is incorrect to write a
>> > hyphen in the expression Paryudasa- and Prasajya-pratisedha. According to
>> > Katsura,  "there is no cp. like 'paryudasa-pratisedha'. 'paryudasa' means
>> > 'negation.'"
>> >
>> > However, I have found the term in Mahavyutpatti 4510; to this Katsura
>> > suggests it may be a retranslation from Tibetan. OK. Again, I pointed out
>> > that in Frits Staals' Reader in the Skt. Grammarians, p. 496, note 55,  so
>> > great an authority as Louis Renou uses the same term. OK. Even Homer nods.
>> >
>> > QUESTION: does the compound paryudaasa-pratis.edha exist in actual
>>Sanskrit
>> > texts? (I would expect that if it comes up, it would be in grammar or
>> > logic, but any actual attestation would be of interest. )
>
>I have never come across the compound paryudaasa-pratis.edha in a
>Sanskrit text, that is, in Buddhist writings on the subject-matter of
>apoha or anupalabdhi, and in related discussions (about abhaava and
>anupalabdhi) in Nyaaya or Miimaam.saa-treatises.
>
>It seems to me that the lexical asymmetry between the two technical
>terms
>paryudaasa and prasajyapratis.edha was definitely perceived, and
>occasionally deemed problematic. However, the commonly followed strategy
>to
>balance it out was cutting off the "pratis.edha" of prasajyapr. (which
>leads to constructions such as "paryudaasapaks.e ...., prasajyapaks.e tu
>...", or other occurrences of "prasajya" in the sense of
>"prasajyapratis.edha"). The other option, that is, adding "pratis.edha"
>to "paryudaasa", does not seem to have been realized.
>
>The Tibetan translations "ma yin dgag" and "med dgag" (for
>paryudaasa/prasajyapratis.edha) are based on conceptual content rather
>than on an analysis of the terms into component parts, and I think
>Katsura is justified in considerind MVy 'paryudaasa-pratis.edha' as a
>retranslation (and not a good one at that).
>
>It might be of interest that Prof. Kajiyama has raised the same question
>at the last Dharmakiirti-conference (November last year in Hiroshima),
>and to my
>recollection, nobody could come up with a reference for
>"paryudaasapratis.edha".
>
>--
>Birgit Kellner
>Department for Indian Philosophy
>Hiroshima University

Only an incidental remark: I have found the expression
paryudaasapratis.edha listed both in the word index of Kajiyama's
translation of Moks.aakaragupta's Bauddhatarkabhaas.ya and in the termini
index of M.T.Much' edition and German translation of Dharmakiirti's
Vaadanyaaya. However, when I checked the pages referred to there I found no
direct reference to specific texts. Even in the lengthy excursus on
negation in Arcat.a's commentary on the Hetubindu the expression does not
occur.

Regards,
Raffaele Torella

Raffaele Torella,
Dipartimento di Studi Orientali
Universita' di Roma "La Sapienza"
(fax: 6-4451209)