Date of Udayana

[Elliot M. Stern]

on 10/07/2000 7:00 PM, Automatic digest processor at
LISTSERV at LISTSERV.LIV.AC.UK wrote:


From: nanda chandran <vpcnk at HOTMAIL.COM>
Date: Mon, 10 Jul 2000 10:54:01 PDT
Subject: Re: Date of Udhayana

Birgit Kellner writes :

>These two were by no means the last great Buddhist philosophers >around.
>For Udayana, in fact, his elder contemporary JJAnazrImitra, at >least some
>of whose works were composed before Udayanas', was much >more important. It
>is in this context worth noting that JJAnazrImitra >authored a lengthy
>treatise called "IzvaravAdaH", which covers about >80 pages in Anantalal
>Thakur's edition of J's works (Patna 1987, 2nd >ed.). I don't know whether
>Udayana takes up any specific arguments >from JJAnazrI in this context, but
>he is certainly known to have >reacted against J's arguments on other
>subjects.

If you can show that JnAnashrimitra wrote against theism and also
show that Udhayana was responding to him, your argument would be more
convincing.

>At any rate, there is no reason why Udayana in his historical environment
>should
>not have felt compelled to write a treatise that aims to establish the
>existence
>of Izvara.

As I said before, I find it strange that the top logician of the NyAya
school would write on a subject which was not critical at that point in
time.

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Strange though it may seem to some, the index to Anantalal Thakur's 1996
edition of Udayana's nyaayavaartikataatparyaparizuddhi records five
references to nyaayakusumaaJjali within the text of
nyaayavaartikataatparyaparizuddhi. All five references refer the reader to
nyaayakusumaaJjali for its exposition of the matter then under discussion
(please note the last index page entry "588", should be corrected to "591").
In two of these references (pages 393 and 417), Udayana explicitly claims
that he has already treated or elaborated the matter in nyaayakusumaaJjali.
In my book, these amount to a claim of authorship.


Elliot M. Stern
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