New from Vienna

[Ernst Steinkellner]

Dear Colleagues,



Following the efforts of H. R. Rangaswamy Iyengar in 1930, the Muni Jambuvijaya in 1961, 1966,1976, and Masaaki Hattori in 1968, a further attempt at reconstructing the Sanskrit text of Dignagats Pramanasamuccaya with its Vrtti is now available for the first chapter "On Perception" as PDF under the address www.oeaw.ac.at/Mat/dignaga_PS_1.pdf:

 

Dignagats Pramanasamuccaya, Chapter 1. 

A hypothetical reconstruction of the Sanskrit text with the help of the two Tibetan translations on the basis of the hitherto known Sanskrit fragments and the linguistic materials gained from Jinendrabuddhi's Tika. (April 2005)

Dedicated to Masaaki Hattori on the occasion of his 80th birthday. 

 

Since we still have no information on a possibly surviving manuscript of this seminal work of the Buddhist epistemological and logical tradition, I thought it might be useful for interested colleagues to see just how much and what kind of progress has been possible  in regaining Dignagats text on the basis of the recently found Pramanasamuccayatika by Jinendrabuddhi. This commentaryts unique Sanskrit manuscript is the main source of new linguistic materials, and the main reason for considering this new step of reconstruction meaningful. 

 

An introduction informs on the state of the art and this reason in more detail, on methodological and editorial principles, and on metrical problems. A detailed analysis is added which reflects the logical structure of this chapterts contents. A bibliography concludes this essay.

 

While the diplomatic and critical editions of Jinendrabuddhits text for the first chapter will soon be published as the first volume of the newly founded series "Sanskrit Texts from the Tibetan Autonomous Region" in Beijing, the present reconstruction of Dignagats text will only be published in this way.  

 

 

                                                    Ernst Steinkellner