violation of all morality by denying any real distinction between right and wrong; where all is illusion, woman is the most attractive form of that illusion. It would, however, be unjust to ascribe such doctrines as essential parts of the Mahāyāna, though tradition ascribes to Nagarjuna the Tantric Pañcakrama, to Aryadeva the Cittaviçuddhiprakaraṇa, and makes Asañga an authority; we need see no more here than the eternal desire to father on ancients new doctrines badly needing some person of repute to vouch for them.' 1 Poussin, Bouddhisme (1898), ch. v; Bouddhisme (1909), pp. 343 ff.; Tathāgataguhyaka, NBL., pp. 261 ft. PART IV BUDDHIST LOGIC CHAPTER XVIII THE ORIGIN AND DEVELOPMENT OF 1. Logic in the Hinayāna Or logical theory the earlier Canon has not a trace; the Buddha is a reasoner whose interlocutors are not his match; his weapons against them, beside his authority, are analogy, simile, parable, and an occasional trace of induction by simple enumeration of cases ; definition and division are prominent by their absence. We hear of men skilled in logic or sophistry and reasoning, but there is nothing to show that they had a science of any sort. Exception must, however, be made for Sañjaya of the Belaṭṭha clan; he seems as an agnostic to have been the first to formulate the four possibilities of existence, non-existence, both, and neither, and Buddha in the indeterminates makes lavish use of this device. But of conscious consideration of this principle we have nothing, nor was anything to be expected from a teacher whose aim was to steer a middle path between affirmation and negation, and was therefore by no means likely to develop a logic of non-contradiction. The later texts were doubtless contemporaneous with the beginnings of logical study; the Milindapañha may allude to logicians, though the reference is but vague; it records the traditional mode of discussion, distinction and counter-distinction being drawn and errors unravelled, but in method it differs not at all from the Canon. A difference appears in the late Abhidhamma Pitaka. In the Kathavatthu we find the technical terms, Upanaya, for minor premiss in an argument, Niggamana for the conclusion 1 Keith, ILA., pp. 13 f.; Mil., pp. 28 ff. Pariñña for the proposition, and we may suppose a contemporary logic, but nothing of it is said. The method, followed however, is interesting; it runs: Q. Is A B? A. Yes. Q. Is CD? A. No. Q. But if A be B, then C is D. That B can be affirmed of A, but not D of C, is false. Hence your first answer is refuted. In the inverse (patiloma) method we have: If D be denied of C, then B should have been denied of A. (But you affirmed B of A.) Therefore that B can be affirmed of A but not D of C is wrong. There are further developments, but of the same type; the logical clearness is not at all adequate. In the Yamaka again the distribution of terms is known and the process of conversion is elaborately illustrated, but without trace of appreciation of logical theory. The Patisambhidāmagga3 deals with analytical insight into words and things, grammatical analysis, and insight into those processes, but it is quite valueless as logical theory. But, what is far more important, the Abhidhamma has not, despite the intention of the work to contain definitions of conceptions, any theory or effective practice of definition. The Nettipakarana shows some advance in this regard, but it is only in Buddhaghosa that we find the fourfold style of definition as essential mark, property, resulting phenomenon, and proximate antecedent. Thus mind is defined as following the sense impression, as having the essential mark of cognizing sights, sounds, &c., as the property of receiving the same, the resulting phenomenon of truth, and as its proximate antecedent the vanishing of the sense impression. Buddhaghosa shows also some understanding of the principles of identity, contradiction, and excluded middle. In northern India Buddhism must have grown up amid an eager logical activity, but we have scanty available records; the forms of reasoning employed by Maitreya, Asañga, and Vasubandhu are recorded on Chinese authority, but it would be premature to draw any definite conclusion from them as to their logical 1 Points of Controversy, pp. xlviii f., 877 f.; Vibhaīga, pp. 293 ff. 2 e. g. KV. i. 6. 55, 'past is existent' is converted to 'all existent is past'. cf. Geiger, PD., p. 62. That Buddhist logic knew in Asoka's time the terms and forms of syllogism (Dasgupta, Ind. Phil. i. 157) is a misreading of Aung's statement in Points of Controversy, p. 1. On definition cf. Compendium, pp. 2, 7. competence. With Maitreya, at any rate, argument does not seem to have advanced beyond the simple procedure from example, e.g. sound is non-eternal, because it is a product, like a pot, but not like ether.' 2. Dignāga The date of the great Buddhist logician Dignaga is still uncertain, though there are grounds on which he may be assigned to not later than A.D. 400, and in any event a much later date is out of the question. His services to logic are difficult to estimate precisely, because a vital question is involved of his relative priority or posteriority to the Vaiçeṣika authority, Praçastapāda, in whom appear very important changes in the logical doctrines hitherto professed in the Nyaya and Vaiçeṣika schools. Reasons for the probable priority of Dignaga have been advanced elsewhere; the suggestion that these innovations of Praçastapada are in fact to be found in Kaṇāda is clearly erroneous; the logic of Kaṇāda is unquestionably primitive, and would have been very different had it been inspired by the much more mature ideas which appear quite openly in Praçastapada. There remains, however, the possibility of derivation of both advances in Buddhism and in the Nyaya-Vaiçeṣika from a school not yet known to us. As a philosopher Dignaga appears a champion of Vijñānavāda idealism, but his work on logic is interesting, because it is inspired by other than epistemological and metaphysical considerations; from his logical works, so far as known from Dharmakirti, it would be impossible to learn precisely his conception of reality. But we know that in perception he distinguished sharply between the element of sensation and imagination; cach idea requires both sensation and the activity of the imagination to give any result; ILA., p. 108. The name is usually a pious fraud for Asañga; Lévi, MSA. ii. 7 f. 2 ILA., pp. 93 ff.; Ui, VP., p. 17, n. 3. He is said to have been a pupil of Vasubandhu. 3 Dasgupta, Ind. Phil, i. 351. That Kanāda is pre-Buddhistic (i. 280) is quite impossible. His Vijanavāda position appears clearly in his Ālambanaparīkṣā (preserved in Tibetan); Poussin, JRAS. 1903, ii. 383, n. 2. On logic we have in Tibetan his Pramāṇasamuccaya; Hetucakrahamaru; Trikālaparīkṣā; and his or Çankarasvamin's Nyāyapraveça (Ui, VP., p. 68, n. 2); seo MSIL., pp. 82 ff. U the mere percept is inexpressible and a momentary experience, which imagination presents as a series of moments (kṣanasamtana), and therefore capable of expression. This view is already attacked by Praçastapada, without naming its author, whose identity with Dignaga is affirmed by Vacaspati Miçra. Still more important was Dignaga's doctrine of inference; it seems to have rested on the assurance that knowledge did not express real relations of external character; the relation of ground and conclusion (anumānānumeya-bhāva) rests upon the relation of inherence and essence, quality and subject (dharmadharmi-bhāva), which is imposed by thought (buddhyārudha). The doctrine harmonizes entirely with his doctrine of perception, for the product there is a creation of imagination (kalpanā, utprekṣā), and all that is left undecided is the nature of the contact in simple perception with some reality; nothing hinders to accept this reality as merely a mental creation, a projection of the basic consciousness (alaya-vijñāna), but for logic the point is unimportant. The power of the mind to impose laws on phenomena affords us the possibility of those general prepositions (vyāpti) on which all reasoning rests, and enables Dignaga to develop a true syllogism: Sound is noneternal, because it is produced; all the produced are non-eternals, like a pot; no non-produced are non-eternals, like ether. The examples serve to illustrate, but the general law is one of the intellect. Dignaga also defined the essential conditions of the middle term or cause (hetu); it must be present in the subject or minor term, e. g. smoke on the mountain; it must be comprehended in the major or predicate, e. g. where there is smoke, there must always be fire; the middle must not exist in things heterogeneous to the major term, e. g. smoke is entirely absent where there is no fire. The doctrine, like that of universal connexion, is criticized by Nyaya writers of the orthodox school, like Uddyotakara. On 1 Cf. BSB. I. iv; AKV. (Paris MS., f. 267) in Poussin, JRAS. 1910, p. 136, n. The something (vastu-mātra) at the basis is the Vijnana or Ālayavijñāna; JRAS. 1906, p. 953. All determinations as substance, attribute, action, universality, and particularity (Vaiçeṣika categories) are in a sense false as conceptual and mediate (savikalpaka); Hetuvidyānyāyadvāraçāstra in Ui, VP., p. 67. |