Jinendrabuddhi's Viśālāmalavatī Pramāṇasamuccayaṭīkā

Jinendrabuddhi’s (approx. 710–770 CE) Pramanasamuccayatika is a detailed commentary on Dignaga’s (approx. 480–540) Pramanasamuccaya, the text that traditionally marked the foundation of the Buddhist school of logic and epistemology in India. The current volume presents a diplomatic and critical Sanskrit edition of the sixth and final chapter of Jinendrabuddhi’s commentary, where the focus is the theory of “false rejoinders”, a dialectical question rarely treated by Indian Buddhist logicians later than the seventh century. Jinendrabuddhi’s voluminous commentary is thus a highly important source, not only for research on the development of the Buddhist school of logic, but also on Indian philosophy in general. The diplomatic edition presented in the current volume is based on a single extant Sanskrit manuscript of the Pramanasamuccayatika kept in Lhasa, Tibet. Access to copies of this manuscript has been made available only recently. To produce the critical edition, also the Tibetan translation of Jinendrabuddhi’s commentary and other relevant materials were taken into consideration. Not only does the critically edited text enable a more exact interpretation of Dignaga’s theory of “false rejoinders” than has hitherto been possible, it also illuminates details regarding the history of the Indian Buddhist tradition of dialectics prior to Dignaga’s time. Editions of the first two of the Pramanasamuccayatika’s six chapters have already been published, in 2005 and 2012, in the current series “Sanskrit Texts from the Tibetan Autonomous Region” (STTAR).