In this article, a tutelary god of Sri Lanka is introduced whose depictions have not yet been documented and are now being made accessible for the first time. The numerous reliefs and paintings that represent this god can be found exclusively in monasteries built or restored until the nineteenth century in the south-western region of Sri Lanka, where also the popular pilgrimage site Kataragama is situated. Sinhalese textual sources and iconographic details suggest that this god is Kārttikeya, who is also known as Mahāsena. He served as the tutelary god of the South and was widely revered in this region until the end of the nineteenth century. He was venerated at his main shrine in the village of Kataragama during that time, and the inhabitants of Sri Lanka com-monly referred to Kārttikeya by the name of this village. Several images presented in this article provide evidence for the assumption that since the late nineteenth century depictions of Kārttikeya have been gradually supplanted by representations of Skandakumāra, the tutelary god of the northern Kandy Highlands. This contradicts the prevailing consensus that an identification of both gods occurred already centuries ago.

Schlagworte: Sri Lanka, Buddhist monasteries, Kataragama, Kārttikeya, Skandakumāra

In its so-called paravāda section, the Yogācārabhūmi (300–350 CE) presents and criticizes sixteen “allodoxies” (paravāda), predominantly non-Buddhist doctrines, practices and institutions, some of which had already been targeted in canonical texts such as the Brahmajālasūtra and the Śrāmaṇyaphalasūtra. The doctrines that were newly added in the Yogācārabhūmi include Sāṅkhya ideas on causality, possibly in combination with ideas developed in the indigenous science of grammar, as well as orthodox Brahmanical conceptions of ritual violence, the castes and purification. The last among these allodoxies is labelled kautuka maṅgalavāda, i.e., “the doctrine of festive ceremonies and auspicious things,” which comes very close to the Western idea of “superstition” in its perceived opposition to reason. Quite unexpectedly though, what the Yogācārabhūmi criticizes under this name is astrology, both as a determinist theory of human destiny and as a body of propitiatory practices. In challenging superstition and astrology because of their incompatibility with reason and karmic determinism, the Yogācārabhūmi often echoes Sarvāstivāda works such as Kumāralāta’s Kalpanāmaṇḍitikā and the Saddharmasmṛtyupasthānasūtra. After tracing the genealogy of the Indian Buddhist treatment of superstitious beliefs and practices, the present paper proposes a critical edition of the kautukamaṅgala section, based on the text of the Sanskrit manuscript of the Yogācārabhūmi and its Tibetan and Chinese translations, and discusses its arguments against astral determinism.

Schlagworte: Yogācārabhūmi, kautukamaṅgala, Astrology, determinism, allodoxy, superstition, rationality, causality, Kalpanāmaṇḍitikā

Of the literature of the early philosophical schools of the Sāṅkhya tradition only the fragments of Vṛṣagaṇa or Vārṣagaṇya (ca. 300 CE) have been preserved to a more substantial extent. His work, the long lost Ṣaṣṭitantra, introduced the earliest elaborated epistemology in the history of Indian philosophy, with emphasis on inference as the means for establishing the basic concepts of the dualistic system of Sāṅkhya, in particular the concept of Primordial matter (pradhāna). To Erich Frauwallner we owe the first collection of fragments of this epistemological tradition of Sāṅkhya, which was published in 1958. He identified these fragments in Jinendrabuddhi’s commentary on the Pramāṇasamuccaya, then available only in its Tibetan translation, and in Siṃhasūri’s Nyāyāgamānusāriṇī, whose edition he had received from the Muni Jambuvijaya before its publication in 1966 and 1976. Since the Sanskrit text of Jinendrabuddhi’s commentary became available in the late 1990s, with its chapters 1, 2 and 6 already published, and chapters 3 and 4 in preparation, it is now possible to present the most probably original text of these fragments of the Ṣaṣṭitantra. They contain the explanations of inference in much detail, and the presentation of the direct (avīta) and, less well attested, indirect (āvīta) proofs of Primordial matter. The edition of the fragments offered in this paper is followed by a tentative translation.

Schlagworte: pramāṇa, anumāna, pratyakṣa, āptavacana, sambandha, viśeṣato dṛṣṭam, sāmānyato dṛṣṭam, vīta, āvīta, pradhāna

This paper claims that the two seemingly different formulations of Dharmakīrti’s definition of a valid cognition in Pramāṇavārttika, Pramāṇasiddhi chapter vv. 1 and 5 have been ingeniously misinterpreted by his direct student Devendrabuddhi and later followers, Indian and Tibetan, as well as by modern scholars. It clarifies that Dharmakīrti actually provides only a single definition and, with reference to his statements on perception in the context of non-perception, explains what he intended with its formulation by means of two separate statements.

Schlagworte: Dharmakīrti, Pramāṇavārttika, Hetubindu, pramāṇa, anupalabdhi, kartṛsthakriyā, karmasthakriyā, prakāśa

The Vijñaptimātratāsiddhi is one of the chapters of Jitāri’s Vādasthānāni. Its first-time critical edition, presented in this paper, is based on two newly discovered manuscripts of the Vādasthānāni which make available the Sanskrit text of a total of twenty chapters on a wide range of philosophical topics. Fourteen of these chapters, including the Vijñaptimātratāsiddhi, were previously completely unknown and remain to be edited. In the Vijñaptimātratāsiddhi, Jitāri (fl. 940–1000) endeavors to establish the Yogācāra doctrine of the mere cognitive manifestation of objects and to refute the position of externalism, with a focus on the externalist opinion that the cognition does not possess the image of the object (nirākārajñānavāda). He begins the discussion with a proof formula to show that all things that become manifest in a cognition are nothing but cognition. This is followed by his refutation of various objections that the reason used in his proof formula is unestablished, contradictory or inconclusive. In order to refute the objection that the reason is inconclusive, Jitāri introduces a subordinate proof formula. After refuting the objections to this proof, Jitāri concludes that the reason used in the subordinate proof formula is conclusive, and therefore the main reason is also conclusive. Thus, his main thesis that what becomes manifest in a cognition is cognition is to be accepted.

Schlagworte: Jitāri, Vijñaptimātratāsiddhi, Vādasthānāni, Yogācāra, mere cognitive manifestation of objects, self-manifestation of cognition, externalism, nirākārajñānavāda