The Tibetans were converted to Buddhism beginning in about the seventh century of the Common Era. After their conversion to Buddhism, the kings sent young trainees to Buddhist India to learn Sanskrit, develop a written language for Tibetan, and translate the Buddhist literature of India into Tibetan. One of the approaches the Tibetans adopted from the Indian Buddhists is a tradition called “the path of reasoning” which employs philosophical debate. In India, the importance of debate was highly valued. Among Tibetan Buddhists, debate has the reputation of being the most effective way of learning the Buddhist doctrine, preparing one to understand clearly the assertions and be able to apply them in meditation to achieve the liberating wisdom. For more than a millennium, the Tibetans preserved and practiced the Indian style of philosophical debate. The Tibetan argument forms were brought over with minor adaptations from the Indian logical forms. In this system of reasoning syllogisms, consisting of a thesis and a reason stated together in a single sentence, and consequences, an argument structurally similar to a syllogism but is merely a logical outflow of an opponent’s own assertions. This paper describes the structure of the Tibetan Buddhist syllogistic form and suggests that, from the point of view of Buddhist religious practice, the central point of Buddhist reasoning and debate is to guide the student to become capable of understanding the profound view leading to liberation.
