経部とダルマキールティ ――金倉圓照博士の遺稿に拠りつつ――=Dharmakīrti on the Sautrāntika Tendency: On the Basis of Late Prof. Kanakura Yenshō’s Draft of the Third Volume of His Indo chūsei seishinshi
The Sautrāntika school begins with Kumāralāta as well as Aśvaghoṣa according to the third volume of the late Prof. Kanakura Yenshō’s 金倉圓照 Indo chūsei seishinshi 印度中世精神史 (A History of medieval Indian spirit), which was left in manuscript at his death in 1987. Vasubandhu cited twice Kumāralāta’s Sautrāntika tenets in the first chapter of his Abhidharmakośabhāṣya, and argued for his Sautrāntika standpoint. Dharmakīrti constructed a Sautrāntika philosophy after studying the Abhidharmakośa. His epistemology is composed of the triad of objects as cause, resemblance (sārūpyam) as action and cognition as effect. This composition opposes the idealistic epistemology of Dignāga, who asserted the trinity in the self-cognition (svasaṃvedanam). That is reconfirmed by opposing it at Pramāṇavārttika III, 346.
Dharmakīrti relates this tenet in his first text, the Nyāyabindu, chapter one (sūtra 20–21). According to the Ṭippaṇī, p. 19, Dharmakīrti added the Sautrāntika definition of perception, “no confusion” (abhrāntam), to the idealistic definition of perception, “no construction” (kalpanāpoḍham) offered by Dignāga. F. I. Stcherbatskoi pointed out this statement in one of his first work (Izdal Fakultét, no. 14, Petrograd, 1903; German translation by O. Strauss, p. 113). Prof. Kanakura cited this comment in his manuscript through the German version.
Furthermore Dharmakīrti demonstrated the tenet of momentariness (kṣaṇikatvam) without any cause in the second chapter (“Pramāṇasiddhi”) of the Pramāṇavārttika succeeding to Maitreya, Asaṅga, and Vasubandhu. The logic for proving it was completed in his Vādanyāya. The “Kṣaṇikavāda” became the catch-phrase of Dharmakīrti. The second chapter of the Sarvadarśanasaṅgraha begins with a citation of his logic.
The religious chapter of the Pramāṇavārttika is based on the strong faith in Buddha as “Authoritative One” (Pramāṇabhūtaḥ). Dharmakīrti demonstrates Buddha’s credibility from his altruism as Savior (tāyī), borrowing the illustration of the five epithets of Buddha related in the dedication verse of the Pramāṇasamuccaya by Dignāga, as well as that of the Abhidharmakośa of Vasubandhu.
A. B. Keith already cited the name and article of Prof. Kanakura from the Jacobi Felicitation Volume in his History of Sanskrit Literature (Delhi: Motilal Banarasidass Publishers, 1993), preface, p. 20.
