The Conception of Buddhist Nirvana — Th. Stcherbatsky (1927)

After that there was a break in the development of the Madhyamika phi¬ losophy. During two centuries we hear of no prominent personalities and no works dealing with it. It seems as though it were partly fallen into oblivion. It is impossible otherwise to explain the total silence of Buddhagliosa about it.

During the next period, the golden age of Indian civilisation, the age of the Gupta empire in Northern India, the brothers Asanga and Yasubandhu appear in the V th century as the champions of a somewhat modified Monism which receives in their hands an idealistic interpretation.

The scene of the development of the Madhyamika philosophy after that shifts to the South. We witness there, in the VI th century A.D., a powerful revival of the genuine, uncompromising Relativism of Nagarjuna. Contemporaneously with the pupils of Yasubandhu, Sthiramati and Dignaga, two very celebrated men, who were working, the one in Yalabhi in Surat, the other mainly in Orrissa, two equally celebrated champions of the Madhyamika system, the Masters (dcarya) Buddhapalita and Bhavya or Bhavaviveka, 2 appear in the South. The Mahayana Monism becomes now definitely split into the idealistic school in

1 There is an old tradition according to which the authentical works of Nagarjuna 2are six, but there is no agreement about how this nu mber is composed. Generally admitted are 1) Mula-madhyamika-sliatra, also called Prajna-mula, 8 celebrated men have com¬ mented upon it, Nagarjuna himself, Buddhapalita, Bhavya, Candrakirti, Devasarma, GunasrI, Gunamati and Sthiramati, 2) Yukti-gastika, a very condensed statement of the_theory; its composition, Wassilieff thinks, possibly preceeded the composition of the main work, 3) Suny ata-saptati, askort poem on Relativity with the author’s own comment, 4) Vigraha-vy avartanl, also with comment, a work on logic already mentioning the four pramanas of the Naiyayiks, 5) Vaidalya-sutra and prakarana, self defence of Nagarjuna against the charge of perverting logic. The sixth is according to Bu-ston a work which is not trans¬ lated, Tha-snad-grub-pa, «A vindication of empirical Reality». However, others reckon, instead of it, Akutobhaya, a comment upon the mula-karikas. But Wassilieff remarks (in his «Review of the Madhyamika literature)), Mss musei As. Petrop.) that «the authenticity of this work was doubted even by the credulous Tibetans#. Candrakirti evidently held that Nagarjuna did not write any comment upon the mula-karikas, cf. text, p. 25. 6, but Avalokitavrata, commenting upon Prajna-pradipa calls it ran-hgrel. Besides these works the Bstan-hgyur contains 1) Mahayana-vimsika, in 20 verses, 2) Aksara-sataka, in 3 lines, and 3) Pratltya-samutpada-hpdaya, in 5 lines, renewed attempts to express with utmost shortness the main conception of a monistic ( aikyam ) motionless Universe. They probably are spurious. ■

2 Perhaps Bhavyaviveka — legs-ldan-hbyed.

appendix: Nagarjuna’s treatise on relativity 3the North, the Yog&caras, and the relativistic one in the South. The latter is again divided between the followers of Buddhapalita and the followers of Bhavya.

The condemnation of all logic for the cognition of the Absolute was final in the first of these schools, it admitted no bona fide argument at all, but undertook it only to show hopeless inconsistency in whatever logical argument would be pro¬ duced by its opponents. This school received the name of Madhyamika-Prasangika. The other school, the followers of Bhavya thought it necessary to supplement the short rules of Nagarjuna by independent ( svatantra ) arguments constructed in accordance with the rules of logic. This school received the name of Madhyamika-Svatantrika. Bhavya is a very subtle logician. He perhaps, more than any other one, deserves to be compared with Zeno of Eleia. Some of his baffling «sophisms» made his name celebrated in the Buddhist world. His school had success and was more numerous than the school of Buddhapalita in the beginning. But in the next VII th century A.D. the Master Candrakirti appears as a mighty champion of the purely negative method of establishing Monism. He succeeds in driving Bhavaviveka’s school into the shadow and finally settles that form of the Madhyamika System which is now studied in all monastic schools of Tibet and Mongolia where it is con¬ sidered to represent the true philosophical basis of Mahayana Buddhism.

We can thus establish' the following periods in the development of the philosophy of the Mahayana,

1) I century A. D., the rise of Mahayana, dlaya-vijnuna and tathata both admitted by Asvagho§a.

2) II century, the theory of Universal Relativity ( sunyatd ) formulated by Nagarjuna and Aryadeva

3) III and VI centuries, a gap.