[Buddha-l] Prapanca

[Dan Lusthaus]

Richard wrote:

> My curiosity about what the term means in Buddhism was piqued by the
> discovery many years ago of how the term is used in grammatical
> treatises, where it does not have a negative connotation at all.

I take it you mean phrases like purvasyaa+eva aya.m prapañca.m, asya+eva
ayam prapañca.m, tasya+eva aya.m prapañca.m, in the Ka"sikav.rtti by
Jayaditya and Vamana. That in itself carries no negative implication, but
wouldn't that non-negative usage be what Nagarjuna targets as prapanca with
verses such as MMK 8:4, which proliferates svabhavic entities and
entailments out of -/k.r?

hetav asati karya.m ca kara.na.m ca na vidyate |

tadabhave kriya karta kara.na.m ca na vidyate ||

If a cause [for an action] does not actualize (asat), the enacted (karya)
and activator (kara.na) are not found (na vidhyate).
Those not having coming to be (abhava), activity (k.riya), actor (karta),
and acting (kara.na) are not found.

(the prapanca of kr / karma into activity, agent, cause, effect, etc. is
usually lost in translations. E.g., Garfield's more or less semantically
correct rendering:

Without a cause, the effect and
Its cause will not occur.
Without this, activity and
Agent and action are not possible.

in which only "activity" and "action" retain any hint of the prapanca, and
the distinction between hetu and kaara.na is lost.)

As for appearances in hetuvidya literature, the upanisadic meaning is
displayed in Vatsyayana's comm. on the Nyayasutra at 3.1.67, but, if I'm not
mistaken (and I'm confident you will inform me if I am), the meaning I
alluded to is at play in the lead in to 2.1.6 (the proliferation of
objections by the opponent engendered by doubt during a discussion of
perpetual doubt [atyanta-sa.m"saya]).

Dan