[Buddha-l] Prapanca

[Dan Lusthaus]

Richard asks:

> > hetav asati karya.m ca kara.na.m ca na vidyate |
> > tadabhave kriya karta kara.na.m ca na vidyate ||
>
> What does this have to do with prapanca?

Everything. The proliferation of all these entities from a single root, such
that each is assigned its own essentialist niche, is what I take Nagarjuna
to mean by prapanca (cf. the example I developed vis-a-vis Frege's
Bedeutung). It is part of his critique of the grammatical tradition, which,
as you know, provides much of the tools and categories for philosophical and
metaphysical thinking in India. The establishment of such nominalized
discrete things from a verb root, as if each could be independent or even
separable, he is arguing, is a tautological confusion built on dependencies
that themselves require an actual cause (which might not be actual, asat).
Dignaga echoes this in Pramanasamuccaya 1 when treating prameya, pramana and
pramana-phala as upacaaras for pramana-phala.

> > As for appearances in hetuvidya literature, the upanisadic meaning is
> > displayed in Vatsyayana's comm. on the Nyayasutra at 3.1.67
>
> The last I checked, that was not considered a Buddhist text.

Never said it was. Only said it was a hetuvidya text.

Dan