[Buddha-l] Prapanca

[Dan Lusthaus]

Richard,

> Your tangential excursion into Frege completely baffled me. And your
> interpretation of Nagarjuna does as well. I know Frege fairly well I
> probably know Nagarjuna as well as any man alive. What I can't seem to
> get a handle on is the mysterious Lusthaus.

Let's see if we can shed some of the mystery.

1. I think we agree that whatever else prapanca means, it includes some
sense of proliferation.

2. Proliferation means to take something and diversify, derive multiples.

3. Putting Frege aside, let's take the verbal root k.r = acting, doing. In
some languages, Sanskrit being one of them, verbs are primary, in the sense
that they are the roots of most words; nouns being commonly formed from
verbs by altering their form in prescribed ways.

4. In the verse from MMK, we are treated to a display of the proliferation
of the k.r root.

hetav asati karya.m ca kara.na.m ca na vidyate |
tadabhave kriya karta kara.na.m ca na vidyate ||

karya = the enacted, the "effect"
kara.na = the activator, the "cause"
k.riya = activity, action
karta = actor, the "agent"
kara.na = acting, an act or deed.

from a root verb we have derived five nouns. Follow me so far?

5. Once the distinctions are established, they become distinct categories.
One can engage in discourse on agents. One can analyze a situation in terms
of identifying the agent, or the cause, or the effect, etc.

6. They can not only be distinguished from each other, but can take on
independent identities, such that one might devise a theory of action that
could include all five, or might overlook one or more of the five. Those
stranded or abandoned factors become isolated. Any of the five (or more)
components of a theory of action can thus be isolated from the others.

7. Each factor becomes more than a factor. It becomes a svabhava -- an
independent, self-defining identity, and to the extent it is meant to apply
to any and all actions, it begins to constitute a class (e.g., the class of
doers) by signifying a universal property they all share in common
(tautologically, the property of being a doer, or, what is no less
tautological, the property of being that which does the doing).

8. Nyaya, for instance, proposes a fivefold theory of action/cognition:
agent, object, instrument, action, and result. An action is not an action
unless it possesses all five factors. As John Taber summarizes this in his
_A Hindu Critique of Buddhist Epistemology_, p. 6, using the stock example
of chopping down a tree:

"In sentences with an active verb, the agent of an action is indicated by a
noun with a nominative ending in agreement with the finite ending of the
verb.; the object by a noun with an accusative ending; the instrument by a
noun with an instrumental ending; and the action proper by the verbal root.
In addition to these elements corresponding to grammatical categories there
si also for any action a distinct result, that which is _brought about_ by
the action. In the case of the act of chopping down a tree these five
factors would be the woodsman (agent), the tree (object), the axe
(instrument), the chopping (action), and the felling of the tree (result).
That knowledge is an action -- evidenced by the fact that there is a verb
'to know' -- implies that the same factors must be involved. The knower is
the agent, the thing known the object, that by which one knows the
instrument, etc."

9. The fivefold heuristic for analyzing action has converted into five
distinct criteria by which anything that claims the status of an action must
be measured, and each of the five must be satisfied.

10. Each of the five categories, in the abstract, can be treated as a
universal. To designate X as an agent would mean it participates in
agentness, or shares the quality or property of being an agent with all
other agents. And so on. (see 7)

Still following me?

11. Universals or classes tend to be taken as *more* real than the distinct
particulars to which they apply, since the particulars come and go, vary and
are inconstant, while the universal remains invariant (Joe may be an agent
at times, but agentness is eternal). Oddly, that claim is usually made by
so-called realists, like Naiyayikas, who make abstractions more real than
actual particular things. Indian Buddhists, famously, mostly rejected that
(but this leads into different waters).

12. This proliferation, by which a verb has splintered into multiple
independent nouns, such that they become the measure of the verb from which
they were derived -- lending it nominal status, or better, numerous nominal
statuses, which is to say, self-hood in multiple identities, is prapanca.
The cause has a selfhood, the effect has a selfhood, the agent has a
selfhood, and so on.

13. An agent implies a self that does. An activity implies a doer. A result
implies an action has been performed by some self (the argument from
design). And so on.

14. Nouns and verbs are tautological diversifications of each other. Neither
is ultimately primary. But nominalization is especially prone to imputing
selfhood.

15. Vyavahara has no choice but to speak in nouns and verbs. Paramartha is a
middle way that reifies neither the noun nor the verb -- and hence is
ni.sprapanca.

Did you make it the finish line?


> Another red herring then? I somehow thought we were talking about how
> the term was used in Buddhism, and the reference to Pakshilasvamin sheds
> no light on that issue whatsoever.

You seem to be rather quick to see things as red herrings. We vegetarians
steer clear of herring, mackerel, steaks and other distractions.

Do you really think Vatsyayana is in a different linguistic universe from
the Buddhists in such things? You mentioned there were several occurrences
of prapanca in Dharmakirti. Care to share some of them with us for
*Buddhist* elucidation?

Dan