School of Letters Department of Humanities Philosophy Course
Indian Philosophy Major
Major (Credit 2)

Intended Year:
Intended School:
History of Indian Philosophy (Seminar IV)
History of Indian Philosophy (Seminar IV)
Sub Title@ Candrakīrti's Critique of Bhāviveka Revisited: -Reading the Sanskrit text of the Prasannapadā on the Mūlamadhyamakakārikā 1.1
l•Ά‰ΘŠwŒ€‹†‰@@–K–βŒ€‹†ˆυ ƒnƒ€@ƒqƒ‡ƒ“ƒ\ƒN
Numbering Code: LET-HUM3214J
Course Code: 18053200
2018 SpringTerm
weekly Wed3
Ito Classroom
E‰Θ–Ϊ (English, ƒTƒ“ƒXƒNƒŠƒbƒg)
Course Overview The Madhyamaka school is one of the major Buddhist philosophical schools of Indian Buddhism. Modern scholarship has paid due attention to this tradition, especially to the school's celebrated elaborations on the notion of "emptiness" (śūnyatā), based on the root text, the Mūlamadhyamakakārikā of Nāgārjuna (150-250 CE). As this text was extracted from the solely extant commentary in Sanskrit, Candrakīrti (fl. 7th century CE)'s Prasannapadā, textual studies on Madhyamaka developed around Candrakīrti's work. Despite the fact that the Prasannapadā is the commentary on all twenty-seven chapters of the Mūlamadhyamakakārikā, modern scholarship showed a particular interest in Candrakīrti's commentary on the first verse which covers about one seventh of the whole. This rather lengthy section devoted to one verse contains Candrakīrti's critiques of Bhāviveka and Dignāga. For its historical importance of illuminating the relationships between important thinkers in the history of Buddhism, it has been translated for several times into various modern languages. However, although philosophical discussions (and new translations) inspired by the contents of this section have continued since de la Vallée Poussin's first edition in 1913, philological and historical research has not made significant progress. Most recently, Anne MacDonald published a new edition and translation of the first chapter of Prasannapadā and it gave a stimulating impetus to Madhyamaka studies. Her work, by uncovering historical information embedded in every line of the text with rigorous annotations, incorporates a hundred years of scholarship and shows a promising direction to which future textual studies on Indian philosophy can follow. In this course, we read Candrakīrti's critique of Bhāviveka, the first half of his commentary on Nāgārjuna's first verse. Comparing Anne MacDonald's work with older edition and translations, we will review what has been done so far and consider what can be done in the future in the field of Madhyamaka philosophy.
Last updated : 2018/2/28 (15:59)