Pramanavarttika

The Pramāṇavārttika (Sanskrit, Commentary on Valid Cognition; Tib. tshad ma rnam 'grel) is an influential Buddhist text on pramana (valid instruments of knowledge, epistemic criteria), a form of Indian epistemology. The Pramāṇavārttika is the magnum opus of the Indian Buddhist Dharmakirti (flourit 6-7th centuries).

The Pramanavarttika is written in about 2,000 verse stanzas. The four chapters deal, respectively, with inference for oneself (svarthanumana), valid knowledge (pramanasiddhi), sense perception (pratyaksa), and inference for others (pararthanumana). The work is a commentary on an earlier work by the Buddhist logician Dignaga, the Pramanasamuccaya.

The first chapter discusses the structure and types of formal inference and the apoha (exclusion) theory of meaning. Dan Arnold writes that apoha is: "the idea that concepts are more precise or determinate (more contentful) just to the extent that they exclude more from their purview; the scope of cat is narrower than that of mammal just insofar as the former additionally excludes from its range all mammals in the world that are not cats." In the latter half of this chapter, Dharmakīrti also mounts an attack on Brahmanism, the authority of the Vedas, Brahmins and their use of mantras, and the system of caste (see Eltschinger 2000). He also discusses the role of scripture, which he sees as fallible and yet important for their discussion of “radically inaccessible things” (atyantaparokṣa) such as karma. Dharmakirti critiques the Brahmins thus:

The second, pramanasiddhi chapter first seeks to defend the authority of the Buddha as a valid source of knowledge for those seeking spiritual freedom and to show that he spoke the truth. His defense focuses on the five epithets of the Buddha attributed to him by Dignaga: being a means of knowledge (pramanabhutatva), seeking the benefit of all living creatures, being a teacher, being 'well gone', and being a protector. Dharmakirti uses the Buddha's infinite compassion (karuna) as a basis for the proof that he is a reliable source of knowledge, as he writes "Compassion is the proof [of the Buddha being a means of knowledge]." From the discussion on the Buddha's infinite compassion, Dharmakirti then goes on to attack the materialist theories of the Carvaka school and the soul theories of the Hindu Brahminical schools and provides a defense of the Buddhist concept of rebirth. According to Dan Arnold, Dharmakirti's argument here is that: "sentient phenomena must have among their causes events that are themselves sentient; events, more generally, must have ontologically homogeneous causes. The straightforward claim is thus that the events constituting the physical body are ontologically distinct from those that cause mental events." For Dharmakirti then, cognition is dependent not just on sense objects and physical sense organs, but on a previous event of awareness (manovijnana). This argument has been described by Dan Arnold as dualistic, a denial of the irreducibility of mental events to physical events and to be an appeal to qualia even though Dharmakirti eventually goes on to defend a form of epistemic idealism (Yogacara).

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