मूलमध्यमककारिका (आचार्य नागार्जुन - चन्द्रकीर्ति प्रणीत प्रसन्नपदा व्याख्या सहित)

INTRODUCTION

1. The Edition
   This edition of the Madhyamakaśāstra of Nāgārjuna with the commentary
   called Prasannapadā by Candrakīrti is mainly based on the one edited by Louis de
   la Valleé Poussin and published in the BIBLIOTHECA BUDDHICA, Vol. IV, St. Peters-
   burg, Russia, in 1912 (referred to as B in the margin). There was an earlier
   edition of this work, published by BUDDHIST TEXT SOCIETY, Calcutta, in 1897 and
   edited by Śaraccandra Śāstri. This Calcutta edition is full of mistakes, and its
   value is no more than a manuscript in print. It was used by Poussin for what
   it was worth, but he also used two Mss., one from Paris and the other from
   Cambridge. Further, he checked his Text of Kārikās as well as of Candrakīrti's
   commentary with the help of Tibetan Translations. He added a number of
   useful indices and exhaustive foot-notes, textual and exegetical. Out of his
   notes, textual ones are retained with some modifications by me at the foot of the
   page below the text, while I have made as much use as possible of his exegetical notes
   in my CRITICAL NOTES printed at the end of the Volume. Since Poussin's edition
   was out in 1912, many Buddhist works in original Sanskrit have been printed in
   Europe, India, America and Japan, and I have added references to them in the
   body of my text as well as in Critical Notes. Poussin's edition is long out of
   print. I had the good fortune of studying this very work at his feet in 1921–
   22, and hence I thought it my duty to bring out a new edition with a number of
   additions and alterations. I have made use of additional material published since
   then, and therefore I hope this edition will be more useful than the former to our
   Indian scholars. The foot-notes of Poussin containing Tibetan translation of
   Kārikās and of extracts of the commentary have been omitted from this edition
   as they are no longer useful to Sanskrit scholars. I do not, however, underrate
   the value of Poussin's edition, and of extracts from Tibetan given by him, but
   once the purpose of checking the accuracy of Sanskrit text is achieved, the value
   of Tibetan translations to Sanskrit paṇḍits becomes secondary.
2. Philosophical Systems under Mahāyāna
   There are two important philosophical schools of the Mahāyāna Buddhism,
   viz, the Mādhyamika School founded by Nāgārjuna and his followers,
   Buddhapālita, Bhāvaviveka, Candrakīrti and Śāntideva, and the Yogācāra School
   founded by Maitreyanātha and his followers Asaṅga, Vasubandhu, Sthiramati,
   Vimuktisena, Haribhadra etc. Both these schools take Prajñāpāramitā
   literature and other Mahāyāna Sūtras as their sacred sources. Ācāryas of both
   these schools seem to have written commentaries on texts like Aṣṭasāhasrikā
   with interpretations which would support the special doctrines of their respective
   schools as Śaṁkara, Rāmānuja etc. interpreted Upaniṣads and the Bādarā-
   yaṇasūtras differently to support Advaita, Viśiṣṭādvaita etc. We have not yet
   discovered in original Sanskrit any such commentary on Prajñāpāramitā from the
   school of Nāgārjuna, but we propose to give in the present series of Buddhist Sans-
   krit Texts Haribhadra's commentary called Āloka on Aṣṭasāhasrikā which may be
   regarded as a specimen of Yogācāra interpretation of the Prajñāpāramitā
   literature. It may be said here that corresponding to Nāgārjuna's Kārikās of
   the Madhyamakaśāstra, we have Abhisamayālaṁkārakārikās from Maitreya-
   nātha to explain the Yogācāra stand,