मूलमध्यमककारिका (आचार्य नागार्जुन - चन्द्रकीर्ति प्रणीत प्रसन्नपदा व्याख्या सहित)

viii Madhyamaka-Śāstra
There is one more school of the Mahāyāna Buddhists which cannot be
accurately called a philosophical school. It is a school of Logicians headed by
Dignāga. The writers like Dignāga and Dharmakīrti specialised in logic; they,
however, could not escape the influences of the two schools mentioned above,
and a majority of them show a strong inclination towards the Yogācāra system
as the Mādhyamika school did not give much scope for logical treatment of
their metaphysics. It will be shown later that the Prāsaṅgika branch of the
Mādhyamikas did not give much room to logical treatment as Nāgārjuna's
Vigrahavyāvartanī amply demonstrates. Dignāga, who wrote a short philoso-
phical treatise in about 57 stanzas called Prajñāpāramitāpiṇḍārtha, seems
clearly to follow the Yogācāra view as also Dharmakīrti.
3. Origin and Teaching of the Mādhyamika School of Buddhists
The religion founded by the Buddha got divided into various schools of
thought and customs within a few centuries after his nirvāṇa. The two earliest of
these schools were the Sthaviravādins and Mahāsāṁghikas. Their differences
were due to certain rules of conduct or interpretation of Buddha's teaching. The
fissiparous tendency did not stop there, and there soon appeared a number of
them drawing their names either from a locale, or mode of living, or adherence to
a particular book or tenet. Many of these schools had their own sacred canon,
complete or partial, which was written in a variety of dialects such as Pāli,
Sanskrit, Prakrit or even Apabhraṁśa. Some of these canons have come down to
us in these languages, at least in fragments, but many appear to have been lost in
their original form. This variety of dialects was but natural; for Buddha was a
native of Kapilavastu, and must have preached in his mother-tongue or in
a language which was capable of being understood by natives of Mithilā,
Magadha, Kāśī and Kosala in which countries he spent his life as a religious
teacher. His sermons were rendered by his pupils in their own native tongue,
from which they were given different standard forms of a language such as
Pāli, Sanskrit, Prakrit and Apabhraṁśa. Of these, Tipiṭaka in Pāli seems to be a
compact canon, but that was not the case with other canons. Improvements in
linguistic forms as also in doctrinal tenets must have been introduced from time
to time, and Buddhist literature which is found in dialects of Northern and North-
eastern regions remained scattered. Side by side, there were some changes in
ideals and ideologies of the original form of the religion due to influences of
adherents and their pre-occupations. All this resulted in forming a new and vast
mass of literature commonly known as Sūtras and written in a language which
shows an admixture of Sanskrit and popular or Prakrit forms and idioms. These
sūtras had a vast volume, and there were traces of lack of cohesion in their
teaching. Among these works, there is a class of literature called Vaipulyasūtras
numbering nine and various recensions of the Prajñāpāramitā. There is also a
very large number of sūtras known under the class of Mahāyānasūtras dating
from about the 2nd or even 3rd century B. C. Nāgārjuna (2nd century A. D.)
in his Sūtrasamuccaya draws upon nearly seventy such titles. A large number of
them seems to have been lost in their original Sanskrit form, but they are
preserved in their Tibetan and/or Chinese translations.
Buddhism in this new form also showed fissiparous tendencies and it was felt
necessary to maintain their strength and unity. To evolve a uniform philoso-
phical system from out this vast literature embodying apparently conflicting
Introduction ix
views leading to chaos, was a task in the post-Christian age before scholars like
Aśvaghoṣa, Nāgārjuna, Maitreyanātha, Asaṅga, Vasubandhu and Dignāga. It is
the effort of these scholars which is responsible for bringing into existence two
famous philosophical schools of Mahāyāna Buddhism, viz., the Mādhyamika
School and the Yogācāra School.
Among these scholars, Nāgārjuna picked up, to name his school, one
of the most striking tenets of Buddhism, viz., Madhyamā or Madhyamā
Pratipad, the Middle Path, preached in his first sermon by Buddha, and
which, consequently, no follower of Buddha could renounce. He named his
system Madhyamaka (मध्यमैव मध्यमकम्, संज्ञायां कन्-पा. ५.३.८७) or Madhyamaka-
śāstra, and his followers come to be known as Mādhyamika (मध्यमकमीयते विदन्ति
वा-तदधीते तद्वेद-पा. ४. २. ५९). Under this title he codified the contents of this vast
mass of conflicting sūtras so as to yield a philosophically uniform teaching, and
embodied it in over 400 Kārikās in anuṣṭubh metre divided into 27 chapters.
In one of these Kārikās, he explicitly refers to the Kātyāyanāvavādasūtra, which,
by-the-bye, is accepted as authority by all Buddhist scholars holding different
shades of views :
कात्यायनाववादे च अस्ति नास्तीति चोभयम् ।
प्रतिषिद्धं भगवता भावाभावविभाविना ॥
[ म. शा. १५.७ ]
On this Candrakīrti remarks :
इदं च सूत्रं सर्वनिकायेषु पठ्यते (म. शा. १५. ७)
The statement of asti and nāsti, two conflicting, contradictory and extreme
categories which have been denied by Buddha, recommends or suggests the
way out of these, which the founder called Madhyamā (मध्यमया धर्मं देशयति ).
Expanding the concepts of asti and nāsti into bhāva and abhāva, saṁsāra and
nirvāṇa, he evolves a solution negating these extremes, and thus founding the
Middle Path. Nāgārjuna, following this line of thought, classifies the contents
of the sūtras into two classes of tenets, one recommending a view which is
ultimately to be abandoned, and the other as final and absolute; the one practical,
vyāvahārika, and the other as absolute, final or pāramārthika. That this is the
ultimate objective of the system of Nāgārjuna is clear from the following kārikā:
द्वे सत्ये समुपाश्रित्य बुद्धानां धर्मदेशना ।
लोकसंवृतिसत्यं च सत्यं च परमार्थतः ॥ [ म. शा. २४.८ ]
Candrakīrti, at the end of his commentary on Madhyamaka Śāstra, confirms
the above view when he says :-
समाप्तं चेदं मध्यमशास्त्रं सकल्लौकिकलोकोत्तरप्रवचननीतनेयार्थव्याख्याननैपुण्याविशारदम् ।
(MS p. 259)
The system of Nāgārjuna thus classifies all discourses of Buddha into
Nītārtha, i. e., absolute or final, and Neyārtha, i. e. vyāvahārika or practical, and
arrives at the conclusion that although from the point of lower philosophical
plane all notions or concepts of worldly existence stand valid, from the point of
view of higher or absolute philosophical plane, these notions have but a relative
validity, and therefore one should reject both existence and non-existence and
follow a middle path or relative validity. Nāgārjuna says :-
अस्तीति शाश्वतग्राहो नास्तीत्युच्छेददर्शनम् ।
तस्मादस्तित्वनास्तित्वे नाश्रीयेत विचक्षणः ॥ [ म. शा. १५.१० ]
म. प्र. २