Dignāga

Dignāga (Chinese: 陳那論師/域龍, Sanskrit: दिग्नाग, Tibetan: ཕྲོགས་ཀྱི་གླང་པོ་) (c 480-540 CE) was an Indian scholar and one of the Buddhist founders of Indian logic.

He was born into a Brahmin^[1] family in Simhavakta near Kanchi Kanchipuram), and very little is known of his early years, except that he took as his spiritual preceptor Nagadatta of the Vatsiputriya school, before being expelled and becoming a student of Vasubandhu. This branch of Buddhist thought defended the view that there exists a kind of real personality independent of the elements or aggregates composing it.

Among Dignaga's works there is Hetucakra (The wheel of reason), considered his first work on formal logic, advancing a new form of deductive reasoning. It may be regarded as a bridge between the older doctrine of trairūpya and Dignaga's own later theory of vyāpti which is a concept related to the Western notion of implication.

Other works include The Treatise on the Objects of Cognition (Ālambana-parīkṣā), The Treatise on Systems of Cognition (Pramāṇa-samuccaya), and The Treatise on the Correct Principles of Logic (*Nyāya-mukha), produced in an effort to establish what were the valid sources of knowledge.

See also

• Buddhist logic
• Critical Buddhism
• Dharmakirti
• Epistemology
• Vinītadeva

References

1. ^ P. 212 Contemplating reality: a practitioner's guide to the view in Indo-Tibetan By Andy Karr

• Frauwallner, Erich, Dignāga, sein Werk und seine Entwicklung. (Wiener Zeitschrift für die Kunde Süd- und Ostasiens 2:83-164, 1959)
• Hattori Masaaki, Dignāga, On Perception, being the Pratyakṣapariccheda of Dignāga's Pramāṇasamuccaya from the Sanskrit fragments and the Tibetan Versions (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1968)
• Hayes, Richard, Dignāga on the Interpretation of Signs (Dordrecht: Reidel Publishing Company, 1982)
• Katsura Shoryu, Dignāga and Dharmakīrti on apoha in E. Steinkellner ed., Studies in the Buddhist Epistemological Tradition (Vienna, Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1991), pp. 129-146
• Mookerjee, S. The Buddhist Philosophy of Universal Flux, an Exposition of the Philosophy of Critical Realism as expounded by the School of Dignāga (Calcutta, 1935)
• Sastri, N. Aiyaswami, Diṅnāga's Ālambanaparīkṣā and Vṛtti. Restored with the commentary of Dharmapāla into Sanskrit from the Tibetan and Chinese versions and edited with English translations and notes with extracts from Vinītadeva's commentary. (Madras: The Adyar Library. 1942)[1]
• Tucci, G The Nyāyamukha of Dignāga, the oldest Buddhist Text on Logic after Chinese and Tibetan Materials (Materialien zur Kunde des Buddhismus, 15 Heft, Heidelberg, 1930)
• Vidyabhusana, S.C. A History of Indian Logic - Ancient, Mediaeval and Modern Schools (Calcutta, 1921)

External references

• Dignaga's Logic of Invention, by Volker Peckhaus
• Das Rad der Gründe, German translation of The Wheel of Reason
• Vidhabhusana, Satis Chandra (1907). History of the Mediaeval School of Indian Logic. Calcutta University.

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