NAGARJuNA'S PHILOSOPHY Kimura Historical SlJIdy of HrnayiItul and M4hJyiItul and the Origin of MahilyiItul Buddhism, by Ryukan - Kimura, Calcutta Uni- A versity, 1927 Majjh Majjhima Mieaya, edd V Trenelaier and Lord vols Pall TeXt Society London 1888-1899 Chaliners Masuda Origin and Doctrines of&/y Indian Buddhist Schools (a trans lation of Vasumitra's Treatise with annotations) Asia Minor, vol II 1925 pp 1-78 PalfcavimJati Pailcavimiati-sahasrikiI PriJjFfiIparamiM, eel Na1;naksba Dun (Calcutta Oriental Series, o 28) London, 1934 N PrasannapaJa see Samyu Samyufta NikiIya, ed L Feer S vots Pall Text London 1884-1898 SiIstra T Kari!w The MahiI-prajRiipiIramitJ-Slstra of N5glrjuna 1509 vol 25, pp S7A-7S6C jiva) T Soci ty e (tr Kumlra TaislrO-shinshu-t/aizokyo (*:iEfifl*••) eel Takakusu and 192Z-1933 Watanabe Tokyo Vibh;;� , Abhidharma-mahiI-vibhiI!iI-siIstr4 (tr vol 27 pp 1-1004 Hsilan-csapg) T IS4S (JOURNALS): Orissa jBORS Journal of Bihar and Rese;u-ch Society (later since 1943 Journal of Bihar Research Society) Pama ]PTS Journal of Pali Text Society London, published for the Society of the Oxford University Press JRAS Jo u rnal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland London 12 PREFAC E The present work as indicated in the title is devoted primarily to a study of the Maha-prajiiiparamita-siistra (* .rt: •• T 1509, vol XXV, pp 57a-7S6c) (abbreviated in the present work as the Siistra) which is Prajiiiparamita-siitra of 25,000 gtithiis, the Paii caviri.satisihasriki Pr'!;iiaparamita The Siistra is the most comprehensive a commentary on the work of those traditionally attributed to Nagarjuna, the well known teacher of the Madhyamika philosophy or the philosophy of the Middle Way This work is lost in its original.md is preserved only in its Chinese translation Professor Etienne Lamotte has rendered into French the first eighteen of the one hundred chapters (chiian) of this tex t (Le Traite de la Grande Vertu de Sagesse, vols 1& II, pub! 1944 and 1949, Bureaux du Museon, Louvain) It is a magnificent work that Professor Lamotte has done, which he has furnishe d with cop ious literary and historical notes This work of Professor Lamotte has been of great help to me My present work, however, is a philosophical study in tended to give as far as possible an objective and complete picture of the Madhyamika philosophy as it can be gathered from the whole of this text Professor Lamotte has advanced arguments to doubt Nagarj un a' s authorship of the Sastra These arguments have not persuaded me and I be lieve that cogent arguments can be made in favour of the tradi tional vie w I prefer, however to postpone such arguments to a later date as they could not aid but would detract from the aim of the present work, which is to set forth the basic philosophical conceptions found in I hope that it will appear to the reader as it has appe ared to me that the basic cep tions of the Sistra constitute a natural continua tion and deve lopment of those found in the well known works of Na the Siistra garjuna like the Midhyamika-kariki (abbreviated in the pres ent work 13 NAGARJUNA'S PHILOSOPHY as Karika) and the Vigrahavyavartani If so, my retaining of the tradi tional attribution can be justified even if one cannot settle the tangled question of its author�hip As Professor Dernieville has observed, this text seems to have sunk into oblivion in India, supplanted by the texts of the quickly rising school of Yogacara-vijiianavada.1 Perhaps the height of metaphysics to which the Sastra rises was felt to be too great for lesser minds Anyway the con structive metaphysics which the Yogacara-vijiianavada offered on ab solutist lines based on the teachings of the Buddha seems to have grown in popularity Hardly a reference to the Sastra can be found in the Buddhist texts now available in their original Sanskrit versions In China, during the two hundred years between Kumarajiva and Hsiian-tsang the Sastra was much studied and was extensively in use But after the time of Hsiian-tsang, with the introduction of Vijiianavada it was little regarded as a source book of Buddhist philosophy of the Mahayana tradition Even where it was in use it was mixed with the constructive metaphysical system of Yogacara-vijiianavada It was Kumarajiva who introduced Nagarjuna and the Madhyarnika philosophy to China Kumarajiva was a native of Kucha born in 343/ 344 A.D of an Indian father and a mother who was a princess of the Kucha royal family.! It was Kumarajiva's mother who took him to Kasmir for education in Buddhist lore, where he studied Sarvastivada under Ban dhudatta; three years later he was introduced to Mahayana by Buddha yasas in Kashgar The fame of Kumaraj iva as a Buddhist scholar induced the ruler ofCh'in to bring him to his country However he was detained by the ruler of Liang (in modern Kansu) in his capital, Ku-tsang Ku marajiva lived there for nearly seventeen years Then in 401/402 A.D he was brought as a captive to the Ch'in capital, Ch'ang-an, under the rule of Emperor Yao-hsing by whom he was received with great respect Kumarajiva was fifty-eight when he carne to Ch' ang-an He remained in China the resC of his life.s The Emperor Yao-hsing not only held him in high esteem but himself took active part in the study and transla non of Buddhist texts Kumarajiva had a great number of disciples of whom there were ten chief ones Among these were Seng-chao ffUi (384-414), Tao-sheng ii1: (d 434) and Scng-jui f.� He had also a fa14 PREFACE v iz., I-Iui-yuan lIlJj (334-416), who was a disciple of Tao-an :il'ti: (312-385) The correspondence between Kumarajiva and Hui-yuan is preserved in the Chinese Tripitaka: *� mous Buddhist scholar as his friend, *.Ut, T 1856 As a scholar, Kumarajiva ' s principal work seems to have been the translation of Buddhist texts; he seems to have written scarcely any inde pendent treatise of his own We are told that he did wr ite a text calle d Shih-hsiang-Iun ":fr:IBIfti (The Treatise on the Real Nature of Things) at the request of the Emperor Yao-hsing, but it is not extant His oral ex (T 1775), however, have come planations of the Vimalak'irtinirdda down to us through Seng-