A Study and Translation of Nāgārjuna’s Yuktiṣaṣṭikā and Candrakīrti’s Yuktiṣaṣṭikāvṛtti

• Main Authors: A-Hua Hsu, 釋脩化
• Other Authors: 廖本聖
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2015
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/75h628

碩士 === 法鼓佛教學院 === 佛教學系 === 103 === Both traditional and modern academic scholarship regard the Yuktiṣaṣṭikā as one of the independent works included in the Yuktikāya collection. The Yuktikāya (known in English scholarship as “Collections of Reasonings”) comprises the major works by Nāgārjuna devoted to explain and explicitate the profound meaning of the Prajñāpāramita. But how many works are there in the Yuktikāya? Five or six? And which works are to be considered genuine part of the collection? Opinions vary. TSong kha pa admits that there are six works in the collection, and divides them into two categories. The first category comprises four works which describe the object of perception, while the second comprises two works concerned with the perceiver of the object. The Yuktiṣaṣṭikā belongs to the latter category. In the Rigs pa’i rgya mtsho, TSong kha pa gave a description of the core theme of each work in the Yuktikāya, so I introduce these six works based on the Rigs pa’i rgya mtsho’s description, and in this way I hope to pinpoint the status of Yuktiṣaṣṭikā in the context of the Yuktikāya. The Sanskrit text of Yuktiṣaṣṭikā is no longer extant. A few sections of the Yuktiṣaṣṭikā have been identified as textual quotations or cases of textual re-use in other Indian commentaries and works. The Yuktiṣaṣṭikā was translated into Chinese by Shihu during the Song Dynasty. However, Shihu’s rendering is not highly valued, and some scholars misunderstand its meaning. The Tibetan translation of the root text was carried out by Pa tshab between the eleventh and twelfth centuries. The only Indian commentary available for this work, the Yuktiṣaṣṭikāvṛtti, authored by Candrakīrti, whose Sanskrit original was considered lost until a few folios surfaced in 2014, was translated by Ye shes sDe in the eighth century. No translation of Candrakīrti’s commentary has been included in the Chinese Tripiṭaka. This commentary constitutes the most important and useful reference work for the study of Nāgārjuna’s Yuktiṣaṣṭikā. In my study I provide a modern Chinese translation of the Yuktiṣaṣṭikā and the Yuktiṣaṣṭikāvṛtti. I try to pinpoint the structural order and content sequence or concatenation underlying Nāgārjuna’s composition of the Yuktiṣaṣṭikā, in order to provide a basic study guide of the stanzas on the basis of Candrakīrti’s Yuktiṣaṣṭikāvṛtti, as well as rGyal tshab’s (1364–1431, one of TSong kha pa’s disciple) sub-commentary on Yuktiṣaṣṭikā originally composed in Tibetan. Upon closer analysis, several technical terms, such as dngos po (thing) , or rang bzhin (inherent existence or non-inherent existence), etc., appear to have been employed to render different terms in the Indian original, or to have been employed with multiple senses. I focus a selection of these terms as a contribution to clarify the Yuktiṣaṣṭikā and Yuktiṣaṣṭikāvṛtti doctrinal idiom. Because the deployment of some of these terms seems to presuppose the thought of Cittamātra, some scholars have ascribed Cittamātra positions to the Yuktiṣaṣṭikā, which stands in complete opposition to the Mādhyamika tenet of the intrinsic emptiness of dependent arising. By way of conclusion, I critically engage with this ascription and propose that these two thoughts are not discrepant at all in that they are both in accordance with the Prasaṅgika point of view. That is, the thought of Cittamātra is read in conformity with Madhyamaka