Notes on structure and textual criticism
Nāgārjuna in the Vigrahavyāvartanī is responding, as I’ve noted, to critics of his view of emptiness (also translated as “void”). The way that this particular prose work is structured involves twenty verses from his opponents–the last post was a translation of Verse 1–and thirty verses of Nāgārjuna responding.
After each verse comes several lengthy sentences expositing its meaning. So far, after skimming the English translation (as much as you can skim Nāgārjuna), many of the objections are restatements of the original point–that Nāgārjuna is involved in a serious self-contradiction when he states that “all things are void.”
The Motilal edition I have notes that the objections made against Nāgārjuna’s views are not all originating from the same opponent. Thus, while some of the verses are restating debates internal to Buddhism, others are objections from strands of Hinduism.
Finally, in terms of textual origins, there are three main texts that the translators rely upon. (I’m actually grateful for my time in seminary here, since we spent a lot of time in Greek dealing with textual variants and reading textual apparati!)
The first is a Sanskrit manuscript found in a Tibetan monastery: the manuscript was written in Tibetan characters, and there are problems with the grammar throughout. This is dated from the 12th century.
Another version is a Tibetan translation of the Sanskrit, also with corruption, in terms of omissions.
Finally, there is a Chinese translation, dated 541 AD (assumed to be a translation from the Sanskrit) which also has substantial problems with how it presents the kārikās (verses), but less so the commentary.
Recourse is also made to a French version of the Tibetan translation of the Sanskrit! You can imagine that determining which text to follow is a tremendously difficult question, one that I don’t foresee myself becoming an expert in.
I’ve been working on the commentary to the first kārikā, but won’t bore my readers with the minutiae of the arduous task. Rather, I’ll post some basic summary of the commentaries and confine my translation posts to the kārikās themselves.
Dru’s question, of what it means when we say that reality is not absolute, and of the limits of analytic language in grappling with this metaphysics, will be relevant throughout, especially since, in interpreting Nāgārjuna, there have been several main responses*, throughout the centuries:
- He is a mystic, writing in a way similar to the apophatic methods of St. John of the Cross and others. His messages is primarily soteriological, not metaphysical.
- He is a nihilist, trapped in his self-contradictions, and affirming an ultimate negation which leaves him with a kind of illusionism, one that is untenable and impossible to sustain.
- He is making metaphysical and epistemological points about the limits of language and philosophy, but using language and philosophy to do so. This is a philosophy of limits and does not imply irrationality (i.e. mysticism) or nihilism (i.e. illusionism).
The third option is the one I’m most familiar with, having been introduced to Nāgārjuna through Graham Priest and Jay Garfield, as well as Mark Siderits. Priest, of course, finds #3 particularly interesting as it supports his own approach to logic.
As I’ve been working through the class at the Newberry Library on mysticism (Christian primarily, although we did explore Abhishiktananda’s synthesis of Advaita and Catholicism), option #1 has been prominent in my mind as well and I wonder whether #1 and #3 are necessarily in conflict. Option #2 seems–so far in my reading–to be the age-old attack upon Nāgārjuna that he must somehow escape. It is, in fact, the concern of his interlocutors in this prose work, a work that Harsh Narain (who I’ve mentioned before), continually cites. He claims Nāgārjuna never fully answers the complaints of his opponents.
This is what I’d like to find out for myself this summer. Stay tuned.
*I’m sure there are other categories that can be developed, especially in regard to internal Buddhist debates about Nāgārjuna’s method. However, from my reading, these seem to be the major ones.
Arbitrary Chatter:
Aaron Boyden: Well, back when I was an... Aaron Boyden: The evaluation of historical... Loden Jinpa: thanks Richard: Thanks Colleen — let me just add... Loden Jinpa: >Finally, I just read the draft...