Review of Literature

The Epistemological works of Diṅnāga and Dharmakīrti were commented by different later Buddhist scholars, such as Dharmottara, Śāntarakṣita, Kamalaśīla, Jñānaśrīmita and Ratnakīrti. Many of Buddhist Epistemological works have been translated and introduced to many academic field by different scholars from different places of the world. Buddhist epistemology has received the greatest attention of different Eastern and Western scholars.

Some of important works are as follow:

1. Buddhist Logic, vol. I-II, Th. Stcherbatsky, New York: Dover, 1962.

2. Early Buddhist Theory of Knowledge, K.N. Jayatilleke, London: Allen and Unwin, 1963.

3. Dignāga, On Perception, Hattori, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1968.

4. Buddhist logic and epistemology: Studies in the Buddhist analysis of inference and language. Edited by B.K. Matilal and R.D. Evans, Dodrdrecht: Reidel Publishing Company, 1986.

5. Dignaga on the Interpretation of Signs, R. Hayes, London: Kluwer Academic Publisher, 1988.

6. Studies in the Buddhist epistemological tradition. Proceedings of the Second International Dharmakīrti Conference, Vienna, June 11-16, 1989. Edited by E. Steinkellner, Wien: Verlag der Ӧsterreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1991.

7. Dharmakīrti’s thought and its impact on Indian and Tibetan philosophy. Proceedings of the Third international Dharmakirti Conference, Hiroshima, November 4-6, 1997. Edited by S. Katsura, Wien: Ӧsterreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften 1999.

8. Recognizing Reality: Dharmakīrti’s Philosophy and Its Tibetan Interpretations, G.B.J, Dreyfus, New York: State University of New York Press, 1997.

9. Buddhist Epistemology, S.R. Bhatt & A. Mehrotra, Westport: Greenwood, 2000.

10. Foundations of Dharmakīrti’s Philosophy, J.D. Dunne, Boston: Wisdom, 2004.

11. Walking along the Paths of Buddhist Epistemology, M. Chattopadhyay, New Delhi: D. K. Print world, 2007.

The above works are related to different aspects of Buddhist Epistemology. Jayatilleke’s work can be called a masterpiece that deals with the theory of knowledge in pre-Buddhist Indian schools and its influence on Buddhist Philosophy. It is a great work of Indian Philosophy. However, it is, as mentioned in its title, restricted to Early Buddhism. Buddhist logic of Th. Stcherbatsky is a complete and valuable work to study Buddhist logic with special reference to Dharmakirti’s Nyāyabinduṭikā. Stcherbatsky is the first Buddhist thinker who compares Buddhist epistemology with Western epistemology. Hattori and then Hayes attempt to show various explanations of Diṅnāga with the help of translations of some important chapters of Pramāṇasamuccaya. Their works have enlightened many students on the related subjects.

B.K. Matilal is one of the brilliant and skilled Indian thinkers who made an important contribution to the study of Indian Logic and epistemology. In modern age, for the first time he edited a comprehensive work on Buddhist logic and epistemology. This work is contributed by seventeen scholars from all over the world. The work consisted of many articles and most of the articles of this work were delivered in a seminar conducted by him in oxford (1982). When this seminar got success, after it a number of continuous conferences on Dharmakīrti’s philosophy were conducted in Europe and Japan, the papers presented in the second and third conference were edited by Steinkellner and Katsura. For Dharmakīrti’s philosophy, these books are useful.

S.R. Bhatt & A. Mehrotra’s work is a simply a text book that deals with general aspects of Buddhist epistemology. This work defines Pre-Diṅnāga’s epistemology in brief. Dreyfus’s and Dunne’s works on Dharmakīrti are their Ph.D theses which they revised.

Dreyfus provides a philosophical survey on Dharmakīrti’s philosophy from the point of view of Tibetan masters on the other hand Dunne re-analyse Dharmakīrti’s philosophy from a new perspective. Chattopadyay’s work deals with salient features of Buddhist epistemology.

Apart from the original works of Diṅnāga and Dharmakīrti, these works of contemporary thinkers are valuable source materials for anyone who wants to learn the nature of Buddhist school of epistemology as well as the position of this system in oriental philosophy.

In Nyāya School of thought, the important works on epistemology are Nyāya-Sūtra, Nyāya-mañjari, Tarkasaṃgraha etc. Besides these original texts there are some other important works on Nyāya epistemology. Such as “The Nyāya theory of knowledge”, by S.C. Chatterjee is a masterpiece on Nyāya Epistemology. The work discusses the history of the Nyāya philosophy that starts with the Nyāya-sūtra of Gautama and ends with the syncretic works of Annam Bhaṭṭa and others. Along with Nyāya Epistemology, it also covers other philosophical schools, their views and criticism.

The other important works on Nyāya theory of knowledge are Jha’s “Nyāya Philosophy of Gautama”, S. Radhakrishnan’s “Indian Philosophy”. Jha’s work covers all epistemological as well as metaphysical aspect of Nyāya School while S. Radhakrishnan’s work is simply a text book that discusses philosophy of all Indian schools, i.e. from Cārvāka to Vedanta. C. D. Bijalwan’s “Indian Theory of knowledge

Based upon Jayanta’s Nyāyamañjari” is also a great work on Nyāya. This work is his Ph.D theses which he improved and revised. The work basically deals with Jayanta’s theory of knowledge. He attempted to co-ordinate, compare and evaluate the answers provided by different Indian scholars to the questions related to nature, locus, forms, and sources of knowledge.