• Bhartṛhari
{Bût~tRa.ha.ri.}
• Deconstruction • Grammatology • Jacques Derrida • Madhyamaka • Nāgārjuna • Tartaria tablets
• Vajrayana Buddhism
{waiz~za ya.na.}sp-writ.htm
by Harold G. Coward, in Philosophy East and West,
Vol. 41, No. 2 (1991), pp.141-162, Univ. of Hawaii Press.
http://ccbs.ntu.edu.tw/FULLTEXT/JR-PHIL/ew95321.htm 071115 , 101130
Downloaded and edited by U Kyaw Tun, M.S. (I.P.S.T., U.S.A.). Not for sale. Prepared for students of TIL Computing and Language Center, Yangon, MYANMAR
index.htm | |Top
lang-thot-indx.htm
Introduction
Derrida's Deconstruction of the Priority of
Speech over Writing
Language as Manifested in Derrida and
Bhartṛhari
Language as a Means for Spiritual
Realization
Conclusion
H.G. Coward's notes
UKT note
• Bhartṛhari
{Bût~tRa.ha.ri.}
• Deconstruction
• Grammatology
• Jacques Derrida
• Madhyamaka
•
Nāgārjuna • Tartaria tablets
• Vajrayana Buddhism
{waiz~za ya.na.}
Noteworthy passages in this file: (always check with
the original section from which they are taken.)
• Derrida makes the utterly surprising move of seeming to go in the opposite
direction -- of identifying the essence of language with writing.
• [According to HG Coward] Indian philosophy has been even
more emphatic than Western thought with regard to the priority
of the oral over the written. The tradition in both Hindu
and Buddhist philosophy has been to correct the written
text with the oral. [UKT - I am contesting the position of
HG Coward with regard to Buddhist philosophy. ]
Contents of this page
Philosophy East and West, Vol. 41:2 (1991), p141
[{p141begins}]
A question suggested by Professor T. R. V. Murti in his 1963
Presidential Address to the All India Philosophical Congress
focused on the status of the spoken word within language.
(fn01) Murti points out that
for Indian thinkers, language was primarily the spoken
word or speaking itself (vāk). However, this definition
of language does not identify it with the overt sounds produced
physiologically or with the written signs which are merely
phonetic copies of the spoken sounds. In fact, said Murti,
"the distinction between śabda (Word) and
dhvani (Sound) is basic to the Indian philosophy of
language. To identify them, to take the physical sound as
the word, is a category mistake."
(fn02) [UKT ¶ ]
Skt-Dev: शब्द śabda (= श ब ् द ) m. sound - SpkSkt
Pal-Myan:{þûd~da.} -
- UHS-PMD0963
Skt-Dev: ध्वनि dhvani (= ध ् व न ि ) -- implied meaning, vocal. m. allusion, echo, tone, hint - SpkSkt
UKT: To understand the above passage clearly, we need to define 'language'. To me 'language' is a means of interspecies communication using syntax. Language is different from 'animal calls' which lack syntax. Language is transmitted from a human-mouth to a human-ear using sound waves the frequency and velocity of which can be measured with physical instruments. Interspecies communication can be made by using sign languages which use visible light. The sender makes various movements with primarily with his hands, which the receiver sees with her eye. - UKT101130
With this contention Jacques Derrida agrees. It is Derrida's contention that virtually the whole of Western metaphysics from Plato to Rousseau and Levi-Strauss has made the category mistake of identifying language or logos with the spoken word. (fn03) But whereas for Murti , the category mistake was in taking the outer sound [UKT: sound waves] instead of the inner word [UKT: 'meaning' and probably including 'telepathic messages' and such which could be understood only by the sender and receiver] to be the essence of language, Derrida makes the utterly surprising move of seeming to go in the opposite direction -- of identifying the essence of language with writing. [UKT ¶ ]
UKT: Sound is transitory, whereas writing or script is permanent. The Bur-Myan addage "
/
" literally meaning 'reading is just sound/writing is correct' can be re-interpreted as "speech is just transitory sound, but script or writing stays permanent". I am now writing from what usually had happened between my father, my mother and myself in our very close knit family. When my mother repeated what my father had said, she would just tell me what she had thought my father had said. When I checked with my father on actually what had been said, my father would sometimes say exactly the opposite of what my mother had said. I am not saying my mother had lied: she had interpreted, sometimes with her own explanatory additions, what my father had said. And my father would say, "Next time you better write it down." The essence of language may or may not be identifiable with writing, but there is a practical advantage of writing over speech. It is especially so, when writing is done in a phonemic script. Written Burmese speech in Myanmar script (Bur-Myan) has remained almost unchanged over centuries because the Myanmar script is a phonemic script, and we had literally "worshipped" our script. I remember in my school days, when I was going to a vernacular school, we were not allowed to step over a book which had Myanmar writing in it. And if a child had accidentally step over it, he was made to kow-tow it. - UKT101130
While Murti was challenging naturalistic schools of philosophy such as the Buddhists, Derrida confronts both the logocentric position (which Murti represents), as well as the Buddhists. [UKT ¶ ]
UKT: The word 'Buddhist' always makes me uneasy. There are two major schools of Buddhism, the Mahayana
{ma.ha ya-na.} and the Hinayana
{hi.na. ya-na.} (aka Theravada
{hté-ra. wa-da.}): both ending in the suffix
{ya-na.} 'vehicle' . Some would include a third Vajrayāna
{waiz~za} are supposed to be super-humans who had gone through the physical death
{htwak-rûp pauk} but continued living in the mental state. An example of Bur-Myan {waiz~za} is
{Bo:Bo:aung}. -- UKT101130
Skt-Devan: वज्रयान vajrayāna - n. One of the three major Buddhist schools - SpkSkt
*Pal-Myan:- UHS-PMD0877
The Mahayanists are Sanskrit oriented where the exact sound with short and long vowels are of great importance. The Theravadims following the early traditions of Buddhism, and the Burmese-Buddhists who claim themselves to be Theravadims, hold that what matters most is the Anatta
{a.nût~ta.} doctrine which places emphasis on change. So the question is to find out what the historical Buddha had in mind on the question of "short and long" vowels and the exact sounds. The following are supposed to be Buddha's own words (in Cullavagga, V. 33. 1):
See 'Language Problem of Primitive Buddhism' by Chi Hisen-lin, which first appeared in Journal of the Burma Research Society, XLIII, i, June 1960. A photocopy of the original paper from JBRS was made available to me by Daw Papa Aung, lecturer in Pali, Yangon University, in 2005.The article is quoted in http://www.chibs.edu.tw/publication/LunCong/004/69_90.htm 080822
In the same paper we find:
Now there were two Bhikkhus surnamed Yamelutekula, who were brothers born in a Brahman family. They had good voice and were expert in conversation. They came to the presence of the Blessed One, to whom they paid their homage and sat aside. After having taken their seat, the two Bhikkhus said to the Blessed One,
"Bhante, now the Bhikkhus with different family names and personal names, of different social ranks and families, have come to join the Order. With their own vernaculars they have marred the Buddha's words. Please permit us to express the Buddha's words in Sanskrit."
The Buddha reproached them, saying,
"You fools, how dare you say, 'Please permit us to express the Buddha's words in Sanskrit!' Fools, by doing so you could neither induce those who did not have faith in the Buddha to have faith in him, nor could you enhance the faith of those who already had it in the Buddha. You could only help those who did not believe in the Buddha and change the mind of those who already believed in him."
After having reprimanded them, he preached the Dhamma for them, and then said to the Bhikkhus,
"Bhikkhus, you are not allowed to express the Buddha's words in Sanskrit. Those who act contrarily will be considered as having committed the offence of Dukkata
{doak~ka.Ta.}."
For
when Derrida describes language as "writing" he not only means that writing is
prior to the spoken reflection of the inner logos, but also that language is not
merely a sort of external speaking or writing as the Buddhists suggest. What
Derrida attempts is a
deconstruction or self-analysis of language that exposes
the mistake of a reductionism in either direction, inward to the divine logos or
outward to the conventional sign. In his desire to escape all philosophical
oppositions such as ''inner" versus "outer," Derrida subtly states his position:
"language is not merely a sort of writing 'but' a possibility founded on the
general possibility of writing."
(fn04) For
Derrida, as we shall see, "writing" characterizes both the "inner" and the
"outer" word in dynamic interrelationship, which, at points, bears striking
similarity with the Indian philosophy of language put forth by
Bhartṛhari
{Bût~tRa.ha.ri.} in his Vākyapadīya.
(fn05)
Indian philosophy has been even more emphatic than Western thought with regard to the priority of the oral over the written. The tradition in both Hindu and Buddhist philosophy has been to correct the written text with the oral. [UKT ¶ ]
UKT: The Burmese-Myanmar position is:
It is the oral word, carefully memorized, guarded by the discipline of the Prātiśākhyas, (fn06) and passed down from teacher to student through succeeding generations that has remained authoritative in India. (fn07) Thus Derrida's proposition that writing is prior, not secondary, to [{p141end/p142begin}] speech will seem at first blush to be quite incredible. Even the West, with its greater stress on the written, has generally accepted the historical priority of oral languages to writing and so finds Derrida's thesis to be outrageous. However, recent research by Andre Leroi-Gourhan on the marks associated with cave paintings, and by Alexander Marshack on the possibility of calendrical markings on prehistoric bone implements, in the discovery of the Tartaria Tablets, raises fundamental questions about our dating of the invention of writing to Sumer, around 3100 B.C. (fn08) Derrida cites this evidence as an initial reason for why we should take him seriously. [{UKT ¶]
UKT: Man as soon as he started passing on oral messages (language with syntax) might have started making "marks" and scratches to represent his oral messages. Therefore, the idea that speech came before script may not be just right. With this remark I must question the idea that "writing was invented in Sumer around 3100 B.C.". Writing probably was invented all over the globe. If it had been done on perishable materials like palm leaves, it would not have survived over centuries. -- UKT101130
But his real point has nothing to do with the historical priority of the written. His proposition that writing is prior to speech is simply part of his Nāgārjuna-like tactic of exposing the weakness of a position by turning its own stratagems against itself. (fn09) By reversing the usual speech/writing hierarchical opposition, which has obtained in the West since Socrates and throughout Indian thought, Derrida's ultimate aim is to counter the simple choice of one of the terms over the other -- to escape the system of metaphysical opposition that has dominated much Western and Indian philosophy. "Writing" for Derrida is not just the inscription of words on paper or computer program, but includes the neuronal traces in the brain which Freud identifies as memory, (fn10) and indeed is the active moment of differentiation which is the creative force of all language. (fn11) Derrida even playfully alludes to DNA as a "writing" or trace present in all living substances. Writing and its originary trace begins to sound like the saṁskāras or originary memory traces of traditional karma theory. Derrida's initial aim in all of this is to deconstruct the traditional priority accorded speech (and its logocentric metaphysics of presence) over writing.
In relating Derrida's critique to Indian philosophy and, in particular to Bhartṛhari, we will examine: (1) Derrida's deconstruction of the logocentric priority of speech over writing, (2) language as manifested in Derrida and Bhartṛhari, and (3) language as a means for spiritual realization.
Derrida follows Nietzsche and Heidegger (and perhaps implicitly Nāgārjuna in Indian philosophy) in elaborating a critique or "metaphysics," by which he means not only the Western philosophical tradition but everyday thought and language as well.
Western thought, says Derrida, has always been structured in terms of dichotomies or polarities: good vs. evil, being vs. nothingness, presence vs. absence, truth vs. error, identity vs. difference, mind vs. matter, man vs. woman, soul vs. body, life vs. death, nature vs. culture, speech vs. writing. (fn12)
These opposites, however, have not been seen as equal entities. The second term is always put in the position of being a fallen or corrupted version of the first. Thus evil is the lack of good, absence is the lack of [{p142end/p143 begin}] presence, error is a distortion of truth, and difference is an obstruction of identity. The two terms are not held in an opposing tension but are placed in a hierarchical order which gives the first term priority both in time and quality. The general result has been the privileging of unity, identity, and temporal and spatial presence over diversity, difference, and deferment in space and time. Thus Western philosophy (and much of Indian philosophy) has answered the question of the nature of being in terms of presence.
Within this broad context, Derrida's critique of Western metaphysics focuses on the privileging of the spoken over the written word. As we have already noted, this same privileging of speech over writing has characterized Indian thought. Barbara Johnson, one of Derrida's translators, clearly summarizes his analysis of the privileging of speech as follows:
The spoken word is given a higher value because the speaker and listener are both present to the utterance simultaneously. There is no temporal or spatial distance between speaker, speech, and listener, since the speaker hears himself speak at the same moment as the listener does. This immediacy seems to guarantee the notion that in the spoken word we know what we mean, mean what we say, say what we mean and know what we have said. Whether or not perfect understanding always occurs in fact, this image of perfectly self-present meaning is, according to Derrida, the underlying ideal of Western culture. (fn13)
Derrida calls this belief in the self-presentation of meaning "Logocentricism," from the Greek logos (speech, logic, reason, the Word of God). Writing, from the logocentric perspective, is seen as a secondary representation of speech to be used when speaking is impossible. The writer puts thought on paper, distancing it from the immediacy of speech and enabling it to be read by someone far away, even after the writer's death. All of this is seen as a corruption of the self-presence of meaning, an opening of meaning to forms of corruption which the presence of speech would have prevented. (fn14) Derrida's critique is not aimed at reversing this value system, and showing writing to be superior to speech. Rather, his critique attempts to dissect the whole system of metaphysical opposition upon which the speech versus writing debate is grounded. In so doing, Derrida finds that both speech and writing are beginninglessly structured by difference and distance. The very experience of meaning is itself an experience of difference, and this difference is shown by Derrida to inhabit the very heart of what appears to be immediate and present. In his commentary on Freud's "mystic writing-pad" Derrida shows that difference is present even in the structures of the unconscious. (fn15) The apparent experience of a unitary self-presence of meaning and consciousness is found to arise from the repression of the differential struc-[{p143end/p144begin}]-tures from which they spring. (fn16) Logocentricism deconstructed is shown to depend on difference, and difference, in both time and space, to be characteristic of speech as well as writing.
Before examining Derrida's deconstruction of logocentricism in detail, let us see if there are schools of Indian philosophy that fit into the logocentric category and are thus subject to Derrida's critique. Within the āstika or Orthodox traditions certainly the Sāṁkhya/Yoga, Vedanta, and Nyāya schools are structured in terms of polarities such as identity versus difference, soul or self versus matter/māyā, truth versus error, and so forth, in which the second term of the pair is always of a lower status. Ontological Being/Presence/Consciousness is identified with the first term of the pair. All also venerate speech over writing, perhaps even more strongly than is the case with Western philosophy. There is also a valuing of phonetic speech and writing over nonphonetic languages, such as Chinese. Pāṇini's Aṣṭādhyāyī or Grammar is based on the sound of spoken Sanskrit, (fn17) and is thus a prime candidate for what Derrida calls "phonocentricism," which is open to all the criticisms of logocentricism. (fn18) [UKT ¶]
The negative status given to writing in the West is paralleled and accentuated in the Indian tradition. Scribes in India have had a low status and the texts they write are judged to be very unreliable. The written is valued only as a teaching aid for those too dull to remember. In fact the very act of writing was held to be ritually polluting in a late Vedic text -- the Aitareya āraṇyaka 5.5.3 states that a pupil should not recite the Veda after eating meat, seeing blood or a dead body, having intercourse or engaging in writing. (fn19) Clearly the āstika or Orthodox schools of Indian philosophy (with the exception of the Grammarian school, which will be discussed later) largely share the same logocentric biases toward Being and Speech and against writing as those located by Derrida in Western metaphysics. Nor do the nāstika or Heterodox schools escape Derrida's net. Jainism strongly shares in the soul/matter dialectic and, like Buddhism, agrees that language is merely conventional and cannot touch the real. This complete separation of speech from the real (most extreme in the Mādhyamika negation of speech into silence) is attacked by Derrida as being just as unsatisfactory as the extreme logocentric position, with its identification of speech with the real. It is not just the logocentric view which Derrida criticizes, but any philosophy which privileges one opposite or extreme over the other. Derrida's net of deconstructive critique would then seem to be as potentially devastating to Indian philosophy as it is to Western philosophy. The one school that may escape Derrida, by having prefigured much of his critique, is the Grammarian school, especially in its formulation by Bhartṛhari. Let us now test out this suggestion as we examine Derrida's deconstruction of logocentricism.
Both Derrida and Bhartṛhari agree that since philosophy must be done [{p144end/p145begin}] in language, literary analysis is as important as, and perhaps more important than, logical analysis. As Derrida puts it, philosophers have been able to impose their various conceptual systems only by ignoring or suppressing the disruptive effects of language. (fn20) Bhartṛhari in Vākyapadīya I:14 describes grammar as the "purifier of all the sciences." It is through the use of correct forms of language -- as identified by the Grammarians -- that philosophic or any other kind of knowledge can be obtained. Both Bhartṛhari and Derrida break down the barrier between literary criticism and philosophy.
If all knowledge comes through language, is there a source or ground of language which is outside of or beyond language? Does language depend on something else -- God, the logos, Brahman? The answer for both Derrida and Bhartṛhari is "no." [UKT ¶ ]
In Bhartṛhari's Vākyapadīya the Absolute is the Śabdatattva, the Word-Principle, and therefore is not something apart from or beyond language. Derrida establishes his "no" by deconstructing the point of view that has dominated metaphysics: namely, that a separate Being or Presence is immediately reflected in speech and then given a secondary representation in writing. Derrida deconstructs this argument as it is presented in Plato, Rousseau, and others, by finding writing, when understood as diffèrance, to contain all of spoken language, and all inscribed language. This of course requires an enlarged concept of writing. In his reading of the Phaedrus, Derrida locates the basis for such an enlarged view of writing in Plato's own text. Whereas Western philosophy has seen writing in the Phaedrus as being an orphan unable to communicate knowledge, Derrida finds evidence for a second kind of writing at 276a of the Phaedrus:
Socrates: But now tell me, is there another sort of discourse that is brother to written speech, but of unquestioned legitimacy? Can we see how it originates, and how much better and more effective it is than the other?
Phaedrus: What sort of discourse have you now in mind, and what is its origin?
Socrates: The sort that goes together with knowledge, and is written in the soul of the learner, that can defend itself, and knows to whom it should speak and to whom it should say nothing.
Phaedrus: Do you mean the discourse of a man who really knows which is living and animate? Would it be fair to call the written discourse only a kind of ghost (eidolon) of it?
Socrates: Precisely... (fn21)
In this passage Derrida finds evidence for a deconstruction or reversal of the usual Platonic view of writing:
While presenting writing as a false brother -- traitor, infidel, and simulacrum -- Socrates is for the first time led to envision the brother of this brother, the legitimate one, as another sort of writing: not merely as knowing, living, animate discourse, but as an inscription of truth in the soul. (fn22)
[{p145end/p146begin}]
This other sort of writing, written on the soul of the learner, is called the trace (fn23) or arche-writing (fn24) (fn24)by Derrida, and is seen as the dynamic source of both speech and external writing. The necessity of arche-writing or trace being composed of the movement of difference is established in Derrida's analysis of another dialogue, Philebus (17 a-b). Here Socrates notes that although the sound or cry which we first speak is one, it also possesses an unlimited variety of different sounds. (fn25) It is only through a limiting and mastering of the differences that understanding is obtained. Difference and relation are irreducible, says Derrida, and are designated as "writing" by Plato. (fn26) Derrida goes on to observe that all of this wisdom of Socrates, though originally spoken, comes to us only because it is written down after his death.
Derrida also establishes the need for the inner trace or arche-writing by a critique of Saussure's linguistic theory. For Saussure, the basis of language is found in the natural bond of the signified (concept or sense) to the spoken word of which the written linage is a contamination. (fn27) But Saussure suggests that language can be best understood by an analogy to both the form and content of writing. Saussure finds that "difference" is the source of linguistic values. (fn28) It is precisely this general movement of difference, says Derrida, that is the arche-writing or trace which contains within it the possibility for all oral and written language. Speech and writing are expressions of one and the same language. Arche-writing is nothing but dynamic expressive difference. It does not depend on sound or writing, but is the condition for such sound and writing. Although it does not exist, its possibility is anterior to all expressions (signified/signifier, content/expression, and so forth). This intrinsic diffèrance, concludes Derrida, permits the articulation of speech and writing, and founds the metaphysical opposition between signifier and signified. Diffèrance is therefore the formation of form and the being imprinted of the imprint. (fn29)
Instead of the term arche-writing or trace, Bhartṛhari uses the term Śabdatattva or Word-Principle. (fn30) Brahman, the Word-Principle, is without beginning or end. Although proclaimed to be one, it is divided by the function of its inherent powers. In particular it is through the sequencing power of time (kāla) that the Word-Principle manifests itself in the expressive activity of language, which becomes the model for all other activity. (fn31) This activity is seen as a real manifestation and not as a merely apparent (Śaṅkara's understanding of vivartate) activity. Bhartṛhari states:
Knowers of tradition (the Vedas) have declared that all this is the transformation [pariṇāmaḥ] of the word. It is from the chandas [hymns of the Vedas] that this universe has evolved. (fn32)
"Here the term pariṇāmaḥ is used to describe the same process which is described in I.1 by vivartate." (fn33) Writing at the end of the fifth century A.D., [{p146end/p147begin}] Bhartṛhari does not speak in terms of causality such as typify Śaṅkara's later debates, but emphasizes the marvelous activity by which the multiple universe is manifested out of the one Word-Principle or Śabdatattva. (fn34) For our present purposes the important point is that for Bhartṛhari, Brahman, as the Word-Principle, is an intrinsically dynamic and expressive reality, and that language (and all of the universe) is its manifestation through the process of temporal becoming. (fn35) Like Derrida, Bhartṛhari also uses the notion of a beginningless trace which is inherent in consciousness. Unlike Derrida, however, Bhartṛhari discusses the trace of speech in relation to previous births.
This residual trace of speech has no beginning and it exists in every one as a seed in the mind. It is not possible that it should be the result of the effort of any person. Movements of the articulatory organs by children are not due to instruction by others but are known through intuition. (fn36)
Iyer notes that the term pratibhāgamyāḥ used here stands (1) for the residual traces of language use in previous births, and (2) for the faculty of speech with which the child is born and for the child's instinct toward activating these traces in human life situations. (fn37) The next verse makes clear that such instinctual traces are inherently involved in all cognition, for "There is no cognition in the world in which the word does not figure. All knowledge is, as it were, intertwined with the word." (fn38)
As was the case for Derrida, Bhartṛhari sees the inherent trace consciousness of language as conditioning all psychic experience from deep sleep to dreams, to ordinary awareness and even to mystical states (states in which there is a direct supersensuous perception of the meaning-whole or sphoṭa). In the dream state, says Bhartṛhari, the only difference is that the seeds or traces of language function in a more subtle manner. (fn39) It seems evident that Derrida's development of Freud's thought would be easily accommodated within Bhartṛhari. Just as Derrida finds the psychological mechanism behind the Western experience of an unchanging logos, presence, or Self to be the suppression of the experience of difference within the psyche, so Bhartṛhari rejects other Indian schools who equate the experience of Self with something external to consciousness and language. "[The Self] exists within in every individual, but appears to be external." (fn40) For Bhartṛhari, and it would seem for Derrida, the experience of Self is the unobstructed experience of Śabdatattva or arche-writing manifested in the temporal dynamic of language. Obstacles to this experience are identified as the incorrect understanding and use of language forms and the "ego-knots" that such impure usage produces. (fn41)
Not being part of the Western debate over the opposition between speech and writing as sparked by Socrates in the Phaedrus, Bhartṛhari gives only passing reference to the status of writing -- and then only to [{p147end/p148begin}] identify texts whose authors are known as opposed to texts considered to be without an author (apauruṣey.). When he does refer to it, as in Vākyapadīya I:132, Bhartṛhari uses the term āgama. In his review of this verse and others where āgama is used, Iyer concludes that what is meant is simply a text composed by some writer, in contrast to śruti or Vedic texts, which are said to be without authors. The contrast is not between written and spoken -- as is the case for Derrida -- but between texts whose authors are known and texts that are considered to be without any author. (fn42) Although the Vedas may be written, they are, like consciousness, eternal and so do not depend on any human author. (fn43) They are the criterion manifestation of the Śabdatattva and do not depend on being written down by any human author for their preservation. For those who cannot see the meaning of the Vedas, the composing of commentaries, through the use of reason which divides up the unitary meaning of the sentence, is done for teaching purposes or for the benefit of those who can only see superficially. (fn44) Bhartṛhari, however, agrees with Derrida that one benefit of āgama is that when teachers or authors die, their words continue and serve as the seed basis for the formation of further tradition. (fn45) Overall, there is no doubt that texts composed by authors, like authorless speech, are a manifestation of the Śabdatattva for Bhartṛhari. For both, however, the temporal transformation of the originating source of language through speech and writing is seen to be continuous. If Bhartṛhari were here today, and able to understand Derrida's thought, perhaps he would not find the term arche-writing too far from his Śabdatattva. Certainly both would find common cause against those who locate the absolute outside of language or who maintain that language has no purchase on reality.
For both Derrida and Bhartṛhari it is the pure possibility of difference that is manifested as language. It is the intrinsic diffèrance of the arche-trace that permits the articulation of speech and writing. The arche-trace manifests into the opposing forms of inner concept and outer sound-image. Derrida uses the technical term "sign" to refer to the whole, "signified" to refer to the abstract concept, and "signifier" to refer to the spoken and heard sound-image. (fn46) Bhartṛhari's technical terminology would seem to provide a virtually perfect parallel: "sphoṭa" (fn47) to indicate the whole, "artha" to refer to the concept or meaning and "dhvani" to refer to the uttered and heard sound. For both Derrida and Bhartṛhari the linguistic whole (the sign or sphoṭa), has an inherent force toward differentiation that produces the double manifestation of inner meaning (signified, artha) and spoken sound (signifier, dhvani). Although sign and sphoṭa are irreducible, neither can be experienced as pure presence. [{p148end/p149begin}] Rooted within language, even in its most holistic form, is the pregnant push towards sequencing, sparing, punctuation -- differentiation in time and space. In the Vākyapadīya, the Śabdatattva, symbolized by the seed sound AUM, (fn48) is sequenced by the power of time into the various recentions of the Veda and all spoken words. (fn49) For Derrida the image is one of the sign, as the linguistic whole, being differentiated by spacing (on the page) and interval or pause (in speaking) into articulated meaning and sound-image. It is the actualizing of this inherent force for differentiation that enables language to function. But it is, at the same time, the limit of language. As Derrida puts it, since a sign (the unity of signified and signifier) cannot be produced within the plentitude of absolute presence, there is, therefore, no full speech, no absolute truth or full meaning. (fn50) In the words of Lao Tzu, "The tao that can be spoken is not the eternal tao" (fn51) Or as Hegel once put it, " When speaks the soul, alas, the soul no longer speaks." (fn52) But whereas Lao Tzu and Hegel are mourning the inability of manifested language to make present the soul or the tao, Derrida and Bhartṛhari emphasize the positive contribution of articulated speech. The sphoṭa and the sign (Derrida's whole) are manifested, and in the dynamic tension of that manifestation lies truth.
Rather than arriving at a skepticism of language, namely, that it is devoid of any truth content (the conclusion of the Buddhists and many modern skeptical critics of language), truth is seen to be contained in the very dynamics of language itself. Thus Derrida's thesis that there is no referent outside of the text is not as nihilistic as it at first sounds, and Bhartṛhari's sphoṭa is not as artificial an entity as much Indian philosophy has assumed.
In Vākyapadīya I:5, there are two terms which Bhartṛhari uses to describe the Veda: it is the prāptyupāya or the means for the attainment of Brahman; and it is the anukāra or symbolization of Brahman. For now let us confine our attention to the term anukāra, which comes from the root kṛ, "to do" or "to make" and suggests the dynamic activity of the Word-Principle. The Vṛtti elucidates the verse by stating that the activity of the Vedic seers in speaking the mantras is the criterion case of word-making activity. The term mantra, notes Aurobindo, signifies a "crossing over" through thought (root man, "to think," and tṛ, "to cross over") from the Absolute or Unmanifested to the human experience of manifested language. (fn53) As pure Sanskrit language, the mantras are conjunctions of certain powerful seed syllables which induce a particular rhythm or vibration in the psychosomatic structure of consciousness and arouse a corresponding psychic state. Such seed sounds can be differentiated in a great variety of ways producing an immense progeny of language. The evocative power is at its height before the mantras become too locked into particular forms of articulation. Poetry is at its peak [{p149end/p150begin}] before language becomes too fully elaborated. Then it must be deconstructed or evolved backwards to recover its original power for signification. Articulation is necessary, but the further it goes the greater the loss of freedom and power within language.
This also seems to be what Derrida means when he refers to the prose book as a corpse of language which must be exited from or transcended (fn54) -- the delimiting of the multisignificant roots has been pursued to its logical conclusion, and the power of the word has been exhausted. The aim of the project of deconstruction, says Derrida, agreeing with Aurobindo, is to get back to metaphoric, poetic language, where the power for signification has not yet been used up. (fn55) Bhartṛhari also reminds us that as language divides and separates, this necessary process in the end can become a source of confusion. The process of difference, pushed to its logical conclusion, produces such a plethora of speaking accents that communication of knowledge is obstructed. (fn56) Unlike Derrida and Aurobindo, Bhartṛhari's solution is not to deconstruct or reverse the process of differentiation, but to control it by the imposition of strict grammatical rules (the science of the Grammarians) by which the power of the root mantras to convey knowledge and action will not be obfuscated. (fn57) Bhartṛhari, along with the other Grammarians, claims to have uncovered the pure forms of the correct unfolding of the patterns of differentiation inherent in the Śabdatattva and symbolized (anukāra) in criterion form in the initial speaking of the Vedas. (fn58)
Another aspect of the meaning of anukāra, as we find it in Vākyapadīya I:5, is the notion of resemblance. Carpenter puts it well:
The Veda, as the anukāraḥ of Brahman standing in a position of imitative resemblance to its source, occupies a mediating position between this source and the diverse forms of the world. It presents, within the dynamic framework of the world as a whole, a level of expression and action which is directly related to the unitary ground of that world. It thus presents the established order of dharmaḥ in contrast to the often disorderly world of everyday experience (vyavahāraḥ). (fn59)
The Veda is not a direct description of Brahman, the Śabdatattva. Language functions to mediate action, not ideas. It is the verb not the noun that is basic. Vedic revelation, for Bhartṛhari, does not provide us with a representation of the transcendent object, the Word-Principle. What the Veda does do is to mediate the inherent action of the Śabdatattva directly through the dynamic idiom of language. "The Veda is thus the outward linguistic form of the dynamic self-manifesting act of the Word-Principle itself." (fn60) To the extent that other language use approximates the Veda, it also shares in the self-manifesting of the Word-Principle. The function of the Grammarians is to help all language use, from whatever science, realize that goal. (fn61) [{p150end/p151begin}]
It seems dear that Derrida would not agree with Bhartṛhari's privileging of scripture in general or of the Veda in particular. He would probably also criticize the notion of the Veda as manifesting the original linguistic form or anukāra of arche-writing. The critique Derrida offers of the Bible as a Grammar of Being in accordance with which "the world in all its parts is a cryptogram to be constituted or reconstituted through poetic inscription or deciphering..." (fn62) has yet to be tested against the Veda -- but that is another project. It is clear, however, that Bhartṛhari's emphasis on language as active rather than passive, as necessarily engaging both thought and action, as not representing but mediating the absolute, is largely in agreement with the overall thrust of Derrida's deconstructive critique.
If language is experienced as a mediation of arche-writing or Śabdatattva, then it is also a means for spiritual realization. Language is not merely epistemological in function. Over against Śaṅkara's assessment of māyā (including all language and even the Vedas) as having epistemological but not ontological status, (fn63) both Derrida and Bhartṛhari locate the real in arche-writing or Śabdatattva, which is not separate from manifested language. While for Śaṅkara language (and the Vedas) must be transcended for spiritual realization (mokṣa), for Bhartṛhari it is in language that union with the Śabdatattva is realized.
Before looking at Bhartṛhari's clear conception of vāk or speech as the means for the spiritual realization (prāptyupāya) of Śabdatattva, let us test Derrida's Grammatology to see if, like Bhartṛhari's science of grammar (vyākaraṇa) it can also be construed as a means for spiritual realization. In his deconstruction of the Western metaphysics of logos or presence, Derrida takes pains to distance himself from any suggestion of theistic religion. Derrida considers his own notion of arche-writing or prototrace to be an atheistic or, more properly, a nontheistic proposal. Of course the term arche-writing is meant to be confounding. How can a writing or trace precede that writing or trace which is left behind? But, aside from Derrida's perplexing play of language with regard to the divine, we do find some hints that support our interpretation of arche-writing as being parallel to Śabdatattva. In Of Grammatology (fn64) Derrida discusses the nature of arche-writing or trace. The manifested trace cannot be thought, without the thinking of the retention of difference, of all manifestation, so that the trace contains all history and all possibility. This history and possibility is not static but contains an inherent force for unmotivated self-manifestation. (fn65) This self-manifestation is structured according to the diverse possibilities -- genetic and structural -- of the trace. "This formulation is not theological, as one might believe somewhat hastily," says Derrida. "The 'theological' is a determined moment in [{p151end/p152begin}] the total movement of the trace." (fn66) The theological is a historically second dissimulation of the trace. The general structure of the unmotivated trace is that of temporal becoming. The trace is not more natural than cultural, not more biological than spiritual. "It is that starting from which a becoming-unmotivated of the sign, and with it all the ulterior oppositions between physio and its other, is possible." (fn67)
Derrida's writing is purposely not systematic. But he does give a fair hint as to the shape that the becoming of the trace takes:
Representation mingles with what it represents, to the point where one speaks as one writes, one thinks as if the represented were nothing more than the shadow or reaction of the representer... In this play of representation, the point of origin becomes ungraspable. There are things like reflecting pools, and images, an infinite reference from one to the other, but no longer a source, a spring [source]. There is no longer simple origin. For what is reflected is split in itself and not only as an addition to itself of its image. The reflection, the image, the double, splits what it doubles. The origin of the speculation becomes a difference. What can look at itself is not one; and the law of addition of the origin to its representation, or the thing to its image, is that one plus one makes at least three. (fn68)
It is the direct experience of this dynamic process of becoming, not as a process of static reflection or metaphysical opposition, that would for Derrida be the realization of the spiritual whole. The sensitive deconstruction of the illusions of permanence, of stasis, or presence (which our ordinary experience and many of our philosophies have superimposed on the becoming of language) is Derrida's prescription as the means for the realization of the whole. We cannot name this whole "spiritual," for that is already to engage the vocabulary of metaphysical opposition. But to understand the whole as manifestation of the inherent difference of the trace is for Derrida the goal. To go from the inscribed trace (writing) to the spoken word and the arche-writing which prefigures and predisposes both, only to be thrown back again, in a continual deconstructive reverse, would seem to be Derrida's use of language as a spiritual discipline. Although this may look like a Mādhyamikan answer, it is not. The deconstructive reverse does not result in the silence (śūnya) of language, but rather in the realization that the dynamic tension in the becoming of language is itself the whole. For Derrida, all of this cannot be understood as abstract theorizing. The language we are deconstructing is our own thinking and speaking -- our own consciousness. We ourselves are the text we are deconstructing. That is why, for Derrida, there is nothing outside of texts. Deconstruction is the process of becoming self-aware, or self-realization.
Can we say that this Derridean deconstruction of language is a means for spiritual realization? A comparison of Derrida with Bhartṛhari helps us to see why we can answer this question in the affirmative. Like Derrida, [{p152end/p153begin}] Bhartṛhari maintains that the analysis of linguistic experience is an examination of the very nature of our consciousness. Just as for Derrida consciousness is nothing but trace or writing, so for Bhartṛhari consciousness is nothing but Śabdatattva -- the inextricably intertwining of consciousness with the word. (fn69) But one difference that must be acknowledged immediately is that while Derrida deconstructs all books, all scriptures, privileging none, Bhartṛhari explicitly states that the Veda is the means for the realization of Brahman. (fn70)
Bhartṛhari is not simply privileging one book or one scripture over all others. His thought is more complex and subtle than that. On the one hand, as we have seen above, Bhartṛhari has said that the Veda is the anukāra of the Śabdatattva -- that is, the Veda is the normative form of the manifested Śabdatattva. All other language is merely a further elaboration of the criterion manifestation of the Śabdatattva as the Veda. The Veda is not one book among others; it is the true manifestation of the Śabdatattva. That is why Bhartṛhari describes it in Vākyapadīya I:5 as both the anukāra and the prāptyupāya or means of realization of Brahman. On the other hand, however, Bhartṛhari also describes the science of grammar as the royal path and door to spiritual realization. (fn71) Grammar is no longer merely an aid to the study of the Veda but is itself a yoga or means to realization. This shift is possible because Bhartṛhari sees Veda as the manifestation of the Śabdatattva itself; grammar, as the science of the Veda, is at the same time the science of the Śabdatattva or Word-Principle itself and thus a yoga. A few verses later, Bhartṛhari specifically describes a "Yoga preceded by the knowledge and use of the correct forms of words," namely, the science of grammar. (fn72) Later on at Vākyapadīya I:131, Bhartṛhari gives more detailed indications as to what this yoga of the word involves. I have given a detailed analysis of this passage elsewhere and will not repeat it here. (fn73) For our present purpose the important point to note is Bhartṛhari's locus on the individual's inner experience of language as involving an inner transformation -- which parallels Derrida's emphasis on grammatology as the science of writing before speech and in speech with power to change the individual's self-awareness. (fn74)
Bhartṛhari's emphasis on language as an inner transformative experience not only provides promising links with the modern thought of Derrida, but can also be seen as a compromise between the more individualistic Buddhists and Naiyāyikas. Carpenter puts it this way:
This is the case because for Bhartṛhari, the Word-Principle is the foundation not only of the Veda and the orthodox traditional world derived from it, but also of the individual's experience in appropriating that world. This experience is characterized by elements of genuine interiority, yet these elements are grounded in the same Word-Principle which manifests itself as the Veda. (fn75)
[{p153end/p154begin}]
Like Derrida, however, Bhartṛhari analyzes the individual's inner experience not as the static presence of a set of divine words or forms (the logos model), nor as a superimposition of epistemological forms (Śaṅkara's māyā), but as an inner word which is primarily productive of activity and only secondarily productive of knowledge. (fn76) Bhartṛhari's Śabdatattva, the Word-Principle, is primarily an ontological principle, and only secondarily epistemological.
We have seen how for Derrida the movement of language was a continuous sequencing of the arche-writing or trace into the spoken and written words, only to be thrown back again in a continual deconstructive reverse. The same kind of implosion-explosion cycle can be found in Bhartṛhari. Just as the Śabdatattva manifests itself objectively as the cosmos, (fn77) so the same Word-Principle manifests itself within all individuals in their experience of language. (fn78) Within the individual, the experience of the sequenced parts (letters and words) is subordinate to the unified whole (the sentence). Understanding of the sentence is only possible because its words taken together evoke a flash of illumination (pratibhā or sphoṭa) which is in some sense already prefigured (Derrida's arche-trace?) within consciousness. (fn79) This is due to the activity of the Śabdatattva. Bhartṛhari describes it as follows:
When the meanings (of the individual word) have been understood separately, a flash of understanding takes place which they call the meaning of the sentence, brought about by the meanings of the individual words.
It cannot be explained to others as such and such. It is experienced by everyone within himself and even the subject [of the experience] is not able to render an account of it to himself.
It is something indefinable (avicāritā) and it brings about a kind of amalgamation of the meanings of individual words, covering the whole sentence as it were, it becomes its object.
No one can avoid in one's activity that (flash of understanding) produced either through words or through the working of one's predispositions. (fn80)
This pratibhā or flash of understanding is insight into the whole meaning and form of the Śabdatattva. Pratibhā precedes and predisposes all human and animal activity. But it is also the culmination of our sequenced language activity as the illumination of the sentence. As such pratibhā is the means for the realization of the Śabdatattva, for they are but two sides of the same coin. Pratibhā is of the nature of one's inner self (Śabdatattva), but requires the words of language for its manifestation and realization. (fn81) Bhartṛhari's theory of intuition is not separate from his theory of language, but, indeed, is its fulfillment. Pratibhā is the experience in which the twofold manifestation of the Śabdatattva - as language and world, as knower and known -- meet. This intuition is neither [{p154end/p155begin}] a purely subjective event nor an intuition of a thing-in-itself. "It is rather the intrinsic luminosity of the world as a dynamic interrelated whole which is revealed by language." (fn82) Language is the enactment of the interrelatedness of the manifested Śabdatattva. As Bhartṛhari puts it in Vākyapadīya III:2:14:
That one Reality is seen as the word, the meaning and their relation. It is the seen, the seeing, the see-er and the fruit of the seeing. (fn83)
Pratibhā is the intuition of all of this and is described by Bhartṛhari as the light which removes ignorance. It is indefinable (avicāritā) because what it reveals is not some "thing," "idea," or "presence," but rather the dynamic interrelatedness of all things -- an insight giving rise to action resulting in spiritual realization.
For both Derrida and Bhartṛhari, the science of grammar enables one to experience language as more than purely epistemological in function. As we speak and write it, it "speaks and writes" us impelling us to action (dharma). While it is clear that Bhartṛhari's speaking, writing, and acting of the word is a yoga or means of spiritual realization, Derrida only offers hints in that direction. It is clear that for Derrida the "theological" is a secondary manifestation of the trace, and that its problem and the problem with most Western metaphysics (and religion) is that the theological is a reification resulting from the suppressing or the difference inherent in language -- the locus of its power in both spiritual and worldly action. Derrida's rejection of theology, metaphysics, and much philosophy is rooted in Bhartṛhari's observation that the dynamic interrelatedness of language cannot be described by the agent who experiences it. For both Bhartṛhari and Derrida any such description would be a reduction of the "dynamic interrelatedness of all experience" to some "thing" or "idea." Such a reductionism robs language of its power of action. This loss is simultaneously a loss of linguistic power, and a loss of the power of spiritual realization.
For both Derrida and Bhartṛhari the correct understanding and practice of language results in a teleological transformation of experience. This common conclusion arises from remarkably different religious roots: Derrida's understanding from a prophetic critique of the Jewish and Christian experience of God; Bhartṛhari's from an interpretation of Vedic dharma which took into account the Nyāya and Buddhist claims for individual spiritual experience.
We cannot say much of Derrida's religious roots and goal. In his relentless deconstruction of every logocentric theology, and even every negative theology, he keeps his spiritual self well hidden. (fn84) But perhaps this is the clue. Could it be that his spiritual source and vision are rooted in the Hebrew prophets? Just as Hebrew prophecy ruthlessly criticized [{p155end/p156begin}] every objectification of God which packaged and separated God from the divine demand for ethical action in daily life, (fn85) so Derrida rigorously deconstructs all theology, philosophy, and ordinary language which objectifies our experience into false Gods and unreal presences. That Derrida's deconstruction does have a prophetic goal is suggested by his essay "Of an Apocalyptic Tone Recently Adopted in Philosophy." (fn86) In this reading of the New Testament "Revelation or Apocalypse to John," Derrida suggests that the apocalyptic be considered "a transcendental condition of all discourse, of all experience itself, of every mark or every trace." (fn87) The Apocalypse of John, he suggests, could be taken as an exemplary revelation of this transcendental structure. And the theme of the Johannine Apocalypse he identifies as the recurrent and imperative "come" of the text (Revelation 22:17-20). "Come" evokes both the imminent coming of the Lord and the imperative that the hearer come quickly. The call beyond being or logos itself comes from beyond being. It cannot come from a voice which is given any personification in our hearing of it -- for that would be to "package" it in categories of presence. "Come" is plural in itself, in oneself. Its only content, says Derrida, is its resounding imperative tone (fn88) that calls forth from us action. The other characteristic of this exemplary book of Apocalypse is indicated in its final words "Do not seal [close] the words of the inspiration of this book..." To seal is to encapsulate or close off the inherent "come" of language and/as religion. The "come" from beyond being and the imperative "come" within oneself never close. The action of coming to the call that never ceases is the end to be realized. All of this fits well with the prophetic impulse of the Hebrew Bible. Its relentless negation of any conceptualization or speaking of the divine (the sin of idolatry), its prophetic hearing of the call to obedience which must always translate into action, and its open-ended future which calls us to become to an end which is always simultaneously a new beginning -- all of this seems to justify our rooting of Derrida in the spiritual critique of the Hebrew Prophets, which Derrida has reformulated as a critique of all idolatrous use of language.
Like Derrida, Bhartṛhari's science of grammar is also a call to action, to dharma. Bhartṛhari reinterprets Vedic dharma as the dharma of the Word-Principle, the Śabdatattva. This shift means that the dharma that one seeks to realize is no longer outside oneself, one's language or the Veda, but is the very essence of one's consciousness just as for Derrida the voice of the prophetic "come" becomes the "come let us go," the inner voice of language, so also for Bhartṛhari, the Vedic dharma as the Śabdatattva becomes the dharma of "correct" language within individual consciousness. The purification of speech, the task of the traditional Vedic discipline of grammar, becomes the means for inner spiritualization.[{p156end}]
Contents of this page
[{p157begin}]
This initial comparative study of Derrida's deconstructive grammatology and Indian philosophy has proved stimulating and fruitful. It has identified many points of formal and often substantive contact between Derrida and traditional Indian thought. Further analysis of these areas of contact should prove challenging and invigorating for both Eastern and Western thought. That this will be the case has been exemplified in the more specific comparison offered between Derrida and Bhartṛhari. This comparison has demonstrated new insights on both sides. Reading Bhartṛhari with Derrida highlights the error of previous interpretations which have read the Vākyapadīya through decidedly Advaitic eyes. It has also highlighted the remarkably original way in which Bhartṛhari accommodated the Buddhist and Nyāya stress on individual spiritual experience while yet retaining an orthodox grounding in Vedic dharma, now reinterpreted as Śabdatattva. Derrida's challenge to Bhartṛhari would take the form of a thoroughgoing deconstruction of the Vākyapadīya. The most evident point of challenge here would be directed at Bhartṛhari's Pratibhā doctrine as a case of "mystical perception." This is of course the very criticism mounted against Bhartṛhari by the Mīmāṁsakas. Since Derrida does not believe that anything like "pure" perception -- perception free of representation or interpretation -- exists, (fn89) his challenge is a significant one.
From the side of Western thought, the comparison has also been fruitful. It has called into question current suggestions that Derrida can be understood as a Mādhyamikan Buddhist -- for this analyst shows him to agree with Bhartṛhari on exactly those points which separate Bhartṛhari and Nāgārjuna. The comparison with Bhartṛhari also suggests that Derrida's relation to scripture (as evidenced in his reading of Revelation) may well turn out to be functionally parallel to Bhartṛhari's handling of the Veda. Scripture is incorporated into the very structure of language and consciousness, thus becoming an ontological ground rather than a metaphysical object.
But perhaps even more important than what each side can learn about itself from the other are the significant points of common emphasis: that language is beginningless and coextensive with consciousness, that language is grounded in its dynamic sequencing by time rather than in any fixed structural forms, that this sequencing takes the form of the dynamic interrelatedness of the cosmos and carries within it an imperative call for action, that this call is obstructed or suppressed by our egocentric creation of concepts with which we identify ourselves as true presence (the sin of idolatry or the ignorance of avidyā), and that the way to counteract this obstruction is the scientific deconstructing (grammatology) or purifying (Vyākaraṇa) of language, which results in some form of "spiritual realization." [{p157end/p158begin}]
For the practice of philosophy, both Derrida and Bhartṛhari would reserve a high place. The task of philosophy is to deconstruct (grammatology) or purity by linguistic criticism (Vyākaraṇa) language use in all the sciences. The specific application of this philosophic critique to religion was stated by Professor Murti in a way that Derrida and Bhartṛhari would perhaps both accept:
Without philosophical appraisal and critical alertness, religion would be blind, like the proverbial cock which had picked up a diamond but did not know its worth. It would degenerate into Dogma and Fanaticism. (fn90)
The call of Derrida and Bhartṛhari is that philosophy (both Western and Indian) urgently needs to get on with its deconstructive and purging task.
fn01.
T. R. V. Murti, "The Philosophy of Language in
the Indian Context,"
in Studies in Indian Thought:
The Collected Papers of Professor
T. R. V. Murti, ed.
by Harold Coward (Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1983).
fn01b
fn03.
Jacques Derrida, Of Grammatology, trans. by
Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak
(Baltimore: The Johns
Hopkins University Press, 1976).
fn03b
fn04. Ibid., pp. 52 and 14. fn04b
fn05.
The Vākyapadīya of Bhartṛhari, trans.
by K. A. Subramania Iyer
(Poona: Deccan College, 1965).
I have also read K. A. Subramania Iyer's
edition of
the Sanskrit text with Professor T. R. V. Murti.
An English
summary of the primary Sanskrit philosophical
texts of the
Grammarian tradition of India along with
a major introductory
essay has been edited by myself
and K. Kunjunni Raja, Philosophy
of the Grammarians
Princeton; Princeton University Press, 1991).
fn05b
fn06. See Harold Coward, The Sphoṭa Theory of Language (Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1986), pp. 7-9. fn06b
fn07.
See Harold Coward, Sacred Word and Sacred Text: Scripture
in World Religions (Maryknoll, New York: Orbis Books, 1988),
chaps. 4 and 5.
fn07b
fn08. Herbert N. Schneidan, "The Word against the Word: Derrida on Textuality," Semeia 23 (1982): 10. fn08b
fn09. Jacques Derrida, Writing and Difference (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978), p. 20. fn09b
[{p158end/p159begin}]
fn10. Jacques Derrida, "Freud and the Scene of Writing," in Writing and Difference, chap. 7. pp. 222 ff. fn10b
fn11.
Derrida, Of Grammatology, p. 51. Grammatology, for Derrida,
is
the science of writing before speech and in all speech.
fn11b
fn12.
Jacques Derrida, Dissemination, trans. by Barbara Johnson
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981), Translator's
Introduction, p. x.
fn12b
fn15. Derrida, "Freud and the Scene of Writing," pp. 221 ff. fn15b
fn17. George Cardona, Pāṇini: A Survey of Research (Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1976), p. 142. fn17b
fn18.
Derrida, Of Grammatology, p. 3. In this regard
it should be
noted that a recent article by Zhang Longxi
shows Derrida's adoption
of the view of Leibniz, Hegel,
and others that Chinese and other
ideographic (rather
than phonetic) languages are mute, and thus
free of
Western metaphysics, to be wrong. As Zhang puts it,
"Chinese poetry is essentially not a script to be
deciphered but
a song to be chanted, depending for its
effect on a highly
complicated tonal pattern."
See his article "The Tao and the Logos"
Critical inquiry 2 (1985): 390.
fn18b
fn19.
As quoted by F. Stāl, 'The Concept of Scripture
in the Indian
Tradition," in Sikh Studies, ed. by
M. Juergensmeyer and Gerald Barrier
(Berkeley: Berkeley
Religious Studies Series, 1979), pp. 122- 123. See
also
J. A. B. van Buitenen, "Hindu Sacred Literature,"
Encyclopaedia
Britannica, 3d ed., vol. 8; and C. Mackenzie Brown,
"Purāṇa as
Scripture: From Sound to
Image of the Holy Word in the Hindu
Tradition,"
History of Religious 26, no. 1 (1986): 68-73.
fn19b
fn20.
Christopher, Norris, Deconstruction: Theory and
Practice
(London: Methuen, 1982), p. 18.
fn20b
fn21.
The Collected Dialogues of Plato, ed. by
Edith Hamilton and
Huntington Cairns (Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 1969), p. 521.
fn21b
fn22. Jacques Derrida, "Plato's Pharmacy," in Dissemination, p. 149. fn22b
fn24. Derrida, Of Grammatology, p. 57. fn24b
fn25. The Collected Dialogues of Plato, "Philebus," p. 1093. fn25b
fn26. Derrida, "Plato's Pharmacy," Dissemination. p. 163. fn26b
[{p159end/p160begin}]
fn27. Derrida, Of Grammatology, p. 38. fn27b
fn29. The sentences above summarize pp 57-63, Of Grammatology. fn29b
fn33.
D. Carpenter, "Revelation and Experience in
Bhartṛhari's
Vākyapadīya," Wiener
Zeitschrift für die Kunde Sudasiens 29 (1985): 190.
fn33b
fn34. Ibid. See also Vākyapadīya III:3:81, and III:9:17 and 26. fn34b
fn36. Ibid., I:122, Vṛtti. fn36b
fn37. Iyer's note 2 on Vākyapadīya I:122, in The Vākyapadīya of Bhartṛhari, p. 110. fn37b
fn38. Vākyapadīya I:123. fn38b
fn39. Ibid., I:123, Vṛtti. fn39b
fn40. Ibid., I:128, Vṛtti. fn40b
fn41. Ibid., I:130-131 and the Vṛttis. fn41b
fn42. See Iyer's note 1 on Vākyapadīya I:132, in The Vākyapadīya of Bhartṛhari, p. 119. fn42b
fn43. Vākyapadīya I:132. fn43b
fn46. Derrida, Of Grammatology, p. 63. fn46b
fn50. Derrida, Of Grammatology, p. 69. fn50b
fn51. As explained by Zhang Longxi, "The Tao and the Logos," p. 391. fn51b
fn52.
As quoted by Ernst Cassirer, Language and Myth, trans.
by Susanne K. Langer (New York: Dover, 1953). p. 7.
fn52b
fn53.
Aurobindo, The Secret of the Veda (Pondicherry:
Sri Aurobindo Ashram, 1971), p. 48 and pp. 203-214.
fn53b
fn54.
Jacques Derrida, "Edmond Jabès and the Question of
the
Book" in Writing and Difference, pp. 75-76.
fn54b
[{p160end/p161begin}]
fn55. Derrida, Of Grammatology, p. 272. fn55b
fn58.
For a presentation of the whole Grammarian tradition, see
Harold Coward and K. Kunjunni Raja, The Philosophy of
the
Grammarians (Princeton: Priceton University Press, 1991).
fn58b
fn59. Carpenter, "Revelation and Experience in Bhartṛhari's Vākyapadīya" p. 194. fn59b
fn61. Vākyapadīya I:12-14. fn61b
fn62. Derrida, "Edmond Jabès and the Question of the Book," p. 76. fn62b
fn63. T. M. P. Mahadevan, The Philosophy of Advaita (Madras: Ganesh & Co., 1969), chap. 8. fn63b
fn64. Derrida, Of Grammatology, pp. 46 ff. fn64b
fn65.
One thinks here of the notion of līlā or the
unmotivated free play
of the divine in Indian philosophy
-- the free phenomenalizing of the divine.
fn65b
fn66. Derrida, Of Grammatology. p. 47. fn66b
fn69.
Vākyapadīya I:123. See also K. A. S. Iyer,
Bhartṛhari (Poona:
Deccan College, 1969), pp. 61, 68.
fn69b
fn71. Ibid., I:14-16 and 131. fn71b
fn73.
Harold Coward, "The Yoga of the Word
(Śabdapūrvayoga),"
The Adyar Library
Bulletin 49 (1985): 1-13.
fn73b
fn74. Derrida, Of Grammatology, p. 51. fn74b
fn75. Carpenter, "Revelation and Experience in Bhartṛhari's Vākyapadīya," p. 199. fn75b
fn76.
Vākyapadīya I:51. "The energy (kratu)
called the word, existing
within, as the yolk in
the pea-hen's egg, has an action-like function
and
assumes the seqence of its parts."
fn76b
[{p161end/p162begin}]
fn79. Ibid., II:437-438 and II:143-145.
For a more detailed discussion,
see Harold Coward,
The Sphoṭa Theory of Language (Delhi: Motilal
Banarsidass, 1986), pp. 119-125.
fn79b
fn80.
Vākyapadīya II:143-146. Translation by
K. Subramania Iyer
(Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1977),
pp. 60-61.
fn80b
fn81. Vākyapadīya II:146, Vṛtti. fn81b
fn82. Carpenter, "Revelation and Experience in Bhartṛhari's Vākyapadīya," p. 203. fn82b
fn83.
Vākyapadīya III:2:14. Translation by
K. Subramania Iyer
(Poona: Deccan College, 1971), p. 72.
fn83b
fn84.
See Jacques Derrida, "Structure, Sign and Play,"
in The
Structuralist Controversy ed. R. Macksey and
E. Donato
(Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1972),
pp. 248,
249, 264, 265; Dissemination, pp. 293-294; Of
Grammatology,
pp. 71-73. etc; and Writing and Difference,
pp. 64-78 and 79-153.
fn84b
fn85.
See the book of Amos in the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament.
Habermas also traces Derrida to Hebrew roots; see
Jurgen Habermas,
Discourse on Modernity.
fn85b
fn86.
Jacques Derrida, "Of an Apocalyptic Tone Recently
Adopted
in Philosophy," Semeia 23 (1982): 63-97.
fn86b
fn89. Derrida, Of Grammatology, p. 54. fn89b
fn90. Murti, "The Philosophy of Language in the Indian Context," p. 376. fn90b [{p162end}]
UKT: End of article.
From: Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bhartrihari 080318
Bhartṛhari
{Bût~tRa.ha.ri.}
is the name of a 6th or 7th century
Sanskrit grammarian, and of a Sanskrit poet of roughly the
same period. It is not known whether the two are identical.
Bhartṛhari [{the grammarian}] was an early figure in Indic linguistic theory, mentioned in the 670s by Chinese traveller Yi-Jing, author of the Vākyapadīya ("of the speaking of words"). The work is divided into three books, the Brahma-kāṇḍa, (or Âgama-samuccaya "aggregation of doctrines"), the Vâkya-kāṇḍa, and the Pada-kāṇḍa (or Prakîrṇaka "miscellaneous").
He theorized the act of speech as being made up of three stages:
1.
Conceptualization by the speaker (Paśyanti "
idea")
2.
Performance of speaking (Madhyamā "
medium")
3.
Comprehension by the interpreter (Vaikharī "complete utterance").
Bhartṛhari is of the shabda-advaita " word monistic" school which identifies language and cognition. He introduces the Sphota doctrine of meaning. According to George Cardona, "Vakyapadiya is considered to be the major Indian work of its time on grammar, semantics and philosophy."
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deconstruction n. 1. A philosophical movement and theory of literary criticism that questions traditional assumptions about certainty, identity, and truth, asserts that words can only refer to other words, and attempts to demonstrate how statements about any text subvert their own meanings: “ In deconstruction, the critic claims there is no meaning to be found in the actual text, but only in the various, often mutually irreconcilable, ‘ virtual texts ’ constructed by readers in their search for meaning ” Rebecca Goldstein - AHTD
From Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deconstruction 101201
Deconstruction is an approach, introduced by French philosopher Jacques Derrida, which rigorously pursues the meaning of a text to the point of exposing the supposed contradictions and internal oppositions upon which it is founded - showing that those foundations are irreducibly complex, unstable, or impossible. It is an approach that may be deployed in philosophy, literary analysis, or other fields.
Deconstruction generally tries to demonstrate that any text is not a discrete whole but contains several irreconcilable and contradictory meanings; that any text therefore has more than one interpretation; that the text itself links these interpretations inextricably; that the incompatibility of these interpretations is irreducible; and thus that an interpretative reading cannot go beyond a certain point. Derrida refers to this point as an aporia in the text, and terms deconstructive reading "aporetic." J. Hillis Miller has described deconstruction this way: “Deconstruction is not a dismantling of the structure of a text, but a demonstration that it has already dismantled itself. Its apparently-solid ground is no rock, but thin air."[1]
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From Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grammatology 101201
Grammatology is a term coined by the linguist Ignace Gelb in 1952 to refer to the scientific study of writing systems or scripts. [1] It includes the typology of scripts, the analysis of the structural properties of scripts, and the relationship between written and spoken language. [2] In its broadest sense, some scholars also include the study of literacy in grammatology and, indeed, the impact of writing on philosophy, religion, science, administration and other aspects of the organization of society [3].
The scholars most immediately associated with grammatology, understood as the history and theory of writing, include Eric Havelock (The Muse Learns to Write), Walter J. Ong (Orality and Literacy), Jack Goody (Domestication of the Savage Mind), not to mention Marshall McLuhan (The Gutenberg Galaxy). Grammatology brings to any topic a consideration of the contribution of technology and the material and social apparatus of language. A more theoretical treatment of the approach may be seen in the works of Friedrich Kittler (Discourse Networks: 1800/1900) and Avital Ronell (The Telephone Book).
In 1967 the deconstructionist philosopher Jacques Derrida borrowed the term, but put it to different use, in his book Of Grammatology. Derrida aimed to show that writing is not simply a reproduction of speech, but that the way in which thoughts are recorded in writing, strongly affects the nature of knowledge. Deconstruction from a grammatological perspective places the history of philosophy in general, and metaphysics in particular, in the context of writing as such. In this perspective metaphysics is understood as a category or classification system relative to the invention of alphabetic writing and its institutionalization in School. Plato's Academy, and Aristotle's Lyceum, are as much a part of the invention of literacy as is the introduction of the vowel to create the Classical Greek alphabet. Gregory Ulmer took up this trajectory, from historical to philosophical grammatology, to add applied grammatology (Applied Grammatology: Post(e)-Pedagogy from Jacques Derrida to Joseph Beuys, Johns Hopkins, 1985). Ulmer coined the term "electracy" to call attention to the fact that digital technologies and their elaboration in new media forms are part of an apparatus that is to these inventions what literacy is to alphabetic and print technologies. Grammatology studies the invention of an apparatus across the spectrum of its manifestations -- technology, institutional practices, and identity behaviors. Marc Wilhelm Küster combines Derrida's approach with Gelbs's study of writing to build a more inclusive view of the interaction between writing and our ways of viewing the world.
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From: Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacques_Derrida 080318
Jacques Derrida (pronounced [ʒak dɛʁida] (July 15, 1930 – October 8, 2004) was an Algerian-born French philosopher, known as the founder of deconstruction. His voluminous work has had a profound impact upon literary theory and continental philosophy. His best known work is Of Grammatology. -- Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacques_Derrida 080318
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From Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madhyamaka 090908
Madhyamaka (Sanskrit: माध्यमक, Mādhyamaka, traditional Chinese: 中觀宗, Pinyin: Zhōngguānzōng; also known as Śunyavada) is a Buddhist Mahāyāna tradition systematized by Nāgārjuna. Nāgārjuna may have arrived at his positions from a desire to achieve a consistent exegesis of the Buddha's doctrine as recorded in the Nikayas. In the eyes of Nāgārjuna the Buddha was not merely a forerunner, but the very founder of the Mādhyamaka system. [1] The tradition and its subsidiaries are called "Mādhyamaka;" those who follow it are called "Mādhyamikas."
According to the Mādhyamikas, all phenomena are empty of "self nature" or "essence" (Sanskrit: Svabhāva), meaning that they have no intrinsic, independent reality apart from the causes and conditions from which they arise.
Mādhyamaka is the rejection of two extreme philosophies, and therefore represents the "middle way" between eternalism — the view that something is eternal and unchanging — and nihilism. Nihilism here means the assertion that all things are intrinsically already destroyed or rendered nonexistent. This is nihilism in the sense of Indian philosophy, and may differ somewhat from Western philosophical nihilism.
Mādhyamaka is a source of methods for approaching prajnaparamita, or "perfection of wisdom", the sixth of the Six Perfections of the bodhisattva path. The term is used as the collective title of key Mahāyāna sutras. This is also often explained in Mahayana hagiography as the teaching on shunyata that occurred at Vulture Peak, Raj Gir, and has been categorized as the Second Turning of the Wheel of Dharma.
Not all Mahāyāna Schools necessarily adhere to the Mādhyamaka view or approach, but Tibetan Buddhist and Zen traditions adhere to a form of Mādhyamaka, though they have differences in method. The present day schools of Tendai, Sanron and the Mahā-Mādhyamaka are also heirs to the Mādhyamaka tradition.
There is currently no historical evidence that the Mādhyamikas divided themselves into distinct schools, but later Tibetan scholars — in particular Tibetan translator Patsap Nyima Drak in the 11th century — categorized views into distinct "schools".
According to the Tibetan view, subdivisions of Madhyamaka are:
• Prāsaṅgika
• Svātantrika
• The later Yogācāra and Mādhyamaka synthesis, sometimes rendered Yogācāra-Svatantrika-Mādhyamaka
It is important to note that while these different tenet systems were discussed, it is debated to what degree individual writers in Indian and Tibetan discussion held each of these views and if they held a view generally or only in particular instances.
Both Prasangikas and Svatantrikas cited material in the agamas in support of their arguments.[2]
The only technique avowed by Prāsaṅgika Mādhyamaka is to show by prasaṅga (or reductio ad absurdum) that any positive assertion (such as "asti" or "nāsti", "it is", or "it is not") or view regarding phenomena must be regarded as merely conventional (saṃvṛti or lokavyavahāra). No position therefore constitutes the ultimate truth (paramārtha), including the views and statements made by the Prāsaṅgikas themselves, which are held to be solely for the purpose of defeating all views. The Prāsaṅgikas also identify this to be the message of the Buddha who, as Nāgārjuna put it, taught the Dharma for the purpose of refuting all views.
Buddhapalita and Candrakirti are noted as the main proponents of this approach. Tibetan teacher Longchen Rabjam noted in the 14th century that Candrakirti favored the prasaṅga approach when specifically discussing the analysis for ultimacy, but otherwise he made positive assertions. His central text, Madhyamakavatara, is structured as a description of the paths and results of practice, which is made up of positive assertions. Therefore, even those most attributed to the Prāsaṅgika view make positive assertions when discussing a path of practice but use prasaṅga specifically when analyzing for ultimate truth.[3]
The Svātantrika Mādhyamaka differs from the Prāsaṅgika in a few key ways. Conventional phenomena are understood to exist conventionally without existing ultimately. In this way they can make positive or "autonomous" assertions using syllogistic logic, and their name comes from this quality of autonomous statements. Svatantrika in Sanskrit refers to autonomy and was translated back into Sanskrit from the equivalent Tibetan term. They also draw a distinction between the final ultimate truth and approximate or enumerative ultimates that describe the ultimate but are not the true ultimate.[3]
Bhavaviveka is the first person to whom this view is attributed, as they are laid out in his commentaries on Nāgārjuna and his critiques of Buddhapalita.
Ju Mipham explained that using positive assertions in logical debate may serve a useful purpose, either while debating with non-Buddhist schools or to move a student from a coarser to a more subtle view. Similarly, discussing an approximate ultimate helps students who have difficulty using only prasaṅga methods move closer to the understanding of the true ultimate. Ju Mipham felt that the ultimate non-enumerated truth of the Svatantrika was no different from the ultimate truth of the Prāsaṅgika. He felt the only difference between them was with respect to how they discussed conventional truth and their approach to presenting a path.[3] Gelug teachers, however, have instead criticized the Svatantrika approach as not delivering students to the same point as the Prāsaṅgika approach.
A Yogācāra and Mādhyamaka synthesis was posited by Shantarakshita in the 8th century and may have been common at Nalanda University at that time. Like the Prāsaṅgika, this view approaches ultimate truth through the prasaṅga method, yet when speaking of conventional reality they may make autonomous statements like the earlier Svātantrika and Yogācāra approaches.
This was different from the earlier Svatantrika in that the conventional truth was described in terms of the theory of consciousness-only instead of the tenets of Svatantrika, though neither was used to analyze for ultimate truth.
For example, they may assert that all phenomena are nothing but the 'play of mind' and hence empty of concrete existence—and that mind is in turn empty of defining characteristics. But in doing so, they're careful to point out that any such example would be an approximate ultimate and not the true ultimate. By making such autonomous statements, Yogācāra-Svatantrika-Madhyamaka is often mistaken as a Svātantrika or Yogācāra view, even though a Prāsaṅgika approach was used in analysis.[4] This view is thus a synthesis of Madhyamaka and Yogācāra.
The Madhyamaka concept of emptiness is often explained through the related concept of interdependence. This is in contrast to independence, that phenomena arise of their own accord, independent of causes and conditions. Although a common way to think about emptiness, it is a conceptual way of talking about it — to lead a student closer to the non-conceptual wisdom of the ultimate truth — and it would not withstand analysis as an ultimate view. In the first chapter of the Mulmadhyamakakarika, Nagarjuna provides arguments that even causes and conditions are empty of inherent existence or essence. This analogy, however, connects the conclusion of the Middle Way tenets with the codependent origination teachings of the first turning.
The analogy to interdependence is considered helpful for students, and is presented in the famous ninth chapter of Shantideva's Bodhicharyavatara, as well as by modern writers like Thich Nhat Hanh who, in The Heart of Understanding, discusses the Heart Sutra in terms of interdependence.
In this analogy, there is no first or ultimate cause for anything that occurs. Instead, all things are dependent on innumerable causes and conditions that are themselves dependent on innumerable causes and conditions. The interdependence of all phenomena, including the self, is a helpful way to undermine mistaken views about inherence, or that one's self is inherently existent. It is also a helpful way to discuss Mahayana teachings on motivation, compassion, and ethics. The comparison to interdependence has produced recent discussion comparing Mahayana ethics to environmental ethics.
"In themselves, from their side, things are free of imputation, even though there is really nothing at all that can be said from their side. This dynamic philosophical tension — a tension between the Madhyamika accounts of the limits of what can be coherently said and its analytical ostension of what can't be said without paradox but must be understood — must constantly be borne in mind in reading the text. It is not an incoherent mysticism, but it is a logical tightrope act at the very limits of language and metaphysics." -- Jay L. Garfield, Fundamental Wisdom of the Middle Way, p. 102
End of Wikipedia article.
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From Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nagarjuna 090908
Acharya
Nāgārjuna (Telugu: నాగార్జున, Tibetan: klu sgrub) (c. 150 - 250 CE) was an
Indian philosopher and the founder of the Madhyamaka school of Mahāyāna
Buddhism.
His writings are the basis for the formation of the Madhyamaka school, which was transmitted to China under the name of the Three Treatise (Sanlun) School. [UKT¶]
UKT: The word "Sanlun" can easily be mistaken for
{swun:lwun:}. The two words are not related. Sanlun school is a Mahayana school, whereas the
He is credited with developing the philosophy of the Prajnaparamita sutras, and was closely associated with the Buddhist university of Nalanda. In the Jodo Shinshu branch of Buddhism, he is considered the First Patriarch.
Little is known about the actual life of the historical Nagarjuna. The two most extensive biographies of Nagarjuna, one in Chinese and the other in Tibetan, were written many centuries after his life and incorporate much lively but historically unreliable material which sometimes reaches mythic proportions. Nagarjuna was born a Brahmin[1], which in his time connoted religious allegiance to the Vedas, probably into an upper-caste Brahmin family and probably in the southern Andhra region of India.[2]
Very few details on the life of Nāgārjuna are known, although many legends exist. He was born in Southern India, near the town of Nagarjunakonda (నాగార్జునకొండ) in present day Nagarjuna Sagar (నాగార్జునసాగర్) in the Nalgonda district of Andhra Pradesh. According to traditional biographers and historians such as Kumarajiva, he was born into a Brahmin family, but later converted to Buddhism. This may be the reason he was one of the earliest significant Buddhist thinkers to write in classical Sanskrit rather than Pāli or Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit.
From studying his writings, it is clear that Nāgārjuna was conversant with many of the Nikaya school philosophies and with the emerging Mahāyāna tradition. However, affiliation to a specific Nikaya school is difficult, considering much of this material is presently lost. If the most commonly accepted attribution of texts (that of Christian Lindtner) holds, then he was clearly a Māhayānist, but his philosophy holds assiduously to the non-Mahāyāna canon, and while he does make explicit references to Mahāyāna texts, he is always careful to stay within the parameters set out by the canon.
Nagarjuna may have arrived at his positions from a desire to achieve a consistent exegesis of the Buddha's doctrine as recorded in the Canon. In the eyes of Nagarjuna the Buddha was not merely a forerunner, but the very founder of the Madhyamaka system.[3] David Kalupahana sees Nagarjuna as a successor to Moggaliputta-Tissa in being a champion of the middle-way and a reviver of the original philosophical ideals of the Buddha.[4]
There exist a number of influential texts attributed to Nāgārjuna, although most were probably written by later authors. The only work that all scholars agree is Nagarjuna's is the Mūlamadhyamakakārikā (Fundamental Verses on the Middle Way), which contains the essentials of his thought in twenty-seven short chapters. According to Lindtner[5] the works definitely written by Nagarjuna are:
• Mūlamadhyamaka-kārikā (Fundamental Verses of the Middle Way)
• Śūnyatāsaptati (Seventy Verses on Emptiness)
• Vigrahavyāvartanī (The End of Disputes)
• Vaidalyaprakaraṇa (Pulverizing the Categories)
• Vyavahārasiddhi (Proof of Convention)
• Yuktiṣāṣṭika (Sixty Verses on Reasoning)
• Catuḥstava (Hymn to the Absolute Reality)
• Ratnāvalī (Precious Garland)
• Pratītyasamutpādahṝdayakārika (Constituents of Dependent Arising)
• Sūtrasamuccaya
• Bodhicittavivaraṇa (Exposition of the Enlightened Mind)
• Suhṛllekha (To a Good Friend)
• Bodhisaṃbhāra (Requisites of Enlightenment)
There are other works attributed to Nāgārjuna, some of which may be genuine and some not. In particular, several important works of esoteric Buddhism (most notably the Pañcakrama or "Five Stages") are attributed to Nāgārjuna and his disciples. Contemporary research suggests that these works are datable to a significantly later period in Buddhist history (late eighth or early ninth century), but the tradition of which they are a part maintains that they are the work of the Mādhyamika Nāgārjuna and his school. Traditional historians (for example, the 17th century Tibetan Tāranātha), aware of the chronological difficulties involved, account for the anachronism via a variety of theories, such as the propagation of later writings via mystical revelation. A useful summary of this tradition, its literature, and historiography may be found in Wedemeyer 2007.
Lindtner considers that the Māhaprajñāparamitopadeśa, a huge commentary on the Large Prajñāparamita not to be a genuine work of Nāgārjuna. This is only extant in a Chinese translation by Kumārajīva. There is much discussion as to whether this is a work of Nāgārjuna, or someone else. Étienne Lamotte, who translated one third of the Upadeśa into French, felt that it was the work of a North Indian bhikkhu of the Sarvāstivāda school, who later became a convert to the Mahayana. The Chinese scholar-monk Yin Shun felt that it was the work of a South Indian, and that Nāgārjuna was quite possibly the author. Actually, these two views are not necessarily in opposition, and a South Indian Nāgārjuna could well have studied in the northern Sarvāstivāda. Neither of the two felt that it was composed by Kumārajīva which others have rashly suggested.
Nāgārjuna's primary contribution to Buddhist philosophy is in the further development of the concept of śūnyatā, or "emptiness," which brings together other key Buddhist doctrines, particularly anatta (no-self) and pratītyasamutpāda (dependent origination). For Nāgārjuna, it is not merely sentient beings that are empty of ātman; all phenomena are without any svabhāva, literally "own-nature" or "self-nature", and thus without any underlying essence; they are empty of being independent. This is so because they are arisen dependently: not by their own power, but by depending on conditions leading to their coming into existence, as opposed to being. Nāgārjuna was also instrumental in the development of the two-truths doctrine, which claims that there are two levels of truth in Buddhist teaching, one which is directly (ultimately) true, and one which is only conventionally or instrumentally true, commonly called upāya in later Mahāyāna writings. Nāgārjuna drew on an early version of this doctrine found in the Kaccāyanagotta Sutta, which distinguishes nītārtha (clear) and neyārtha (obscure) terms -
Nāgārjuna differentiates between saṃvṛti (conventional) and paramārtha (ultimately true) teachings, but he never declares any to fall in this latter category; for him, even śūnyatā is śūnya -- even emptiness is empty. For him, ultimately,
nivṛttam abhidhātavyaṃ nivṛtte cittagocare |
anutpannāniruddhā hi nirvāṇam iva dharmatā || 7The designable is ceased when the range of thought is ceased,
For phenomenality is like nirvana, unarisen and unstopped.
This was famously rendered in his tetralemma with the logical propositions: X, not X, X and not X, neither X nor not X.
Nagarjuna also taught the idea of relativity; in the Ratnavali, he gives the example that shortness exists only in relation to the idea of length. The determination of a thing or object is only possible in relation to other things or objects, especially by way of contrast. He held that the relationship between the ideas of "short" and "long" is not due to intrinsic nature (svabhāva). This idea is also found in the Pali Nikayas and Chinese Agamas, in which the idea of relativity is expressed similarly: "That which is the element of light ... is seen to exist on account of [in relation to] darkness; that which is the element of good is seen to exist on account of bad; that which is the element of space is seen to exist on account of form."[7]
For more on Nāgārjuna's philosophy, see Mūlamadhyamakakārikā.
Nagarjuna as Ayurvedic Physician
Nagarjuna was also a practitioner of Ayurveda, or traditional Indian medicine. Many of his unique conceptualizations, such as his pioneering work on the therapeutic value of specially treated minerals knowns as bhasmas, which earned him the title of the "father of iatrochemistry," are described by Frank John Ninivaggi in his text: Ayurveda: A Comprehensive Guide to Traditional Indian Medicine for the West, p. 23. (Praeger/Greenwood Press, 2008). ISBN 978-0-313-34837-2.
Nāgārjuna is often depicted in composite form comprising human and naga characteristics. Often the naga aspect forms a canopy crowning and shielding his human head. The notion of the naga is found throughout Indian religious culture, and typically signifies an intelligent serpent or dragon, who is responsible for the rains, lakes and other bodies of water. In Buddhism, it is a synonym for a realized arhat, or wise person in general. The term also means "elephant".
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From Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T%C4%83rt%C4%83ria_tablets 101201
The Tărtăria tablets are three tablets, known since the late 19th century excavation at the Neolithic site of Turdaş (in Romanian), Tordos (in Hungarian) in Transylvania, by Zsófia Torma, which date to around 5300 BC.[1] They bear incised symbols, the Vinča signs, that have been the subject of considerable controversy among archaeologists, some of whom claim that the symbols represent the earliest known form of writing in the world.
UKT: More in the Wiki article.
UKT: I would hesitate to call the signs on the Tartaria tablets as 'writing'. If you could call them writing, we should also class my favorite Rune
{ing:} the
{sa.da.ba.wa. ing:} as a form of writing which it is not. - UKT101201
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From Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vajrayana 101201
Vajrayāna Buddhism (Devanagari: वज्रयान; Mongolian: Очирт хөлгөн, Ochirt Hölgön) is also known as Tantric Buddhism, Tantrayāna, Mantrayāna, Secret Mantra, Esoteric Buddhism and the Diamond Vehicle. Vajrayana is a complex and multifaceted system of Buddhist thought and practice which evolved over several centuries and encompasses much inconsistency and a variety of opinions.[1] Its main scriptures are called Tantras.[1] A distinctive feature of Vajrayana Buddhism is ritual, which is used as a substitute or alternative for the earlier abstract meditations.[2][3]
The period of Indian Vajrayana Buddhism has been classified as the fifth[4] or final[1] period of Indian Buddhism. Although the first tantric Buddhist texts appeared in India in the 3rd century CE and continued to appear until the 12th century CE,[5] scholars such as Hirakawa Akira believe that the Vajrayana probably came into existence in the 6th or 7th century CE,[4] while the term Vajrayana first came into evidence in the 8th century CE.[1]
According to Vajrayana scriptures Vajrayana refers to one of three routes to enlightenment, the other two being Hinayana and Mahayana.
UKT: More in the Wiki article.
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