Proving Emptiness: The Epistemological Background for the “Neither One Nor Many” Argument and the Nature of Its Probandum in Phya pa Chos kyi seng ge’s Works

Introduction

The Tibetan thinker Phya pa Chos kyi seng ge (1109‒1169)¹ lived at a pivotal period for the development of Tibetan Madhyamaka, a time when new interpretations based on Candrakīrti’s works spread by Pa tshab nyi ma grags started to attract a growing interest from Tibetan scholars.² Up to this time, interpretations of Madhyamaka doctrines had relied principally on the works of the so-called “three Madhyamaka [teachers] from the East” (dbu ma shar gsum),³ namely, the Madhyamakālaṅkāra of Śāntarakṣita (725–788), the Madhyamakāloka of Kamalaśīla (c. 8th cent.), and the Satyadvayavibhaṅga of Jñānagarbha (c. 8th cent.), translations of which had been available since the ninth century.⁴ Phya pa must have been familiar with these texts since his studies and early teaching duties in sTod lung with rGya dmar pa Byang chub grags,⁵ who had been a student of Khyung Rin chen grags and Gangs pa She’u Blo gros byang chub, two of the foremost students of rNgog Blo ldan shes rab (1059‒1109), the “Great Translator,” leading exegete and second abbot of the monastery of gSang phu Ne’u thog.⁶ Although not a direct student of rNgog Blo ldan shes rab, Phya pa was thereby trained in the interpretative tradition later termed the “tradition of rNgog” (rngog lugs). rNgog Blo ldan shes rab himself is reported by his biographers to have composed commentarial works on the three treatises of the “Madhyamaka [teachers] from the East,” none of which have yet surfaced.⁷ He did not, however, revise existing translations or produce new translations of these works.⁸ It is on these three treatises as well that Phya pa’s Madhyamaka contribution appears to concentrate. Among the eighteen recovered works of Phya pa published in the bKaʼ gdams gsung ʼbum one finds commentaries by Phya pa on each of these three texts, as well as an independent work on Madhyamaka entitled dBu ma de kho na nyid kyi snying po (hereafter: sNying). This is the same work that was published in 1999 by Helmut Tauscher on the basis of a different manuscript, whose first folio identified the text as dBu ma shar gsum gyi stong thun. This might well be a later appellation of the text. Indeed, the colophon in both manuscripts gives the title dBu ma de kho na nyid kyi snying po, and it is with this name also that Phya pa refers to it in his commentary on the Madhyamakāloka (sNang bshad).⁹ As noted by Tauscher, this work might be identified as one of the summaries of Madhyamaka (dbu ma bsdus pa che chung) listed in A khu ching Shes rab rgya mtsho’s (1803–1875) list of rare works, which also includes the three above-mentioned commentaries and a commentary on the Uttaratantra (see Tho yig, dbu ma section, 11317–21), all of which are now available in the bKaʼ gdams gsung ʼbum.

Phya pa was reportedly opposed to the new Candrakīrti-oriented Madhyamaka interpretations that were adopted by a number of his own students, notably rMa bya Byang chub brtson ʼgrus and gTsang nag pa brTson ʼgrus seng ge. He is held to have composed many refutations of Candrakīrti and to have engaged in debate with Candrakīrti’s commentator Jayānanda.¹⁰ He is consequently firequently classified as a “svātantrika”—a qualification whose legitimacy, as discussed in Tauscher (2003), depends on the criteria one wants to apply in distinguishing “svātantrika” (rang rgyud pa) from “prāsaṅgika” (thal ʼgyur ba). Biographical lists do not hint to specific works of refutation by Phya pa, and no such work is included either among the texts recovered so far, but the confrontation is explicit in sNying po, where Phya pa criticizes Candrakīrti (7th cent.) and his epigones (zla ba grags pa la sogs pa) regarding the method for refuting ultimate entities and cites the Madhyamakāvatāra several times...