Omniscience and Religious Authority: A Study on Prajñākaragupta's Pramāṇavārttikālaṅkārabhāṣya ad Pramāṇavārttika II 8-10 and 29-33 by Shinya Moriyama (review)

T hough it had already beencompleted by 2011, Moriyama's Omniscience and Religious Authoritywas published only in 2014. In his acknowledgments, the author regretted his inability to incorporate studies that had been published after 2011. The work—a revised version of his PhD thesis, which had been defended in 2006—is one of the first attempts at a detailed investigation of a rather significant yet not sufficiently analyzed topic: namely, the Buddha's omniscience and its proof. ¹In particular, the monograph concerns the treatment of these topics by Prajñākaragupta (ca. 750–810) while establishing a philologically reliable text of some portions of his Pramāṇavārttikālaṅkārabhāṣya. The book was completed soon after the publication of Sara McClintock's (2010) comprehensive monograph Omniscience and the Rhetoric of Reason: Śāntarakṣita and Kamalaśīla on Rationality, Argumentation, and Religious Authority, which concerns instead the Buddha's omniscience as treated in Śāntarakṣita's and Kamalaśīla's Tattvasaṅgrahaand Tattvasaṅgrahapañjikā.

Moriyama's book is an example of solid scholarship, in which philological precision, philosophical depth, and clarity of exposition all find their place. Prajñākaragupta is quite an original author within the Buddhist tradition of logic and epistemology ( pramāṇa); his Pramāṇavārttikālaṅkārabhāṣyais one of the most significant commentaries on Dharmakīrti's (around 600) Pramaṇavārttika. As Moriyama himself suggests, quoting Karin Preisendanz, ²there is a distinction between commentaries that are philosophically innovative and commentaries that are philosophically "unproductive" (1–2). He places Prajñākaragupta among those who innovate, pointing to the title of his work, that is, the "adornment" ( alaṅkāra) of the Pramāṇavārttika. This commentary addresses three of the four chapters of the Pramāṇavārttika, namely, the Pramāṇasiddhi, the Pratyaks.a, and the Parārthanumāna chapters. The commentary on the Pramāṇasiddhi, in particular, shows an "exceptional tendency to elaborate on religious issues that are independent of the original content of the Pramāṇavārttika" (3).

The Sanskrit text of the bhaṣyahas been fully edited only once, and that was by Rāhula Sāṅkṛtyāyana in 1953; ³Moriyama considers this edition to be rather unreliable, since "it contains many typographical errors as well as some substantial mistakes" (99). Moriyama's critical edition of two portions of the text ( ad PramāṇavārttikaPramāṇasiddhi 8–10 and 29–33) is but one of several studies that have been carried out in recent years—such as those of Ono, Shigeaki Watanabe, and Franco––in order to improve on that edition and provide the scientific community with a more definitive text.

The book is divided into two parts, which are preceded by a general introduction. The first part, consisting of four chapters, concerns the analysis of Prajñākaragupta's arguments on omniscience and religious authority. The second part contains the Sanskrit edition as well as the Tibetan text of Pramāṇavārttikālaṅkārabhāṣya adPV II 8–10 and 29–33, followed by an annotated English translation. Finally, an appendix lists all the quotations that are found in Jayanta's subcommentary on the passages edited by Moriyama. Throughout the book, Moriyama offers evidence based on the quotation of several relevant Sanskrit passages, along with their translations; at times, he discusses different translations for the same passage.

In the introduction, while outlining the history of the concept of omniscience in Buddhist thought, Moriyama argues that Kumārila and Dharmakīrti's debate on religious authority was a turning point in the development of this concept. Dharmakīrti does not expressly talk about omniscience in the Pramāṇasiddhi; however...