About Vasubandhu and Sāṅkhyakārikābhāṣya (-saptati)
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The dialectics between Buddhism and the philosophy of Sāṅkhya are profoundly recorded especially in Chinese and Tibetan Vāda Grantha-s — this is to the point that most major Sāṅkhya texts extant today are reconstructed from their Chinese and Tibetan translations. Other Buddhist texts are also vast sources about the school of thought and its preceptors; the information regarding the early preceptors on the other hand is scarce in Sāṅkhya texts themselves (the outlier being Yuktidīpikā) or in other Hindu works.
One example of this is K'uei Chi's commentary on Vasubandhu's Vijnaptimātratasiddhi where he elucidates about Kapilā, his school of Sāṅkhya, and his successors. He also states about debates between the schools and about Vasubandhu's refutation of Sāṅkhya philosophy. He records this as his master Hiuen-Tsang narrates to him. The *debatable* thing though is he mentions Sāṅkhyakārikābhāṣya on the Sāṅkhya text of Sāṅkhyakārikā as a work of Vasubandhu. As far as I know, he is not alone here - Yuen Ts'eh in his commentary on Nyāyānusāraśāstra, Tsing Liang (Ching Kuan) in his discourse on the Avataṃsaka and Ju Li too in his commentary on Vasubandhu's Vijnaptimātratasiddhi mentions the same.
The point to note here is that though debatable, traditional Indology doesn't hold any connection between Vasubandu and Sāṅkhyakārikābhāṣya. J. Takakusu mentioning the same states "There is, however, no reason whatever why a Buddhist should write a commentary on the work of his opponent...", he continues to posit that the mention of Sāṅkhyakārikābhāṣya in the aforementioned texts is due to confusion - "...and this point too, I think, must be dismissed as a confusion arising from a resemblance of the names, Sāṅkhya saptati, and Paramārthasaptati."
Personally, I don't think these two points hold much merit — (i) We have a plethora of instances against the reasoning. Thousands of works and commentaries are written on rival texts including major works of opposing schools of thought. (ii) There is an intelligible difference between the titles even if the saptati is common. To have confusion between these by multiple people doesn't hold any practical value of reasoning. Also in my opinion the text of Sāṅkhya saptati was pretty well known in the Chinese-Buddhist realm of philosophy, evident from Yuktidīpikā's mention of multiple discussions and debates between the Buddhists and the followers of Sāṅkhya. I am curious to know anything against this.
Supplementing my limited research, **I'd like to know** if Vasubandhu really wrote Sāṅkhyakārikābhāṣya and if you know any other resources (*primary sources like texts of preceptors or scholarship of modern scholars*) that either sustain the link of Vasubandhu and Sāṅkhyakārikābhāṣya or go against it. And please let me know if I'm misunderstanding something or am in ignorance of some critical information here.
Asked by Padmanābha
(51 rep)
Dec 31, 2023, 08:14 AM
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Last activity: Jan 23, 2024, 02:50 PM