Dharmakirti

Dharmakīrti (fl. c. 600–670 CE) was an influential Indian Buddhist philosopher who worked at Nālandā. He was one of the key scholars of epistemology (pramāṇa) in Buddhist philosophy, and is associated with the Yogācāra and Sautrāntika schools. He was also one of the primary theorists of Buddhist atomism. His works influenced the scholars of Mīmāṃsā, Nyaya and Shaivism schools of Hindu philosophy as well as scholars of Jainism.

Dharmakīrti's Pramāṇavārttika, his largest and most important work, was very influential in India and Tibet as a central text on pramana ('valid knowledge instruments'), and was widely commented on by various Indian and Tibetan scholars. His texts remain part of studies in the monasteries of Tibetan Buddhism.

Little is known for certain about the life of Dharmakīrti. As per John Taber, the only reliable information that we have about his life was that he was a teacher at Nalanda. The Chinese monk, Yijing, who was a resident at Nalanda between the years of 675 and 685 CE, refers to Dharmakīrti as a “recent” teacher. Yijing also mentioned that a Chinese traveller called Wuxing, was studying Dharmakīrti's teachings at the Telhara monastery which is just a short distance away from Nalanda which indicates that Dharmakīrti had attained fame as a logician in Magadha around 650–660 CE.

Tibetan hagiographies suggest that Dharmakīrti (Tibetan: ཆོས་ཀྱི་གྲགས་པ་; Wylie: chos kyi grags pa) was born into a Brahmin family of South India and was the nephew of the Mīmāṃsā scholar Kumārila Bhaṭṭa. When he was young, Kumārila spoke abusively towards Dharmakīrti as he was taking his Brahminical garments. This led Dharmakīrti to take the robes of the Buddhist order instead, resolving to "vanquish all the heretics." As a student of Buddhism, he first studied under Isvarasena, and later moved to Nalanda where he interacted with the 6th century Buddhist scholar Dharmapala.

However, the accuracy of the Tibetan hagiographies is uncertain, and scholars place him in the 7th century instead. This is because of inconsistencies in different Tibetan and Chinese texts, and because it is around the middle of 7th century, and thereafter, that Indian texts begin discussing his ideas, such as the citation of Dharmakīrti verses in the works of Adi Shankara. Dharmakīrti is believed by most scholars to have lived between 600 and 660 CE, but a few place him earlier.

Dharmakīrti is credited with building upon the work of Dignāga, the pioneer of Buddhist logic, and Dharmakīrti has ever since been seen as influential in the Buddhist tradition. His theories became normative in Tibet and are studied to this day as a part of the basic monastic curriculum.

The Tibetan tradition considers that Dharmakīrti was ordained as a Buddhist monk at Nālandā by Dharmapāla. In his writings, we find the statement that no one will understand the value of his work and that his efforts would soon be forgotten.

The Buddhist works such as the Yogacarabhumi-sastra and the Mahāyānasūtrālaṅkāra, composed before the 6th century, on hetuvidyā (logic, dialectics) are unsystematic, whose approach and structure are heresiological, proselytical and apologetic. They aimed were to defeat non-Buddhist opponents (Hinduism, Jainism, Ājīvikism, Charvaka (materialists), and others), defend the ideas of Buddhism, develop a line of arguments that monks could use to convert those who doubted Buddhism and to strengthen the faith of Buddhists who began to develop doubts. Around the middle of the 6th century, possibly to address the polemics of non-Buddhist traditions with their pramana foundations, the Buddhist scholar Dignāga shifted the emphasis from dialectics to more systematic epistemology and logic, retaining the heresiological and apologetic focus. Dharmakīrti followed in Dignāga's footsteps, and is credited with systematic philosophical doctrines on Buddhist epistemology, which Vincent Eltschinger states, has "a full-fledged positive/direct apologetic commitment". Dharmakīrti lived during the collapse of the Gupta Empire, a time of great insecurity for Buddhist institutions. The role of Buddhist logic was seen as an intellectual defense against Hindu philosophical arguments formulated by epistemically sophisticated traditions like the Nyaya school. However, Dharmakīrti and his followers also held that the study of reasoning and its application was an important tool for soteriological ends.