Membangun Kemandirian Petani Garam melalui Literasi Keuangan dan Perencanaan Keuangan Keluarga untuk Produksi, Akses Modal, dan Informasi Pasar Dr. Didin Fatihudin
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Tzohar, Roy, 1973– author.
Title: A Yogācāra Buddhist Theory of Metaphor / Roy Tzohar.
Description: New York, NY, United States of America : Oxford University Press, [2018] | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2017011352 (print) | LCCN 2017036990 (ebook) | ISBN 9780190664404 (updf) | ISBN 9780190664411 (epub) | ISBN 9780190664428 (oso) | ISBN 9780190664398 (cloth)
Subjects: LCSH: Buddhism and philosophy. | Buddhist philosophy. | Metaphor.= | Metaphor—Religious aspects—Buddhism. | Yogācāra (Buddhism)
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017011352
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Printed by Sheridan Books, Inc., United States of America
For Rotem
Contents
Acknowledgments xi
Abbreviations xv
Introduction 1
1. What Do Buddhists Have to Say About Figurative Language? 3
2. A Bit of Methodology: On Determining the Relevant Textual Field and Handling Intertextual Borrowing 8
3. An Outline 16
PART ONE
1. Metaphor as Absence: The Case of the Early Nyāya and Mīmāṃsā 23
1.1. What Is Metaphor (Upacāra)? 23
1.2. Upacāra in the Early Mīmāṃsā School 28
1.3. Upacāra in the Early Nyāya School 34
1.3.1. The view that nouns do not refer to an individual entity (vyakti) 35
1.3.2. The view that nouns directly refer to the generic property (jāti) and refer to the individual only figuratively 36
1.4. Summary 40
2. Metaphor as Perceptual Illusion: Figurative Meaning in Bhartṛhari’s Vākyapadīya 42
2.1. Figurative Meaning in the Second Kāṇḍa of the Vākyapadīya 46
2.1.1. Some preliminary distinctions regarding polysemy and metaphor 47
2.1.2. Figurative meaning and the analogy with perceptual error 49
2.2. Figurative Meaning in the Third Kāṇḍa of the Vākyapadīya 63
2.2.1. The semantic problems at stake 64
2.2.2. Bhartṛhari’s proposed solution and its interpretations 66
2.2.3. An alternative interpretation: Reading the third kāṇḍa in light of the second kāṇḍa 69
PART TWO
3. It’s a Bear . . . No, It’s a Man . . . No, It’s a Metaphor! Asaṅga on the Proliferation of Figures 77
3.1. The Authorship and Dating of the Tattvārtha Chapter of the Bodhisattvabhūmi and Its Relation to the Viniścayasaṃgrahaṇī 78
3.2. Metaphor-Related Arguments: A Close Reading 84
3.2.1. Asaṅga’s argumentative strategy 84
3.2.2. Demonstrating the inexpressibility of an essential nature in the TApaṭ: Some preliminary distinctions 86
3.2.3. Demonstrating the inexpressibility of an essential nature in the VS: Some preliminary distinctions 88
3.2.4. The TApaṭ “first argument”: The argument from polysemy 95
3.2.5. The TApaṭ “second argument”: An essential nature is not apprehended or determined by the designation 99
3.2.6. The TApaṭ “third argument”: An essential nature is not apprehended or determined by the object 100
3.2.7. Part I of the VS account: The designation is not dependent on the semantic-ground 103
3.2.8. Part II of the VS account: The magical creation analogy and what it says about the role of metaphor 106
3.2.9. Part III of the VS account: The essential nature is not apprehended or determined by anything other than the designation and the semantic-ground 111
3.2.10. Part IV of the VS account: Designations do not even “illuminate” or reveal an essential nature 112
3.2.11. The opponent’s objection: The claim that the essential nature is inexpressible is self-contradictory 114
3.2.12. Doesn’t inexpressibility presuppose the annihilation of phenomena? Asaṅga on language and intersubjectivity 119
3.3. Summary 123
4. The Seeds of the Pan-Figurative View: Metaphor in Other Buddhist Sources 125
4.1. Metaphor in Vasubandhu’s Abhidharmakośabhāṣya and Sthiramati’s Commentary 126
4.2. Metaphor in the Laṅkāvatārasūtra 137
4.2.1. The dating of the Laṅkāvatārasūtra and its relation to Yogācāra thinkers 137
4.2.2. The Sagāthakaṃ on discursive thought and causality 139
4.2.3. The Sagāthakaṃ on metaphors and mental causal reality 141
4.3. Metaphor in the Fifth Chapter of Dignāga’s Pramāṇasamuccaya 144
PART THREE
5. What It All Comes Down To: Sthiramati’s Pan-Metaphorical Claim and Its Implications 153
5.1. A Permanent Absentee: Sthiramati’s Definition of Metaphor 157
5.2. Sthiramati’s Refutation of Opposing Claims 161
5.3. What Remains of Ordinary Language? A Causal Figurative Theory of Sense 166
5.4. It Is All About Discourse: Sthiramati’s Arguments Against the Madhyamaka 173
6. Conversing with a Buddha: The Yogācāra Conception of Meaning as a Means for Overcoming Incommensurability 178
6.1. The Awareness Following Nonconceptual Knowledge as an Ultimate Outlook on Causality 180
6.2. Sthiramati’s Theory of Meaning and the Problem of Incommensurability 188
6.3. Perceptual Meaning and the Yogācāra Understanding of Intersubjective Agreement 190
6.4. Coming Back Full Circle: Perspectival Experience, Polysomic Language 201
Conclusion: The Alterity of Metaphor 205
Appendix A: A Translation and Exposition of the Vākyapadīya 2.250–256 221
Appendix B: A Running Translation of the Vākyapadīya 2.285–2.297 227
References 233
Index 253
Acknowledgments
This book evolved out of my PhD dissertation at Columbia University, and my first debt of gratitude is owed to the scholars who painstakingly midwifed that project: Gary Tubb, whose exceptional knowledge and love of Sanskrit literature are an always-present source of inspiration; Robert Thurman, who has guided me with unending patience and skill in means through the intricacies of Tibetan Buddhist texts; and Laurie Patton, whose graduate seminar on metaphor, which I attended over a decade ago when she was on Fulbright at Tel Aviv University, is in many ways the intellectual point of departure for the present book, and whose guidance and encouragement have accompanied me ever since. At Columbia, I benefited from the superlative scholarship and teaching of other faculty members, who also provided me with invaluable advice on issues both philological and philosophical; for this, my deepest thanks goes to Bernard Faure, Jack Hawley, Venerable Geshe Lozang Jamspal, Sheldon Pollock, and Wayne Proudfoot.
In the same spirit, I wish to thank the numerous scholars and friends who have helped me form and improve this book through stimulating conversations over the years, in particular Orna Almogi, Eyal Aviv, Daniel Arnold, Michael Stanley-Baker, Joel Bordeaux, Christian Coseru, Thibaut d’Hubert, Florin Deleanu, Martin Delhey, Rupert Gethin, Paul Hackett, Charles Hallisey, Jowita Kramer, David Kittay, Dan Lusthaus, Richard Nance, Parimal Patil, Andrea Pinkney, Mark Sidertis, Jonathan Silk, Dorji Wangchuk, Jan Westerhoff, and Michael Zimmermann. Special thanks go to several people who have read drafts of all or part of the book and offered their comments: Mario D’amato, a fellow rōnin, for his extremely helpful and detailed feedback; Elisa Freschi, for her thoughtful and spirited comments; Jonardon Ganeri, for a memorable philosophical debate about the work in a Berlin bar; Jay Garfield, a true kalyāṇa-mitra, who read this book cover to cover with incredible and generous attention and made this work so much better; Jonathan Gold, the best interlocutor that one could hope for; Janet Gyatso, whose interest and
Acknowledgments
wise suggestions were a consistent source of support over the years; Sonam Kachru, for his friendship and intellectual bonhomie; and Robert Sharf, for insightful reactions to ideas developed here. Of course, all errors that remain in the book are my own.
I am grateful to Cynthia Read and Drew Anderla at Oxford University Press for their interest in this manuscript, for their close attention and important guidance, and for their ever-professional and -sympathetic way.
I am thankful also to several institutions and departments that provided financial and logistical support for my research. The funding for the initial research for this book, conducted in India, was provided through the American Institute of Indian Studies (AIIS) Junior research fellowship (2007–2008). In Sarnath, I wish to thank the eminent faculty at the Central University of Tibetan Studies (CUTS), and especially Shrikant Bahulkar, Venerable Wonchuk Dorje Negi, Venerable Geshe Damdul Namgyal, Venerable Tsering Sakya, Venerable Lobsang Norbu Sastri, and Ramshankara Tripathi for generously sharing with me their vast stores of knowledge on Buddhist texts. In Pune, I wish to thank the faculty of Deccan College, and especially Vinayaka B. Bhatta, head of the Sanskrit Dictionary Project, and Jayashree Sathe, its editorin-chief, who kindly allowed me access to the institute’s scriptorium. And in Mysore, my thanks are extended to H. V. Nagaraja Rao, for many formidable hours of reading Sanskrit poetics.
In the years 2011–2015, I was a beneficiary of the Marie Curie Grant of the European Union (CORDIS), which gave me the resources and time to complete the research for this book and present it at international forums. An extended sabbatical stay in Berlin between 2013 and 2015 afforded me the time needed to complete the first draft of this book. I am grateful to Tel Aviv University, for allowing me to take this leave; to the Zukunftsphilologie Program, Forum Transregionale Studien, Freie Universität, Berlin, where I have been an affiliated postdoctoral fellow; and to Islam Daya, the program’s director.
Six additional months as a stipendiary research fellow at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, Berlin (2014–2015), provided me with the rarest gift—time to write and think uninterruptedly in the most intellectually stimulating environment. I am grateful to all of my colleagues there, and foremost to Dagmar Schäfer, the managing director of the institute and the director of Department 3, for her generosity and vision, and for her commitment to rethinking the history of science beyond Europe and the West. Finally, funding received from the Yad-Hanadiv Grant, the Department of East and South Asian Studies at Tel Aviv University, enabled me to hire Alex Cherniak, who expertly proofread the many Sanskrit and Tibetan passages included in
Acknowledgments
this book; Oren Hanner, a great research assistant; and Natalie Melzer, my first reader. I am grateful to them all.
In the last years I have been sustained in all aspects of my academic life by the solidarity, assistance, and friendship of my colleagues at Tel Aviv University’s South and East Asian Studies Department and Philosophy Department, where my thanks go out to Yoav Ariel, Ehud Halperin, Asaf Goldschmidt, Ofra Goldstein-Gidoni, Jacob Raz, Dani Raveh, Galia Patt-Shamir, Meir Shahar, and Ori Sela. My profound thanks are extended to Shlomo Biderman, my teacher of old, whose lifetime project at Tel Aviv University gave me the rare opportunity to teach Indian philosophy unapologetically as an integral part of the philosophy department’s curriculum. I am also grateful to my colleagues over on the mountain, at Hebrew University, Yael Bentor, Yigal Bronner, Yohanan Grinshpon, David Shulman, and Eviatar Shulman; though institutionally remote, they were so close in their support and helpful input.
Finally, I am thankful beyond measure to my family: Rahel, Menahem, and Lea; and above all to Rotem and Asya, who have travelled with me, both metaphorically and literally, along this path, and without whose love this book, like so much else, would not have been possible.
Chapter 5 contains a revised version of my article “Does Early Yogācāra Have a Theory of Meaning? Sthiramati’s Arguments on Metaphor in the Triṃśikā-Bhāṣya,” which appeared in the Journal of Indian Philosophy, 45(1), 99–120; and Chapter 6 integrates sections from my article “Imagine Being a Preta: Early Indian Yogācāra Approaches to Intersubjectivity,” from Sophia, doi:10.1007/s11841-016-0544-y. Both are reprinted here with the kind permission of Springer Science and Business Media.
Abbreviations
AKBh Abhidharmakośabhāṣya [Vasubandhu]
AKBhṬT Abhidharmakośaṭīkā Tattvārthā (chos mngon pa’i mdzod kyi bshad pa’i rgya cher ’grel pa don gyi de kho na nyid ces bya ba) [Sthiramati]
AS Abhidharmasamuccaya [Asaṅga]
ASBh Abhidharmasamuccayabhāṣya [Sthiramati]
BBh Bodhisattvabhūmi [Asaṅga]
H: Lhasa (lha sa) recension of the Tibetan canon
KP Kāśyapaparivartasūtra
KPṬ Kāśyapaparivartaṭīkā (’phags pa dkon mchog brtsegs pa chen po chos kyi rnam grangs le’u stong phrag brgya pa las ’od srungs kyi le’u rgya cher ’grel pa) [Sthiramati]
LAS Laṅkāvatārasūtra
MBhū Maulībhūmi section of the YB [Asaṅga]
MBh Mahābhāṣya [Patañjali]
MBhD Mahābhāṣyadīpikā [Bhartṛhari]
MīS Mīmāṃsāsūtra [Jaimini]
MMK Mūlamadhyamakakārikā [Nāgārjuna]
MS Mahāyānasaṃgraha (theg pa chen po bsdus ba) [Asaṅga]
MSBh Mahāyānasaṃgrahabhāṣya (theg pa chen po bsdus pa’i ’grel pa) [Vasubandhu]
MSA Mahāyānasūtrālaṃkāra [Maitreya/Asaṅga]
MSABh Mahāyānasūtrālaṃkārabhāṣya [Vasubandhu]
MV Madhyāntavibhāgakārikā [Maitreya/Asaṅga]
MVBh Madhyāntavibhāgabhāṣya [Vasubandhu]
MVṬ Madhyāntavibhāgaṭīkā [Sthiramati]
NyS Nyāyasūtra [Gautama]
NySBh Nyāyasūtrabhāṣya [Vātsyāyana]
NySVā Nyāyasūtravārttika [Uddyotakara]
P Peking Edition of the Tibetan Buddhist Canon
Abbreviations
PP (VP) Prakīrṇaprakāśa (VP) [Helārāja]
PS Pramāṇasamuccaya [Dignāga]
PSV Pramāṇasamuccayavṛtti [Dignāga]
PSkV Pañcaskandhakavibhāṣā [Sthiramati]
ŚāBh Śābarabhāṣya [Śabara]
SNS Saṃdhinirmocanasūtra
ŚrBh Śrāvakabhūmi [Asaṅga]
T. Taishō Revised Tripiṭaka
TApaṭ Tattvārthapaṭalam of the Bodhisattvabhūmi [Asaṅga]
TD Sde dge (Derge) recension of the Tibetan canon
Ṭīkā (VP) Vākyapadīyaṭīkā [Puṇyarāja]
Triṃś Triṃśikā [Vasubandhu]
TriṃśBh Triṃśikābhāṣya [Sthiramati]
TriṃśṬ Triṃśikā-ṭīkā [Vīnitadeva]
TSN Trisvabhāvanirdeśa [Vasubandhu]
U Upanibandhana on the MS [Asvabhāva]
Viṃś Viṃśikākārikā and vṛtti [Vasubandhu]
VP Vākyapadīya (Trikāṇḍi) [Bhartṛhari]
Vṛtti (VP) Vākyapadīyavṛtti [Bhartṛhari]
VS Viniścayasaṃgrahaṇī (mam par gtan la dbab pa bsduBa) [Asaṅga]
VV Vigrahavyāvartanī [Nāgārjuna]
Vy Vyākhyāyukti (rnam par bshad pa’i rigs pa) [Vasubandhu]
YB Yogācārabhūmi [Asaṅga]
Introduction
Put sim P ly, according to the Buddhists, at the root of human suffering lies a deep discord between how we ordinarily conceive of reality and how it truly is. Major factors in actively creating and maintaining this discord are language and the way in which our conceptual schemes parse, attempt to fix as permanent, and desperately hold on to what is by nature a fleeting and fluctuating stream of events. In this respect, language is not merely a veil that obscures true reality, but rather an active force (according to some Buddhist philosophical schools, a causal element) involved in its fabrication: It is the metaphysical workshop in which entities are forged and, once produced, are erroneously believed to be real.
Language is, therefore, part of the disease, but inevitably it is also part of the cure. This is because on the one hand, while Buddhist thought is underlined by a deep devaluation of language as a means for representing, describing, or reaching reality, on the other hand, insofar as it is required for any salvific discourse, language is viewed as necessary for liberation. The staunch antirealism of some Buddhist schools deprives language of its obvious referents, and Buddhist views regarding the basic inexpressibility of the ultimate reality further undermine its status; but at the same time, Buddhist thought faces the need to uphold the meaningfulness not just of ordinary language, but of the (often overtly metaphysical) Buddhist discourse itself.
At the heart of Buddhist philosophical thought, then, lies the paradox that is language. As a consequence, Buddhist philosophical texts present a palpable tension that arises from the inherently paradoxical need to argue against words by using words, to devalue language through language. Resolving, or at least in some way containing, this tension was arguably one of the main challenges confronted by Indian Buddhist thought, the story of which can indeed be told through the successive strategies and solutions
employed by its various schools to meet this challenge. This book focuses on the ingenious response to this tension that one Buddhist school, the early Indian Yogācāra (3rd–6th century ce), proposed through its sweeping claim that all language use is in fact metaphorical (upacāra).
Over the last several decades, the so-called metaphorical turn, propelled by a scholarly fascination with the fundamental role that metaphors play in our concept formation, has explored the implications of a similar pan-metaphorical picture. In a sense, this theoretical trend cast metaphor as a substance that is in many ways like the air we breathe: all-pervasive, essential to (mental) life, and transparent to us most of the time. But what if it ceased to be transparent? What if our awareness were awakened to the metaphorical nature of nearly everything we say, including our most prosaic utterances? What if our language—that “reef of dead metaphors,” in the memorable image coined by the linguist Guy Deutscher1 suddenly came alive? The Yogācāra, this book argues, were keenly aware of this overwhelming pervasiveness of metaphor, as well as of the philosophical benefits of being made aware of it.
Exploring the profound implications of the school’s pan-metaphorical claim, the book makes the case for viewing the Yogācāra account of metaphor as a broadly conceived theory of meaning—one that is applicable, in the words of the 6th-century Yogācāra thinker Sthiramati, both “in the world and in texts.” This theory of meaning, I argue, allowed the Yogācāra to carve out a position that is quite exceptional in the Buddhist landscape: a position that views ordinary language as incapable of representing or reaching reality, but at the same time justifies the meaningfulness of the school’s own metaphysical and salvific discourse. This scheme, I hope to show, bears on our interpretation of the Yogācāra by radically reframing the school’s controversy with the Madhyamaka; by reinstating the place of Sthiramati, who is known for his commentaries, as an innovative thinker in his own right; and by establishing the importance of the school’s contribution to Indian philosophy of language and its potential contribution to contemporary discussions of related topics in philosophy and the study of religion.
In this respect, this book is also about the wider Indian philosophical conversation about meaning that took place around the middle of the first millennium. Although some of what the Yogācārins had to say about metaphor was highly innovative, their reflections on this issue should be understood against the backdrop of, and as conversing with, specific theories of meaning put forward by such non-Buddhist schools as the Mīmāṃsā, the Nyāya, 1. Deutscher (2005, 118).
and the Grammarians. By grounding the Yogācāra’s pan-metaphorical claim in its broader intellectual context, both Buddhist and non-Buddhist, the book uncovers an intense philosophical conversation about metaphor and language that took place in India during that time and which reached across sectarian lines. This picture reframes the usual depiction of the Buddhist thought of the period as somewhat isolated and less engaged in exchange with non-Buddhist philosophical schools. Integrating formal analyses of Indian philosophy with the history of ideas, the book thus functions as an argument for a deeply contextual consideration of Buddhist philosophy—one that looks beyond sectarian demarcations and traditional narratives of textual transmission, even in this early period.
Finally, then, this book is about how Buddhist thinkers reflected on and understood the metaphorical function of language, and about what metaphors mean and do within Buddhist philosophical texts. Figurative language is palpably present in Buddhist philosophical texts in general and in the Yogācāra lore in particular, and yet there are relatively few existing studies of this topic, and when theorizing, these studies tend to appeal to contemporary philosophical and literary theories of metaphors. In the present study, by contrast, I attempt to reconstruct a body of theory on metaphor as formulated by Buddhist thinkers (i.e., using their own terms). My hope is that this book will provides readers of Buddhist philosophy with a fresh scholarly perspective for appraising not only the overall Buddhist understanding of language but also, more concretely, how particular metaphors operate within these texts.
1. What Do Buddhists Have to Say About Figurative Language?
The systematic argumentation that is the mark of early Mahāyāna philosophical treatises is counterbalanced rather strikingly by the school’s ubiquitous use of figurative language in these works. The stock analogies, similes, and metaphors can usually be traced to a number of Buddhist root figures that, far from being merely ornamental, are highly important in developing argumentation and outlining its soteriological horizons. But given the overwhelming visibility of figurative language in Buddhist literature, its role and use have received relatively little attention in scholarship to date. While various scholarly works engage with figurative language as a subtopic of Buddhist hermeneutics (which will be discussed in more detail shortly), or with the philosophical work performed by particular Buddhist metaphors (see, for instance, Wayman, 1984; Lusthaus, 2002, 491–495, 508–517; Wood, 1991, 42–47; Garfield, 2002,
147–151; Gold, 2006), only a handful consider its overall status or function as an independent topic, and often these works approach it by employing contemporary theories of metaphor developed in Western disciplines.2 With few exceptions,3 there has been no sustained attempt to examine how Buddhist thinkers reflect on and theorize their own application of figurative language.
2. Notable studies of this sort include McMahan (2002), on the role and meaning of visual metaphors in Indian Mahāyāna sūtras. McMahan argues for the centrality of the visual as a paradigm for knowledge in these texts but draws mostly on contemporary conceptual theories of metaphor. This study is not concerned, however, with the linguistic side of metaphors, disregarding the fact that visual metaphors are ultimately also linguistic devices (see Gummer, 2005). Covill (2009) convincingly demonstrates that Aśvaghoṣa consciously and strategically used recurrent metaphors to encapsulate a central theme of religious conversion. In this respect, her work is attuned to the way in which Buddhist thinkers understood their own deployment of linguistic metaphor, yet her analysis turns on the content of a particular web of metaphors, and to this extent remains text- and usage-specific. In fact, one of the reasons that Covill gives for her somewhat counterintuitive decision to rely on contemporary Western theory of conceptual metaphor rather than on Indian theory of poetics is precisely that the latter disregards the specific content of metaphor (adhering instead to a general theorization of meaning). Focusing on another work by Aśvaghoṣa, the Buddhacaritaṃ, Patton (2008) explores the hermeneutical and conceptual role of figurative language in pre-alaṃkāraśāstra Indian literature. Additional notable essays that address the topic of Buddhist metaphors, but not as their main focus, include Collins (1982 and 1997), on the ways in which the Pāli imaginaire utilizes certain patterns of imagery concerning either personal identity or the concept of nirvāṇa, respectively; and Eckel (1992), whose study of Bhāvaviveka’s philosophical works draws attention to the metaphors that frame the latter’s arguments. Other writers whose engagement with the topic is notable, if more narrowly defined, include Goodman (2005), who has presented what he calls the Vaibhāṣika “metaphoricalist” approach to personal identity, and Flores (2008, 87–100), who proposes a literary reading of the figurative language in the Dhammapada
3. Gold (2007, 2015) deals with the place of upacāra in Vasubandhu’s understanding of causality. D’Amato (2003) reconstructs a Buddhist theory of signs presented in the eleventh chapter of the Mahāyānasūtrālaṃkāra and its conception of lakṣaṇā. Kragh (2010) examines several cases of figurative use within Candrakīrti’s work and calls for the formulation of a literary theory—distinct from Sanskrit poetics—that is especially attuned to the genre of śāstra. As for scholarship that deal with the general Indian theorization of figurative language before the existence of a full fledge theory of poetics, notable (but by no means exhaustive) examples include Gonda’s (1949) methodical and extensive study of similes in Indian literature (including a section on Buddhist similes). Kunjunni Raja (1977) deals extensively with the understanding of figurative language of the Nyāya, Mīmāṃsā, and Grammarians, and elsewhere (1965) specifically with Pāṇini’s understanding of lakṣaṇā Gerow (1977) provides notes on some limited early Indian engagement with poetics and addresses the meanings and terminology related to figurative language in classical Indian thought (1984). Piatigorsky and Zilberman (1976) deal with the range of meanings and uses of the term lakṣaṇā, mostly in the Upaniṣads; and Gren-Eklund (1986) compares certain features of both philosophical and later poetic understanding of figurative language with the Aristotelian conception of figurative transference. Patton (2004), focusing on the notion of viniyoga, presented the centrality of metonymical thinking as a vehicle for constructing ritualistic meaning, and her account can perhaps be regarded as a first-of-its-kind scholarly
My aim in this book, therefore, is to present a systematic account—the first of its kind, as far as I know—of a homegrown Buddhist theory of metaphor. What, then, does the Mahāhyāna philosophical discourse have to say about figurative language, and where does it do so (under which subdiscourses)? Two obvious places in which to search for answers do not yield them. First, the later Buddhist epistemological discourse (pramāṇavāda), despite its tendency toward comprehensive categorization, does not define or expressly delineate the rules and role of figurative language in any distinct way.4 Second, there is no early Buddhist theory of poetics (alaṃkāraśāstra)—or, for that matter, any extant systematized theory of poetics from that period—that deals with these issues.5
description of ritualistic-qua-performative Indian theory of metaphor. Another noted work is Myers (1995), who, following the program initially proposed by Potter (1988), examines the role of central metaphors in broadening and exceeding given conceptual spheres in Vedic and Advaita-Vedāntic literature. Most recently, Keating (2013a, 2013b, 2017), deals extensively with the understanding of various categories of figurative use in the work of the 9th-century Kashmiri thinker Mukula Bhaṭṭa, as well in the works of other Indian philosophical schools of thought.
4. On Dignāga’s (rather limited) engagement with the issue of figurative language, see Chapter 4, section 4.3. Within this discourse, the epistemic function of figurative elements usually overshadows the linguistic one. This is true, for instance, of the discussion of “examples” (dṛṣṭānta), which is usually limited to a consideration of their validity in the inferential procedure (anumāna), and the same goes for the consideration of relevant valid means of knowledge such as “analogy” (upamāna); in this respect, see Zilberman’s expansive but unfortunately unfinished work on analogy in Indian thought (2006, 49). As for “testimony” (āptavāda, āptāgama), while both Asaṅga and Vasubandhu accept it as a valid means of knowledge, its bearing on such specific speech particles as figures is never discussed in epistemic discourse. For Asaṅga’s reference to the role of testimony in his Abhidharmasamuccaya (AS), the Bodhisattvabhūmi, and the Hetuvidyā section in the Śrutamayībhūmi, see Tatia (1976, 253), Dutt (1978, 25, lines 17–19), and Wayman (1999, 23), respectively.
5. The first full-fledged extant works on Sanskrit poetics are Daṇḍin’s Kāvyādarśa and Bhāmaha’s Kāvyālaṃkāra, whose chronology and order of appearance are a longstanding conundrum in contemporary scholarship. Bronner (2012a, 99, 110) convincingly places Daṇḍin’s Kāvyādarśa c.700 ce and as postdating Bhāmaha. Both writers mention (and Bhāmaha even names and quotes) predecessors as authors of earlier poetical works whose absence still puzzles scholars; in this respect, see the opposing views of Pollock (2003, 42; 2006, 89–90) and Bronner (2012a, 110–113). Regarding much earlier works that deal with poetical terms, though early writers like Yāska and Pāṇini did theorize figures to a certain extent, their engagement, while significant for subsequent theory of poetics, is far from uniform in its scope or concerns (see Gerow 1977, 221). As for the Nāṭyaśāstra, Pollock (2003, 42n.5) points out that although an early version of the text, now lost, could have been available from the 2nd century ce (and is referenced for the first time in the 4th century), its main focus was the structure of drama, not poetics (although it probably influenced the latter’s discussion of rasa), and Gerow indicates that only in the 8th century ce, with the commentary
Nevertheless, early Mahāyāna Buddhist literature is keenly aware of the stakes involved in the deployment of figurative language as a liberative tool. This awareness is most conspicuous in two related contexts. The first is the Buddhist notion of “skillful means” (upāya), which counts figurative language as one of many pedagogical means applied by Buddhist teachers. The second context is discussions of hermeneutics, in which figurative language is seen as the textual expression of implicit intention (abhisaṃdhi, abhiprāya) and interpretable meaning (neyārtha) of the Buddha’s words.6 Both these perspectives on figurative usage, however, reduce it either to its function (pedagogical) or to indirect intention ascriptions, telling us little about the semantics and pragmatics of figurative meaning; i.e., its enabling conditions, cognitive impact, and the referential mechanism involved in its employment.
Where we do find these issues addressed is in the early Yogācāra treatises, which often take up the subject of figurative usage as part of a broader philosophical engagement with the relation between language and reality. Within these accounts, situated at the juncture of discourse on associative language and discourse on theories of meaning, a prominent concept is upacāra, a term best translated as “figurative designation,” or simply “metaphor.” While the term is not exclusive to the Yogācāra, it is especially prevalent in the writings
of Lollaṭa, does it become a truly “creative basis for the tradition” (1977, 225–226n.34). As for Buddhism, despite some pronounced suspicion on the part of canonical sources toward poets and the composition of poetry, Buddhists are strongly connected to the history of the composition of poetry in India, from the very early so-called Pāli kāvya literature—namely, the Thera- and Therīgāthā anthologies, the poetical works of Aśvaghoṣa from the second century CE, which are the first extant instances of extensive poetry (mahākāvya), those ascribed to Kumāralāta and Mātṛceṭa, and up to the poems ascribed to Dharmakīrti (for references to the latter, see Ingalls 1965, 445). See Tieken (2014, 86–87, 103–106) for a discussion of the roots of kāvya and its possible relation to Buddhism, and Ollett (2015) for a discussion of some Buddhist writers in what he conceives of broadly as a “kāvya movement” from 50 bce to the 2nd century CE. Nevertheless, there is no indication of a particular Buddhist contribution to or a distinct tradition of theory of poetics in Sanskrit.
6. The issue of figurative use as a subtopic of a discussion about skillful means and hermeneutics is taken up in a variety of sources; in the context of the Mahāyāna literature, these include Thurman (1978), Hamlin (1983), Lopez (1988, 1993), Schroeder (2001), Pye (2003), Ganeri (2006b), and Collier (1998). The latter is noteworthy, insofar as his analysis of indirect intention and nonliteral speech in a variety of Mahāyāna sources draws comparisons with accounts of Indian poetics, revealing interesting connections between the work of medieval Indian thinkers, such as Haribhadra, and the theory of poetics prevalent in his time. Regarding early Buddhism, Hamilton (2000) has argued for a reading of the early Buddhist sources that emphasizes the intended figurative nature of many of the Buddha’s assertions (above all, the nonself claim); Hwang (2006) supplies a doctrinal history of the metaphor of nirvāṇa attuned to the various interpretative schemes provided by the suttas and early Abhidhamma, and Cox (1992) discusses at length the Abhidharma hermeneutical mindset (see, in this respect, Chapter 4, section 4.1).
ascribed to Asaṅga and Vasubandhu (c.360 ce),7 and receives its most comprehensive and systematic treatment in the commentarial works of Sthiramati (470–550), which advance the claim that all language use is metaphorical.8
The scholarly engagement with Sthiramati as an important Indian philosopher in his own right is limited, perhaps in part because of the commentarial nature of his work. Yet his place along the continuum of the Yogācāra’s textual development and the perspective that this position offers are unique and give his work a special significance. Relative to previous thinkers like Asaṅga and Vasubandhu, Sthiramati operated under a much more defined notion of the Yogācāra as a distinct school, or at least a more defined textual tradition; accordingly, his interpretive challenge—and contribution—consisted in synthesizing a varied textual corpus into a coherent and consistent worldview, adding to it in the process some original and strikingly innovative insights. Highlighting Sthiramati’s substantive philosophical contribution to the Yogācāra tradition is one of the goals of this book.
With respect to the understanding of language and metaphor in particular, the scope and reach of Sthiramati’s treatment of this topic are especially notable, insofar as he explicitly situates these issues within the wider nonBuddhist Indian conversation about meaning and reference, and also proceeds to synthesize various Yogācāra ideas about language into a unified theory of meaning. To mount his pan-figurative claim, as we will see, Sthiramati ingeniously weaves together the Yogācāra’s multiple and dispersed comments on language, joining a critique of a correspondence theory of meaning with a positive account of the causal and mental underpinnings of language in terms of the activity of consciousness.
But what does this pan-figurative claim entail, and what purpose did it serve for the Yogācāra? Where does it leave ordinary language use, and no less important, how does it bear on the status and meaning of the language of Buddhist scriptures? Where did this sweeping claim originate, and to what extent was it innovative?
By addressing these questions, I aim to present an account of the Yogācāra understanding of upacāra, formulated as far as possible in the school’s own theoretical terms. At the same time, my reading of the school’s views brings into account their broader pan-Indian context, which is, as I will argue, a necessary context for any proper understanding of the school’s claims.
7. For more on Vasubandhu’s dating, see Chapter 4, section 4.1.
8. For more on Sthiramati’s dating, as well as to the question of his authorship in respect to the list of works attributed to him by the tradition, see Chapter 5, note 1 and 2.
2. A Bit of Methodology: On Determining the Relevant
Textual Field and Handling
Intertextual Borrowing
Upacāra has a broad range of meanings in non-Buddhist Sanskrit literature.9 Conducting early research for this book at the scriptorium of the Sanskrit Dictionary Project at Deccan College (Pune, Mahārāshtra), I reviewed hundreds of slips of paper that in theory quote all appearances of upacāra in 1,541 representative works of Sanskrit literature (Ghatage et al., 1976).10 Apart from locating references to upacāra in Sanskrit sources, this vast database allowed me to identify patterns in the changes of meaning that the term underwent across periods and genres. Specifically, it demonstrated quite distinctly that the use of upacāra in the sense of metaphor is prominent in the philosophical literature—non-Buddhist and Buddhist alike—from its earliest phases, as well as in the later alaṃkāraśāstra literature, but it is relatively scarce or nonexistent in other genres. While this observation needs to be qualified by the fact that it inevitably reflects the principles of selection applied by the dictionary’s compilers, as well as the historically constructed notion of a Sanskrit canon,11 it nonetheless enables us to outline a general working context in which upacāra was highly visible, and more important, suggests that this context reaches across sectarian lines. Both these observations came to form my working hypotheses, which eventually, through close readings in a variety of upacāra-related textual sources, proved to be well founded.
Given the wide scope of this textual context, my lineup of sources had to be selective. The initial criterion guiding my selection of texts, apart from their thematic relevance to the issues brought up by the Yogācāra, was the
9. Monier Williams’s Sanskrit-English Dictionary (1956/1899) lists the following meanings (before the word’s sense as figurative usage): approach, service, attendance, act of civility, reverence, proceedings, practice, behavior, attendance on a patient, ceremony, offering, solicitation, ornament, and usage. (197).
10. The project was inaugurated in 1948 by S. M. Katre. The first volume of the project’s dictionary was published in 1978, and in 2013, the first part of the 11th volume appeared. The process of cataloguing and sorting vocables from all selected Sanskrit sources is ongoing. Its information is stored in an archive of handwritten slips of reference paper, each containing the Sanskrit headword, an approximate English translation, and a textual reference to the passage in which the word appears.
11. The totality of the works used in the dictionary is said to represent the traditional branches of Sanskrit literature from the Ṛgveda to 18th-century commentarial literature, but the list reflects mostly Sanskrit classical Brahmanic works and presents (for instance) a relatively small body of Buddhist and Jain works (the dictionary also excludes meanings that are unique to Buddhist sources—i.e., “hybrid” Sanskrit).
presence of a substantial theoretical engagement with upacāra, either as the main topic of discussion or in a philosophically significant manner, and also, in the case of sources other than the Yogācāra treatises, the text’s chronological availability to early Yogācāra thinkers. The selection of sources was also motivated by what I had initially regarded as a natural goal of this study: tracing, if not the textual origin of, then at least the main source of influence on, the Yogācāra understanding of upacāra so as to come nearer to providing the term with an intellectual history of sorts. This entailed reading sources in ever-widening contextual circles that moved chronologically from the obvious core of the early Yogācāra treatises’ often quite disperse references to upacāra, to their immediate Buddhist context (Mahāyāna sūtras, other Buddhist philosophical schools like the Madhyamaka, Pāli and Sanskrit Abhidharma, and Pāli canonical sources), and then to the less immediate non-Buddhist philosophical śāstric context.
Serving as the rather stable focal point of this exploration of the textual field was Sthiramati’s explication of upacāra in his commentary on Vasubandhu’s Triṃśikā (Treatise in Thirty Verses, Triṃś). Representing the apex of the early Yogācāra treatment of metaphor, this text came to mark the upper limit of my survey—both chronologically (mid-6th century ce) and thematically. The most chronologically distant Yogācāra literature that I reviewed is the Tattvārthapaṭalaṃ (Chapter on the Meaning of Reality, henceforth TApaṭ) of the Bodhisattvabhūmi (Levels of the Bodhisattva, BBh),12 one of the early sources (if not the earliest) of Yogācāra thought, whose influence on the school’s subsequent works cannot be overstated. The TApaṭ and its accompanying sections in the later Viniścayasaṃgrahaṇī (Collection of Clarifications, VS), both belonging to the vast corpus of the Yogācārabhūmi (Levels of Spiritual Training),13 traditionally ascribed to Asaṅga,14 offer a highly sophisticated philosophical account of the relation between language and reality, in which the concept of upacāra plays an important argumentative role.
12. Deleanu (2006, 195) proposes an approximate dating of the BBh to c.230–300, of the Saṃdhinirmocanasūtra to c.300–350, and of the first strata of the Viniścayasaṃgrahaṇī to c.320–350 and its later parts to c.380 CE. For a discussion of the relative chronology of these texts, see Chapter 3, section 3.1.
13. In this context, bhūmi can be taken to refer either to a stage or a foundation, and Yogācāra to the practice of yoga or to the practitioners of yoga. Here, I follow Delhey (2013, 501). For an alternative translation, see Kragh (2013, 49–50).
14. Despite this ascription, the texts most likely could not have been the work of a single author, or even a single compiler. The doctrinal and philological stratification of the YB corpus indicates that it was redacted over a long period of time. See the discussion of this issue in Chapter 3, section 3.1.
