Position summary
Author was a PhD candidate at Mahachulalongkornrajavidyalaya University (MCU), Thailand at the time of the 2018 article. The work surveyed in the wiki is a single five-page article in a small Thai open-access journal. He is included in the wiki as a low-tier exhibit of contemporary Theravāda-trained academic survey work on Madhyamaka, not as a primary interpretive voice.
The position articulated in chowdhury-nagarjuna-hermeneutics-2018 is a standard four-schools doxographical narrative: emptiness as Nāgārjuna’s response to Sarvāstivāda, Sautrāntika, and Vijñānavāda; śūnyatā anchored in early Pāli suttas (Cūḷa-suññata, Mahā-suññata, Āneñjasappāya, Mahāvedalla) under three rubrics — meditative dwelling, attribute of objects, heedfulness-release. Operates implicitly in the same Pāli-canonical-continuity register as Kalupahana but at a much shallower level of engagement.
Hermeneutical approach
Doxographical-historical, secondary-source synthesis. Does not engage primary commentarial material (Buddhapālita, Bhāviveka, Candrakīrti) or the Mahāyāna hermeneutical framework (Two Truths, neyārtha/nītārtha, Three Turnings). The article’s relation to the wiki’s framework-necessity argument is by absence, not by argument: the author simply does not raise the question.
Key claims
- Four-school doxography by epistemic stance toward external objects (chowdhury-nagarjuna-hermeneutics-2018 p. 3).
- Threefold suttic catalogue of suññatā — meditative dwelling / attribute of objects / heedfulness-release (pp. 3–4).
- Nāgārjuna’s initial polemical target: Ābhidharmika dharma-theory; later expanded into a general remover of all views.
- MMK 24:18 four-synonym identification — emptiness, dependent origination, dependent designation, middle way.
Related scholars
- Kalupahana — same Pāli-canonical-continuity register, at a far higher level of scholarship and primary-source engagement.
- The article’s framing is not close to Westerhoff, Sprung, or any of the Tibetan commentators tracked in the wiki.