Position summary
Chowdhury was a PhD candidate at Mahachulalongkornrajavidyalaya University (MCU), Thailand when the 2018 article appeared. It is a single five-page piece in a small Thai open-access journal: survey work, contemporary Theravāda-trained academic writing on Madhyamaka rather than original interpretation.
The position in chowdhury-nagarjuna-hermeneutics-2018 is a standard four-schools doxographical narrative. Emptiness is read as Nāgārjuna’s response to the Sarvāstivāda, Sautrāntika, and Vijñānavāda; śūnyatā is anchored in early Pāli suttas (Cūḷa-suññata, Mahā-suññata, Āneñjasappāya, Mahāvedalla) under three rubrics — meditative dwelling, attribute of objects, and heedfulness-release. The register is the same Pāli-canonical-continuity one as Kalupahana, though the engagement is much shallower.
Hermeneutical approach
Doxographical and historical: a synthesis of secondary sources. It does not engage the primary commentarial material (Buddhapālita, Bhāviveka, Candrakīrti) or the Mahāyāna hermeneutical framework (the Two Truths, neyārtha/nītārtha, the Three Turnings). The framework question is absent rather than argued against; Chowdhury simply never raises it.
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.