“Bhāvaviveka’s Prajñāpradīpa: A Translation of Chapter Two: ‘Examination of the Traversed, the Untraversed, and That Which Is Being Traversed’” — Ames, William L. (trans.); Bhāviveka (author), 1995.
Source provenance. Ames’s full English translation of Chapter 2 of Bhāviveka’s Prajñāpradīpa (Shes rab sgron ma), made from the Tibetan (Peking, Narthang, Derge, Cone editions, with extensive use of Avalokitavrata’s Prajñāpradīpa-ṭīkā), published in Journal of Indian Philosophy 23(3): 295–365 (Sept 1995). The Sanskrit original is lost except for quotations in the Prasannapadā; the Chinese translation is reportedly poor, but Jñānagarbha and Cog ro Klu’i rgyal mtshan’s early-ninth-century Tibetan is regarded as excellent. Ames also published Chapter 1 as two articles (1993, 1994) in JIP 21 and 22, and Chapters 3–5 in his 1986 University of Washington PhD thesis. This article gives us the whole of Chapter 2, Bhāviveka’s commentary on MMK’s chapter on motion (gata-āgata-gamyamāna-parīkṣā), closing the gap flagged on Bhāviveka that the Prajñāpradīpa had “still not been directly added.” The MMK 1.1 critique of Buddhapālita is NOT in this source (it sits in Chapter 1, published by Ames separately and not yet added); what Chapter 2 provides is a different but equally valuable window on Bhāviveka’s method at work across an entire chapter.
Thesis / main argument
Bhāviveka’s Chapter 2 comments on Nāgārjuna’s critique of motion, arguing that what appears as motion has no intrinsic nature (svabhāva) because goer, going, and path are mutually dependent: none is self-sufficient, yet each is presupposed by the others. The chapter’s method, however, is what matters philosophically: Bhāviveka systematically converts Nāgārjuna’s prasaṅga arguments into formal Dignāga-style probative syllogisms (thesis + reason + example, often with dissimilar example) qualified by “in ultimate reality” (paramārthatas / don dam par). He also quotes Buddhapālita’s own commentary at several points and subjects each quotation to a short critique (e.g. “That is not [logically] possible, because…”). He answers objections from at least six rival schools — Vaiśeṣikas (Aulūkyas), Sāṃkhyas, Jains, grammarians (Pāṇinīyas), etymologists, and fellow Buddhists of substantialist tendency — demonstrating the Prajñāpradīpa’s doxographic reach. Ames’s translator’s introduction situates Bhāviveka in the lineage, confirms the Tibetan origin of the school-designation, and flags that Bhāviveka’s position on prasaṅga is “inconsistent, if not biased.”
Key claims (from Bhāviveka’s text)
- Chapter 2’s structural purpose (commentary preceding the first opponent-objection): Nāgārjuna begins the chapter “to show that dependent origination possesses the characteristics of [being] without coming and without going” — that is, to establish two of the eight negations set out in MMK 1.A,B. Motion is chosen because it is a paradigm of activity (kriyā), so if motion is refuted, other activities follow. This places Chapter 2 within a Mahāyāna hermeneutical arc: it is exegetically subordinate to the programmatic eight negations
- The central threefold analysis (MMK 2.1): going does not exist on the traversed, untraversed, or that-which-is-being-traversed. Bhāviveka converts each into a syllogism with a commonly-accepted example (e.g. “The untraversed is not being traversed, because it has not yet been traversed, like a path different from that, which one does not wish to traverse”)
- Systematic use of the paramārthatas qualifier: nearly every thesis in the chapter is qualified “in ultimate reality” (don dam par) — e.g. “In ultimate reality, a goer does not go, because he already possesses activity, like one who stays” (MMK 2.8a commentary). The qualifier is precisely what Candrakīrti attacks at candrakirti-prasannapada-mmk1-excerpt sections IX–X
- Conventional motion preserved: Bhāviveka repeatedly affirms that conventionally, a goer and going and a path exist through mutual dependence. “That [goer and going] is also established in superficial reality; but in ultimate reality, it is not established.” This is the operative Two Truths structure — negation qualified by paramārthatas, conventional functioning preserved
- Bhāviveka’s “cinematic” theory of conventional motion (commentary on MMK 2.22c): “Conventionally, the goer is a collection of conditioned factors which originates continuously in another place. This origination occurs by virtue of the element, air, which is produced by effort; and that effort, in turn, arises from wishing as its cause. Going is that which is the arising of that [goer] with a defining characteristic unlike that of the previous moment.” Ames notes this is a momentary / Sautrāntika-inflected theory of motion; Nāgārjuna would not have needed to endorse or reject it conventionally
- Critique of Buddhapālita (appears repeatedly, short form): Bhāviveka quotes Buddhapālita’s gloss of a term or of a verse, then replies “That is not [logically] possible, because…” with three or four reasons. Example on MMK 2.2 (“yataḥ means ‘of the goer’”): Bhāviveka counters (a) there would be no correlative of “therefore”; (b) the basis of an activity is invariable; (c) the negation of a goer’s going on the traversed and untraversed has been shown already. These are compressed methodological critiques, not the three-pronged attack against Buddhapālita’s MMK 1.1 gloss that Candrakīrti reports
- Bhāviveka accepts that Nāgārjuna uses prasaṅga (commentary on MMK 2.19): “Thus because here [in MMK 2.19] there is a prasaṅga argument, the original meaning (prakṛta-artha) can be reversed.” Bhāviveka then converts the prasaṅga into the syllogism: In ultimate reality, goer and going are not just the same, because they are agent and action/object, like the cutter and the cut. This is philosophically revealing: Bhāviveka does not reject prasaṅga per se; he treats prasaṅga as an indirect way of presenting a syllogism that can be reconstructed. Ames’s note 7 flags this as “inconsistent, if not biased” because in Chapter 1 Bhāviveka criticises Buddhapālita’s prasaṅga on the grounds that the conversion would saddle Buddhapālita with unwanted theses
- Defence against the “common-sense” objection (commentary on MMK 2.17 ff.): “Since we have employed a qualified thesis by saying ‘in ultimate reality,’ we have not abandoned the conventional designations of goer and going which are commonly known in the world.” This is Bhāviveka’s explicit Two-Truths defence — and the argumentative work the paramārthatas qualifier is doing
- Scriptural basis cited at the chapter’s close (commentary on MMK 2.25cd): Bhāviveka adduces four Mahāyāna sūtra passages showing that “coming” and “going” are absent in the state of the Noble Ones — Ārya-akṣayamati-nirdeśa, Dharmodgata chapter of Aṣṭasāhasrikā Prajñāpāramitā, Ārya-brahma-viśeṣa-cintā-paripṛcchā, and Bhagavatī-prajñāpāramitā-suvikrāntavikrāmi. This anchors the Chapter 2 argument in Prajñāpāramitā scripture, confirming the Mahāyāna framework is load-bearing for Bhāviveka’s project
Key claims (from Ames’s translator’s introduction)
- Bhāviveka “seems to have been the first to use the formal syllogism of Indian logic in expounding the Madhyamaka” (p. 296)
- “Bhāviveka’s criticisms of Buddhapālita in the Prajñāpradīpa resulted in the division of the Madhyamaka into two subschools” — but “the names of these subschools, derived from svatantra-anumāna and prasaṅga, seem to have originated some centuries after Candrakīrti and are known to us only from Tibetan sources” (p. 296, citing Ruegg 1981)
- The Prajñāpradīpa is “the first commentary on the MMK to make use of the formal apparatus of Buddhist logic and the first to discuss non-Buddhist philosophical schools extensively” (p. 296)
- On Bhāviveka’s inconsistency (note 7, p. 299): at MMK 2.19 Bhāviveka admits Nāgārjuna uses a prasaṅga that converts into a syllogism which “also simply negates sameness without asserting difference.” But at MMK 1.1 he uses the same conversion-strategy to accuse Buddhapālita of tacitly affirming arising-from-other. “Thus Bhāviveka seems inconsistent, if not biased, on this point” — i.e. the critique of Buddhapālita is not methodologically principled but opportunistic
- Bhāviveka accepts a “cinematic” theory of motion on the conventional level (note 11), illustrating his hospitality to Abhidharma-style conventional analysis — a piece of Ruegg’s criterion-(4) (acceptance of svalakṣaṇa on the saṃvṛti level)
- The Tibetan translation is “excellent,” done by Jñānagarbha and Cog ro Klu’i rgyal mtshan; the Chinese translation is reportedly poor (Kajiyama 1963)
Methodology
Ames translates from the Tibetan (Peking, Narthang, Derge, Cone) with heavy use of Avalokitavrata’s sub-commentary for disambiguating terse passages. Square brackets mark material added for clarity, usually on Avalokitavrata’s authority. A full English-Tibetan-Sanskrit glossary is provided (pp. 356–362), exploiting the standardised Tibetan translation-equivalents to reconstruct Sanskrit terms. The Sanskrit text of MMK Chapter 2 (Saito’s edition, de Jong’s emendations) is appended. Notes are extensive and often philosophically substantive — several reconstruct Avalokitavrata’s paraphrases, which are load-bearing for the chapter’s argument at many points.
Notable quote
“Thus because here [in MMK 2.19] there is a prasaṅga argument, the original meaning can be reversed.” — Bhāviveka, commentary on MMK 2.19
Connections
- candrakirti-prasannapada-mmk1-excerpt: The Prasannapadā critique of Bhāviveka is now fully contextualised. The paramārthatas-qualifier that Candrakīrti attacks at section X is the dominant structural feature of Bhāviveka’s Chapter 2 method. The “inferences accepted only by one party” defence at section XII has its analogue: Bhāviveka’s syllogisms invoke examples (like the “cutter and the cut,” “one who stays”) that are jointly accepted — exactly the style Candrakīrti argues is not necessary
- Bhāviveka: This source upgrades the scholar page from “partially primary-grounded via Candrakīrti’s quotation” to “primary-grounded for Chapter 2” on the method, the doxographical project, and the paramārthatas style. The MMK 1.1 critique remains accessible only via Candrakīrti
- Buddhapālita: Adds direct-quote fragments of the Buddhapālitavṛtti at MMK 2.1, 2.2, 2.22c, 2.23cd
- Mūlamadhyamakakārikā: Ames notes that Chapter 2 is “one of the most important chapters of the MMK”: Nāgārjuna refers to Chapter 2 explicitly at MMK 3.3, 7.14, 10.13, 16.17 (p. 296). This gives a text-internal reason for treating Chapter 2 as structurally central, alongside Chapter 1
- ruegg-svat-pras-2006: Confirms criteria (1) autonomous inference, (2) the paramārthatas qualifier, and (4) acceptance of svalakṣaṇa conventionally. Ames’s introduction explicitly states that the school-designations are Tibetan, citing Ruegg (1981)
- karmapa-feast-fortunate-1578: The Ninth Karmapa’s claim that “the Consequentialists and Autonomists differ in regard to the words they use to communicate, but their intentions are the same” is pressure-tested by this source. The Autonomists do differ from Consequentialists in the Abhidharma-conventional move at MMK 2.22c commentary; the Karmapa’s dissolution of the hierarchy needs that to be compatible with genuine Madhyamaka, which Mipham argues via the approximate/actual ultimate distinction (shantarakshita-madhyamakalankara)
- apple-jewels-middle-way-2018: Atiśa’s pedagogical synthesis of Bhāviveka (public) with Candrakīrti (advanced) looks sensible in light of this source: Bhāviveka’s method is a pedagogically clearer introduction to Madhyamaka negation precisely because it qualifies negations “in ultimate reality” and preserves conventional functioning, while Candrakīrti’s more radical position can be reserved for advanced instruction