Śūnyatāsaptati

Overview

The Śūnyatāsaptati (“Seventy Stanzas on Emptiness”; sTong pa nyid bdun cu pa’i tshig le’ur byas pa) is the fourth member of Nāgārjuna’s Yukti-corpus (rigs pa’i tshogs drug) — alongside the MMK, VV, VP, Yuktiṣaṣṭikā, and Ratnāvalī. It is a 73-verse focused exposition (despite the conventional title “seventy”) of the implications of dependent origination for the question of how things exist, organised around the arising-enduring-disintegrating (utpāda-sthiti-bhaṅga) problematic that opens MMK Ch 7.

The Sanskrit original is lost. The Tibetan translation is preserved in two principal recensions — Peking #5227 (dbu ma tsa 27a–30b) and sDe dge #3827 (dbu ma tsa 24a–27a) — together with Candrakīrti’s Śūnyatāsaptativṛtti commentary (Peking #5268, sDe dge edition kept at LTWA, Dharamsala). Nāgārjuna’s own auto-commentary is also preserved in the Tibetan canon. The text’s colophon names three Tibetan translators (Gzhon nu mchog, Gnyan dharma grags, Khu) and an unnamed editor.

Authenticity is uncontested in the Tibetan tradition and is the standard view in modern scholarship (Lindtner 1982, Nagarjuniana).

Key passages

The only complete English translation, komito-seventy-stanzas-1987, adds English words to the stanzas to bring out their sense “at least as the Tibetans interpret Nāgārjuna” and sets them in roman type; italic words render the Tibetan root (Komito 1987, pp. 13, 182). In the quotations below, italics reproduce the translation’s own, so roman words are the translators’ additions.

• Stanza 1 — “‘Arising,’ ‘enduring,’ and ‘disintegrating;’ ‘existing’ and ‘non-existing;’ ‘inferior,’ ‘middling,’ and ‘superior’ do not have true existence. These terms are used by the Buddha in accordance with worldly conventions” (p. 97). The Buddha’s own categorial vocabulary is conventional usage, not a report of what truly exists. The verse anticipates v. 44, where the Buddha’s language of existence is said to be spoken through his intention.

• Stanzas 4–6 — the four-cornered cause-and-result analysis. Compressed form of the MMK 1.1 four-corner negation: results that already exist in the cause cannot arise (existence makes arising redundant); results that do not exist in the cause cannot arise (no causal connection); results that both exist and do not exist are contradictory. Prasaṅga method exemplified without naming it.

• Stanza 11 — dependence, not valid cognition. Ignorance and karmic formations, being mutually cause and effect, are not established by intrinsic nature (རང་བཞིན་). The English renders the last line as “are known by a valid cognizer not to exist inherently” (pp. 115–116), but the Tibetan line is རང་བཞིན་གྱིས་ནི་མ་གྲུབ་ཡིན་ (“are not established by intrinsic nature”), and the translators’ note gives the words rendered as “not established”. The root has no word for valid cognition (ཚད་མ་).

• Stanzas 15–22 — the nihilism objection answered. The objector asks how, if phenomena do not exist inherently, there can be inferior, middling and superior, or a result arising from causes (v. 15), and how there can be arising or cessation if phenomena are devoid of intrinsic nature (v. 18). The labels “Vaibhāṣika” (v. 15) and “Hīnayānist” (v. 18), the gloss “then you are asserting that they don’t exist at all”, and the comparison with “the horns of a rabbit” are the translators’ additions from the commentaries (pp. 121–125). The reply (vv. 16–17, 19–22) turns on dependence: if phenomena existed inherently, “they do not originate in dependence” (v. 16). V. 21 names the two extremes: “If a phenomenon were to disintegrate completely then you must accept the annihilationist view” (p. 128), as the preceding line names permanence. The text answers in brief the charge that MMK 24:1–6 stages at length.

• Stanzas 33–43 — karman without svabhāva. A self-contained sequence on action, agent, and result paralleling MMK Ch 17. V. 38 runs from the absence of actions to the absence of an agent, a result and an experiencer, and concludes that “phenomena are devoid” (p. 150); the qualifier “inherent” in the English is the translators’. Read with vv. 40–42, the sequence answers the objection that emptiness destroys ethics.

• Stanzas 40–42 — the emanation simile. In the root, the Tathāgata’s emanation and the emanation’s emanation, “both of them”, “exist through terms” and exist “merely through imputation by thought” (p. 153). V. 42 extends this to the agent and the action: “they do have a slight existence as mere” imputations (p. 154). The often-quoted sentence that the two emanations’ lack of inherent existence “does not mean that they are completely non-existent” is the translators’ addition. The illusion-and-emanation simile (cf. MMK 17, MMK 23, BCA 9) still states, in the root, the positive conventional content of the absence of intrinsic nature: things exist as designations by terms and thought.

• Stanza 44 — the Buddha speaks through intention. “Whatever is said by the Buddha has the two truths as its chief underlying thought; it is hard to understand and must be interpreted in this light” (p. 156). In the root, the Buddha’s sayings “existence”, “non-existence” and “existence-and-non-existence” are spoken through his intention (དགོངས་པ་), and this is hard to understand. The words “has the two truths as its”, “must be interpreted in this light”, and the glosses matching “existence” with conventional existence and “non-existence” with non-inherent existence, are the translators’ additions. The verse therefore states a hermeneutic of intention without naming the two truths. Nāgārjuna’s own statement of the two truths as the key to the Buddha’s teaching is MMK 24:8–9; joining the intention of v. 44 to the two truths is the work of the commentaries (mabja-ornament-of-reason, Preliminary Discussion; Candrakīrti, sprung-lucid-exposition-1979, pp. 44–45; gorampa-removal-wrong-views, p. 228).

• Stanzas 67–68 — “There is nothing which exists inherently. In that fashion even non-functional things do not exist” (v. 67, p. 177). Geshe Sonam Rinchen’s commentary notes that v. 67 is missing from both Candrakīrti’s and Parahita’s commentaries, “suggesting that it may be an interpolation” (p. 177). V. 68: “Because all things are empty of inherent existence the Peerless Tathāgata has shown the emptiness of inherent existence of dependent arising as the reality of all things.” In the root the Tathāgata taught dependent arising because all things are empty; the identification of the two (the four-way identification of MMK 24:18) is in the translators’ words, not the verse’s.

• Stanza 70 — “What is shown conventionally to the world appears to be without disintegration, but the Buddha has never actually shown anything with true existence” (p. 179). Then: “Those who do not understand what is explained by the Tathāgata” “are frightened by this teaching”. The words between, describing what was explained as “conventionally existent and empty of the sign of true existence”, are the translators’ gloss. The fright motif is Nāgārjuna’s: the text’s own diagnosis of why the nihilist reading recurs.

• Stanza 71 — In the root, statements in “the way of the world” such as “this arises in dependence on that” “are not refuted”, and “whatsoever arises dependently does not exist inherently”; the verse then asks “how can that” … “have” … “existence?” (p. 180). The words that make “that” refer to “non-inherent existence itself”, and so make the verse a statement of the emptiness of emptiness (cf. MMK 13:8), are the translators’ additions. The commentary draws the link: “In another context this is known as the emptiness of emptiness” (p. 180).

Place in the Yukti-corpus

The Tibetan classification of six Nāgārjuna works as the rigs pa’i tshogs drug groups MMK, VV, Yuktiṣaṣṭikā, Śūnyatāsaptati, VP, and Ratnāvalī. The Śūnyatāsaptati is methodologically closest to MMK among these: a verse-only treatise (with auto-commentary) refuting svabhāva across the standard Buddhist categories, structured around a single problematic (arising-enduring-disintegrating) rather than the broader categorial sweep of MMK.

Per apple-jewels-middle-way-2018, the “six reasonings” classification is itself a later Tibetan imposition (Eastern Vinaya tradition) on what Atiśa originally read as a unified Nāgārjunian project also incorporating the devotional praises (Dharmadhātustava, etc.).

The opponent profile varies across the Yukti-corpus: the MMK faces Sarvāstivāda Abhidharma plus the occasional Naiyāyika; VV the Naiyāyika and some Ābhidharmika; VP the Naiyāyika, taken sūtra-by-sūtra against the sixteen categories; and the Śūnyatāsaptati, on the commentaries’ identification, the Vaibhāṣika and Hīnayāna (the translation’s labels at vv. 15 and 18 are interpolated; the root names no opponent). Taken together, the profile suggests that Nāgārjuna’s interlocutors extend across both śrāvaka Abhidharma and non-Buddhist Indian philosophy, which sits badly with Kalupahana’s “no sophisticated Mahāyāna sūtras available; Tripiṭaka-only” reduction.

Commentarial tradition

• Nāgārjuna’s auto-commentary (Śūnyatāsaptativṛtti / sTong pa nyid bdun cu pa’i ‘grel pa) — preserved only in Tibetan; widely accepted as authentic, alongside the VV’s auto-commentary and (more contestedly) the VP’s
• Candrakīrti’s Śūnyatāsaptativṛtti — preserved in the Tibetan Tengyur (Peking #5268; mdo ‘grel ya 305b–381b). One of Candrakīrti’s three known Madhyamaka sub-commentaries, alongside the Prasannapadā on MMK and the Yuktiṣaṣṭikāvṛtti.
• No other Indian sub-commentary survives. The text receives less commentarial attention in Tibet than the MMK or VV.
• Geluk oral tradition — Geshe Sonam Rinchen’s verse-by-verse commentary, transmitted at LTWA Dharamsala and edited into prose by Komito 1987 (komito-seventy-stanzas-1987). Geluk-doctrinal in register: it reads the object of negation as bden grub, and the translation carries the vocabulary of valid cognition into its English (v. 11).

Modern reception

• komito-seventy-stanzas-1987 — English translation from the Tibetan by Geshe Sonam Rinchen, Tenzin Dorjee and David Ross Komito, with Geshe Sonam Rinchen’s Geluk verse-by-verse commentary and Komito’s editorial framing as a “Buddhist psychology of emptiness” (Asaṅga / Dharmakīrti pedagogical scheme). Interpolated English words are set in roman, root words in italic (pp. 13, 182).
• Lindtner, Nagarjuniana (1982) — accepts authenticity; the standard reference for the Yukti-corpus.
• The text is much less engaged in modern academic Madhyamaka scholarship than the MMK, VV, or even VP. Westerhoff’s 2009 systematic monograph and 2018 historical survey both reference it, but neither has produced a dedicated translation or commentary. It remains a philosophical lacuna in the modern reception.