Tattvasamgraha

For the tantric text of the same name, see Tattvasaṃgraha Tantra.

Shantarakshita.

Tattvasaṃgraha (T. de kho na nyid bsdus pa), or “Compendium of Principles," is one of the major works of the eighth-century Indian scholar-yogi Śāntarakṣita. It is an encyclopedic work of over 3,000 verses. "The verses themselves are called the Tattvasaṃgrahakārikā; there is also an extensive prose commentary by Śāntarakṣita’s student, Kamalaśīla, entitled the Tattvasaṃgrahapañjikā."

The Tattvasaṃgraha surveys the philosophical positions of a wide variety of non-Buddhist (and some Buddhist) schools on a number of topics or principles (tattva), and attempts to demonstrate the faults of the philosophical positions of these other schools.

"The work is of great value to scholars for its presentation (albeit polemical) of the tenets of these schools as they existed in eighth-century India. The commentary often provides the names and positions of specific philosophers of these schools."

According to the Princeton Dictionary, the Tattvasaṃgraha, along with the Tarkajvālā by Bhāvaviveka, are important examples of Buddhist siddhanta texts in India. Both of these texts "set forth the positions of non-Buddhist and Buddhist philosophies in order to demonstrate the superiority of their respective Madhyamaka positions."

Overview

Jan Westerhoff states:

The [Tattvasaṃgraha] is a long work of over 3,000 verses, which is preserved in its original Sanskrit together with Kamalaśīla’s commentary. The Tattvasamgraha is of particular interest as a doxographical work. It discusses a wide range of philosophical concepts, such as primordial matter (prakrti), the creator god (īśvara), words and their referents (śabdārtha), perception (pratyaksa), inference (anumāna), the existence of past, present, and future (traikālya), and the authoritativeness of scripture (śruti), and gives specific attention to the views of different philosophical schools on these concepts. There are, for example, detailed discussions of the account of the self (ātman) from the perspective of Sāmkhya, Nyāya, Vaiśesika, Mīmāmsā, Advaita Vedānta, and Jainism. The Tattvasamgraha is a polemical work to the extent that it endeavours to show the mistakes inherent in all these non-Buddhist views (and some Buddhist ones, such as those of the Vātsīputrīyas) in order to demonstrate the truth of Śāntaraksita’s Buddhist position. Yet independent of its success in this respect, it offers us a fascinating inside view of the state of philosophical debate in eighth-century India, a time that may be considered (both in terms of the variety of theoretical options explored, and in terms of their depth of conceptual penetration) as the peak of its development. Śāntaraksita’s encyclopedic work demonstrates the extent to which Buddhist thought during this period was not an intellectually insulated enterprise, but interacted argumentatively with all the main philosophical currents of the time.

Chapters

The Tattva-saṃgraha has twenty-six chapters on the following topics:

1. The Sāṃkhya doctrine of primordial matter (prakṛti) as the source of the physical world
2. Various doctrines of God as the source of the world
3. The doctrine of inherent natures (svabhāva) as the source of the world
4. Bhartṛhari’s doctrine of Brahman-as-language as the source of the world
5. The Sāṃkhya-Yoga doctrine of human spirit (puruṣa)
6. Examination of the doctrines of the self (ātman) in the Nyāya, Mīmāṃsā, Sāṃkhya, Digambara Jaina, Advaita and Buddhist personalist (pudgalavādin) schools
7. The doctrine of the permanence of things
8. Various doctrines of karma and its ripening
9. A critical examination of substance
10. A critical examination of quality
11. A critical examination of action
12. A critical examination of universals
13. A critical examination of particularity
14. A critical examination of inherence (the relation between universals and particulars and between substances and qualities)
15. An examination of words and their meanings
16. An examination of sense perception
17. An examination of inference
18. An examination of other means of acquiring knowledge
19. A critical examination of Jaina epistemology
20. An examination of time
21. A critical examination of materialism
22. On the external world (that is, the world external to consciousness)
23. A critical examination of revelation as a source of knowledge
24. Examination of the idea that some propositions are self-validating
25. Examination of the notion of supernormal powers

Translation

• The Tattvasamgraha of Shantarakshita English translation by Ganganatha Jha, 1937

Sources

• Buswell, Robert E.; Lopez, Donald S. (2014), The Princeton Dictionary of Buddhism, Princeton University 
• Hayes, Richard (2021), Zalta, Edward N., ed., "Madhyamaka", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2021 ed.), Metaphysics Research Lab, Stanford University, retrieved 2022-08-26 
• Westerhoff, Jan (2018), The Golden Age of Indian Buddhist Philosophy, Oxford University Press 

External links

• Tattvasamgraha, Wikipedia