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128 MANCALA R. CIIINCIIORE

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The Need and Necessity of Studying T.P.

We oullined above the sort of methodological and conceptual stance that seems to be at stake and the sort of clue which texts like T.P. appear to fumish in understanding Dińn3ga’s philosophy, along with avenue of conceptual growth and comprehensiveness together with originality of its conceptual framework. On this background we briefly outline below what appears to be the specific motive behind writing T.P. with the help of an example or two, picked up from the text, the Sanskrit reconstruction from the Tibetan translation of which is appended at the end of this essay for the convenience of the concemed.

The following reasons, in our opinion, seem to have prompted Dińnaga to write T.P. : As is well known, Buddhists in generał, hołd that nothing in the world is permancnt and etemal (AnityatS). Change is a slructural and constitutive fcature of anything. Anything that is real must be susceptible to change, ²¹ as no existcnce without change is undcrstandablc. Change, thus, is not only an inalicnablc fcature of things but also of thcir States (BhSvas) as well. In T.P. this view seems to be clearly arliculated telling us that it is not time which dctennines change. Rathcr, we use time as a tool to map change that is buill into things.

In T.P., Dińnaga also seems to put forth and abide himself by another important tenet of Buddhism, viz., no-soul theory AnStmatS. As there is no etcrnal element in things, so too are organisms bereft of anything permanent and eternal, called sclf or soul. It is an untenable dogma to hołd that nothing that is real can ever be undcrstood properly without reference to somelhing or somc aspcct of it which is not subject to change - gradual or violcnt. So too, it is a misnomer to hołd that there is no way to comprehend the naturę of the real excepl through subject - prcdicatc mould of language and communication. Rathcr, everything is madę up of clustcrs of features, Sarhghatas and, hence, the meaning of existcnce needs to be understood in terms of such a collcction or clustcr of characteristic features.

It is being prompted by such considerations that Buddhism in generał and Dińnaga in particular in his T.P. seems to analyse existence in terms of emergcnce and destruction - coming into being and passing away, i.e., bccoming. ²² These two phases of the existential object are so inlricately rclated with each olher that it seems almost implausible to make satisfactory sense of the claim, no matter whether advanced common-sensically or by adhcrents of other philosophical schools, that essence of things consists in their stability complcte or partial. In fact the truły real could be surmiscd to be a uniąue particular such that the modes of communication we are normally accustomcd to are incapable of capturing it. ²³ Considerations of