The Golden Age of Indian Buddhist Philosophy by Jan Westerhoff

Author:Jan Westerhoff
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Published: 2018-03-31T09:40:53+00:00

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OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 31/3/2018, SPi

YOGĀCĀRA



or finally, it may indeed refer to a different Vasubandhu, but in quite another

way. Paramārtha’s biography tells us that all the three sons of Vasubandhu’s

mother were called ‘Vasubandhu’, though two of them were also called by

:

different names in order to tell them apart: Asanga (‘no attachment’) and

Viriñcivatsa (child of Viriñci, another name of his mother Prasannaśīlā). In

this case the term ‘older Vasubandhu’ could refer to the oldest of these three

:

Vasubandhus, namely Asanga.

It seems as if the main force that makes the hypothesis of the two Vasu- The main force

bandhus attractive is one that often stands in the way of a nuanced under- behind the

hypothesis

standing of the history of Buddhist philosophy: the view that Buddhist

philosophers can be clearly divided into different schools of thought, that

each of these schools of thought has a core set of unique beliefs that distin-

guishes them from all other schools, and that all of a philosopher’s intellectual

activity takes place within the limits of this framework. While there is no doubt

that doxographic frameworks are propaedeutically useful for trying to explain Difficulties with

the rough outlines of development of Buddhist thought (as they are used in the doxographic

frameworks

present work), the overly simplistic nature of their key assumptions is obvious

once these are properly formulated. Buddhist philosophers did not compose

their treatises in order to found new schools, and did not subsequently regard

themselves as their chief exponents, but the identity of these schools is pro-

jected backwards with the benefit of historical hindsight, in order to stress

certain similarities amongst the views of temporally contiguous sets of

thinkers. These schools developed, often over considerable time, and their

views developed with them; there is no fixed set of theses that is common to

every work by every author ascribed to a given school and thereby constitutive

of that school’s intellectual identity. Finally, the views of philosophers change

over the course of time, sometimes in radical ways, a fact that is as true today as

it was in ancient India. To ascribe philosophical texts to authors on the basis of

the fact that the positions described in them diverge, if at all, only in the most

minimal fashion is unlikely to lead to a satisfactory account of authors and the

development of their work. The fact that the framework incorporating these

views is not simply regarded as propaedeutic tool but as authoritative in its

own right lends support to the idea of ‘splitting up’ Vasubandhu into two,

despite the fact that the traditional accounts always consider Vasubandhu to be

a single author with a unified body of works. The split allows us to distinguish

the Ābhidharmika Vasubandhu from the Yogācārin, ascribe to each a set of

unique Abhidharma and Yogācāra beliefs, and consider their intellectual

activity as wholly contained within these respective frameworks. However,

once we question the intrinsic cogency of the framework motivating this

split we realize that the justification for the division slips away, and that the

historical evidence brought forward to support it can equally be explained in

other ways.

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