Art. XIV.—Notes from the Tanjur

Extract

I present here a short tract from Mdo, vol. cxxxiii, foil. 330–2, entitled Īśvarakartṛtranirākṛtir Viṣṇorekakartṛtvanirākaraṋam, or “Refutation of the idea of God as Creator (sic): Refutation of the idea of Viṣṇu as sole Creator (sic).” It is ascribed to Nāgārjuna, who is named as the author of about one hundred works noted by me in the Tanjur. The fact that it appears in one of the last volumes of the Mdo, and that both the Sanskrit and the native versions are given, seem to indicate that the work was a comparatively late accession to the Tibetan collection. I give both versions in order to fix the text. The work is, as will be seen, of a simple type, adapted, as it states, to the learner (suśiṣyapratibodhārtham), and in character quite different from the famous nyāya treatise of Udayana, the Kusumāñjali, which seeks to establish the contrary.