Sanskrit Debate

Sanskrit Debate: Vasubandhus Vmatik versus Kumrilas Nirlambanavda illustrates the rules and regulations of classical Indian debate literature (pramnastra) by introducing new translations of two Sanskrit texts composed in antithesis to each others tradition of thought and practice. In the third century CE, Vasubandhu, a Buddhist philosopher-monk, proposed that the entire world of lived experience is a matter of mind only through his Vmatik (Twenty Verses). In the seventh century CE, Kumrila, a Hindu philosopher-priest, composed Nirlambanavda (Non-Sensory Limit Debate) to establish the objective reality of objects by refuting Vasubandhus claim that objects experienced in waking life are not different from objects experienced in dreams. Kumrila rigorously employs formal rules and regulations of Indian logic and debate to demonstrate that Vasubandhus assertion is totally irrational and incoherent. Vmatik ranks among the worlds most misunderstood texts but Kumrilas historic refutation allows Vmatik to be read in its own text-historical context. This compelling, radically revolutionary re-reading of Vmatik delineates a hermeneutic of humor indispensable to discerning its medicinal message. In Vmatik, Vasubandhu employs the form of professional Sanskrit logic and debate as a guise and a ruse to ridicule the entire enterprise of Indian philosophy. Vasubandhu critiques all Indian theories of epistemology and ontology and claims that both how we know and what we know are acts of the imagination.