A TREATISE ON BUDDHIST EPISTEMOLOGY AND LOGIC ATTRIBUTED TO KLONG CHEN RAB ’BYAMS PA (1308–1364) AND ITS PLACE IN INDO-TIBETAN INTELLECTUAL HISTORY∗

More than twenty-five years ago, if memory serves, rumors were in circulation that a commentary on Dharmak̄ırti’s (ca.?600–660)1 Pramān. avārttika [hereafter PV]2 by the great Tibetan scholar and visionary Klong chen Rab ’byams pa of the Rnying ma pa school of Tibetan Buddhism had been sighted. This set the imagination on fire. The prospect of the existence of such a work was all the more intriguing because no treatise of this kind, or any work like it, was listed in the then already published catalogue to his voluminous oeuvre Klong chen pa himself had written towards the end of his relatively short life while in exile in what is now Bhutan. Reproduced by Chos grags bzang po in his biography of his master, this incomplete catalogue registers some two hundred and seventy separate items plus an uncounted number of spiritual songs and an assortment of ephemeral compositions.3 What is more, none of the early indigenous bibliographies list a work by him on Dharmak̄ırti’s thought, let alone on the PV. But this absence should nor induce us to wring our hands, for these bibliographies are as a rule far from comprehensive.4 That said, if Klong chen pa were indeed responsible for the Tshad ma’i de kho na nyid bsdus pa, as only the colophons of its two extant manuscripts would have us believe, and if it were his sole contribution to Buddhist logic and epistemology (pramān. a, tshad ma) – depending on whether the context is primarily Indian or Tibetan Buddhist, I will from now on write either “pramān.avāda ” or “tshad ma”, instead of the cumbersome “Indian [or: Tibetan] Buddhist logic and epistemology ” –, then the rumor may not have been entirely well-founded. As its title indeed suggests, this work to which the ensuing pages are devoted is not a commentary on the PV at all. Rather, it is a critical epitome of the essentials (de kho na nyid bsdus pa) –