FUNDAMENTALS OF NAGARJUNA'S THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE

Buddhist tradition of logic and epistemology started with Dinnaga approximately one thousand years after the mahaparinirvana of the Sakyamuni Buddha. Though the topics of this tradition were traced back to the earliest teachings of the Buddha in Nikaya literature and some philosophical works of many famous Buddhist thinkers like Nagarjuna, Asanga, Vasubandhu, it was Dinnaga who officially founded this logico-epistemological system. We must recognize that the contribution of Buddhism to profound system of logic and epistemology of Indian philosophy began with Dinnaga. Dinnaga was the fist Buddhist thinker who set up and systematized the Buddhist theory of knowledge which has been definitely the foundation of later Buddhist development of epistemology carried out by Dharmakirti, Dharmottara, Santaraksita, Kamalasila. Jnanasrimitra and Ratnakirti. It is true that Dinnaga keeps an important position in both Buddhist and Indian history of epistemology. He is said to have inaugurated new era in the history of logic and epistemology insofar. By treating the theory of the means of knowledge as a subject by itself, he departed from the usual observation of the previous Hindu schools which used to deal with both the means of knowledge and the objects of knowledge together. It is necessary that there should be many attempts on the study of Dinnaga’s philosophy so that his role in Buddhist logico-epistemological system is certified. This study is one of them