Harvard University Press Introduction to Reality: A Study of Śrīgupta’s Tattvāvatāravṛtti with a Critical Edition and Annotated Translation (Harvard Oriental Series)

Introduction to Reality offers the first comprehensive study, critical edition, and annotated English translation of Śrīgupta’s (c. 7th–8th century) Tattvāvatāravṛtti. As the earliest known synthesis of Nāgārjuna’s Madhyamaka metaphysics with the Dignāga-Dharmakīrti tradition of logic and epistemology, the Tattvāvatāravṛtti marks a pivotal moment in the development of Indian Madhyamaka thought. Its central focus is the “neither-one-nor-many argument,” later renowned as one of the five great Madhyamaka arguments for emptiness. An analysis of this line of reasoning reveals it to be, at its core, an attack on true unity: Śrīgupta rejects the possibility of an intrinsic nature by denying the existence of mereological simples, whether material or immaterial. The Tattvāvatāravṛtti also presents the earliest formulation of an influential threefold criterion for conventional reality, according to which whatever is conventionally real is dependently originated, causally efficacious, and satisfies our ordinary notions of existence and unity only when not subjected to critical analysis. This framework was central to later Madhyamaka-Yogācāra syntheses, particularly in the work of Śāntarakṣita and Kamalaśīla. Śrīgupta’s other important philosophical contributions are brought to light, including his case for the non-standard view that certain instances of enlightened cognition are necessarily both conceptual and veridical, challenging the widespread assumption in Buddhist thought that conceptually mediated cognition is invariably erroneous.