During the Middle Ages, the relationship between the Buddha's omniscience and his religious authority was a major issue in Buddhist thought. One of the most extensive and sophisticated discussions on this topic is found in the Pramanavarttikalankarabhasya, the magnum opus of the 8th-century Buddhist master Prajnakaragupta. In this study, author Shinya Moriyama combines philological acumen with philosophical analysis to present Prajnakaragupta's innovative ideas, offering an important introduction to his religious thought in its historical context of post-Dharmakirtian Buddhist epistemology....

According to one of the most fundamental tenets in Indian Buddhist epistemology, there are only two means of knowledge - perception and inference - because there are only two objects of knowledge: the particular and the universal. This book deals with this tenet as it was expounded and substantiated in Dharmakirti's (7th c.) magnum opus, the Pramanavarttika, a work that has exerted lasting influence on Buddhist philosophy in India and Tibet up to the present day. (Series: Leipzig Studies on Culture and History of South and Central Asia / Leipziger Studien zu Kultur und Geschichte Sud- und...

Abhinavagupta is undoubtedly the most famous Kashmirian medieval intellectual: his decisive contributions to Indian aesthetics, Saiva theology, and metaphysics, and to the philosophy of the subtle and original Pratyabhijna system, are well known. Yet so far his works have often been studied without fully taking into account the specific historical, social, artistic, religious, and philosophical context in which they are embedded. The purpose of this book is to show that this intellectual background is no less exceptional than Abhinavagupta himself. (Series: Leipzig Studies on the Culture and...