Work

Pramanavarttika

Commentary on Valid Cognition

Dharmakirti·Sanskrit

About this text

The central work of Buddhist logic: a verse treatise on what counts as knowledge. Only perception and inference qualify; whatever is real is momentary and does causal work; concepts operate by exclusion, carving usable classes out of a world of unrepeatable particulars. Nearly every later philosopher in India, Buddhist or not, had to answer it.

Like a river reaching the ocean, my work will find no one in this world able to grasp its depths with ease; it will age and perish within my own person.

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