The Madhyamakavatarabhasya. Unveiling the Sixth Bhumi

The project takes as its focus the sixth chapter of the Madhyamakavatarabhasya (Commentary on the Entrance to the Middle Way), one of the two most influential works, especially for later Tibetans, of the seventh-century Indian Buddhist scholar Candrakirti. Attention will concentrate on the important second half of the chapter, where Candrakirti uncompromisingly rejects the theories of Buddhist and non-Buddhist opponents concerning the existence of a real self, responds to objections about the Madhyamaka schools logical procedure, and elaborates in detail the different types of emptiness. Candrakirti denies the ultimate existence of a self because real phenomena are impossible for Madhyamikas, but he does assert that a self is to be accepted as a legitimate and necessary component of the non-ultimate, i.e., everyday, level. This important section of the Madhyamakavatarabhasya is at present available to scholars only in its Tibetan translation. Recently, however, it was revealed that a Sanskrit manuscript of the Madhyamakavatarabhasya, which was presumably brought to Tibet during the second dissemination of Buddhism there, survived the Cultural Revolution. The manuscript itself cannot be examined by scholars, but photocopies of it are now accessible to designated scholars associated with the Institute for the Cultural and Intellectual History of Asia of the Austrian Academy of Sciences in Vienna, under an agreement of cooperation between the Institute and the China Tibetology Research Center in Beijing. This agreement has made possible the preparation of critical and diplomatic editions of the first five chapters of the Madhyamakavatara and Madhyamakavatarabhasya (the verses of the former are embedded within the text of the latter), as well as of the verses and first half of the commentary of chapter six. The project aims, on the basis of the newly available Sanskrit manuscript photocopies and other Sanskrit and Tibetan materials, to critically edit the entire latter half of chapter six, and to produce an English translation of the verses and commentary that is accompanied by detailed historical, philological and analytical annotation. The project will thus facilitate the publication of the entire sixth chapter of Candrakirtis Madhyamakavatara- bhasya. With the Sanskrit of Candrakirtis crucial discussions available for the first time, and the new English translation, future research in many areas of Buddhist Studies and beyond will have a solid and rich basis upon which to build.