How Did Medieval Chinese Learn Epistemology from Indian Buddhism? – A Study of Jingying Huiyuan’s Treatise on the Three Measures of Valid Cognition

The Harvard-Yenching Institute presents a talk to show that reception of Indian Buddhist epistemology in the era before Xuanzang was far more significant than what has been previously assumed.

Co-sponsored with the Harvard Buddhist Studies Forum

Chen-kuo Lin (National Chengchi University)

Discussant: James Robson (Associate Professor of East Asian Languages and Civilizations, Harvard University)

The wide-spread consensus about Buddhist epistemology (pramāṇa-vāda) is that it has never received any serious attention outside of the development of Indo-Tibetan Buddhism. As clearly shown in the current scholarship, the study of Chinese textual sources in this field has been totally ignored owing to the untenable belief that it is unhelpful, if not entirely useless, for our understanding of Buddhist epistemology in the original form. In this talk, however, Professor Lin will try to demonstrate the opposite by presenting a textual and doctrinal study of Jingying Huiyuan (523-592)’s Essay on the Three Measures of Valid Cognition (Sanliang zhiyi), a gem of early Chinese Buddhist epistemological treatises. This study shall show that reception of Indian Buddhist epistemology in the era before Xuanzang was far more significant than what has been previously assumed.

Before exploring Huiyuan’s contribution, Professor Lin will give a brief historical picture of how Buddhist epistemology was introduced from India to China during the 5th-6th century. This picture will be drawn from two angles. The first is a brief chronological sketch, while the other is a topical reconstruction. Regarding the topical background, he has selected three topics that were extensively discussed in the early texts in Chinese translation. The first topic in those early materials addresses the theological issues, such as arguments for the existence of soul (ātman, puruṣa) and cosmic creators (Iśvara, Viṣṇu). The second topic concerns metaphysical problem of the existence of external world. The third topic focuses on the relationship between epistemology and meditation. Professor Lin's study will show that Huiyuan is in much favor of the third topic than the other two.