Perhaps I should have kept this for an academic paper, but since the discussion here is so interesting and the company (mostly) very nice, I would like to stress that, as Shenghai Li demonstrated in his Ph.D. thesis (2012), it is not entirely clear if what Nāgārjuna titles as Kātyāyanāvavādasūtra is an early Buddhist, Śrāvaka-sūtra at all (I’ll quote the relevant parts of the thesis):
Middle way is the general Buddhist concept that gives its name to the school called Madhyamaka, meaning the “middle.” The term Madhyamaka does not appear in the writings of Nāgārjuna and Āryadeva, but its Chinese and Tibetan equivalents are
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found in the oldest Chinese translation of Mūlamadhyamakakārikā, which is accompanied by the commentary of Qingmu (T. 1564), and in the Tibetan translations of Buddhapālita’s and Bhāviveka’s commentaries,14 suggesting that a school of thought bearing that name might have formed at least in the late fourth century. But the idea of middle way goes back to the enduring story of the life of the Buddha, where prince Siddhārtha’s hedonist existence in the palace and his practice of asceticism comprise the two extremes. Thus, the Pāli text of the Dhammacakkappavattana Sutta, in the context of providing an account of the Buddha’s first sermon, speaks of “pursuit of sensual happiness in sensual pleasures” and the “pursuit of self-mortification” as the “two extremes,” having avoided which “the Tathāgata has awakened to the middle way.”15 Perhaps a more common notion of middle way in Buddhism carries the meaning of avoiding the two extremes of perpetuation (śāśvata) and annihilation (uccheda), such that one believes neither in an eternal, unchanging soul nor in a terminal destruction of one’s own continuation, which entails the dissipation of the fruits of one’s own actions. La Vallée Poussin, who describes the second sense of middle way as moving from a personal moral discipline toward a philosophical view, points out that the second sense of middle way is already found in the the suttas of the Pāli Nikāyas.16
Various schools of Buddhist thought have also formed their own interpretations of the notion of middle way. For the Mādhyamikas, or persons following the Madhyamaka School of thought, treading the middle way has the primary connotation of avoiding the
14 Ruegg, Literature of Madhyamaka, 1 and n. 2.
15 Bodhi, trans., The Connected Discourses of the Buddha: A New Translation of the Saṃyutta Nikāya, Translated from the Pāli (Somerville, MA: Wisdom Publications, 2000), 1844. The Pāli is in Feer, Saṃyutta-nikāya, 5:421.
16 La Vallée Poussin, Louis de. “Madhyamaka.” Mélanges chinois et bouddhiques 2 (1932-1933): 10. Candrakīrti also refers to this common meaning of śāśvata and uccheda when he glosses the two terms that appear in the prologue of MMK. See PPMV 4.8-9.
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two extremes of the reification of the unreal objects and nihilism, and it conveys none other than the idea of emptiness in the way that the school interprets it. In the writings of the Mādhyamikas the two extremes are also given the usual names of perpetuation and annihilation, as they are elsewhere in the Buddhist literature, while they are also referred to as the extremes of existence and non-existence. In Mūlamadhyamakakārikā XV 7, Nāgārjuna refers to a sūtra in the Āgama/Nikāya collection to convince his readers that his Madhyamaka presentation in that text is confirmed by a Nikāya Buddhist scriptural source.
In Kātyāyanāvavāda, both [the ideas that] “it exists” and “it does not exist” are denied by the Blessed One, who reveals existence and non-existence.17
Candrakīrti supplies in his commentary on the stanza the passage in question from the Āryakātyāyanāvavādasūtra in Sanskrit,18 and he also reports that “this sūtra is recited in all the schools of Nikāya Buddhism.”19 The Pāli version of this sūtra transmitted in the Theravāda school is the Kaccāyanagotta Sutta, which is a part of the Saṃyuttanikāya. The following are the three passages from this sutta that concerns the Mādhyamikas’ use of this source.
17 Ye, Mūlamadhyamakakārikā, 238: kātyāyanāvavāde cāstīti nāstīti cobhayaṃ/ pratiṣiddhaṃ bhagavatā bhāvābhāvavibhāvinā //. The fifteenth chapter of MMK devotes itself to a critique of the notion of essence (svabhāva) as a means of demonstrating the essenceless or empty nature of things.
18 PPMV 269.7-10. See below.
19 PPMV 269.11: idaṃ ca sūtraṃ sarvanikāyeṣu paṭhyate.
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(1) This world, Kaccāyana, for the most part depends upon two things, viz. existence (atthitā) and non-existence (natthitā).
(2) “Everything exists”: Kaccāyana, this is one extreme. “Everything does not exist”: this is the second extreme. Avoiding both extremes, the Tathāgata teaches the dhamma by way of the middle.
(3) Conditioned by ignorance, conditioned states (saṅkhāra/saṃskāra) [come to be]; conditioned by conditioned state, consciousness [comes to be] … In this manner, this is the origin of this mass of complete suffering.20
Kaccāyanagotta also has a Chinese counterpart (jing no. 301) in Guṇabhadra’s translation of Saṃyuktāgama (T. 99), where the corresponding passages are found.21 The entire Kaccāyanagotta Sutta, moreover, is also embedded in Channa Sutta in the Pāli Saṃyuttanikāya and in the corresponding sūtra (jing no. 262) in the Chinese version of Saṃyuktāgama in the form of Ānanda’s recollection of the Buddha’s instructions for Kātyāyana/Kaccāyana.22 The Pāli, Chinese, and Candrakīrti’s Sanskrit versions differ considerably in the details, but they all agree in the general outline. All of them contain a
20 Feer, Saṃyutta-nikāya, 2:17: (1) dvayanissito khvāyaṃ kaccāna loko yebhuyyena atthitañ ceva natthitañ ca//. (2) sabbam atthīti kho kaccāyana ayam eko anto// sabbaṃ natthīti ayaṃ dutiyo anto// // ete te kaccāyana ubho ante anupagamma majjhena tathāgato dhammam deseti//. (3) avijjāpaccayā sankhārā// saṅkhārapaccayā viññāṇaṃ// pe// evam etassa kevalassa dukkhakkhandhassa samudayo hoti//.
21 (1) T. 99 II 85c20-22: 佛告[跳-兆+散]陀迦旃延。世間有二種依。若有．若無。為取所觸。取所觸故。或依有．或依無. (2) 85c26-28: 若世間無者不有。世間滅如實正知見。若世間有者無有。是名離於二邊說於中道. (3) 85c28-86a2: 所謂此有故彼有。此起故彼起。謂緣無明行。乃至純大苦聚集。無明滅故行滅。乃至純大苦聚滅.
22 The Pāli is in SN 22.90, Feer, Saṃyutta-nikāya, 3:134-5. The Chinese is in T. 99 II 66c25-67a8.
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version of the three passages given here, with the exception that Candrakīrti’s Sanskrit citation includes a version of only the first and the third passages.23 A possible reason that Candrakīrti does not include the second passage in the citation is that the Madhyamaka commentarial tradition before him does not have a habit of giving all the relevant passages from this sūtra. The early Madhyamaka commentaries on Nāgārjuna’s stanza in question show a pattern of giving increasingly more details of the sūtra as time passes by, but commentators before Candrakīrti mention nothing more than the first passage,24 which apparently serves the purpose of showing the source that Nāgārjuna has in mind.25
Kātyāyanāvavāda is the only text that Nāgārjuna mentions by title in the Mūlamadhyamakakārikā. As this very short sūtra is clearly important for him, and since all extant Pāli or Chinese versions includes a form of second passage, Nāgārjuna is most likely to be aware of it. We also have very good reasons to believe that this specific passage is also very significant for Nāgārjuna, as it closely resembles an expression of the idea of middle way in a Mahāyāna sūtra that is very familiar to him. Performing his exegetical duty, Candrakīrti’s commentary on Mūlamadhyamakakārikā XV 7 also gives the following citation from a Mahāyāna source:
23 PPMV 269.7-10: uktaṃ hi bhagavatā āryakātyāyanāvavādasūtre/ (1) yad bhūyasā kātyāyanāyaṃ loko ‘stitāṃ vābhiniviṣṭo nāstitāṃ ca / (3) tena na parimucyate / jātijarāvyādhimaraṇaśokaparidevaduḥkhadaurmanasyopāyāsebhyo na parimucyate/ pāñcagatikāt saṃsāracārakāgārabandhanān na parimucyate / mātṛmaraṇasaṃtāpaduḥkhān na parimucyate / pitṛmaraṇasaṃtāpaduḥkhād iti vistaraḥ //.
24 Akutobhayā does not mention any details of the sūtra. See Clair W. Huntington, “The Akutobhayā and Early Indian Madhyamaka” (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Michigan, 1986), 390. Qingmu’s commentary appears to refer only to the first passage. T. 1564 XXX 20b3-4: 刪陀迦旃延經中。佛為說正見義離有離無. Buddhapālita only refers to the phrases astitā and nāstitā in the first passage. See Saito Akira, “A Study of the Buddhapālita-mūlamadhyamaka-vṛtti,” (Ph.D. dissertation, Australian National University, 1984), 2:203. Bhāviveka cites the text of the first passage. D (To. 3853) Dbu ma, vol. tsha, 160a1: kA t+yA ya na 'jig rten 'di ni gnyis la gnas te/ phal cher yod pa nyid dang/ med pa nyid la’o zhes bya ba la sogs pa dang /.
25 We are still left without a clear answer as to why Candrakīrti cites the third passage but not the second. Perhaps it is not in the specific Sanskrit version that Candrakīrti uses, although he indicates his awareness of the existence of other versions.
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“It exists”: Kāśyapa, this is one extreme; “it does not exist”: Kāśyapa, this is one extreme. That which is the middle between these two extremes—beyond examination, cannot be shown, without support, without appearance, not signifiable, and unrevealed—Kāśyapa, is the middle way (madhyamā pratipad), the examination of the reality of things.26
This passage is extracted from the Kāśyapaparivarta,27 which is one of the oldest Mahāyāna sūtras. Its earliest Chinese translation is produced by Loujiachen 婁迦讖, who worked in China in the second century C.E. The antiquity of this translation is further established by Staël-Holstein based on its linguistic features.28 Therefore, the presence of Kāśyapaparivarta in India at the time of Nāgārjuna is well-supported.29
The citations given here show that the core of this passage from Kāśyapaparivarta clearly matches with the second passage from Kaccāyanagotta. In fact, the first Chinese translation of Kāśyapaparivarta, which is close to Nāgārjuna in time, and the extant Sanskrit version of the sūtra do not contain the elaborate phrases “beyond examination, cannot be shown, without support, without appearance, not signifiable, and unrevealed.”30 Nor do they appear in Sthiramati’s citation of the passage in
26 PPMV 270.7-9: tathā / astīti kāśyapa ayam eko ‘nto nāstīti kāśyapa ayam eko ‘ntaḥ / yad enayor dvayor antayor madhyaṃ tad arūpyam anidarśanam apratiṣṭham anābhāsam aniketam avijñaptikam iyam ucyate kāśyapa madhyamā pratipad dharmāṇāṃ bhūtapratyavekṣeti //.
27 The Sanskrit, Tibetan, and four Chinese translations of this passage are found in Staël-Holstein, Kà÷yapaparivarta, 90. The citation consists of chapter 60 of the sūtra according to the editor’s numbering.
28 Ibid., XI-XII and XXIV n. 32.
29 See Ruegg, Literature of Madhyamaka, 4-5 n. 11 on the dates of Nāgārjuna proposed by modern scholars, ranging between the end of the first century to the third century.
30 Staël-Holstein, Kà÷yapaparivarta, 90.
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Madhyāntavibhāgaṭīkā.31 The passage from Kāśyapaparivarta belongs to a section of the sūtra where the idea of middle way is expressed in various manners in a series of passages,32 which is identified by Staël-Holstein as an outstanding feature of the text.33 Nāgārjuna’s acquaintance with this section of the sūtra is demonstrable by the fact that a stanza in his Mūlamadhyamakakārikā is clearly based on a passage of the sūtra that comes immediately after the “middle way” section.34 Nāgārjuna’s explicit mention of Kātyāyanāvavāda, which is hardly more than a page in Pāli Text Society’s edition, and his implicit incorporation of the materials from the passages nearby in Kāśyapaparivarta therefore support a strong likelihood of his attention to the similar expressions of middle way in the two sūtras. If he is indeed aware of their resemblance, he would also be impressed by the fact that in an immediately subsequent passage, Kāśyapaparivarta proceeds to produce the typical formulation of dependent origination, which appears partially in Kātyāyanāvavāda.
Moreover this is what I have declared to you, viz. conditioned by ignorance, karmic formations come to be; conditioned by conditioned
31 Sthiramati, Sylvain Lévi, and Susumu Yamaguchi, Madhyāntavibhāgaṭīkā: exposition systématique du Yogācāravijñaptivāda (Nagoya: Librairie Hajinkaku, 1934), 15. See below.
32 Staël-Holstein, Kà÷yapaparivarta, 82-94. All but no. 61 of the twelve chapters (no. 52 to no. 63) in this section contain an expression of the idea of middle way.
33 Ibid., V.
34 Nāgārjuna’s stanza in question is MMK XIII 8, found in Ye, Mūlamadhyamakakārikā, 214: śūnyatā sarvadṛṣṭīnāṃ proktā niḥsaraṇaṃ jinaiḥ/ yeṣāṃ tu śūnyatādṛṣṭis tān asādhyān babhāṣire //. “The Victors (jinaiḥ) announced that emptiness is the remedy of all views. They pronounce those who have the view of [reifying] emptiness as incurable.” Here, Nāgārjuna is referring to a passage in Kāśyapaparivarta (chap. 65). Staël-Holstein, Kà÷yapaparivarta, 97: bhagavān āha / evam eva kāśyapa sarvadṛṣṭigatānāṃ śūnyatā niḥsaraṇaṃ yasya khalu punaḥ kāśyapa śūnyatādṛṣṭis tam aham acikitsyam iti vadāmi. “The Blessed One spoke: in exactly the same way, Kāśyapa, emptiness is the remedy for those who [falsely] adhere to all the views. Moreover, I describe the one who has the view of emptiness as beyond medical treatment.” The subsequent synoptic stanzas are fragmentary on this specific point in the Sanskrit, but see the Tibetan and Chinese versions of the second stanza and the parallel points in chap. 64 in ibid., 98, 95-6. See also ibid., V and XIV n. 2; Ruegg, Literature of Madhyamaka, 6-7.
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states, consciousness; conditioned by consciousness, name and form; conditioned by name and form, the six sources; conditioned by the six sources, contact; conditioned by contact, feeling; conditioned by feeling, craving; conditioned by craving, appropriation; conditioned by appropriation, existence; conditioned by existence, birth; conditioned by birth, old age, death, sorrow, lamentation, suffering, dejection, and irritation come to be. In this manner, this is the origin of this great mass of complete suffering.35
This paragraph from Kāśyapaparivarta contains the standard statement of the twelve links (nidāna) of dependent origination (pratītyasamutpāda) that are used to explain the mechanism of the cycle of life and death in the Buddhist teachings. As with the idea of middle way, the Buddhist tradition associates dependent origination with the life of the Buddha as well. As Lamotte shows, in many, although not the oldest, Buddhist narratives, the Buddha is said to have realized dependent origination along with its twelve links around the time of his enlightenment.36 Echoing the statement of pratītyasamutpāda in Kāśyapaparivarta, all the Pāli and Chinese versions of Kaccāyanagotta also mentions the twelve links in an abbreviated format, which is indeed common in the Nikāyas
35 Staël-Holstein, Kà÷yapaparivarta, 91: yad api kāśyapa yuṣmākaṃ mayākhyāta / yad uta avidyāpratyayā saṃskārāḥ saṃskārapratyayaṃ vijñānaṃ vijñānapratyayan nāmārūpan nāmarūpapratyayaṃ ṣaḍāyatanaṃ ṣaḍāyatanapratyaya sparśaḥ sparśapratyayā vedanā vedanāpratyayā tṛṣṇā tṛṣṇāpratyayam upādānam upādānapratyayo bhavaḥ bhavapratyayā jātiḥ jātipratyayā {j}jarāmaraṇaśokaparidevaduḥkhadaurmanasyopāyāsāḥ saṃbhavaṁty evam asya kevalasya mahato duḥkhaskandhasya samudayo bhavati. This paragraph constitutes chap. 61 of the sūtra.
36 Étienne Lamotte, “Conditioned Co-production and Supreme Enlightenment,” in Buddhist Studies in Honour of Walpola Rahula (London: Geodon Fraser, 1980), 120-3.
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collections.37 A further parallel between Kāśyapaparivarta and Kaccāyanagotta is the fact that both include a formula of the twelve links in reverse order (pratiloma), “Due to ignorance’s cessation, conditioned states cease; due to conditioned states’ cessation, consciousness ceases …”38 The concurrence of the twelve links in the forward and reverse orders, however, is common in the Buddhist texts.
The connection between Kātyāyanāvavāda and Kāśyapaparivarta is therefore evident. Moreover, it is the Mahāyāna text of Kāśyapaparivarta that functions as a common reference point intertextually for the later Buddhist writers. Sthiramati, for instance, cites not Kātyāyanāvavāda but Kāśyapaparivarta’s formulation of the middle way principle in his ṭīkā on Madhyāntavibhāga,39 a Yogācāra śāstra on the distinction between the middle and the extremes. Both Vasubandhu’s bhāṣya and Sthiramati’s ṭīkā on Madhyāntavibhāga refers to Kāśyapaparivarta as Ratnakūṭa, from which Sthiramati cites eleven passages40 and wrote a separate commentary on the sūtra.41
37 See, for instance, Maurice Walshe, trans., The Long Discourses of the Buddha: A Translation of the Dīgha Nikāya (Boston: Wisdom Publications, 1987), 34-6. 89 (Sutta 1, 3.71), 543 n. 88.
38 Chap. 62 in Staël-Holstein, Kà÷yapaparivarta, 92: avidyānirodhā [sic.] saṃskāranirodhaḥ saṃskāranirodhād vijñānanirodhaḥ … For the restoration of the lacunae in this chapter, see Pāsādika Bhikkhu, “The Dharma-Discourse of the Great Collection of Jewels, The Kāśyapa-Section, Mahāratnakūṭadharmaparyāya - Kāśyapaparivarta: English Translation and Restoration of the Missing Sanskrit Portions, (V),” Linh-So’n publication d’études bouddhologiques 5 (1978): 36 n. 15. In the Pāli and Chinese versions of Kaccāyanagotta the reserve-order formula is found respectively in Feer, Saṃyutta-nikāya, 2:17, 3:135 and T. 99 II 85c14, 67a7.
39 Sthiramati, Sylvain Lévi, and Susumu Yamaguchi, Madhyāntavibhāgaṭīkā: exposition systématique du Yogācāravijñaptivāda (Nagoya: Librairie Hajinkaku, 1934), 15: Ratnakūṭādimadhye ‘stīti kāśyapāyam eko ‘ntaḥ / nāstīti kāśyapa ayaṃ dvitīyo ‘ntaḥ / yad enayor dvayor antayor madhyam iyam ucyate kāśyapa madhyamā pratipad dharmāṇāṃ bhūtapratyavekṣeti.
40 J. W. de Jong, “Review of Étienne Lamotte, Le Traité de la Grande Vertu de Sagesse de Nāgārjuna (Mahāprajñāpāramitāśāstra), Tome IV,” T’oung Pao 64 livr. 1-3: 170. See also de Jong’s comments on other Buddhist texts’ link to Kāśyapaparivarta. See also Bhikkhu Pāsādika, “Bibliographical Remarks Bearing on the Kāśyapaparivarta,” Buddhist Studies Review 8 (1991): 64-5. For Vasubandhu’s reference to Kāśyapaparivarta, see Gadjin M. Nagao, ed., Madhyāntavibhāga-bhāṣya: A Buddhist Philosophical Treatise Edited for the First Time from a Sanskrit Manuscript (Tokyo: Suzuki Research Foundation, 1964), 69.
41 Baron A. von Staël-Holstein, ed., A Commentary to the Kāśyapaparivarta (Peking: National Library of Peking and National Tsinghua University, 1933).
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While Kāśyapaparivarta resembles Kaccāyanagotta textually in the discussion of middle way and pratītyasamutpāda, it also contains unique Mahāyāna elements in its “middle way” section, many of which concern the notion of emptiness. In this regard, a more explicit statement in the sūtra reads, “Moreover, Kāśyapa, as for the examination of the reality of things, it is not on account of emptiness that things (dharmas) are made empty. Things are simply empty.”42 In view of Nāgārjuna’s known familiarity with the sūtra and its significance as a very influential Mahāyāna texts, we may surmise that the association of middle way, dependent origination, and emptiness in Kāśyapaparivarta could very well serve as a scriptural source for Nāgārjuna’s characteristic statements of the identity of the three notions, especially the latter two, with one another.43 A clear instance of these is the stanza with which Nāgārjuna closes his Vigrahavyāvartanī, “I bow down before that incomparable Buddha, who declares emptiness, dependent origination, and the middle way to be synonymous.”44 Nāgārjuna clearly acknowledges here that his view has a scriptural source. Mūlamadhyamakakārikā XXIV 18, one of most well-known stanzas by which Nāgārjuna is remembered in the later centuries, also reiterate this idea: “We describe what is pratītyasamutpāda as emptiness; that is dependent designation; and that alone is the middle way.”45
43 Besides the two stanzas mentioned immediately below, Nāgārjuna touches on the subject also in (1)
MMK XXIV 19; (2) Vigrahavyāvartanī 22 and the author’s own commentary thereto, in Kamaleswar
Bhattacharya, E. H. Johnston, and Arnold Kunst, eds., The Dialectical Method of Nāgārjuna
(Vigrahavyāvartanī) (Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1978), 23-4; (3) Śūnyatāsaptati 68, in Lindtner,
Nagarjuniana, 64; (4) Yuktiṣaṣṭikā 43-45, in ibid., 114. The subject is also mentioned in stanza twenty-two
of Lokātītastava, another work that has been ascribed to Nāgārjuna. See ibid., 136.
42 Chap. 63, in Staël-Holstein, Kà÷yapaparivarta, 94: na śūnyatāyā dharmā śūnyā karoti dharmā eva śūnyā/.
44 Kamaleswar Bhattacharya, E. H. Johnston, and Arnold Kunst, eds., The Dialectical Method of Nāgārjuna (Vigrahavyāvartanī) (Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1978), 53: yaḥ śūnyatāṃ pratītyasamutpādaṃ madhyamaṃ pratipadaṃ ca/ ekārthaṃ nijagāda praṇamāmi tam apratimabuddham //.
45 Ye, Mūlamadhyamakakārikā, 426: yaḥ pratītyasamutpādaḥ śūnyatāṃ tāṃ pracakṣamahe / sā prajñaptir upādāya pratipat saiva madhyamā//.
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Thus, in the cases of both pratītyasamutpāda and middle way, which have been fundamental Buddhist concepts since the early history of Buddhism, the traditional connotations are maintained in the Mahāyāna sūtras such as Kāśyapaparivarta and in the writings of Nāgārjuna, while additional association—with the notion of emptiness—is formed, which in fact becomes the primary meanings of these concepts. The new association does not erase the established connotations, which still function on the conventional level and is even used as a reason to justify the new association. Indeed, Nāgārjuna and his Madhyamaka followers are especially in favor of using the idea of causal dependence embedded in the concept of pratītyasamutpāda to argue that things must be empty on the ultimate level on account of their having no independent nature of their own.46
Among the previous scholars of Madhyamaka thought, David Kalupahana has contributed the most to highlight the significance of Kaccāyanagotta.47 However, for him Nāgārjuna’s explicit reference to this sūtra lends itself to an argument that Nāgārjuna’s principal interest was to expound the teachings of the Buddha as represented in the Āgamas/Nikāyas and, more specifically, that his Mūlamadhyamakakārikā is to “be considered a grand commentary on the Discourse to Kātyāyana.”48 In so doing Kalupahana ignores the intervening layer of Mahāyāna sūtras,49 to which Nāgārjuna’s writings are linked textually and indebted conceptually, as we have demonstrated above.
46 See the sources provided in the preceding paragraph and a previous note, especially MMK XXIV 19 and Vigrahavyāvartanī 22 and the commentary thereto.
47 See David J. Kalupahana, Nāgārjuna: The Philosophy of the Middle Way; Mūlamadhyamakakārikā, Introduction, Sanskrit Text, English Translation, and Annotation (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1986), 7-16. Cf. his entry “Pratītya-samutpāda,” in Encyclopedia of Religion, ed. Lindsay Jones, Eliade Mircea, and Charles J. Adams (Detroit: Macmillan Reference USA, 2005), 7363-6, where a discussion of the Discourse to Kātyāyana and Nāgārjuna’s link to the sūtra figure most prominently.
48 Kalupahana, Nāgārjuna, 5; Kalupahana, “Pratītya-samutpāda,” 7365.
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Instead of regarding Nāgārjuna’s texts as a simple extension of the Nikāya/Āgama literature, we would do well to recognize that in making emptiness the chief subject matter of his texts, Nāgārjuna’s doctrinal allegiance lies with the Mahāyāna sūtras. Consequently, his readings of the Nikāya Buddhist scriptures are mediated by his interest in the Mahāyāna sūtras. Seen in this light, the parallels between Kāśyapaparivarta and Kaccāyanagotta, then, supply an instance of a pioneer Mahāyāna writer’s own awareness of the intertextual connections between the Nikāya and Mahāyāna sūtras. Such parallels are very common—indeed a phenomenon that merits a separate investigation, although one which we cannot attempt at any length here. In this instance and a few others that we will consider below, we will focus rather on the Mahāyāna writers’ own responses to the issue.
The historian of Buddhism will without doubt recognize in these parallels the borrowing of the Mahāyāna sūtras from the earlier Nikāya Buddhist texts. For the Mahāyāna Buddhists, however, the two groups of texts are not related to each other in terms of their temporal order of emergence or gradual evolution. In the specific case of Kātyāyanāvavāda, its significance for Nāgārjuna’s rather appears to be its connection to the Kāśyapaparivarta, which enables Nāgārjuna to see in the former a shadow of the message found in the latter.
Indeed, the context of the use of Kātyāyanāvavāda in the fifteenth chapter of Mūlamadhyamakakārikā is the demonstration of the Mahāyāna idea of emptiness in relation to four concepts: (1) the emptiness of an entity’s own nature, literally its own-being (svabhāva); (2) the emptiness of the nature of other entities, or other-being
49 For Kalupahana so insignificant is the Mahāyāna elements in Nāgārjuna’s writings that he intends to “exorcize the terms Theravāda and Mahāyāna from our vocabulary.” Idem, Nāgārjuna, 5-6.
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(parabhāva); (3) the emptiness of existence or being (bhāva); (4) the emptiness of non-existence or non-being (abhāva). According to Candrakīrti’s commentary, the opponents who accept shared Buddhist ideas oppose the Mahāyāna doctrine of emptiness in relation to each of these terms by arguing that each one of them is presupposed by the reality of the subsequent term. Thus, in the first five stanzas of the chapter arguments are employed to prove the emptiness of each of the terms in order.50 Finally, Kātyāyanāvavāda’s denial of existence (astitā) and non-existence (nāstitā) is invoked as a scriptural authority in addition to the logical arguments used in the fourth and fifth stanzas to justify the emptiness of existence and non-existence.51 Candrakīrti adduces here specifically the fact that a version of Kātyāyanāvavāda is recited in all schools of Nikāya Buddhism (idaṃ sūtraṃ sarvanikāyeṣu paṭhyate) to urge the acceptance of the Mādhyamika arguments.52
Thus, Kātyāyanāvavāda—rather than Kāśyapaparivarta—is chosen here simply because the interlocutor in the conversation is a follower of Nikāya Buddhism, for whom a Mahāyāna sūtra cannot be used as an authority. Indeed, among the Nikāya Buddhist scriptures the elements that speak to Mahāyāna Buddhist writers are often those that echo Mahāyāna Buddhist scriptures and views, in the same way that Nāgārjuna often attracts the attention of the modern writers who find in his works shadows of various aspects of modern thought.
Neither Alex nor Joseph Walser mentions this in their discussions on the topic. But the fact that Nāgārjuna likely quotes or alludes to the Kāśyapaparivarta is clearly important.
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