Philosopher
Śrīgupta
fl. 650–720 CE
Also known as Srigupta
Indian Madhyamaka philosopher whose Introduction to Reality gave the first complete Madhyamaka form of the 'neither one nor many' case for emptiness.
Few details of Śrīgupta’s life survive. Tibetan authors agree that he lived in Bengal, studied with Bhāviveka and taught Jñānagarbha, which places him roughly in the seventh century; his work shows Bhāviveka’s influence, putting him in the line later called Svātantrika-Madhyamaka.
His joining of Madhyamaka with the Dignāga–Dharmakīrti tradition was taken up by Jñānagarbha, Śāntarakṣita, Kamalaśīla and Haribhadra, and later became part of Tibetan Buddhist scholasticism.
Key ideas
- Neither one nor many
- Nothing can have an intrinsic nature, since whatever is real would have to be either a true unity or a true plurality, and nothing is either. Śrīgupta’s version of this argument became one of the main arguments for emptiness in India and Tibet.
- Madhyamaka meets logic
- His Introduction to Reality seems to be the earliest synthesis of Nāgārjuna’s Madhyamaka metaphysics with the logic and epistemology of Dignāga and Dharmakīrti, a pairing later standard in Tibet.
- Conventional reality
- What is conventionally real arises dependently and is causally effective, Dharmakīrti’s test repurposed; Śrīgupta added that it satisfies only so long as it is not examined critically.
- Tradition
- Indian
- Region
- Bengal
- Schools
- Madhyamaka
- Themes
- What is ultimately real
Influences
Influenced by
Śrīguptafl. 650–720 CE
Influenced
Influenced by
Śrīguptafl. 650–720 CE
Influenced
Where these links come from
Key works
- Introduction to Reality (Tattvāvatāra)
Sources
- Allison Aitken, Śrīgupta, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy