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A Yogācāra Buddhist Theory
of Metaphor
 A Yogācāra
Buddhist Theory
of Metaphor
z
ROY TZOHAR

1
 1
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Tzohar, Roy, 1973– author.
Title: A Yogācāra Buddhist Theory of Metaphor / Roy Tzohar.
Description: New York, NY, United States of America : Oxford University Press, [2018] |
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2017011352 (print) | LCCN 2017036990 (ebook) |
ISBN 9780190664404 (updf) | ISBN 9780190664411 (epub) |
ISBN 9780190664428 (oso) | ISBN 9780190664398 (cloth)
Subjects: LCSH: Buddhism and philosophy. | Buddhist philosophy. | Metaphor.= |
Metaphor—Religious aspects—Buddhism. | Yogācāra (Buddhism)
Classification: LCC BQ4040 (ebook) | LCC BQ4040 .T96 2018 (print) |
DDC 181/.043—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017011352

1 3 5 7 9 8 6 4 2
Printed by Sheridan Books, Inc., United States of America
For Rotem
 Contents

Acknowledgments xi

Abbreviations xv

Introduction 1
1. What Do Buddhists Have to Say About Figurative Language? 3
2. A Bit of Methodology: On Determining the Relevant Textual Field and
Handling Intertextual Borrowing 8
3. An Outline 16

PART ONE

1. Metaphor as Absence: The Case of the Early Nyāya and Mīmāṃsā 23

1.1. What Is Metaphor (Upacāra)? 23
1.2. Upacāra in the Early Mīmāṃsā School 28
1.3. Upacāra in the Early Nyāya School 34
1.3.1. The view that nouns do not refer to an individual entity
(vyakti) 35
1.3.2. The view that nouns directly refer to the generic
property (jāti) and refer to the individual
only figuratively 36
1.4. Summary 40
viii Contents

2. Metaphor as Perceptual Illusion: Figurative Meaning

in Bhartṛhari’s Vākyapadīya 42
2.1. Figurative Meaning in the Second Kāṇḍa of
the Vākyapadīya 46
2.1.1. Some preliminary distinctions regarding polysemy
and metaphor 47
2.1.2. Figurative meaning and the analogy with
perceptual error 49
2.2. Figurative Meaning in the Third Kāṇḍa of the Vākyapadīya 63
2.2.1. The semantic problems at stake 64
2.2.2. Bhartṛhari’s proposed solution and its interpretations 66
2.2.3. An alternative interpretation:
Reading the third kāṇḍa in light of the second kāṇḍa 69

PART TWO

3. It’s a Bear . . . No, It’s a Man . . . No, It’s a Metaphor! Asaṅga on

the Proliferation of Figures 77
3.1. The Authorship and Dating of the Tattvārtha Chapter of
the Bodhisattvabhūmi and Its Relation to
the Viniścayasaṃgrahaṇī 78
3.2. Metaphor-​Related Arguments: A Close Reading 84
3.2.1. Asaṅga’s argumentative strategy 84
3.2.2. Demonstrating the inexpressibility of an essential
nature in the TApaṭ: Some preliminary distinctions 86
3.2.3. Demonstrating the inexpressibility of an essential nature
in the VS: Some preliminary distinctions 88
3.2.4. The TApaṭ “first argument”: The argument
from polysemy 95
3.2.5. The TApaṭ “second argument”: An essential nature is not
apprehended or determined by the designation 99
3.2.6. The TApaṭ “third argument”: An essential nature is not
apprehended or determined by the object 100
3.2.7. Part I of the VS account: The designation is not dependent
on the semantic-​ground 103
 Contents ix

3.2.8. Part II of the VS account: The magical creation analogy

and what it says about the role of metaphor 106
3.2.9. Part III of the VS account: The essential nature is not
apprehended or determined by anything other than the
designation and the semantic-​ground 111
3.2.10. Part IV of the VS account: Designations do not even
“illuminate” or reveal an essential nature 112
3.2.11. The opponent’s objection: The claim that the essential
nature is inexpressible is self-​contradictory 114
3.2.12. Doesn’t inexpressibility presuppose the annihilation of
phenomena? Asaṅga on language and intersubjectivity 119
3.3. Summary 123

4. The Seeds of the Pan-​Figurative View: Metaphor in Other

Buddhist Sources 125
4.1. Metaphor in Vasubandhu’s Abhidharmakośabhāṣya
and Sthiramati’s Commentary 126
4.2. Metaphor in the Laṅkāvatārasūtra 137
4.2.1. The dating of the Laṅkāvatārasūtra and its relation
to Yogācāra thinkers 137
4.2.2. The Sagāthakaṃ on discursive thought and causality 139
4.2.3. The Sagāthakaṃ on metaphors and mental
causal reality 141
4.3. Metaphor in the Fifth Chapter of Dignāga’s Pramāṇasamuccaya 144

PART THREE

5. What It All Comes Down To: Sthiramati’s Pan-​Metaphorical Claim

and Its Implications 153
5.1. A Permanent Absentee: Sthiramati’s Definition of Metaphor 157
5.2. Sthiramati’s Refutation of Opposing Claims 161
5.3. What Remains of Ordinary Language? A Causal Figurative
Theory of Sense 166
5.4. It Is All About Discourse: Sthiramati’s Arguments Against
the Madhyamaka 173
x Contents

6. Conversing with a Buddha: The Yogācāra Conception

of Meaning as a Means for Overcoming Incommensurability 178
6.1. The Awareness Following Nonconceptual Knowledge as
an Ultimate Outlook on Causality 180
6.2. Sthiramati’s Theory of Meaning and the Problem of
Incommensurability 188
6.3. Perceptual Meaning and the Yogācāra Understanding of
Intersubjective Agreement 190
6.4. Coming Back Full Circle: Perspectival Experience,
Polysomic Language 201

Conclusion: The Alterity of Metaphor 205

Appendix A: A Translation and Exposition of the Vākyapadīya 2.250–​256 221

Appendix B: A Running Translation of the Vākyapadīya 2.285–​2.297 227

References 233

Index 253
 Acknowledgments

This book evolved out of my PhD dissertation at Columbia University, and

my first debt of gratitude is owed to the scholars who painstakingly midwifed
that project: Gary Tubb, whose exceptional knowledge and love of Sanskrit
literature are an always-​present source of inspiration; Robert Thurman, who
has guided me with unending patience and skill in means through the intri-
cacies of Tibetan Buddhist texts; and Laurie Patton, whose graduate seminar
on metaphor, which I attended over a decade ago when she was on Fulbright
at Tel Aviv University, is in many ways the intellectual point of departure for
the present book, and whose guidance and encouragement have accompa-
nied me ever since. At Columbia, I benefited from the superlative scholarship
and teaching of other faculty members, who also provided me with invalu-
able advice on issues both philological and philosophical; for this, my deepest
thanks goes to Bernard Faure, Jack Hawley, Venerable Geshe Lozang Jamspal,
Sheldon Pollock, and Wayne Proudfoot.
In the same spirit, I wish to thank the numerous scholars and friends
who have helped me form and improve this book through stimulating con-
versations over the years, in particular Orna Almogi, Eyal Aviv, Daniel Arnold,
Michael Stanley-​Baker, Joel Bordeaux, Christian Coseru, Thibaut d’Hubert,
Florin Deleanu, Martin Delhey, Rupert Gethin, Paul Hackett, Charles
Hallisey, Jowita Kramer, David Kittay, Dan Lusthaus, Richard Nance, Parimal
Patil, Andrea Pinkney, Mark Sidertis, Jonathan Silk, Dorji Wangchuk, Jan
Westerhoff, and Michael Zimmermann. Special thanks go to several people
who have read drafts of all or part of the book and offered their comments:
Mario D’amato, a fellow rōnin, for his extremely helpful and detailed feedback;
Elisa Freschi, for her thoughtful and spirited comments; Jonardon Ganeri, for
a memorable philosophical debate about the work in a Berlin bar; Jay Garfield,
a true kalyāṇa-​mitra, who read this book cover to cover with incredible and
generous attention and made this work so much better; Jonathan Gold, the
best interlocutor that one could hope for; Janet Gyatso, whose interest and
xii Acknowledgments

wise suggestions were a consistent source of support over the years; Sonam
Kachru, for his friendship and intellectual bonhomie; and Robert Sharf, for
insightful reactions to ideas developed here. Of course, all errors that remain
in the book are my own.
I am grateful to Cynthia Read and Drew Anderla at Oxford University
Press for their interest in this manuscript, for their close attention and impor-
tant guidance, and for their ever-​professional and -​sympathetic way.
I am thankful also to several institutions and departments that provided
financial and logistical support for my research. The funding for the initial
research for this book, conducted in India, was provided through the American
Institute of Indian Studies (AIIS) Junior research fellowship (2007–​2008).
In Sarnath, I wish to thank the eminent faculty at the Central University
of Tibetan Studies (CUTS), and especially Shrikant Bahulkar, Venerable
Wonchuk Dorje Negi, Venerable Geshe Damdul Namgyal, Venerable Tsering
Sakya, Venerable Lobsang Norbu Sastri, and Ramshankara Tripathi for gener-
ously sharing with me their vast stores of knowledge on Buddhist texts. In
Pune, I wish to thank the faculty of Deccan College, and especially Vinayaka B.
Bhatta, head of the Sanskrit Dictionary Project, and Jayashree Sathe, its editor-​
in-​chief, who kindly allowed me access to the institute’s scriptorium. And in
Mysore, my thanks are extended to H. V. Nagaraja Rao, for many formidable
hours of reading Sanskrit poetics.
In the years 2011–​2015, I was a beneficiary of the Marie Curie Grant of
the European Union (CORDIS), which gave me the resources and time to
complete the research for this book and present it at international forums.
An extended sabbatical stay in Berlin between 2013 and 2015 afforded me
the time needed to complete the first draft of this book. I am grateful to Tel
Aviv University, for allowing me to take this leave; to the Zukunftsphilologie
Program, Forum Transregionale Studien, Freie Universität, Berlin, where I
have been an affiliated postdoctoral fellow; and to Islam Daya, the program’s
director.
Six additional months as a stipendiary research fellow at the Max Planck
Institute for the History of Science, Berlin (2014–​2015), provided me with the
rarest gift—​time to write and think uninterruptedly in the most intellectu-
ally stimulating environment. I am grateful to all of my colleagues there, and
foremost to Dagmar Schäfer, the managing director of the institute and the
director of Department 3, for her generosity and vision, and for her commit-
ment to rethinking the history of science beyond Europe and the West. Finally,
funding received from the Yad-​Hanadiv Grant, the Department of East and
South Asian Studies at Tel Aviv University, enabled me to hire Alex Cherniak,
who expertly proofread the many Sanskrit and Tibetan passages included in
 Acknowledgments xiii

this book; Oren Hanner, a great research assistant; and Natalie Melzer, my
first reader. I am grateful to them all.
In the last years I have been sustained in all aspects of my academic life by the
solidarity, assistance, and friendship of my colleagues at Tel Aviv University’s
South and East Asian Studies Department and Philosophy Department,
where my thanks go out to Yoav Ariel, Ehud Halperin, Asaf Goldschmidt, Ofra
Goldstein-​Gidoni, Jacob Raz, Dani Raveh, Galia Patt-​Shamir, Meir Shahar, and
Ori Sela. My profound thanks are extended to Shlomo Biderman, my teacher
of old, whose lifetime project at Tel Aviv University gave me the rare oppor-
tunity to teach Indian philosophy unapologetically as an integral part of the
philosophy department’s curriculum. I am also grateful to my colleagues over
on the mountain, at Hebrew University, Yael Bentor, Yigal Bronner, Yohanan
Grinshpon, David Shulman, and Eviatar Shulman; though institutionally
remote, they were so close in their support and helpful input.
Finally, I am thankful beyond measure to my family: Rahel, Menahem,
and Lea; and above all to Rotem and Asya, who have travelled with me, both
metaphorically and literally, along this path, and without whose love this book,
like so much else, would not have been possible.
Chapter 5 contains a revised version of my article “Does Early Yogācāra
Have a Theory of Meaning? Sthiramati’s Arguments on Metaphor in the
Triṃśikā-​Bhāṣya,” which appeared in the Journal of Indian Philosophy, 45(1),
99–​120; and Chapter 6 integrates sections from my article “Imagine Being
a Preta: Early Indian Yogācāra Approaches to Intersubjectivity,” from Sophia,
doi:10.1007/​s11841-​016-​0544-​y. Both are reprinted here with the kind permis-
sion of Springer Science and Business Media.
 Abbreviations

AKBh Abhidharmakośabhāṣya [Vasubandhu]

AKBhṬT Abhidharmakośaṭīkā Tattvārthā (chos mngon pa’i mdzod kyi bshad
pa’i rgya cher ’grel pa don gyi de kho na nyid ces bya ba) [Sthiramati]
AS Abhidharmasamuccaya [Asaṅga]
ASBh Abhidharmasamuccayabhāṣya [Sthiramati]
BBh Bodhisattvabhūmi [Asaṅga]
H: Lhasa (lha sa) recension of the Tibetan canon
KP Kāśyapaparivartasūtra
KPṬ Kāśyapaparivartaṭīkā (’phags pa dkon mchog brtsegs pa chen po chos
kyi rnam grangs le’u stong phrag brgya pa las ’od srungs kyi le’u rgya
cher ’grel pa) [Sthiramati]
LAS Laṅkāvatārasūtra
MBhū Maulībhūmi section of the YB [Asaṅga]
MBh Mahābhāṣya [Patañjali]
MBhD Mahābhāṣyadīpikā [Bhartṛhari]
MīS Mīmāṃsāsūtra [Jaimini]
MMK Mūlamadhyamakakārikā [Nāgārjuna]
MS Mahāyānasaṃgraha (theg pa chen po bsdus ba) [Asaṅga]
MSBh Mahāyānasaṃgrahabhāṣya (theg pa chen po bsdus pa’i ’grel pa)
[Vasubandhu]
MSA Mahāyānasūtrālaṃkāra [Maitreya/​Asaṅga]
MSABh Mahāyānasūtrālaṃkārabhāṣya [Vasubandhu]
MV Madhyāntavibhāgakārikā [Maitreya/​Asaṅga]
MVBh Madhyāntavibhāgabhāṣya [Vasubandhu]
MVṬ Madhyāntavibhāgaṭīkā [Sthiramati]
NyS Nyāyasūtra [Gautama]
NySBh Nyāyasūtrabhāṣya [Vātsyāyana]
NySVā Nyāyasūtravārttika [Uddyotakara]
P Peking Edition of the Tibetan Buddhist Canon
xvi Abbreviations

PP (VP) Prakīrṇaprakāśa (VP) [Helārāja]

PS Pramāṇasamuccaya [Dignāga]
PSV Pramāṇasamuccayavṛtti [Dignāga]
PSkV Pañcaskandhakavibhāṣā [Sthiramati]
ŚāBh Śābarabhāṣya [Śabara]
SNS Saṃdhinirmocanasūtra
ŚrBh Śrāvakabhūmi [Asaṅga]
T. Taishō Revised Tripiṭaka
TApaṭ Tattvārthapaṭalam of the Bodhisattvabhūmi [Asaṅga]
TD Sde dge (Derge) recension of the Tibetan canon
Ṭīkā (VP) Vākyapadīyaṭīkā [Puṇyarāja]
Triṃś Triṃśikā [Vasubandhu]
TriṃśBh Triṃśikābhāṣya [Sthiramati]
TriṃśṬ Triṃśikā-ṭīkā [Vīnitadeva]
TSN Trisvabhāvanirdeśa [Vasubandhu]
U Upanibandhana on the MS [Asvabhāva]
Viṃś Viṃśikākārikā and vṛtti [Vasubandhu]
VP Vākyapadīya (Trikāṇḍi) [Bhartṛhari]
Vṛtti (VP) Vākyapadīyavṛtti [Bhartṛhari]
VS Viniścayasaṃgrahaṇī (mam par gtan la dbab pa bsduBa) [Asaṅga]
VV Vigrahavyāvartanī [Nāgārjuna]
Vy Vyākhyāyukti (rnam par bshad pa’i rigs pa) [Vasubandhu]
YB Yogācārabhūmi [Asaṅga]
 Introduction

Put simply, according to the Buddhists, at the root of human suffering

lies a deep discord between how we ordinarily conceive of reality and how it
truly is. Major factors in actively creating and maintaining this discord are
language and the way in which our conceptual schemes parse, attempt to fix
as permanent, and desperately hold on to what is by nature a fleeting and
fluctuating stream of events. In this respect, language is not merely a veil that
obscures true reality, but rather an active force (according to some Buddhist
philosophical schools, a causal element) involved in its fabrication: It is the
metaphysical workshop in which entities are forged and, once produced, are
erroneously believed to be real.
Language is, therefore, part of the disease, but inevitably it is also part of
the cure. This is because on the one hand, while Buddhist thought is under-
lined by a deep devaluation of language as a means for representing, describ-
ing, or reaching reality, on the other hand, insofar as it is required for any
salvific discourse, language is viewed as necessary for liberation. The staunch
antirealism of some Buddhist schools deprives language of its obvious refer-
ents, and Buddhist views regarding the basic inexpressibility of the ultimate
reality further undermine its status; but at the same time, Buddhist thought
faces the need to uphold the meaningfulness not just of ordinary language,
but of the (often overtly metaphysical) Buddhist discourse itself.
At the heart of Buddhist philosophical thought, then, lies the para-
dox that is language. As a consequence, Buddhist philosophical texts pres-
ent a palpable tension that arises from the inherently paradoxical need to
argue against words by using words, to devalue language through language.
Resolving, or at least in some way containing, this tension was arguably one
of the main challenges confronted by Indian Buddhist thought, the story of
which can indeed be told through the successive strategies and solutions
2 Introduction

employed by its various schools to meet this challenge. This book focuses on
the ingenious response to this tension that one Buddhist school, the early
Indian Yogācāra (3rd–​6th century ce), proposed through its sweeping claim
that all language use is in fact metaphorical (upacāra).
Over the last several decades, the so-​called metaphorical turn, propelled by
a scholarly fascination with the fundamental role that metaphors play in our
concept formation, has explored the implications of a similar pan-​metaphorical
picture. In a sense, this theoretical trend cast metaphor as a substance that
is in many ways like the air we breathe: all-​pervasive, essential to (mental)
life, and transparent to us most of the time. But what if it ceased to be trans-
parent? What if our awareness were awakened to the metaphorical nature of
nearly everything we say, including our most prosaic utterances? What if our
language—​that “reef of dead metaphors,” in the memorable image coined by
the linguist Guy Deutscher1—​suddenly came alive? The Yogācāra, this book
argues, were keenly aware of this overwhelming pervasiveness of metaphor, as
well as of the philosophical benefits of being made aware of it.
Exploring the profound implications of the school’s pan-​ metaphorical
claim, the book makes the case for viewing the Yogācāra account of meta-
phor as a broadly conceived theory of meaning—​one that is applicable, in the
words of the 6th-​century Yogācāra thinker Sthiramati, both “in the world and
in texts.” This theory of meaning, I argue, allowed the Yogācāra to carve out
a position that is quite exceptional in the Buddhist landscape: a position that
views ordinary language as incapable of representing or reaching reality, but at
the same time justifies the meaningfulness of the school’s own metaphysical
and salvific discourse. This scheme, I hope to show, bears on our interpreta-
tion of the Yogācāra by radically reframing the school’s controversy with the
Madhyamaka; by reinstating the place of Sthiramati, who is known for his
commentaries, as an innovative thinker in his own right; and by establishing
the importance of the school’s contribution to Indian philosophy of language
and its potential contribution to contemporary discussions of related topics in
philosophy and the study of religion.
In this respect, this book is also about the wider Indian philosophical con-
versation about meaning that took place around the middle of the first mil-
lennium. Although some of what the Yogācārins had to say about metaphor
was highly innovative, their reflections on this issue should be understood
against the backdrop of, and as conversing with, specific theories of mean-
ing put forward by such non-​Buddhist schools as the Mīmāṃsā, the Nyāya,

1. Deutscher (2005, 118).

 Introduction 3

and the Grammarians. By grounding the Yogācāra’s pan-​metaphorical claim

in its broader intellectual context, both Buddhist and non-​Buddhist, the book
uncovers an intense philosophical conversation about metaphor and language
that took place in India during that time and which reached across sectarian
lines. This picture reframes the usual depiction of the Buddhist thought of the
period as somewhat isolated and less engaged in exchange with non-​Buddhist
philosophical schools. Integrating formal analyses of Indian philosophy with
the history of ideas, the book thus functions as an argument for a deeply con-
textual consideration of Buddhist philosophy—​one that looks beyond sectar-
ian demarcations and traditional narratives of textual transmission, even in
this early period.
Finally, then, this book is about how Buddhist thinkers reflected on and
understood the metaphorical function of language, and about what meta-
phors mean and do within Buddhist philosophical texts. Figurative language
is palpably present in Buddhist philosophical texts in general and in the
Yogācāra lore in particular, and yet there are relatively few existing studies of
this topic, and when theorizing, these studies tend to appeal to contempo-
rary philosophical and literary theories of metaphors. In the present study,
by contrast, I attempt to reconstruct a body of theory on metaphor as for-
mulated by Buddhist thinkers (i.e., using their own terms). My hope is that
this book will provides readers of Buddhist philosophy with a fresh scholarly
perspective for appraising not only the overall Buddhist understanding of
language but also, more concretely, how particular metaphors operate within
these texts.

1. What Do Buddhists Have to Say

About Figurative Language?
The systematic argumentation that is the mark of early Mahāyāna philosophi-
cal treatises is counterbalanced rather strikingly by the school’s ubiquitous use
of figurative language in these works. The stock analogies, similes, and meta-
phors can usually be traced to a number of Buddhist root figures that, far from
being merely ornamental, are highly important in developing argumentation
and outlining its soteriological horizons. But given the overwhelming visibil-
ity of figurative language in Buddhist literature, its role and use have received
relatively little attention in scholarship to date. While various scholarly works
engage with figurative language as a subtopic of Buddhist hermeneutics
(which will be discussed in more detail shortly), or with the philosophical
work performed by particular Buddhist metaphors (see, for instance, Wayman,
1984; Lusthaus, 2002, 491–​495, 508–​517; Wood, 1991, 42–​47; Garfield, 2002,
4 Introduction

147–​151; Gold, 2006), only a handful consider its overall status or function as
an independent topic, and often these works approach it by employing con-
temporary theories of metaphor developed in Western disciplines.2 With few
exceptions,3 there has been no sustained attempt to examine how Buddhist
thinkers reflect on and theorize their own application of figurative language.

2. Notable studies of this sort include McMahan (2002), on the role and meaning of visual
metaphors in Indian Mahāyāna sūtras. McMahan argues for the centrality of the visual as a
paradigm for knowledge in these texts but draws mostly on contemporary conceptual theo-
ries of metaphor. This study is not concerned, however, with the linguistic side of meta-
phors, disregarding the fact that visual metaphors are ultimately also linguistic devices (see
Gummer, 2005). Covill (2009) convincingly demonstrates that Aśvaghoṣa consciously and
strategically used recurrent metaphors to encapsulate a central theme of religious conver-
sion. In this respect, her work is attuned to the way in which Buddhist thinkers under-
stood their own deployment of linguistic metaphor, yet her analysis turns on the content
of a particular web of metaphors, and to this extent remains text-​and usage-​specific. In
fact, one of the reasons that Covill gives for her somewhat counterintuitive decision to rely
on contemporary Western theory of conceptual metaphor rather than on Indian theory of
poetics is precisely that the latter disregards the specific content of metaphor (adhering
instead to a general theorization of meaning). Focusing on another work by Aśvaghoṣa, the
Buddhacaritaṃ, Patton (2008) explores the hermeneutical and conceptual role of figura-
tive language in pre-​alaṃkāraśāstra Indian literature. Additional notable essays that address
the topic of Buddhist metaphors, but not as their main focus, include Collins (1982 and
1997), on the ways in which the Pāli imaginaire utilizes certain patterns of imagery concern-
ing either personal identity or the concept of nirvāṇa, respectively; and Eckel (1992), whose
study of Bhāvaviveka’s philosophical works draws attention to the metaphors that frame the
latter’s arguments. Other writers whose engagement with the topic is notable, if more nar-
rowly defined, include Goodman (2005), who has presented what he calls the Vaibhāṣika
“metaphoricalist” approach to personal identity, and Flores (2008, 87–​100), who proposes a
literary reading of the figurative language in the Dhammapada.
3. Gold (2007, 2015) deals with the place of upacāra in Vasubandhu’s understanding of cau-
sality. D’Amato (2003) reconstructs a Buddhist theory of signs presented in the eleventh
chapter of the Mahāyānasūtrālaṃkāra and its conception of lakṣaṇā. Kragh (2010) exam-
ines several cases of figurative use within Candrakīrti’s work and calls for the formulation
of a literary theory—​distinct from Sanskrit poetics—​that is especially attuned to the genre
of śāstra. As for scholarship that deal with the general Indian theorization of figurative
language before the existence of a full fledge theory of poetics, notable (but by no means
exhaustive) examples include Gonda’s (1949) methodical and extensive study of similes
in Indian literature (including a section on Buddhist similes). Kunjunni Raja (1977) deals
extensively with the understanding of figurative language of the Nyāya, Mīmāṃsā, and
Grammarians, and elsewhere (1965) specifically with Pāṇini’s understanding of lakṣaṇā.
Gerow (1977) provides notes on some limited early Indian engagement with poetics and
addresses the meanings and terminology related to figurative language in classical Indian
thought (1984). Piatigorsky and Zilberman (1976) deal with the range of meanings and uses
of the term lakṣaṇā, mostly in the Upaniṣads; and Gren-​Eklund (1986) compares certain
features of both philosophical and later poetic understanding of figurative language with
the Aristotelian conception of figurative transference. Patton (2004), focusing on the notion
of viniyoga, presented the centrality of metonymical thinking as a vehicle for constructing
ritualistic meaning, and her account can perhaps be regarded as a first-​of-​its-​kind scholarly
 Introduction 5

My aim in this book, therefore, is to present a systematic account—​the first

of its kind, as far as I know—​of a homegrown Buddhist theory of metaphor.
What, then, does the Mahāhyāna philosophical discourse have to say about
figurative language, and where does it do so (under which subdiscourses)?
Two obvious places in which to search for answers do not yield them. First, the
later Buddhist epistemological discourse (pramāṇavāda), despite its tendency
toward comprehensive categorization, does not define or expressly delineate
the rules and role of figurative language in any distinct way.4 Second, there is
no early Buddhist theory of poetics (alaṃkāraśāstra)—​or, for that matter, any
extant systematized theory of poetics from that period—​that deals with these
issues.5

description of ritualistic-​qua-​performative Indian theory of metaphor. Another noted work is

Myers (1995), who, following the program initially proposed by Potter (1988), examines the
role of central metaphors in broadening and exceeding given conceptual spheres in Vedic
and Advaita-​Vedāntic literature. Most recently, Keating (2013a, 2013b, 2017), deals extensively
with the understanding of various categories of figurative use in the work of the 9th-​century
Kashmiri thinker Mukula Bhaṭṭa, as well in the works of other Indian philosophical schools
of thought.
4. On Dignāga’s (rather limited) engagement with the issue of figurative language, see
Chapter 4, section 4.3. Within this discourse, the epistemic function of figurative ele-
ments usually overshadows the linguistic one. This is true, for instance, of the discus-
sion of “examples” (dṛṣṭānta), which is usually limited to a consideration of their validity in
the inferential procedure (anumāna), and the same goes for the consideration of relevant
valid means of knowledge such as “analogy” (upamāna); in this respect, see Zilberman’s
expansive but unfortunately unfinished work on analogy in Indian thought (2006, 49).
As for “testimony” (āptavāda, āptāgama), while both Asaṅga and Vasubandhu accept it
as a valid means of knowledge, its bearing on such specific speech particles as figures is
never discussed in epistemic discourse. For Asaṅga’s reference to the role of testimony in
his Abhidharmasamuccaya (AS), the Bodhisattvabhūmi, and the Hetuvidyā section in the
Śrutamayībhūmi, see Tatia (1976, 253), Dutt (1978, 25, lines 17–​19), and Wayman (1999, 23),
respectively.
5. The first full-​fledged extant works on Sanskrit poetics are Daṇḍin’s Kāvyādarśa and
Bhāmaha’s Kāvyālaṃkāra, whose chronology and order of appearance are a longstanding
conundrum in contemporary scholarship. Bronner (2012a, 99, 110) convincingly places
Daṇḍin’s Kāvyādarśa c.700 ce and as postdating Bhāmaha. Both writers mention (and
Bhāmaha even names and quotes) predecessors as authors of earlier poetical works whose
absence still puzzles scholars; in this respect, see the opposing views of Pollock (2003, 42;
2006, 89–​90) and Bronner (2012a, 110–​113). Regarding much earlier works that deal with
poetical terms, though early writers like Yāska and Pāṇini did theorize figures to a certain
extent, their engagement, while significant for subsequent theory of poetics, is far from uni-
form in its scope or concerns (see Gerow 1977, 221). As for the Nāṭyaśāstra, Pollock (2003,
42n.5) points out that although an early version of the text, now lost, could have been avail-
able from the 2nd century ce (and is referenced for the first time in the 4th century), its main
focus was the structure of drama, not poetics (although it probably influenced the latter’s dis-
cussion of rasa), and Gerow indicates that only in the 8th century ce, with the commentary
6 Introduction

Nevertheless, early Mahāyāna Buddhist literature is keenly aware of the

stakes involved in the deployment of figurative language as a liberative tool.
This awareness is most conspicuous in two related contexts. The first is the
Buddhist notion of “skillful means” (upāya), which counts figurative language
as one of many pedagogical means applied by Buddhist teachers. The second
context is discussions of hermeneutics, in which figurative language is seen as
the textual expression of implicit intention (abhisaṃdhi, abhiprāya) and inter-
pretable meaning (neyārtha) of the Buddha’s words.6 Both these perspectives
on figurative usage, however, reduce it either to its function (pedagogical) or
to indirect intention ascriptions, telling us little about the semantics and prag-
matics of figurative meaning; i.e., its enabling conditions, cognitive impact,
and the referential mechanism involved in its employment.
Where we do find these issues addressed is in the early Yogācāra treatises,
which often take up the subject of figurative usage as part of a broader philo-
sophical engagement with the relation between language and reality. Within
these accounts, situated at the juncture of discourse on associative language
and discourse on theories of meaning, a prominent concept is upacāra, a term
best translated as “figurative designation,” or simply “metaphor.” While the
term is not exclusive to the Yogācāra, it is especially prevalent in the writings

of Lollaṭa, does it become a truly “creative basis for the tradition” (1977, 225–226n.34). As
for Buddhism, despite some pronounced suspicion on the part of canonical sources toward
poets and the composition of poetry, Buddhists are strongly connected to the history of the
composition of poetry in India, from the very early so-​called Pāli kāvya literature—​namely,
the Thera-​ and Therīgāthā anthologies, the poetical works of Aśvaghoṣa from the second cen-
tury CE, which are the first extant instances of extensive poetry (mahākāvya), those ascribed
to Kumāralāta and Mātṛceṭa, and up to the poems ascribed to Dharmakīrti (for references to
the latter, see Ingalls 1965, 445). See Tieken (2014, 86–​87, 103–​106) for a discussion of the
roots of kāvya and its possible relation to Buddhism, and Ollett (2015) for a discussion of
some Buddhist writers in what he conceives of broadly as a “kāvya movement” from 50 bce
to the 2nd century CE. Nevertheless, there is no indication of a particular Buddhist contribu-
tion to or a distinct tradition of theory of poetics in Sanskrit.
6. The issue of figurative use as a subtopic of a discussion about skillful means and herme-
neutics is taken up in a variety of sources; in the context of the Mahāyāna literature, these
include Thurman (1978), Hamlin (1983), Lopez (1988, 1993), Schroeder (2001), Pye (2003),
Ganeri (2006b), and Collier (1998). The latter is noteworthy, insofar as his analysis of indi-
rect intention and nonliteral speech in a variety of Mahāyāna sources draws comparisons
with accounts of Indian poetics, revealing interesting connections between the work of
medieval Indian thinkers, such as Haribhadra, and the theory of poetics prevalent in his
time. Regarding early Buddhism, Hamilton (2000) has argued for a reading of the early
Buddhist sources that emphasizes the intended figurative nature of many of the Buddha’s
assertions (above all, the nonself claim); Hwang (2006) supplies a doctrinal history of the
metaphor of nirvāṇa attuned to the various interpretative schemes provided by the suttas
and early Abhidhamma, and Cox (1992) discusses at length the Abhidharma hermeneutical
mindset (see, in this respect, Chapter 4, section 4.1).
 Introduction 7

ascribed to Asaṅga and Vasubandhu (c.360 ce),7 and receives its most com-
prehensive and systematic treatment in the commentarial works of Sthiramati
(470–​550), which advance the claim that all language use is metaphorical.8
The scholarly engagement with Sthiramati as an important Indian philos-
opher in his own right is limited, perhaps in part because of the commentarial
nature of his work. Yet his place along the continuum of the Yogācāra’s tex-
tual development and the perspective that this position offers are unique and
give his work a special significance. Relative to previous thinkers like Asaṅga
and Vasubandhu, Sthiramati operated under a much more defined notion of
the Yogācāra as a distinct school, or at least a more defined textual tradition;
accordingly, his interpretive challenge—​and contribution—​consisted in syn-
thesizing a varied textual corpus into a coherent and consistent worldview,
adding to it in the process some original and strikingly innovative insights.
Highlighting Sthiramati’s substantive philosophical contribution to the
Yogācāra tradition is one of the goals of this book.
With respect to the understanding of language and metaphor in particu-
lar, the scope and reach of Sthiramati’s treatment of this topic are especially
notable, insofar as he explicitly situates these issues within the wider non-​
Buddhist Indian conversation about meaning and reference, and also proceeds
to synthesize various Yogācāra ideas about language into a unified theory of
meaning. To mount his pan-​figurative claim, as we will see, Sthiramati inge-
niously weaves together the Yogācāra’s multiple and dispersed comments on
language, joining a critique of a correspondence theory of meaning with a
positive account of the causal and mental underpinnings of language in terms
of the activity of consciousness.
But what does this pan-​figurative claim entail, and what purpose did it
serve for the Yogācāra? Where does it leave ordinary language use, and no
less important, how does it bear on the status and meaning of the language
of Buddhist scriptures? Where did this sweeping claim originate, and to what
extent was it innovative?
By addressing these questions, I aim to present an account of the Yogācāra
understanding of upacāra, formulated as far as possible in the school’s own
theoretical terms. At the same time, my reading of the school’s views brings
into account their broader pan-​Indian context, which is, as I will argue, a nec-
essary context for any proper understanding of the school’s claims.

7. For more on Vasubandhu’s dating, see Chapter 4, section 4.1.

8. For more on Sthiramati’s dating, as well as to the question of his authorship in respect to
the list of works attributed to him by the tradition, see Chapter 5, note 1 and 2.
8 Introduction

2. A Bit of Methodology: On Determining

the Relevant Textual Field and Handling
Intertextual Borrowing
Upacāra has a broad range of meanings in non-​Buddhist Sanskrit literature.9
Conducting early research for this book at the scriptorium of the Sanskrit
Dictionary Project at Deccan College (Pune, Mahārāshtra), I reviewed hun-
dreds of slips of paper that in theory quote all appearances of upacāra in 1,541
representative works of Sanskrit literature (Ghatage et al., 1976).10 Apart from
locating references to upacāra in Sanskrit sources, this vast database allowed
me to identify patterns in the changes of meaning that the term underwent
across periods and genres. Specifically, it demonstrated quite distinctly that
the use of upacāra in the sense of metaphor is prominent in the philosophical
literature—​non-​Buddhist and Buddhist alike—​from its earliest phases, as well
as in the later alaṃkāraśāstra literature, but it is relatively scarce or nonexistent
in other genres. While this observation needs to be qualified by the fact that it
inevitably reflects the principles of selection applied by the dictionary’s compil-
ers, as well as the historically constructed notion of a Sanskrit canon,11 it none-
theless enables us to outline a general working context in which upacāra was
highly visible, and more important, suggests that this context reaches across
sectarian lines. Both these observations came to form my working hypotheses,
which eventually, through close readings in a variety of upacāra-​related textual
sources, proved to be well founded.
Given the wide scope of this textual context, my lineup of sources had
to be selective. The initial criterion guiding my selection of texts, apart from
their thematic relevance to the issues brought up by the Yogācāra, was the

9. Monier Williams’s Sanskrit-​English Dictionary (1956/​1899) lists the following meanings

(before the word’s sense as figurative usage): approach, service, attendance, act of civility,
reverence, proceedings, practice, behavior, attendance on a patient, ceremony, offering,
solicitation, ornament, and usage. (197).
10. The project was inaugurated in 1948 by S. M. Katre. The first volume of the project’s
dictionary was published in 1978, and in 2013, the first part of the 11th volume appeared. The
process of cataloguing and sorting vocables from all selected Sanskrit sources is ongoing. Its
information is stored in an archive of handwritten slips of reference paper, each containing
the Sanskrit headword, an approximate English translation, and a textual reference to the
passage in which the word appears.
11. The totality of the works used in the dictionary is said to represent the traditional branches
of Sanskrit literature from the Ṛgveda to 18th-​century commentarial literature, but the list
reflects mostly Sanskrit classical Brahmanic works and presents (for instance) a relatively
small body of Buddhist and Jain works (the dictionary also excludes meanings that are
unique to Buddhist sources—​i.e., “hybrid” Sanskrit).
 Introduction 9

presence of a substantial theoretical engagement with upacāra, either as the

main topic of discussion or in a philosophically significant manner, and also,
in the case of sources other than the Yogācāra treatises, the text’s chronologi-
cal availability to early Yogācāra thinkers. The selection of sources was also
motivated by what I had initially regarded as a natural goal of this study: trac-
ing, if not the textual origin of, then at least the main source of influence
on, the Yogācāra understanding of upacāra so as to come nearer to providing
the term with an intellectual history of sorts. This entailed reading sources in
ever-​widening contextual circles that moved chronologically from the obvious
core of the early Yogācāra treatises’ often quite disperse references to upacāra,
to their immediate Buddhist context (Mahāyāna sūtras, other Buddhist philo-
sophical schools like the Madhyamaka, Pāli and Sanskrit Abhidharma, and
Pāli canonical sources), and then to the less immediate non-​Buddhist philo-
sophical śāstric context.
Serving as the rather stable focal point of this exploration of the textual field
was Sthiramati’s explication of upacāra in his commentary on Vasubandhu’s
Triṃśikā (Treatise in Thirty Verses, Triṃś). Representing the apex of the early
Yogācāra treatment of metaphor, this text came to mark the upper limit of
my survey—​ both chronologically (mid-​ 6th century ce) and thematically.
The most chronologically distant Yogācāra literature that I reviewed is the
Tattvārthapaṭalaṃ (Chapter on the Meaning of Reality, henceforth TApaṭ) of the
Bodhisattvabhūmi (Levels of the Bodhisattva, BBh),12 one of the early sources (if
not the earliest) of Yogācāra thought, whose influence on the school’s subse-
quent works cannot be overstated. The TApaṭ and its accompanying sections
in the later Viniścayasaṃgrahaṇī (Collection of Clarifications, VS), both belong-
ing to the vast corpus of the Yogācārabhūmi (Levels of Spiritual Training),13
traditionally ascribed to Asaṅga,14 offer a highly sophisticated philosophical
account of the relation between language and reality, in which the concept of
upacāra plays an important argumentative role.

12. Deleanu (2006, 195) proposes an approximate dating of the BBh to c.230–​300, of the
Saṃdhinirmocanasūtra to c.300–​350, and of the first strata of the Viniścayasaṃgrahaṇī to
c.320–​350 and its later parts to c.380 CE. For a discussion of the relative chronology of these
texts, see Chapter 3, section 3.1.
13. In this context, bhūmi can be taken to refer either to a stage or a foundation, and Yogācāra
to the practice of yoga or to the practitioners of yoga. Here, I follow Delhey (2013, 501). For an
alternative translation, see Kragh (2013, 49–​50).
14. Despite this ascription, the texts most likely could not have been the work of a single
author, or even a single compiler. The doctrinal and philological stratification of the YB cor-
pus indicates that it was redacted over a long period of time. See the discussion of this issue
in Chapter 3, section 3.1.
10 Introduction

Proceeding next to examine the immediate Buddhist doctrinal context of

the Yogācāra treatises, I turned to the various Mahāyāna scriptures associ-
ated in the broad sense with the Yogācāra.15 But here, defying my early expec-
tations, apart from a noteworthy philosophical engagement with upacāra in
the 10th chapter of the Laṅkāvatārasūtra (Descent into Laṅkā Scripture, LAS),16
I found that the Yogācāra-​oriented sūtras included little or no reference to the
term in its relevant sense. As for the philosophical works of other Buddhist
schools of thought, the Madhyamaka treatises composed up to Sthiramati’s
time contain, as far as I found, no significant references to upacāra,17 but the
term is employed ubiquitously (mostly in a hermeneutical context) both in the
Sanskrit Abhidharma commentarial literature—​most notably in Vasubandhu’s
Abhidharmakośabhāṣya (Commentary on the Treasury of Abhidharma, AKBh)—​
and also in the works of Dignāga (c.480–​540).
Any attempt to determine the textual origins and context of the Sanskrit
Abhidharma use of the term leads naturally to the early canonical materials;
but here too, counter to my expectations, I found that even though the term is
indeed used in the Pāli sources with a variety of meanings, nowhere in these
sources does it appear in the sense of figurative application.18 By contrast, the
use of upacāra in this sense is highly present in fundamental non-​Buddhist
philosophical texts of the early Mīmāṃsā (25 ce, 420 ce) and Nyāya (150 ce,
450 ce),19 and in the Grammarians (especially Bhartṛhari, 450–​510 ce),20 all
of which address it mostly in the context of theories of meaning.21 Moreover,

15. These include Mahāyāna sūtras like the Saṃdhinirmocanasūtra, the Laṅkāvatārasūtra, the
Daśabhūmikasūtra, the Śrīmālādevīsiṃhanādasūtra, the Ghanavyūha, and the Maitreya sec-
tion of the Pañcaviṃśatisāhasrikāprajñāpāramitā. See Powers (1991, 2) and Lugli (2011, 103–​
104, 146) on some of the features that make these Yogācāra or Yogācāra-​affiliated sources.
16. This section of the sūtra was probably composed between 433 and 513 CE. For more on the
dating of the Laṅkāvatārasūtra, see Chapter 4, section 4.2.1.
17. The few sporadic references are mostly in the works of Bhāvaviveka, such as in the
Prajñāpradīpa-​mūlamadhyamaka-​vṛtti (dbu ma rtsa ba’i ’grel pa shes rab sgron ma) P5253, vol.
95, 67a2; and in the Madhyamakahṛdaya-​vṛtti-​tarkajvālā (dbu ma’i snying po’i ’grel pa rtog ge
’bar ba) P5256, vol. 96, 66a6, 241a5.
18. For a more detailed account of the Pāli canon’s use of the term upacāra, see Chapter 4,
section 4.1.
19. Dates are approximate and refer to the composition of the sūtra and bhāṣya, respectively,
and are based on Potter (1983). For a survey of the various dating schemes (which differ
greatly) for the early texts of the Mīmāṃsā, see Slaje (2007, 131n61).
20. For more on the dating of Bhartṛhari, see Chapter 2.
21. As far as I found, there are no references to the term in this sense in the early literature
of the Sāṃkhya and Yoga schools. As for the early Advaita-​Vedānta, the Gauḍapāda-​ kārikā
 Introduction 11

as I show throughout the study, there are instances of clear similarity and
often plain identity, both thematic and stylistic, between the Buddhist and
non-​Buddhist textual employments of the term (recurring formulaic phrases,
stock examples, etc.). These correspondences are also evident in another way
in the Yogācāra philosophical accounts of upacāra, which to varying degrees
derive their opponents’ views from and respond to the non-​Buddhist śāstras’
arguments about upacāra.
Hence, the absence of references to upacāra in the Pāli canon and their
scarcity in the Mahāyāna sūtras and the Madhyamaka treatises, on the one
hand, and overwhelming parallels between the Sanskrit Abhidharma and the
early Yogācāra use of the term and that of non-​Buddhist śāstric sources, on the
other, all underscore the cross-​sectarian context in which the explanation of
this term must be sought.
Broadly speaking, the deeply contextual investigation of an idea across
primary textual sources and sectarian lines seems to demand a diachronic
perspective, at least as a safeguard against anachronism and an ahistorical,
essentializing approach to the realm of ideas. This need is all the more pro-
nounced in view of the tendency of the scholarship of Indian thought in the
not-​so-​distant-​past toward perennialism. In the present case, this calls ide-
ally for something like a conceptual history, if not an outright genealogy, of
upacāra.
The attempt to apply such an approach to a study of upacāra, however,
encounters several difficulties that render the very idea of tracing the ori-
gin of the concept or supplying a linear narrative of intertextual borrowing
on this theme highly problematic. First are the empirical difficulties associ-
ated with any attempt to arrange this textual field chronologically—​a predica-
ment shared by the scholarship of both early and classical Indian thought,
as both typically need to make do with indeterminate and approximate dates
based in many cases on doctrinal or philological analysis.22 Second, when
brought under analysis, the texts at hand appear to challenge some of the

offers one significant use of the term, which can be taken to mean “in a figurative sense”;
this is how Karmarkar (1953, verse 36, and 102–​103) suggests to translate it, whereas King
(1995, 250) takes it to mean “practice.”
22. See the volume on the periodization of Indian philosophy edited by Franco (2013), partic-
ularly Franco’s introduction (2013a) on the historical and contextual situatedness of scholarly
periodization schemes, and Lipner’s (2013) contribution to this volume for a methodologi-
cal consideration of the way in which different models and central metaphors guide the
practice of periodization. On some of the difficulties involved specifically in dating early
Indian thought, see Bronkhorst (2007, 175–​258). I discuss the dating of early Yogācāra texts
in Chapter 3, section 3.1.
12 Introduction

most basic interpretative presuppositions heuristically applied to the field,

such as the idea of a single authorship of texts or of clear-​cut sectarian iden-
tities or doxographical categories within the Buddhist world, as well as the
traditional and scholarly assumption regarding the chronological priority of
sūtra over śāstra.23 Without the reliable benefit of such interpretative heuris-
tics, and with little to go by in the way of hard chronological evidence or reli-
able biographical information on the authors of these texts, we are left with
an intricate intertextual realm in which questions of the origin of particular
theories or the direction of intertextual borrowing can be resolved only pro-
visionally. This is not to undermine the legitimacy of interpretation offered
in the absence of hard extratextual evidence (I am about to offer such an
interpretation myself). Instead, I wish to emphasize that in the absence of
such evidence, any diachronically organized scheme based on philological
analysis is at one and the same time interpretation-​dependent and the very
foundation that justifies the interpretation, resulting in a potentially vicious
hermeneutical circle. This is ultimately why the case at hand seems unsuited
to a genealogical analysis; there is simply not enough conclusive chronologi-
cal evidence to support (for instance) a Foucauldian critical genealogy; i.e.,
an “archeology” of knowledge in which meaning is never fixed abstractly to a
discourse but is derived from its history and process of becoming (Foucault
1972, 138–​140).
If we still wish to make sense of intertextuality in this context, there-
fore, it seems we would do well to search for an additional approach to the
strictly diachronic interpretive approach.24 Now, the intertextual realm that
concerns us here is defined first, as I have said, by the general concerns
and vocabulary of early Indian śāstric theories of meaning and their engage-
ment with upacāra (before the first extant works on Sanskrit poetics). Within
this framework, the merits of a synchronic account—​which is something

23. See especially Chapter 4 for a discussion of the viability of these categories when
approaching Buddhist texts.
24. One can argue, for instance, for the interpretative gain in viewing cases of intertextual
borrowing in terms of an imaginaire in the broad sense of the term (i.e., a common cultural
and literary context). This may be further complemented by the poststructuralist under-
standing of the notion of intertextuality as designating not the mere context or the simple
fact of “cross-​citation,” as the term is often and rather flatly employed, but an interpretive as
well as a creative activity within a certain interrelational semiotic and ideological field (see
Kristeva, 1980). An example of such an integrative approach is Patton’s examination of the
way in which such an imaginaire is at work in the background of Aśvaghoṣa’s Buddhacaritaṃ,
in its textual reliance on various Brahmanical sources, and in his use of a set of metaphors to
bridge the differences between Buddhist and Brahminic worldviews (2008, 54–​55).
 Introduction 13

of a methodological default in this case—​include the richness of interpre-

tive possibilities that comes from understanding a discourse as a multidi-
rectional conversation rather than one composed of discrete and linearly
organized monologues. Thus, it allows us, for example, to acknowledge that
there is circularity in the conversation, with texts at once both responding
to and already assuming one another.25 As such, a synchronic approach car-
ries the promise of moving beyond the rhetoric of sectarian demarcations or
accepted narratives of textual transmission. Conversely, the main danger it
poses, apart from the trap of ahistoricity, is losing track of the distinctness of
the voices that participate in the conversation and reading too much context
into a particular text.
To maximize the advantages offered by this scheme and avoid its pitfalls, in
the following study, working synchronically within the boundaries of whatever
approximate diachronic framework is available, I attempt to engage with each
individual text as much as possible as an autonomous entity that advances an
independent argument. But this approach is complemented by a view of these
texts as situated within, and hence conversing with, the broader context of
Indian śāstric theories of meaning. This means that I remain attuned always
to any recurrence of themes and to the possibilities of intertextual variation,
reverberation, and cross-​citation as marks of the texts’ awareness of their own
situatedness within a broader context, and attempt to offer a philosophical

25. Such an understanding of the Indian textual realm is presupposed to some extent by
the argument by McCrea and Patil (2010) for the use of the term “text traditions” (rather
than “schools”) in respect to major players in this field; and I believe that this perspective
finds support in Ganeri’s compelling and revisionary argument regarding what an adequate
interpretative context should look like in the case of Indian philosophical texts (2011, 63–​73).
Drawing on Quentin Skinner’s methodology for recovering the illocutionary force of past lin-
guistic acts in order to determine their intended “intervention,” Ganeri nonetheless points
out that Skinner’s conception of the context required for such recovery is overly restricted.
This is because apart from its emphasis on the level of detail about individual circumstances
of authors, which is not always available, Skinner’s conception does not account for the way
in which Indian authors, for instance, sought to perform their “interventions” with respect
above all to an existing intertextual realm. In this sense, the relative lack of chronological
and biographical hard data in the Indian realm of ideas—​the fact that it appears to be “all
text and no context”—​is seen, for a change, not merely as a lamentable predicament, but as
an indication of what this realm regards as its most relevant context—​namely, other texts.
Expanding the Skinnerian methodology to the realm of Indian intellectual history, Ganeri
argues, would therefore require us to consider the interventions of individual authors in
terms of their illocutionary force within such intertextual contexts. Regarding Buddhist
thought in particular, for a discussion of the various forms of intertextual borrowing and
the methodology for its analysis, see Cantwell, Freschi, and Kramer (2016), and especaiily
Wallace (2016) in that issue.
14 Introduction

reconstruction of the conversation about upacāra that nourished and affected

the Yogācāra pan-​figurative claim.
Finally, a word about the “elephant in the room”—​namely, the question
of the Yogācāra’s alleged idealism.26 The proper interpretation of the early
Indian Yogācāra philosophical worldview, and especially of its claim that all
phenomena are merely mental representations (vijñapti-​mātra), is the subject
of ongoing scholarly controversy.27 Roughly speaking, on the one side of this
debate are scholars who maintain that the Yogācāra arguments do indeed aim
to establish a kind of subjective or metaphysical idealism, according to which
nothing exits outside of the perceiving consciousness,28 and on the other are
scholars who question the adequacy of attributing any “idealistic” ontologi-
cal claims to the Yogācāra and instead interpret the school as offering a vari-
ant of epistemic idealism,29 a stance according to which direct knowledge of
externality as such is impossible, and hence all knowledge is given within a
mental realm. As is often the case with longstanding scholarly conundrums,
especially when they are understood dichotomously as posing an either/​or
question, this controversy can sometimes seem to take on a life of its own
somewhat independent of its subject matter. One of the symptoms of this
weight that the debate takes on is the expectation that every new study on the
Yogācāra will address the issue and take sides, even if it is not directly engaged
in the debated question.
In practice, however, the vast array of interpretations proposed by cur-
rent scholarship with respect to this question seem to illustrate above all the
resistance of the early Yogācāra textual corpus to such a binary approach.
Among other things, such an approach implicitly presupposes that in the first
half of the first millennium, the early Yogācāra was already a homogenous
and distinctly defined doxogrpahical entity, while in fact this was hardly the

26. The following comments are based on my survey of this topic in Tzohar (2017a).
27. For opposing interpretations of Vasubandhu and a thorough picture of the current state
of this debate, see Garfield and Gold’s public polemic (2011) and Schmithausen’s (2005)
critique of Lusthaus (2002).
28. This sort of interpretation of the Yogācāra ideas can be found, for instance, in the early
translations and interpretations by La Vallée Poussin (1928), and in D. T. Suzuki’s study
of the Laṅkāvatāra-​sūtra (Suzuki, 1930) and later in Matilal (1974), Griffiths (1986), Wood
(1991), Hopkins (1999), Siderits (2007), and Schmithausen (2005).
29. Works that feature such an interpretation—​w hile varying in their ontological
commitment—​include Wayman (1965), Ueda (1967), Willis (1979), Kochumuttom (1982),
Kalupahana (1987), and most recently Gold (2015). Works that set the epistemic idealist inter-
pretation against the background of a distinctly phenomenological approach are Lusthaus
(2002) and Garfield (2015).
 Introduction 15

case. These multiple interpretations, when considered not so much in light

of their ability to resolve the debate but in terms of their diversity, yield a
much more nuanced and variegated picture regarding the relation between
the Yogācāra and idealism. They suggest that the answers to this question
are deeply context-​and text-​specific, as well as influenced by factors such as
the applied textual selection and the scope of inquiry. 30As we will see, posing
a question, for instance, about the ontological claims of the BBh, the LAS,
or Sthiramati’s TriṃśBh—​all texts that are loosely grouped under the label of
Yogācāra –​–​will yield very different accounts. In this respect, the controversy
regarding the Yogācāra idealism, that “elephant in the room,” may turn out to
be something of a magical creation, insofar as it is appears differently to dif-
ferent spectators—​to borrow the Yogācāra analogy.
By this, I do not mean that the question of the proper interpretation of
Yogācāra idealism is not worth pursuing—​indeed, it must be addressed
since it is both taken up by the traditional doxographic schemes and
required by current philosophical discourse; rather, I intend to suggest the
usefulness of a bottom-​up approach. In this book, accordingly, the ques-
tion of the Yogācāra idealism is temporarily bracketed to make way for more
context-​and text-​specific inquiries, yet without losing sight of the ways in
which these inquiries may eventually contribute to a better understanding
of the issue as a whole.

30. So, for example, regarding the question’s context sensitivity, various scholars have
emphasized the dynamic intellectual development of the Yogācāra textual corpus, point-
ing out the differences on this note between the earliest strata of the Yogācārabhūmi (as
well as the abhidharmasamuccya) and other independent Yogācāra treatises ascribed to
Asaṅga and Vasubandhu and their interpreters. See, for instance, Schmithausen (2005,
9–​10). Regarding the way in which this question depends upon the method of inquiry and
its textual scope, the various interpretations of Vasubandhu’s Viṃśikā offer a good exam-
ple: When read in light of Gold’s extensive philosophical analysis of several fundamental
themes and concerns across Vasubandhu’s unified body of works (2015), the text seems
to align with epistemic idealism, whereas considered in light of the focus of Kellner and
Taber (2014) on the text’s argumentative strategy (rather than individual isolated argu-
ments, an approach supported on hermeneutical grounds by tracing similar strategies in
the AKBh), it appears to align with metaphysical idealism. In another vein, other schol-
ars have shown that much of the controversy regarding the Yogācāra’s idealism turns
on the precise semantic and philosophical meaning attributed to the term “idealism.”
Most recently, Garfield (2015, 186–​199) has demonstrated that the Yogācāra philosophical
worldview does not adequately align with the framework of the realist/​idealist dichotomy.
Considering its relation to contemporary philosophical perspectives, Garfield argues that
it is best described as presenting a phenomenological approach, which is distinct how-
ever from the two main phenomenological strands in contemporary continental philo-
sophical thinking, identified with Edmund Husserl and Martin Heidegger, respectively.
16 Introduction

3. An Outline
The overall structure of this book is guided by the attempt to clarify the Yogācāra
stance on metaphor, which receives its strongest articulation in Sthiramati’s
pan-​figurative claim in the Triṃśikā-​bhāṣya. Its chapters are therefore orga-
nized thematically, rather than according to the chronology or sectarian affili-
ation of the texts discussed, as best serves the progressional philosophical
understanding of this claim, with each chapter building on the explication of
terms, themes, and arguments introduced in the preceding chapters.
Chapters 1 and 2, the first part of the book, provide a gradual entry into
the basic terminology and presuppositions of the Indian philosophical under-
standing of figurative meaning. Specifically, they examine the semantic and
conceptual scope of upacāra among the Yogācāra’s non-​Buddhist intellectual
milieu, in the fundamental works of the Nyāya and Mīmāṃsā schools, and
among the Grammarians, especially Bhartṛhari.
Chapter 1 presents a working definition of metaphor on the basis of the
common features that underlie its understanding by the various Indian
schools of thought. I examine the understanding of metaphor in the early
works of the Mīmāṃsā and Nyāya, which consider the issue as part of their
broader discussion of the denotation of nouns. While these schools’ theories
of meaning share much in their basic understanding of the mechanism of
metaphor, their interpretations can be seen as archetypes of the two poles of
Indian thinking about figurative language—​as either buttressing or under-
mining ordinary language use, respectively. These two approaches, we will
see, recur as a leitmotif in the works of other schools of thought.
Chapter 2 turns to the understanding of metaphor in the school of gram-
matical analysis, focusing on Bhartṛhari’s Vākyapadīya (Treatise on Sentences
and Words, VP) along with its commentaries, and examining its relevance to
later Buddhist formulations of the topic. Here, I focus on Bhaṛthari’s famous
argument, in the third book (kāṇḍa) of the VP, for the figurative existence of
all the referents of words, and on his less explored analogy between metaphor
and perceptual illusion in the second book of the VP. In the latter, I argue,
Bhartṛhari lays the foundations for a sophisticated pragmatist account of
both linguistic and perceptual meaning, which along with the pan-​figurative
claim of the third book, allows an explanation of the operation of ordinary lan-
guage that is independent of the ontological status of the referents of words.
Subsequent chapters will reveal the importance of this account for our inter-
pretation of the Yogācāra understanding of metaphor, motivated as it is by a
similar need to explain the practical value, and what is more, the meaningful-
ness of discourse without appealing to an external objective grounding.
 Introduction 17

In the second part of the book (Chapters 3 and 4), I turn my attention to the
larger Buddhist context of the Yogācāra. Here, I examine the unique aspects of
the theoretical understanding of metaphor in the Abhidharma literature, some
Mahāyāna scripture, and the earliest Yogācāra treatises, without losing sight
of their conversation with the broader context of Indian Sanskritic theories of
meaning.
Chapter 3 deals with the Yogācāra understanding of metaphor as
expressed in one of the school’s earliest sources, the TApaṭ of the BBh,
along with its commentarial sections in the VS, both ascribed to Asaṅga.
The body of works ascribed to Asaṅga is foundational for Yogācāra thought,
yet to date, there is very little scholarship in English about these texts’
understanding of language, with the bulk of the literature focusing either
on their metaphysics or on their theory of meditation. My analysis in this
chapter, which incorporates materials translated into English for the first
time, demonstrates that the writings attributed to Asaṅga also put forth an
influential philosophy of language. The chapter’s translation and analysis
of the metaphor-​related passages in both texts serve to present a unique
Buddhist understanding of the performative philosophical role of figurative
language and of its relation to the possibility of the ineffable. Although we
will see that the arguments in Asaṅga’s texts do not amount to the elaborate
pan-​metaphorical claim presented by later Yogācāra sources, they nonethe-
less anticipate and lay the foundation for the school’s subsequent under-
standing of metaphor.
Concluding the book’s survey of the Buddhist context of the Yogācāra,
Chapter 4 explores the possible ways in which a variety of Buddhist sources—​
including Vasubandhu’s AKBh (and a commentary on it which is ascribed
to Sthiramati), the Yogācāra-​related LAS, and Dignāga’s Pramāṇasamuccaya
(Collection on Reliable Knowledge, PS)—​contributed to Sthiramati’s full-​fledged
theory of metaphor. Here, my reconstruction of the context of the Yogācāra
understanding of metaphor becomes more specific, tracing not only the com-
mon broad presuppositions underlying figurative usage, but also the possibil-
ity of a more concrete intertextual exchange that helped shape Sthiramati’s
claims—​some of them highly innovative—​on this topic.
The third and final part of the book (Chapters 5, 6, and the Conclusion)
puts the pieces of the puzzle together. It explicates Sthiramati’s pan-​figurative
claim in his Triṃśikā-​bhāṣya and draws out its ramifications for the Yogācāra
worldview and its broad conception of meaning, both linguistic and percep-
tual. Here, I also examine how this perspective on metaphor can serve us to
approach the Buddhist application of particular figures and the use of literary
tropes within philosophical texts.
18 Introduction

Chapter 5 concerns Sthiramati’s discussion of metaphor in his com-

mentary on Vasubandhu’s Triṃśikā, and it is here that I draw out the crux
of Sthiramati’s philosophical contribution. The chapter demonstrates how
he incorporates many of the elements introduced by his predecessors into a
highly sophisticated, mostly innovative, philosophical theory of meaning. The
innovation lies above all in tying together, through the pan-​figurative view, the
Yogācāra understanding of the causal activity of consciousness with a linguis-
tic theory of sense.
The chapter discusses Sthiramati’s motivations for presenting this view,
as well as its ramifications for the Yogācāra understanding of the role and
meaning of the school’s own doctrinal and salvific discourse. I argue that
this framework enabled Sthiramati to present an understanding of discourse
that distinguishes between varying levels of meaning within the conventional
realm. This understanding sat well with the Yogācāra soteriological and theo-
retical needs, and crucially, allowed Sthiramati to establish the meaningfulness
of the school’s own metaphysical discourse. Securing this meaningfulness
was especially important to Sthiramati in meeting the challenge posed by
the radical conventionalism of the Madhyamaka, and his response, as we will
see, suggests that the prominent dispute between the early Yogācāra and the
Madhyamaka in fact turned on linguistic rather than on ontological issues.
Chapter 6 explores the broader epistemic ramifications of the Yogācāra
theory of meaning and metaphor. It points out an important feature that this
theory shares with contemporary analytical causal theories of reference—​
namely, the ability to counter the problem of incommensurability—​the relativ-
istic claim that vast differences in our conceptual frameworks imply that we
may be talking at cross-​purposes without acknowledging that fact.
A version of the challenge of incommensurability is palpably present in
the Buddhist tradition in general and in the Yogācāra lore in particular, where
it takes the form of a question concerning the possibility of explaining how
beings at different ends of the Buddhist path can converse in a meaningful
way despite the epistemic abyss that separates them. This discussion presents
the Yogācāra understanding of this problem, notably in Sthiramati’s TriṃśBh
and Asaṅga’s Mahāyānasaṃgraha (Compendium of Mahāyāna, MS), and exam-
ines how Sthiramati’s figurative theory of meaning addresses it.
The chapter finishes by pointing out deep structural affinities between the
Yogācāra understanding of linguistic meaning and its understanding of expe-
rience, particularly of intersubjective experiences of the external world. This
allows us to identify several fundamental themes that run through Yogācāra
thought in general, and through the school’s conception of meaning in
 Introduction 19

particular, implying a broadly conceived theory of meaning that is not merely

linguistic, but also perceptual.
Finally, in the Conclusion, I draw out those features and themes that are
common to the various accounts of metaphor presented in the preceding chap-
ters and gesture at their possible applications. I briefly examine further ways
in which these features may be applied to deepen and enrich our understand-
ing of the Buddhist, and more generally Indian, philosophical engagement
with figurative language. As a quick case study, I explore how the Yogācāra
theory of meaning sheds light on the concrete use of distinct figures, focusing
on a list of similes prevalent in the school’s literature.
PART ONE
 1

Metaphor as Absence
The Case of the Early Nyāya and Mīmāṃ s ā

1.1. What Is Metaphor (Upacāra)?

The idea of metaphor (upacāra) means different things to the various thinkers
that this book examines. But while we will find nothing like a standardized and
unified account of the term in these sources, their respective understandings of
it do exhibit certain common features and presuppositions. Indeed, as we will
see, it is these commonalities that enabled the cross-​sectarian conversation about
upacāra to occur in the first place.
One good way to begin exploring these commonalities is by considering how
they stand in relation to the more standardized understanding of metaphor that
we find in the Sanskrit theory of poetics (alaṃkāraśāstra) that appeared much
later. This standardization is characterized, above all, by the formulation of the
necessary discursive conditions for indirect denotation. In his Indian Theories of
Meaning, Kunjunni Raja (1969, 231–​232) summarizes these conditions as follows:

This function of the word, denoting a referent different from its nor-
mal and primary one, but somehow related to it, is called lakṣaṇā or
upacāra; other terms like gauṇī vṛtti and bhakti are also used to refer to
this secondary significative function of words . . . The three essential
conditions generally accepted by the later Ālaṃkārika-​s as necessary in
lakṣaṇā or transfer are (a) the inapplicability or the unsuitability of the
primary meaning in the context, (b) some relation between the primary
and the actual referent of the word and (c) sanction for the transferred
sense by popular usage, or a definite motive justifying the transfer.1

1. These conditions are summarized from Mammaṭa’s Kāvyaprakāśa II.9. The third condi-
tion [i.e., the motive (prayojana)], which justifies the figurative use, can be sought either in
24 A Yogācār a Buddhist Theory of Metaphor

Applied, for instance, to the figurative phrase “siṃho māṇavakaḥ” [the

“boy (is a) lion”]—​a śāstric stock example of a metaphor based on qualitative
similarity (gauṇī vṛtti)—​this formulation suggests that the primary referent of
the word “lion” is a lion (be it a particular or an instantiation of a universal,
etc.), while its actual referent, or its locus of reference2—​that to which it refers
figuratively—​is the boy. Since we are normally barred from assuming that
there is literally a lion before us, we may instead assume, in accordance with
convention, that the boy and the lion have qualities that are similar, and thus
understand the phrase as implying that the boy is in certain respects like a
lion. It is important to note the difference in this formulation between the
primary object (lion) and the secondary object that serves as the locus of refer-
ence (the boy): while the lion, as an object, is absent from the locus of refer-
ence, the boy is not.
This may seem counterintuitive, given that the post-​Aristotelian Western
discourse of metaphor refers to the boy as the tenor (topic) of the metaphor
and the lion as its illustrative vehicle. Gren-​ Eklund (1986, 81–​82, 92–​ 93)
explains this difference by drawing a distinction between what she calls “meta-
phoric transference,” which describes how figurative usage is conceived in the
Western philosophical tradition, and “secondary attribution,” which describes
its understanding in Indian philosophical and poetic discourse. According
to Gren-​Eklund, metaphoric transference occurs when a word that has one
meaning is understood to mean something else; in the Indian context, how-
ever, figurative attribution marks cases in which a referent is denoted not by
the supposedly “usual” word, but rather by some other word (through seman-
tic imposition, etc.). Thus, the emphasis in Indian discourse is not on the
changed meaning of a word, but on the difference in the referential relations
between a word and its referent.
The understanding of upacāra foremost in terms of its underlying con-
ditions is characteristic of the later Sanskrit theory of poetics. Whereas the
accounts of upacāra discussed in this chapter, all of which refer to philo-
sophical discourse and to an earlier time frame, largely comply with these

the context of its utterance and reception (an option chosen by the early Mīmāṃsā school) or
in the “speaker’s” intention in using the figure (as in the case of the later Ālaṃkārikas). See
also McCrea (2000, 454n.34).
2. The word “locus” here stands for the Sanskrit grammatical technical term adhikaraṇa.
These terms reflect the particular Sanskrit śāstric way of making sense of referential relations
(and also of relations of predication) in terms of loci. See Hayes (1988, 146)
 Metaphor as Absence 25

conditions for figurative usage, they do not treat them as central; as we will
see, they give them less (if any) attention.
Furthermore, while the Indian theory of poetics and later philosophical
treatises engage wholeheartedly in the theorizing and classification of terms
that stand for various kinds of metaphorical use, such concerns are not central
to the philosophical discourse of the time that we are considering. As we will
see, there is no standardized or unified use of these classifications among
the various schools of thought (and sometimes even among early and later
thinkers of the same tradition).3 The same is also true of the attempts (usually
within Western scholarship) to identify parallels in Indian Sanskrit lore for
the different senses of metaphor, metonym, and synecdoche (Gerow, 1984;
Gren-​Eklund, 1986): the texts show us that, in practice, these terms are often
conflated under the rubric of upacāra, a concept whose center of gravity for
these thinkers (unlike for later Sanskrit poetics) is found not in its classifica-
tory or discursive impact, but in its hermeneutical and mostly in its referential
function within theories of meaning.4
Within this framework, the central concern that the highly varied accounts
of upacāra discussed here do share—​indeed, the factor that enables them to
partake in a single debate—​is the referential mechanism underlying figu-
rative usage. Although they diverge in their respective explanations of this
mechanism—​each account according to the philosophical work that it seeks
to perform—​we find in all of them an understanding of figurative use in terms

3. A basic classification distinguishes metaphors based on qualitative similarity (gauṇī vṛtti,

as in the “boy-​lion”) from Indication (lakṣaṇā) -​type metaphors. The latter are based on rela-
tions other than qualitative similarity, as in the phrase “gaṅgāyāṃ ghoṣaḥ,” meaning “a village
on the Ganges.” Since the village cannot literally sit on the river, one resorts to a figurative
understanding of the word Ganges as denoting the riverbank due to their relation of proxim-
ity (sāmīpya). See Kunjunni Raja (1965, 257). So, for instance, Sthiramati and Dignāga gen-
erally identify upacāra with the former kind, Uddyotakara uses it in his Nyāyasūtravārttika
(NySVā) to describe cases of the latter kind, and the Nyāyasūtrabhāṣya understands it as
incorporating all kinds of figurative transference.
4. Patton (2004, 45) suggests a point of more or less general agreement in the scholarly
debate regarding the differences between metaphor and metonym: “In metaphor, two ele-
ments from different conceptual domains are related. In metonym, two elements from the
same conceptual domain are related [italics in the original].” Even through the lens of this
broad definition, however, the term upacāra appears to be applied to both cases. Thus, for
instance, Sthiramati uses the term to describe the expression the “boy (is) fire” (a metaphor),
while Vasubandhu applies it to the phrase “the eye sees,” which he regards as a metonym
(as there is no real agentive element involved and the sense faculty is conflated with its
produced cognition).
26 A Yogācār a Buddhist Theory of Metaphor

of the absence of the primary referent from the locus of reference (as in the
previous example, with the absence of a lion in the boy).5
This conception of upacāra should be considered against the background
of a feature common to all Indian schools of thought, whether Buddhist or
non-​Buddhist—​ namely, their general adherence to referential theories of
meaning (i.e., theories that identify a word’s meaning with its designatum).
This sort of scheme, in which, to quote Mark Siderits, “the name-​bearer rela-
tion seems to reign supreme as the central metaphor of semantics,” does not
give center stage to the distinction between an expression’s reference and its
“sense” (akin to Frege’s Sinn) and thus perforce does not take “sense” to be a
distinct element of meaning over and above the reference (see Siderits, 1986,
81; Mohanty, 1992, 60–​67; Ganeri, 2006a, 9–​12).
One can only speculate about the reasons for the strict adherence of Indian
theories of meaning to the referential model. One possible explanation may
be found in the initial role allocated to verbal testimony (śabda) in Indian epis-
temic discourse. Discussing this issue in the context of an analysis of linguis-
tic comprehension (śābdabodha) of sentences, Mohanty (1992, 79) points out
the following:

Neither the Mīmāṃsā nor the Nyāya is concerned, in the strict sense,
with what one can call “understanding the meaning of an expression.”
One is rather concerned with how hearing a sentence, under appro-
priate conditions (e.g. when the speaker is honest and reliable and
known to be so), serves as a means of acquiring valid knowledge, i.e.
as a pramāṇa. When those appropriate conditions are fulfilled, under-
standing amounts to knowing, i.e. grasping, not the sense, but rather
the ontological structure that obtains, e.g. the individual over there as
possessing cowness, and as characterized by a color-​particular which
possesses the universal whiteness.

Mohanty captures what can be seen as a constitutive feature of Indian lin-

guistic discourse—​namely, that the linguistic understanding of an expression

5. In the words of the Nyāya: “yadi na vyaktiḥ padārthaḥ kathaṃ tarhi vyaktāv upacāra iti?
nimittād atadbhāve ’pi tadupacāraḥ/​. . . ,” NySBh_​2.261, Tarkatirtha (1936–​1944, 662). The
Nyāyasūtrabhāṣya (NySBh) is here cited from the following Sanskrit e-​text: Indology Student
Team, University of Tokyo, “Gautama: Nyayaāsūtra with Vātsyāyana’s Nyāyabhāṣya” (http://​
gretil.sub.uni-​goettingen.de/​gretil/​1_​sanskr/​6_​sastra/​3_​phil/​nyaya/​nysvbh1u.htm). This
electronic edition is based on Tarkatirtha’s edition of the text, and all page numbers given
for the Sanskrit verses refer to that edition. In this chapter, unless otherwise indicated, all
translations are my own.
 Metaphor as Absence 27

(parallel to its “sense”) was always conceived in this discourse as dependent

on, and therefore subordinate to, its epistemic function.6 Within this scheme,
language usage had to maintain a relation to an actual or possible state of
affairs if it was to fulfill its epistemic role, and hence it was meaningful only
insofar as it was referential.7 Given these assumptions, expressions with a
sense but no reference (such as “the son of a barren woman”) were naturally
seen as an anomaly that threatens the epistemic function of words. We will
see that the Buddhists, although operating with the same view of discourse
as referential, generally rejected this realist semantics8 and indeed ultimately
sought to undermine it by capitalizing precisely on the threat posed to the real-
ist picture by referenceless expressions.
Within this overwhelmingly semantics-​oriented framework, the meaning
of a word is necessarily a function of the actuality (ontological, epistemic) of its
referent. Under these conditions, secondary denotation—​and the ideas that a
word may denote a referent other than its “primary” one and that this primary

6. Mohanty qualifies this claim, however, by pointing out that despite the overwhelming
interest in the epistemic role of words, some theorization of the linguistic understanding
of expressions is found in both the Nyāya and the Mīmāṃsā explication of śābdabodha. He
argues that the theoretical need for a perspective that allows śābdabodha to involve a sort of
“quasi-​sense,” in addition to being a mode of knowledge, was recognized by the tradition—​as
exemplified, for instance, in the query whether there is śābdabodha even when there is doubt
concerning semantic competence (i.e., whether one can comprehend an expression when
it is referenceless or a sentence when it is false). Mohanty (1992, 61, 83, 89, 253–​254). This
view is supported by Ganeri (2006a, 146–​154), who examines this possibility with respect to
the Navya-​Nyāya; he concludes that the school’s presentation of cognitive modes can indeed
be seen as similar to Frege’s distinction between sense (Sinn) and meaning (Bedeutung) once
it is taken as a general theoretical distinction (without adopting the theoretical implications
proposed by Frege, such as in his theory of communication).
7. An additional cause can perhaps be traced to another fundamental feature of Indian
semantics—​namely, the denotative power (śakti) behind the denotative function (abhidhā-​
vṛtti) of words. Insofar as this power is considered an innate capacity of words (regardless of
the question of the origin of the connection between a word and its meaning), it appears to
privilege a referential conception of meaning. See Kunjunni Raja (1977, 19–​20) and Coward
(1990, 6–​7).
8. But they did not necessarily reject the epistemic function of verbal testimony (śabda
pramāṇa) as a possible means of valid knowledge. For instance, both Asaṅga and Vasubandhu
accept scriptural testimony (āptavāda, āptāgama) as an autonomous pramāṇa, although this
went hand in glove with a rather wary approach to the authority of scripture (see Tzohar,
2017b). This ambivalent approach to the issue is also manifest in the works of thinkers like
Dignāga and Dharmakīrti, who, despite rejecting testimony as a pramāṇa, still held scrip-
ture to have a certain epistemic purchase by allowing for a type of inference that was based
on scriptural sources, over and above the so-​called ordinary kind of inference [the latter
defined as vastubalapravṛttānumāna, literally—​an inference that functions by the force of
(real) entities—​i.e., an inference that is evaluated on the basis of facts and states of affairs].
See Tillemans (1999, 27–​30).
28 A Yogācār a Buddhist Theory of Metaphor

referent may be absent from the locus of reference—​poses an explanatory

challenge for theories that maintain a word-​world correspondence.9 The var-
ied, often highly creative ways in which Indian thinkers have explained away,
utilized, and sometimes succumbed to the philosophical challenges posed
by figurative meaning are my topic throughout all the chapters of this book.
We begin, in the next section, with a discussion of the Mīmāṃsā and Nyāya
schools.

1.2. Upacāra in the Early Mīmāṃsā School

The early Mīmāṃsā, the school of Indian hermeneutics par excellence, seems
like the natural starting point for a discussion of the Indian philosophical con-
ception of figurative meaning. Apart from the school’s deep interest in impli-
cative language as part of its focus on the interpretation of Vedic utterances—​a
framework that, as we will see, influenced the Buddhist Abhidharma—​the
Mīmāṃsā’s hermeneutical concerns also deeply shaped the school’s concep-
tion of language and meaning. This resulted, as we will see shortly, in a theory
of meaning in which figurative transference became more the norm than the
exception, bringing the Mīmāṃsā much closer to the Buddhist view than one
would expect.
The Mīmāṃsā requirement for a decisive and consistent interpretation of
the Vedas, and especially of Vedic injunctions, does not allow meaning to be
determined either by convention or by an appeal to pragmatics. The school,
therefore, requires a system of semantics in which the relation between
words and their referents is invariable, a condition expressed in the school’s
notion of this relation as autpattika—​“innate” or “originary.” A definition of
this relation is supplied in Śabara’s commentary (Śābarabhāṣya, ŚāBh) on the
Mīmāṃsāsūtra (MīS) 1.1.5:10

“Autpattika” –​what we mean by this is nitya. It is “origin” that is indi-

rectly spoken of as existence (presence). It is the existence, inseparable
from the word and the object, that constitutes the relation and there is

9. Bronkhorst (2001, 475–​477) has suggested that the need to respond to the bedrock
assumption of a correspondence between language and reality has been a driving force in
shaping the landscape of Indian philosophical discourse.
10. In this chapter, I use Pohlus (2010) diplomatic e-​text edition of the MīS and ŚāBh, based
chiefly on M. C. Nyayaratna’s edition (1863–​1889), compared with five other editions. Page
numbers refer to Nyayaratna’s edition.
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
Berczi:

»Tiedättekö, että se aloittaa jumalattoman toimintansa

ylihuomenna,
András?»

András nyökäytti päätään.

»Ja luullakseni ylihuomenesta alkaen saamme kaikki ruveta

näkemään nälkää, sillä sittenhän ei ole enää mitään työtä
kunniallisten ihmisten tehtäväksi kuin piru sytyttää savuavan
nuotionsa, kylvää, leikkaa, sitoo ja jauhaa Jumalan viljaa Jumalan
maalla», lisäsi kylän oraakkeli.

»Ja juuri kun tuo pieni kissa keskeytti minut, olin sanomaisillani…»
sanoi seppä Sándor.

Mutta András laski tyynesti karkean ruskean kouransa jättiläisen

käsivarrelle ja keskeytti tyynesti iloisin äänin:

»Aioit kai sanoa, Sándor, näiden muiden äänettömin

suostumuksin, koska he tietävät sen olevan totta, ettei teihin kuulu,
mitä piru ja kartanon omistaja tekevät Bideskut’issa, sillä onhan
Keményn András vielä Kisfalu'ssa. Hänellä on vielä työtä kaikille sitä
haluaville ja hänellä on niin pitkä kukkaro, ettei kenenkään, joka
asuu peninkulmienkin päässä, tarvitse kärsiä muutakaan puutetta,
saati sitten nälkää.»

Seurasi jälleen pitkä vaitiolo ja kaikki näyttivät häpeävän yhä

enemmän. Mustalaiset soittivat liikuttavaa ja sydämeenkäypää
unkarilaista kansanlaulua, jonka sävel voi pehmittää kovimmankin
kuulijan sydämen.
 »Olet kunnon mies, András», sanoi kylän oraakkeli seppä
Sándorin juodessa haarikallisen viiniä vapautuakseen kurkkuun
nousseesta vaivaavasta palasta, »mutta…»

»Siinä ei ole mitään muttaa, toverit. Meidän on tuettava toisiamme,

ja uskokaa puhettani, kun sanon, että tuo puhe pirusta on sulaa
hullutusta. En voi selittää tuota kaikkea teille, mutta isä Ambrosius
lupasi minulle tänä iltana, että hän huomenna saarnan asemasta
selittää teille tarkasti, miten maissi kartanon omistajan uudessa
myllyssä jauhetaan jauhoiksi. Silloin ymmärrätte sen luullakseni yhtä
hyvin kuin minäkin, ja kunnes se tapahtuu, pyydän teitä
unhottamaan tuon kirotun myllyn tahi ainakin sen ajattelemisen. Nyt
on jo myöhäinen ja minulla on pitkä ratsastusmatka kotiin, joten
teidän on luvattava minulle, ettette ajattele koko myllyä, ennenkuin
huomenna jumalanpalveluksen jälkeen. Pyydän tätä teidän itsenne
ja terveytenne vuoksi», lisäsi hän kohottaen haarikkansa. »No,
lupaatteko?»

»Lupaamme!»

Vastaus oli yksimielinen. Selvästi oli tuo nuori talonpoika hyvin

rakastettu, koska hänen sanansa olivat vaikuttaneet. Viinihaarikat
tyhjennettiin ja kaikki huokaisivat helpotuksesta ja tyytyväisyydestä.
Mustalaiset alkoivat soittaa iloisempaa kappaletta, ja András
huudahti hiljaa:

»Csillag, kaunokaiseni, missä olet?»

Kuivalta hiekkakentältä alkoi kuulua kavioiden kapsetta ja pian

ilmestyi pimeästä näkyviin miellyttävä musta tamma, solakka ja
suloliikkeinen. Se tuli aivan pöydän viereen, jonka ääressä talonpojat
ryypiskelivät, ja löydettyään isäntänsä seisahtui se tyynesti
odottamaan. Sillä ei ollut satulaa, ei jalustimia eikä suitsia, mutta
Unkarin pustien talonpojat eivät käytä sellaisia välineitä. Kun he
ratsastavat täyttä vauhtia noilla hiekkatasangoilla, näyttää siltä kuin
mies ja hevonen olisivat kasvaneet yhteen.

András hyppäsi heti kahareisin tammansa selkään ja huudettuaan

ystävilleen jäähyväiset, johon nämä vastasivat kaikuvalla
»Eläköön!», katosi hän pimeään.
III

SUKUYLPEYTTÄ.

Bideskutin päärakennuksessa, talleissa, tallipihalla, puu- ja

kasvitarhassa työskenneltiin kuumeisesti. Lukemattomat
tallipalvelijat, ajurit, kokit ja palvelijattaret juoksentelivat sinne tänne
kuin irti päässeet kanat, tehden kukin omia töitään kuumissaan,
huohottaen ja innoissaan. Eikä kreivitär itsekään, tottunut kun hän oli
unkarilaisen aateliston rajattomaan vieraanvaraisuuteen, voinut
kokonaan tukahduttaa tuon sähköttävän innostuksen vaikutusta, joka
oli saanut koko talon valtaansa. Hänen syntymäpäivänsä ja samalla
myös uuden höyrymyllyn käyntiinpanopäivän kunniaksi aiottujen
juhlallisuuksien valmistukset edistyivät nopeasti. Tänään vielä oli tuo
suuri talo aivan tyhjä vieraista, mutta huomenna alkaisi varmaankin
niiden tulo, jota sitten jatkuisi iltaan saakka.

Vaikka se kuokkavieraista tuntuikin aivan arvoitukselliselta, tiesivät

kumminkin muut maakunnan asukkaat, että elokuun
kahdeksaskolmatta päivä oli kreivitär Irman syntymäpäivä.
Bideskut’issa oli noin kuusikymmentä vierashuonetta, ja jokainen
unkarilainen aatelismies, asuipa hän sitten miten kaukana tahi
lähellä hyvänsä, oli kaikkine omaisineen hyvin tervetullut sinne noiksi
muutamiksi ilonpäiviksi, joiden kuluessa tilaisuutta aina vuosittain
juhlittiin. Jokainen sai olla varma lämpimästä vastaanotosta,
tuhlaavaisesta vieraanvaraisuudesta ja parhaimmista ja
valikoiduimmista viineistä, suoraan sanoen, kaikesta, joka kuuluu
Unkarin tasankojen asukkaiden perinnäistapoihin. Senvuoksi
olivatkin Bideskut’in Guyri ja hänen vaimonsa, kreivitär Irma, tähän
vuoden aikaan aina valmiit ottamaan vastaan vieraita. Härkiä,
lampaita, karitsoita, hanhia, ankkoja ja kaikenlaista muuta siipikarjaa
teurastettiin erotuksetta, valkoista leipää leivottiin, vanhimpia
viinitynnyreitä avattiin, hienoimmat puvut, lakanat ja käsiliinat
tuuletettiin, ja kaikki laitettiin valmiiksi noille otaksutuille sadoille
vieraille, heidän lapsilleen, ajureilleen, palvelijoilleen,
palvelijattarilleen ja kuriireilleen.

Eräässä Bideskut’in isiltä perityn päärakennuksen

vanhanaikaisessa ilmavassa huoneessa istuivat kartanon herra ja
hänen ylimyksellinen puolisonsa keskustelemassa lopullisista
järjestelyistä noiden kaikkien odotettujen ja odottamattomien
vieraiden huvittamiseksi. Huone oli kalustettu kylän puusepän
taitavasti kyhäämillä ja kaivertamilla hienoilla ja vanhoilla tammi- ja
mahonkituoleilla ja -pöydillä, ja pienissä lyijypuitteisissa ikkunoissa
oli paksut, valkaisemattomasta pellavakankaasta valmistetut
monenvärisillä koruompeluksilla kauniisti kirjaillut verhot
viilentämässä kuumaa keskipäivän auringonpaistetta.

Hilpeä ja hyväntahtoinen Bisdeskut’in Guyri veteli haikuja

lempipiipustaan kreivitär Irman laskiessa solakoilla sormillaan
huomiseksi odottamiaan vieraita.

»Egregyis'it tulevat varmasti», sanoi hän mietiskelevästi, »ja

samoin Kantássy't Vécsery't, Palotay't, Arany't, Miskolczy't ja
Barótcz'it. Et voi laskea vähemmän kuin neljä palvelijaa kutakin
perhettä kohti, ja kun lasketaan heidän lapsensa ja muutamia heidän
ystäviään, jotka he luultavasti tuovat mukanaan, on meillä jo
seitsemänkymmentä aivan varmaa vierasta. Sitten saapuu aina noin
neljä- tahi viisikymmentä sellaista, joita emme ole osanneet
odottaakaan. Muistat kai, että meitä istuutuessamme viime vuonna
pöytään oli sataseitsemänkymmentä?»

»Hyvä on, rakkaani», vastasi kreivi, »saat antaa sellaisia

määräyksiä kuin haluat ja teurastuttaa niin paljon karjaa kuin luulet
vieraiden syövän. Jumalalle kiitos, Bideskut’issa on vielä niin paljon
elintarpeita, että ne riittävät jokaisen ystävämme perheen ravinnoksi
niin kauaksi aikaa kuin he vain haluavat viipyä luonamme. Ellei ole
tarpeeksi tilaa valmistaa heille jokaiselle eri vuodetta, voimme
levittää olkia harjoitustallin lattialle. Nuoremmat miehet saavat
nukkua siellä ja luovuttaa paremmat huoneet naisille ja lapsille.
Teurastuta, rakkaani, mistään välittämättä, käske Pannan valmistaa
ruokaa sellaisesta siipikarjasta, kaalista ja porkkanoista kuin hän
vain haluaa, sillä ne eivät lopu, vaikka ne hieman vähenevätkin.»

Ja Bideskuty, ollen ylpeä ja varma hedelmällisistä maistaan, jotka

antoivat hänelle kaiken tähän tuhlaavaiseen kuuluisaan
unkarilaiseen vieraanvaraisuuteen tarvittavat aineet, nojautui
taaksepäin tuolissaan ja veteli tyytyväisesti haikuja pitkästä
kirsikkapuisesta piipustaan.

»Olisin mielelläni hankkinut Ilonkalle uuden silkkipuvun tähän

tilaisuuteen», sanoi kreivitär Irma toivovasti.

»Rakkaani», sanoi hänen miehensä nauraen hilpeästi, »Ilonka on

hurmaava tuossa musliinipuvussa, jonka ostin juutalaiselta parilla
floriinilla. Tiedät kai sitäpaitsi aivan hyvin, että rasvaiset setelit ja
muut rakastamamme keisari Frans Josefin kuvat ovat hyvin
harvinaiset tässä maamme kolkassa. Olen kumminkin kiitollinen
Jumalalle siitä. Emme milloinkaan halua mitään, jota emme voi
saada. Ellei», lisäsi hän tyytyväisesti nauraa hihittäen, »tuota
myllyäni koneineen olisi olemassa, en haluaisi nähdä rahaa
vuosikausiin».

»Ja kumminkin tuhlaat sitä tuohon kirottuun höyrymyllyyn ja

niittokoneihin, joita talonpojat pelkäävät ja vihaavat, mielestäni eivät
niinkään aiheetta. Jumalalla ei voi olla milloinkaan minkäänlaista
osaa tuollaisiin asioihin, jotka ovat pirun omia keksinnöitä, Guyri. En
voi tukahduttaa pelkoani, että tuolla kaikella on vielä pahat
seuraukset».

»No mutta, sinähän puhut samoin kuin nuo taikauskoiset

talonpojat! Te naiset ette ymmärrä, millaisen hyväntyön ja hyödyn
teen itselleni ja maalleni, kun saan höyrymyllyni vain käyntiin».

»Tuo ansio voi joko tulla vähitellen, tahi olla tulematta, sitä en
tiedä, sillä en ymmärrä ollenkaan noita asioita. Käsitän vain, ettet
ikuisesti voi syytää rahaa noihin pirullisiin laitoksiin.»

Bideskuty ei vastannut. Perinpohjainen kokemus oli opettanut

hänet huomaamaan, että hänen silloin oli parasta vaieta kokonaan,
kun kreivitär rupesi puhumaan hänen suunnattoman kalliista
lempiaatteestaan.

»Guyri», jatkoi kreivitär Irma, »ei ole vieläkään liian myöhäistä.

Luovu tuosta hullutuksesta äläkä turmele syntymäpäiväni iloa
panemalla myllyäsi tekemään tuota jumalatonta työtä».
 »Rakkaani», vastasi kreivi, jonka itsepäisen vaikenemisen tämä
suora kysymys katkaisi, »sinuahan on tähän asti luultu
ymmärtäväiseksi naiseksi, ja niin ollen kai et voi kuvitellakaan, että
tuhlattuani melkein miljoonan markkaa tuon myllyn rakentamiseen,
en panisi sitä käyntiin saatuani sen valmiiksi?»

»Koska olet vain jatkanut sen rakentamista itsepäisyydestä, on

sinulla vielä aikaa keskeyttää se. Ei ole olemassa ainoatakaan
ihmistä, joka ei ole varoittanut sinua noista uusimuotisista laitteista.
Olet niiden vuoksi joutunut vain kaikkien vihattavaksi täällä omalla
tilallasikin».

Jälleen turvautui hänen miehensä järkkymättömään vaitioloon.

Hän veteli vain haaveillen savuja pitkävartisesta kirsikkapuisesta
piipustaan ja salli vaimonsa kaunopuheliaisuuden aaltojen vyöryä
taipumattoman päänsä yli.

»Guyri», jatkoi kreivitär, »olen huomannut, että luonasi on viime

aikoina käynyt paljon juutalaisia. Naimisiinmenomme jälkeisinä
aikoina ei sellaisia näkynyt huoneissamme. Tiedät minun vihaavan
noita koneellisia päähänpistojasi niin, ettet ole kertonutkaan minulle
mitään, mihin tarkoitukseen ne on rakennuttu, mutta ei ainoakaan
juutalainen tulisi tänne, ellei sinulla olisi jotakin ostettavaa ja
myytävää tahi ellei sinun tarvitsisi lainata rahoja heiltä suurta korkoa
vastaan. Häpäiset meidät kokonaan, jos alat myydä maitasi, viljaasi
ja viinejäsi kuin tavallinen juutalainen kauppias. Tiedän ja olet
sanonut sen itsekin, ettei meiltä mikään lopu, vaikka se joskus
väheneekin, mutta vilja ei kasva unkarilaisen aatelismiehen vainioilla
senvuoksi, että hän likastaisi sormensa rupeamalla myymään sitä».

»Kultaseni», huomautti Bideskut’in herra lempeästi, »kun perin

tämän tilan isäni kuoltua, oli täällä kolmekymmentätuhatta mitallista
vehnää mätänemässä pelloilla sen sijaan, että se olisi käytetty
johonkin hyödylliseen tarkoitukseen».

»Niin», vastasi kreivitär, »miksi se ei saisi mädätä, jos sitä on niin

paljon, ettei sitä voida kaikkia lahjoittaakaan pois? Kodissani mätäni
eräänä vuonna kolmetuhatta mitallista vehnää ja isäni olisi sallinut
mädätä viisikymmentäkintuhatta, ennenkuin hän olisi ruvennut sitä
myymään. Ottaa nyt rahaa sellaisesta kauheata!» lisäsi hän vanhoin
isiltä perityin ylpeyden tuntein.

Kreivi ei vastannut nytkään mitään. Ehkä hän ajatteli sitä tosiasiaa,

ettei hänen vaimollaan eikä tämän sisarilla olisi kattoa päänsä yllä,
jolleivät he olisi päässeet naimisiin, sillä ei ainoastaan vilja, vaan
myöskin pellot, karja, maatilat sekä isiltä peritty koti olivat jo aikoja
sitten joutuneet kokonaan juutalaisten haltuun. Heidän isänsä ei ollut
likastanut sormiaan myymällä viljaa ja tukkeja, vaan oli kiinnittänyt
talonsa, maansa ja kaiken omaisuutensa viimeistä tikkua myöten ja
jättänyt lapsilleen perinnöksi Luciferin ylpeyden, mutta ei muuta
äyrinkään edestä.

Huolimatta neljästäkymmenestä ikävuodestaan oli kreivitär Irma

vielä kaunis nainen. Hänen vartalonsa oli vielä mukiinmenevä,
hänen ihonsa terve ja hiukset olivat vielä niin mustat kuin korpin
siivet. Hän oli aikoinaan ollut kuuluisa kaunotar ja parina huvikautena
Budapestin tanssiaisten kuningatar. Äiti oli kasvattanut tyttärensä
sellaisin lujin mieleenpainuvin ohjein, että jokaisen unkarilaisen
ylimystytön on oltava kaunis ja mentävä edullisiin naimisiin, ja nuori
kreivitär Irma oli täytettyään kahdeksantoista valmis noihin
molempiin. Ensimmäisenä vuonna, kun hän otti osaa seuraelämään,
valitsi ja valikoi hän huolellisesti monien ihailijoillensa joukosta.
Kuuluisa nimi ja suuret tilukset olivat välttämättömät, ennenkuin
kukaan kosija uskalsi edes pyytääkään häntä parikseen kotiljonkiin.
»Paroonit ovat vasta ihmisiä», oli usein toistettu määräys, joka
todellisuudessa karkoittikin jokaisen kosijan, jolla ei ollut tuollaista
yhteiskunnallista arvoa. Mutta ensimmäinen vuosi kuluikin niin, ettei
kreivitär Irmalle ilmestynytkään sellaista kosijaa, joka olisi tyydyttänyt
sekä hänen että hänen äitinsä vaatimukset, ja seuraavana vuonna
kuiskailtiin Budapestin aateliskerhossa, ettei Irman huvikauden
kuluessa kertaakaan oltu kuultu vetoavan tuohon vanhaan sääntöön
ihmisyydestä.

Seuraava huvikausi tuli ja meni, ja kreivitär Irma totesi suureksi

kauhukseen, että hänen parissa tanssiaisissa oli syytettävä
päänkipua ennen kotiljonkia, koska ei kukaan ollut pyytänyt häntä
toverikseen. Asiat alkoivat jo näyttää hyvin surullisilta, kun äkkiä
Bideskuty’n Guyri ilmestyi näyttämölle. Hän oli nuori, hyvännäköinen
ja omisti puolet Heven maakunnasta, ja sitäpaitsi näytti hän olevan
hurjasti rakastunut tuohon hieman jo vanhentuneeseen
kaunottareen. Hän ei ollut kyllä mikään parooni, ja olisikin luultavasti
pari vuotta aikaisemmin alennettu samalle tasolle, kuin kreivittären
sylikoira ja lempilintu olivat, mutta senjälkeen oli paljon vettä
virrannut Tonavasta ja maailma alkoi tulla jo paljon
radikaalisemmaksi. Bideskuty kosi ja sai vastahakoisen myöntävän
vastauksen. Kreivitär Irman kuultiin sitten huomauttavan suurissa
tanssiaisissa, että kaikki unkarilaiset aateliset, jotka omistavat puolet
jostakin maakunnasta, ovat ihmisiä.

He olivat sitten eläneet melko sovinnollisesti keskenään, sillä

Guyri mukautui aina vaimonsa tahtoon kaikissa asioissa. Onneksi oli
rouvan maku samanlainen kuin hänen miehensäkin kaikissa, paitsi
eräässä seikassa. Kuten Bideskutykin, rakasti hänkin unkarilaisen
aatelisen melkein kuninkaallista elämää maatilallaan, ja kun hän
kerran oli mennyt naimisiin, ei hän enää ikävöinyt Budapestiin, jossa
tarvittiin rahaa, jota heillä oli hyvin vähän, ja jossa hänen olisi ollut
pakko syödä toisten ihmisten härkien ja vasikoiden lihaa ja vieraissa
kasvitarhoissa kasvaneita vihanneksia. Kuten Guyrikin, ei hänkään
välittänyt ollenkaan maansa politiikasta, vaan rakasti sitä senvuoksi,
että se oli hänen oma maansa ja sentähden parempi kuin muiden
kenenkään, koska siellä kasvoi parempaa viljaa ja viiniä, koska siellä
kasvatettiin lihavampia nautoja kuin missään muualla maailmassa;
mutta ministerien vaihdoksista tuolla Budapestissä, parlamentista,
vaaleista, yhtymisestä Itävaltaan tahi täydellisestä itsehallinnosta, ei
hän eikä hänen miehensä välittäneet ollenkaan. Hän toivoi vain, että
hänen tyttärensä, Ilonka, menisi vuorostaan edullisiin naimisiin, ja
rukoili, ettei hänen miehensä joutuisi juutalaisten kynittäväksi
onnettomien maanviljelystä edistävien suunnitelmiensa vuoksi.
Hänestä oli sama, oliko Unkari venäläisten, hottentottien tahi
saksalaisten hallussa, kunhan vain hänen toiveensa toteutuisivat.
Hänen elämänsä olisi sujunut hyvin rauhallisesti ja hän olisi ollut
hyvin tyytyväinen tämän parhaan maailman parhaimpiin antimiin,
ellei rypistynyt ruusunlehti olisi huolestuttanut häntä hänen miehensä
onnettoman kiintymyksen muodossa koneihin, jollainen tuoksahti jo
poroporvarillisuudelta eikä ollenkaan sopinut unkarilaiselle
aatelismiehelle, jonka velvollisuus oli elää kreivien tapaan, syödä ja
juoda, huvittaa ystäviään ja jättää kaikki muu ihmisille, joilla ei ollut
esi-isiä eikä senvuoksi täydellistä ihmisyyttäkään.
IV

RAHANLAINAAJA.

»Rosenstein, tuo juutalainen, on odotushuoneessa, herra kreivi»,

ilmoitti Bideskuty’n palvelija, Jánko, kunnioittavasti avattuaan oven.
»Hän sanoo teidän pyytäneen häntä tulemaan tänä aamuna».

Kreivitär Irma ei huomauttanut mitään, sillä hän ei milloinkaan

vastustanut tahi väitellyt miehensä kanssa palvelijain kuullen, vaikka
nämä olisivat olleet kuinka luotettavia tahansa, vaan aina osoitti
esimerkiksi kelpaavaa kunnioitusta ja nöyryyttä talon isännälle.
Mitään ei voitu nyt voittaa moittimalla Rosensteiniä, jonka
laahustavat askeleet jo kuuluivat käytävästä.

»Niin, rakkaani», sanoi Bideskuty hieman levottomasti, »ehkä

sinun pitää mennä vielä puhuttelemaan Pannaa sillä aikaa kuin minä
keskustelen Rosensteinin kanssa. Muista nyt, että olen antanut
sinulle luvan teurastuttaa niin paljon karjaa kuin haluat, ja muutenkin
menetellä parhaan ymmärryksesi mukaan. Pidä nyt huolta, että
ruoka riittää ja toimi niin, ettei Bideskuty’n vieraanvaraisuutta moitita.
Käske juutalaisen tulla tänne», lisäsi hän kääntyen palvelijansa
puoleen. »Katso, että hän pyyhkii likaiset kenkänsä ennen lämpiöön
tuloaan.»

Juutalainen tuli pian nöyrästi huoneeseen kumartaen niin, että hän

oli melkein kaksin kerroin. Kun kreivitär purjehti majesteetillisesti
hänen ohitseen, kumartui hän vieläkin syvempään yrittäen suudella
kreivittären vaipan lievettä, mutta kreivitär kiersi viitan tiukemmasti
ympärilleen, ja suomatta juutalaiselle silmäystäkään poistui hän
huoneesta.

Rosensteinin ikää ei voitu arvata, ei likimainkaan. Hänen

tummahko porkkananvärinen harva tukkansa riippui vaalenneen
kalotin alta kahtena suortuvana kasvojen kummallekin puolelle.
Hänen pitkä nuttunsa, joka oli napitettu kaulasta jalkoihin asti, riippui
irrallaan hänen laihan ruumiinsa ympärillä ja oli kulunut melkein
nukkavieruksi terävien olkapäiden kohdalta. Hän hieroi laihoja
käsiään alituisesti ja hänen vesisiniset silmänsä katsoivat lattiaan
koko sen ajan kuin jalo kreivi suvaitsi keskustella hänen kanssaan.
Ainoastaan silloin tällöin, kun hän luuli voivansa tehdä sen
huomaamatta, katsoi hän tuimasti ja pahansuovasti unkarilaiseen
ohuitten huulien melkein kadotessa terävien hampaitten väliin. Silloin
oli noissa värittömissä silmissä sellainen ilme, että jokainen viisas
mies olisi sen huomattuaan heti muuttunut varovaisemmaksi.

»Oletko tuonut minulle nuo rahat?» kysyi Bideskuty ratkaisevasti.

»Niin, katsokaahan, herra kreivi, asia on näin. Teidän

korkeutennehan tietää minut niin köyhäksi, ettei minulla itselläni ole
noin suurta rahamäärää, ja…»

»Tiedän tuon tavallisen valeen», keskeytti Bideskuty nauraen.

»Älä viitsi puhua minulle tuosta palvelevaisesta ystävästä, joka
suostuu auttamaan kohtuuttomasta korvauksesta, jonka vakuudeksi
sinun on luvattava hänelle tilani paras maakappale. Sano minulle
pian, haluatko ottaa Zárdan noiden
kahdensadanviidenkymmenentuhannen floriinin pantiksi ja millaisen
koron haluat tuosta summasta».

»Zárda on hyvin mitätön pantti, jalo kreivi, neljännesmiljoonasta.

Siellä ei ole rakennuksia eikä .»

»Hyi hitto, vieköön piru nuo juutalaiset!» jyrisi Bideskuty. »Vaikka

he ovat eläneet turvemajoissa koko ikänsä ja heidän esi-isänsä ovat
olleet viemäriojien matoja, haluavat he nyt oikeita rakennuksia
asuakseen. Zárda ei tule milloinkaan joutumaan teidän likaisiin
käsiinne, älä sellaista toivokaan. Lunastan sen, kuten kaikki muutkin
maani heti, kun myllyni pannaan käyntiin ja jauhojani ruvetaan
kehumaan koko maassa».

»Teidän korkeutenne puhuu viisaasti», sanoi viekas juutalainen

katsahtaen salaa ja ivallisesti Bideskuty'yn. »Tuo höyrymylly on
suurenmoinen liikeyritys, sillä se vähentää työtä ja senvuoksi
parantaa teidän talonpoikienne asemaa. Senvuoksi eivät
ystävänikään kiellä minulta noita rahoja, jotka luovutan hyvin
mielelläni teidän korkeudellenne tuohon jaloon tarkoitukseen,
kunhan vain saan tuon mitättömän Zárdan pantiksi».

»Etkö sinä, hitto vieköön, voi olla puhumatta tuolla tavoin

Zárdasta, sillä se on tarpeeksi arvokas pantti kirotuista rahoistasi.
Luullakseni et tule likaisine jalkoinesi sille milloinkaan
astumaankaan. Ilmoita nyt vain korko».

Bideskuty'n puhuessa näin herjaavasti puri Rosenstein kovasti

huuliaan. Hän, samoin kuin hänen kärsivällinen, itsepintainen ja
paksunahkainen rotunsakin, oli niin tottunut tällaiseen kieleen
lainatessaan yhä useammin rahoja näille ylpeille ja komeasti eläville
unkarilaisille aatelisille, että sellainen ikäänkuin kuului heidän
mielestään sopimukseen. He lisäsivät vain korkoa sen mukaan.

»Ah, herra kreivi», vastasi hän vaatimattomasti, »minun oli pakko

hyväksyä ystävieni vaatimukset korkoon nähden. Olen köyhä mies,
ja sitten kuin olen maksanut heille, jää minulle vain hieman
elääkseni. Onneksi elän hyvin vaatimattomasti, joten sata mitallista
vehnää tuosta viidestäkymmenestätuhannesta, jonka he vaativat
vuosittain, riittää minulle aivan hyvin».

»Viisikymmentätuhatta mitallistako vehnää? Sinä roisto, sinä…!»

»Enhän minä ole sitä määrännyt, jalo kreivi, vaan ystäväni. He

ilmoittivat minulle, että vehnän hinta tulee tänä vuonna
laskeutumaan enemmän kuin milloinkaan ennen, minkä vuoksi
niiden lisäksi vaaditut sata nautaa…»

»Sata nautaako vielä? Sinä kapinen koira, sinä häpeämätön

kiskuri!»

»Joista saan vain itselleni härän ja vasikan, herra kreivi. Köyhän

on todellakin vaikea tulla toimeen. Ystäväni eivät anna minulle
rahoja, elleivät he saa yhdeksääkymmentäkahdeksaa nautaa, tuota
vehnää, puhumattakaan viidestäsadasta lampaasta ja
kahdeksastasadasta päästä siipikarjaa, joista he eivät luovuta
minulle muuta kuin viisikolmatta tämän vaikean liikeasian
järjestämisen palkkioksi.»

»Sinä kirottu roisto, ellet tuki suutasi, kutsun Jánkon tänne ja

pieksätän sinut niin, ettet vielä ikinä ole saanut sellaista
selkäsaunaa. Kymmenentuhatta mitallista vehnää, neljäkymmentä
härkää, parikymmentä vasikkaa, kolmesataa lammasta ja viisisataa
lintua annan sinulle, mutta en jyvää enkä lampaan häntääkään
lisäksi».

Juutalaisen silmät välkkyivät ohuitten punaisten luomien takana,

mutta hän katsoi kumminkin kiinteästi maahan, kun hän pudisti
arvellen päätään ja sanoi:

»Olen keskustellut ystävieni kanssa perinpohjin tästä asiasta ja

ilmoittanut nyt teidän korkeudellenne lopullisen koron, jota he eivät
suostu alentamaan».

»Ja minäkin sanon sinulle, etten suostu sellaiseen kiskomiseen.

Jos uskallat vielä seisoa siinä ja vaatia sellaista, käsken palvelijani
antamaan sinulle selkään».

»Silloin olen hyvin pahoillani, herra kreivi», sanoi Rosenstein

nöyrästi, »ettei tästä asiasta tänään tullutkaan mitään.

»Mutta sinä kirottu, saastainen juutalainen, onko piru mennyt

paksuun kalloosi? Minun on saatava nuo rahat heti! Pian on minun
maksettava palkka Budapestista tänne tulleille insinööreille ja
työmiehille, ja sitten tarvitsen osan noista rahoista koneihinkin.
Vieköön piru koko roskan!»

»Jos teidän korkeutenne haluaa, keskustelen ystävieni kanssa

jälleen, vaikka olen melkein varma, etteivät he suostu alentamaan
korkoa».

»Jumalan nimessä, älä enää valehtele, koska kumminkin tiedät,

etten usko puheitasi! Annan sinulle kymmenentuhatta mitallista
vehnää .»

»Viisikymmentätuhatta, herra kreivi…»

»Kaksikymmentä, sanon minä! Kuusikymmentä nautaa!…»

»Sata, herra kreivi…!

»Kahdeksankymmentä, ja tartuttakoon piru ruton niihin heti, kun

likaiset kätesi koskevat niihin! Neljäsataa lammasta…»

»Viisisataa…»

»Sanoin kaksikymmentätuhatta mitallista vehnää,

kahdeksankymmentä nautaa, neljäsataa lammasta ja viisisataa
lintua. Jos suostun antamaan enemmän, vietäköön minut helvettiin
sinun ja sinunlaistesi seuraan!»

»Ja, jalo kreivi, minut on valtuutettu ilmoittamaan teille, että elleivät

ystäväni saa viittäkymmentätuhatta mitallista vehnää, sataa nautaa,
viittäsataa lammasta ja kahdeksaasataa lintua, eivät he luovuta
rahoja».

Tämä oli varmasti katkeraa. Bideskuty tarvitsi välttämättömästi

rahaa ja tuo kirottu juutalainen oli niin itsepäinen, että aatelismiehen
oli luultavasti suostuttava koronkiskojan vaatimuksiin. Tämä oli hyvin
vastenmielistä ja varmasti kuulumatonta julkeutta menneiden
sukupolvien aikana, jolloin nuo kurjimukset olivat sanomattoman
onnellisia saadessaan lainata rahoja sellaista tarvitseville jaloille
parooneille.

»Kuulehan nyt, sinä kirottu roisto», sanoi Bideskuty vihdoin, »olen

ilmoittanut sinulle viimeisen kantani korkoon nähden. Ota tarjoomani
korvaus ja mene rauhassa tiehesi. Mutta ellet luovu noista
häpeämättömistä vaatimuksistasi, suostun niihin, koska tarvitsen
rahaa, mutta luovutan sinut sitten palvelijoilleni, jotka saavat antaa
sinulle terveellisen kurituksen, ennenkuin poistut talostani. Valitse
nyt, haluatko parikymmentätuhatta mitallista vehnää,
kahdeksankymmentä nautaa, neljäsataa lammasta ja viisisataa
lintua, vai etkö?»

»Haluan viisikymmentätuhatta mitallista vehnää, teidän

korkeutenne», toisti juutalainen tyynesti, »sata nautaa, viisisataa
lammasta ja kahdeksansataa lintua…»

»Ja selkäsaunanko?»

Juutalainen vaikeni hetkeksi katsahtaen ylimykseen. Suorana ja

voimakkaana, ylpein silmin ja jaloin ryhdin seisoi Bideskuty hänen
edessään kuin sen rodun ruumiillistunut edustaja, joka vuosisatoja
oli sortanut, kiduttanut ja vainonnut juutalaisia, kieltänyt heiltä kaikki
inhimilliset oikeudet ja kohdellut heitä pahemmin kuin kulkukoiria ja
mustalaisia. Aikoiko ruuvi kiertyä nyt toisinpäin yhdeksännentoista
vuosisadan viime puoliskolla? Aikoivatko nuo sorretut, jotka olivat
aseistautuneet vaivalloisesti hankkimallaan kullalla, nousta noita
tuhlaavia ja harkitsemattomia sortajiaan vastaan rahansa voimalla
päästäkseen pian tämän suloisen Arkadian, Unkarin tasankojen,
hallitsijaksi?

Tietämättään hieroi juutalainen nukkavierua nuttuaan, joka ilmaisi

selvästi, ettei tuollainen kohtelu vihastuneiden aatelismiesten ja
heidän lakeijainsa puolelta ollut hänelle ollenkaan outoa. Hän vastasi
senvuoksi tyynesti:

»Niin, selkäsaunan myös, jaloin kreivi».

 Bideskuty nauroi sydämestään. Hänen vihansa oli haihtunut
kokonaan. Kun hän kerran saisi katsella, miten juutalaiselle
annettaisiin kelpo selkäsauna, ei hän mielestään maksanut
ollenkaan liikaa tuollaisesta huvista. Rosenstein aukaisi pitkän
nuttunsa, ja otettuaan povitaskustaan pari suurta paperiarkkia levitti
hän ne pöydälle.

»Mitä pirullisuuksia nuo ovat?» kysyi Bideskuty.

»Teidän korkeutenne on hyvä ja katsoo. Nämä ovat jonkunlaisia

velkakirjoja ja sitoumuksia, että korko maksetaan täsmällisesti».

Bideskuty punastui raivosta.

»Sinä kirottu koira, eikö unkarilaisen aatelismiehen sana sitten

riitä? Mitä voi rasvainen paperisi pakottaa minua tekemään, ellei
kunniasanasi sido minua?»

»Katsokaa, kreivi», sanoi juutalainen niin nöyrästi, että Bideskuty’n

viha haihtui, »en halua sellaista omasta puolestani, mutta ystäväni
vaativat minulta jonkunlaista takuuta. He eivät ole ennen olleet
liikeasioissa niin kunnioitettavien kreivien kanssa kuin te olette».

Juutalainen sanoi tämän hieman ivallisesti hänen sinisten

silmiensä kiintyessä samalla pahansuovasti Bideskuty'yn, joka ei
kumminkaan huomannut äänensävyä eikä katsettakaan.

»Rangaistakseni sinua tästä kirotusta itsepäisyydestäsi, on sinun

syötävä palanen sianlihaa», sanoi hän tarttuessaan vihaisesti
papereihin.

Hän ei viitsinyt edes lukea papereita läpi, sillä sellainen teko, joka
olisi edellyttänyt jonkunlaista liikeasioiden tuntemista, ei olisi
ollenkaan sopinut niin jalolle Bideskuty’n suvun jälkeläiselle, suvun,
joka oli auttanut kuningas Mátyáksen valtaistuimelle.
Vastustelematta enää ollenkaan kirjoitti hän nimensä molempien
paperien alasyrjään suurin kirjaimin kuin koulupoika. Hän oli
huomannut Rosensteinin taskussa pullollaan olevan rasvaisen
lompakon.

»Työnnä nyt rahat tänne», sanoi hän heittäen kynän menemään.

»Sitten lähden katsomaan, miten palvelijani antavat sinulle niin
selkään, ettet sellaista saunaa ole vielä ikinä saanutkaan».

Juutalainen luki molemmat sitoumukset huolellisesti alusta

loppuun, ripisteli hiekkaa tuolle kunnioitettavalle nimikirjoitukselle,
käänsi paperit sitten harkitusti kokoon ja pisti taskuunsa. Bideskuty
alkoi hermostua ja veteli tuimasti sauhuja kirsikkapuisesta piipustaan
silmien kiintyessä ikävöivästi seinää koristaviin keppeihin ja
ratsupiiskoihin. Mutta selvästi oli hän sitä mieltä, etteivät ne menetä
mitään tehoisuudestaan, vaikka tässä hieman täytyi odottaakin,
koska hän ei puhunut sanaakaan, vaan katseli, miten Rosenstein
laski lompakostaan kaksisataaviisikymmentä tuhannen floriinin
seteliä likaisilla sormillaan hänen ylimykselliseen kätensä.

»Olen valmis milloin tahansa», lisäsi juutalainen, »kun teidän

korkeutenne haluaa käyttää taitoani hyväkseen, neuvottelemaan
puolestanne ystävieni kanssa, jotka varmasti suositukseni
perusteella tahtovat aina palvella teidän korkeuttanne».

Mutta kreivi Bideskuty ei kuunnellut enää. Tukittuaan setelit

taskuunsa avasi hän oven ja huusi hilpeästi Jánkolle:

»Vie tämä kirottu juutalainen keittiöön ja ota selville, haluaako hän

mieluummin syödä palan sianlihaa, vai ottaako hän kunnollisesti