Rong-ston on the Prajñāpāramitā Philosophy of the Abhisamayālaṃkāra
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Description
This work by Haribhadra was not only a key treatise of the late-8th-century Prajñāpāramitā-Madhyamaka synthesis within Indian Buddhism, but it was also a crucial source which shaped how Prajñāpāramitā philosophy was understood by generation after generation of Tibetan scholiasts.
Since the time of Rngog Io-tsa-ba Blo-Idan-shes-rab (1059-1109), the Prajñāpāramitā philosophy expounded in the Abhisamayālaṃkāra and its main commentaries such as Haribhadra's had been a fundamental topic for Tibetan scholars of Mahāyāna philosophy. Its study, together with the study of elementary dialectics (bsdus grwa) and Buddhist logic-epistemology (Pramāṇa, especially Dharmakīrti's Pramāṇaviniścaya), was considered in the tradition of Rngog's seminary Gsang-phu Ne'u-thog to be one of the three prerequisite subjects for Buddhist scholarship - this triad being sometimes referred to as phar tshad bsdus gsum. The fundamental importance of these subjects remains more or less unchanged today in the main surviving offshoot of that tradition — i.e. modern Dge-lugs-pa scholasticism.
Rong-ston's exegesis was the culmination of three centuries of intensive studies by scholars in the Gsang-phu Ne'u-thog and allied traditions, and it stands in the mainstream of Tibetan exegesis of this work. Not only did he receive detailed instruction on this subject during his early studies in the 1380s at Gsang-phu under Blo-gros-dbang-phyug, but he also studied it as a more mature scholar in the 1390s under the Sa-skya-pa teacher G.yag-ston Sangs-rgyas-dpal (1348–1414), a master of Prajñāpāramitā studies who at that time was almost unrivalled in this field. The lineage he received from G.yag-ston had been successively transmitted through such great masters as Tshad-ma'i-skyes-bu Bsod-nams-mgon, Bu-ston Rin-chen-grub (1290–1364), and G.yag-ston's teacher Sgra-tshad-pa Rin-chen-rnam-rgyal (1318–1388). (Jackson, introduction, I)
