THE JO-NAN-PASwhere it was recognized as the line of the Khal kha rje btsun dam pa of Da Khu
re (or Hu re chen mo, Urga) which continued into the present century.U
Taranatha was thus the last great representative of the school.
The circumstances of this radical dispossession of the Jo nail pas in the
middle of the seventeenth century however present a sharp contrast with the fact
that two and a half centuries earlier two of Tsoil kha pa's teachers, Phyogs las
roam rgyal and Na dbon Kun dga' dpal, had belonged to this school. And,
although Tsoil kha pa came to disagree with their teachings and despite the fact
that their tenets thus form many of the piirvapa/qas refuted in the Legs bsad siiin
po for example, the masters of this school continued to be respected. An author-
ity like Gun than dKon mchog bsTan pa'i sgron me, though always rigorously
opposing the unorthodox scholastic exposition of their doctrines, admits that Dol
bu pa' s spiritual intuition was very profound and that he was 'a not inferior
omniscient being because of his comprehension^14 and, as the closing lines of the
present chapter devoted to them in the ThG clearly indicate, the author, Blo bzail
chos kyi iii rna, does not condemn them out of hand.
* * *
As a contribution to the study of the history and doctrines of the Jo nail pas as
well as of the criticisms of their interpretations made by masters of the other
schools of Tibetan Buddhism a translation is offered here of the sixth chapter of
the History of Philosophical Doctrines (Grub mtha' sel gyi me lon).^15 Completed
in 1801 by Thu'u bkvan Blo bzail chos kyi iii rna, this work contains a valuable
if brief account of the history of the school together with notices on the lives of
many of their most important teachers followed by a short outline of their doc-
trines and a refutation of them according to the Prasailgika-Madhyamika method
of the dGe lugs pas.^16
In this critique the author first shows that the Jo nail pa doctrines are in
several respects comparable to the doctrines of the Brahmailical schools and that
they are consequently open to the same criticisms to which the latter were sub-
jected by the great Buddhist teachers of India and Tibet. Thus their doctrine is
first of all found to resemble that of the Word-brahman advocated by the
Sabdabrahmavadins such as Bhartrhari; and the first kiirikri of the latter's Vrikya-
padiya is quoted according to which the sabdabrahman appears as the objective
world (arthabhriva) and the source of mundane differentiated construction
(prakriyii jagatal)). It is then shown how the participation and involvement of
the Absolute in the cycle-of-existences (sa1!lsiira) also results from the Jo nail pa
theory of an eternal and immutable element of potential A wakening inherent in
every being in the satpsaric condition. It is also to be noted that the tendency
towards an ontological position--or at least towards an ontological formulation
of a doctrine-which, as mentioned above, appears in the case of Dignaga is
also connected with the Vakyapadiya; for Dignaga's Traikrilyaparl/qri is essen-
tially an only slightly modified version of verses taken mostly from Bhartrhari's
Praklrl)akakiil)t;ia (3. 3. 53-85).^17