Against the background of the fact that speakers not seldom intend to convey imports which deviate from the linguistically expressed meanings of linguistic items, the present article addresses some consequences of this phenomenon which appear to still be neglected in textual studies. It is suggested that understanding behaviour is in some respect a primary objective of exegesis and that due attention must be attributed to the high diversity of behaviour-related criteria by which interpretations of linguistic items are to be evaluated. Although we intimate in addition that individual (meaningful) sentences occurring either in oral conversations or in written documents generally exhibit a multiplicity of contents of diverse types and that the circumstance that sometimes only a content equalling the linguistic significance of a pertinent unit matters for purposes of interpretation is caused by a material coincidence of different varieties of content, the tenets advocated in the paper do not essentially depend on that view. On the other hand, the following assumptions are relevant in the present connection: (a) A number of deviances between imports conveyed by linguistic utterances and literal meanings of expressions occur due to maxims of linguistic behaviour that are quite independent of lexical and syntactic features of individual natural languages. (b) It is by no means an exceptional phenomenon that imports not derivable by grammatical rules of a particular language alone possess primary importance for interpretation and textual exegesis. In view of significant affinities between understanding of sentences and of texts it is argued that the consideration of diverse aspects of behaviour possesses relevance for textual exegesis at least in the following respects: (1) By delivering a heuristic device for discerning problems affecting adopted interpretations it encourages searches for alternatives. (2) It provides means for evaluating the degree of acceptability of particular textual exegeses and possibly rejecting them on a more rational basis than mere intuition. (3) It offers possibilities for critically assessing the validity of explicit arguments advanced in favour of or in opposition to some interpretation. (4) It furnishes a background for assessing certain disputes about translation. The dimension of linguistic behaviour also attains importance in connection with questions of exegesis which are not concerned with assessments of (propositional) contents intended to be communicated, such as the ascertainment of the function which some argument possesses in a context. For substantiating the thesis that omission of raising relevant questions concerning behaviour is not an isolated phenomenon two examples will be employed: (1) A discussion concerning the exegesis of a crucial passage of DignAga's PramAa(1)double dagger asamuccaya and the PramAa(1)double dagger asamuccayava(1)> tti, (2) a critical appraisal of a recent publication dealing with the interpretation of the second chapter of NAgArjuna's MA << lamadhyamakakArikA-s.

The dominant topic of this study pertains to the relationship between the possession of properties on the part of linguistic items, such as words, concatenations of words or sentences, and the possibility of truly ascribing those properties to the concerned units. It can be verified that among the qualities which linguistic expressions can exhibit there are some which could be correctly attributed to them only by employing items which (numerically) differ from the pertinent expressions. As various properties exist which exhibit this particular feature the question how different phenomena of the impossibility of self-ascription are related to each other attains relevance. There is evidence to the effect that the existence of linguistic qualities exemplifying the pertinent peculiarity has been realized even in some non-Western philosophical tradition. For that reason the present investigation possesses both historical and problem-oriented ingredients. On the one hand the goal is pursued to substantiate the claim that the phenomenon of impossibility of self-ascription has been recognized in a non-Western tradition, at least with respect to particular linguistic properties. This task is performed by an analysis of a textual segment within a work which has been written in the tradition of linguistic philosophy in India, presumably in the fifth or sixth century AD, and by an attempt to demonstrate that a most coherent argumentative structure can be distilled from the textual segment supposing that it concerns the topic of impossibility of self-ascription with respect to semantic functions. On the other hand the question of how the impossibility of self-ascription regarding particular semantic functions is connected with problems of self-ascription regarding lack of truth constitutes a major concern of the study. It is contended that the latter phenomenon involves specific aspects and that accordingly the thesis insinuated by some scholars that the investigated text could provide a basis for the solution of truth-paradoxes is unwarranted. In view of the fact that the supposition that self-ascriptions of lack of truth always lack the property of expressing a truth is not self-evident it has been endeavoured to support the plausibility of this tenet and to show that this stance need not lead to inconsistencies, if it were assumed that only a particular type of content differing from a linguistically expressed content exhibits the qualities of being definitely true or untrue and of always complying with ‘classical’ inference-rules — in particular modus ponendo ponens and reductio ad absurdum — as well as with a principle according to which a linguistic unit expresses a truth exactly if its content is true. A contention is that the postulation of this type of content need not be made merely ad hoc. The envisaged position implies that the existence of indexical elements is by no means the only factor preventing that linguistic synonymy guarantees identity of truth value and that even linguistic items without deictic ingredients can be simultaneously linked to various types of content. As the investigations also refer to other phenomena suggesting that being simultaneously related to a multitude of contents is not an uncommon feature of linguistic expressions they touch on questions of interpretation and translation and thereby affect some general issues of the humanities.

The publication deals with topics concerning the interpretation of the VigrahavyAvartanA << in as much as they are relevant for the understanding of (early) Madhyamaka-philosophy in general. A major part of the article is dedicated to a critical assessment of a number of views which have been propagated recently in a paper by Sharma (In: Nagoya studies in Indian culture and Buddhism, Saa(1)integral bhAa(1)A pound, 2011). A primary goal of the present investigation consists in substantiating the claim that early Madhyamaka represents a metaphysical teaching which stands in sharp contrast not only to stances of common sense but also to tenets propagated in Buddhist dogmatics.

Purpose of the article is to provide support for the contention that two fundamental treatises representing the teaching of Madhyamaka, viz. the Mūlamadhyamakakārikās and the Vigrahavyāvartanī, were designed to establish and justify a metaphysical tenet claiming that no particulars of any kind can exist on some level of final analysis and that this was the only primary concern of those works. Whereas the former text is in the first place dedicated to providing proofs of the central metaphysical thesis the major objective of the second treatise lies in a defense of the claim against possible objections. A correlate of this view regarding the content of those two works is on the one hand that the philosophy of the founder of the Madhyamaka-school essentially consists in a metaphysical teaching implying a radical rejection of a stance propagated in earlier Buddhist schools according to which objects of ordinary experience could be reduced to or explained by the existence of other sorts of particulars that can be theoretically postulated. On the other hand the exegesis advocated in the article implies that theorems pertaining to the nature of language or the relationship between language and non-linguistic reality are not at all a predominant issue in the pertinent texts and presumably were not a major matter of concern of early Madhyamaka in general. Accordingly matters pertaining to questions of semantics attain relevance at best in the form of objective consequences which the metaphysical doctrine might entail. The paper focuses on the second chapter of the Mūlamadhyamakakārikās as well as the segment of the Vigrahavyāvartanī which deals with the first major problem, represented by the verses 1 – 4 and 21 – 29. The reason is that a detailed and thoroughgoing investigation of these two textual passages is suited to disprove a contention voiced by Western scholars who suppose that the teaching of the founder of Madhyamaka embodies a particular claim pertaining to the relationship between language and non-linguistic reality.

The topic of this book is the investigation of a concise and fairly intricate textual passage appearing in a theoretical treatise presumably written in India in the 13 of two technical terms which play a central role in the framework of theories of inference at that time. Focus lies on a number of problems of textual exegesis which have either not yet found a definite and adequate solution in the previous Indian or Western literature dealing with the text or have not even been recognized as problems at all.

Apart from a sufficiently exact identification of the conceptual content of the key terms discussed in the textual passage, the ascertainment of the nature of arguments provided by the writer of the text for a rejection of alternative definitions as well as not explicitly formulated premises motivating their dismissal and tacitly presupposed requirements for the adequacy of definitions constitute major goals of the present study. Two aims of a more general kind are equally pertinent, viz. a) to explore limitations inhering in a reduction of the perspective of assessment to aspects that are envisaged by a tradition of which an object of investigation, such as a text or the author of a text, is a part and b) to demonstrate the intimateness of the relation between possessing a firm grasp of theoretical issues treated in Indian philosophical texts and a central concern of traditional philological investigations, namely ascriptions of content to linguistic items.