The gate to speech: Smṛtijñānakīrti’s Smra ba’i sgo mtshon cha lta bu /* Vacanamukhāyudhopama and his use of the Abhidharma philosophy of language

Abstract

Abstract In the early eleventh century, the peripatetic Indian scholar Smṛtijñānakīrti – Dran pa ye shes grags pa in Tibetan – overcame great hardship and many obstacles before ultimately arriving in the central Tibetan region after which he moved on to the Khams area of western Sichuan province. Among a good number of other works, there he authored a profoundly influential grammatical treatise titled Smra ba’i sgo mtshon cha lta bu (* Vacanamukhāyudhopama ), which can be translated as Gate to Speech which is like a Weapon . This article seeks to disclose that this work takes inter alia several interesting philosophical ideas that were derived from Abhidharma literature as its theoretical foundation. Accordingly, we will proceed by examining two aspects of this work: first, its notion of the so-called nāmapadavyañjanakāya and, secondly, its theories related to the formation and generation of speech. Understanding these aspects will also clarify some of the ideological origins of indigenous Tibetan grammatical literature.