Korean Journal of Buddhist Studies ISSN:1598-0642(Print) 불교학연구

This paper examines the transmission history and theoretical limitations of hetuvidyā (Buddhist logic) in the late Ming and Early Qing Period. Although hetuvidyā flourished for approximately one century during the Tang dynasty, its lineage gradually died out thereafter. In the late Ming and early Qing period, four scholars — Zhenjie (眞界), Wang Kentang (王肯堂), Mingyu (明昱), and Zhixu (智旭) — compiled commentaries on the Nyāyapraveśa, providing an opportunity for its revival. Concerning transmission history, the postscript of Zhenjie and the preface of Wang Kentang confirm that hetuvidyā transmission had effectively been severed in late Ming and early Qing Buddhist circles. Both scholars were compelled to rely on fragmentary citations preserved in Chengguan’s (澄觀) Huayan jing suishu yanyi chao and Yanshou’s (延壽) Zongjing lu, as Tang-dynasty hetuvidyā commentaries were no longer available. Concerning theoretical limitations, the four scholars share two common errors. The first is confusion between zongyi (宗依) and zongt’i (宗體). In the established commentarial tradition, zongyi refers to the subject and predicate terms individually, while zongt’i denotes the complete propositional thesis; all four scholars erroneously identified the predicate term with zongt’i. The second error concerns pakṣadharmatva (遍是宗法性), which requires the hetu to pervade the subject term of the thesis. All four scholars misidentified the relevant referent of “zong” as the predicate rather than the subject. These two errors are mutually entailed: misidentifying the predicate as zongt’i necessarily displaced the reference point of pakṣadharmatva toward the predicate term. While the late Ming and early Qing revival of hetuvidyā carries genuine historical significance, it must be judged as falling short of full theoretical reconstruction.