The Tibetan & Himalayan Digital Library

The Commentarial Hierarchy

The philosophico-religious curriculum of Tibetan monastic scholasticism consists of three textual layers. This commentarial hierarchy makes clear both the constitutive nature of the basic scholastic texts and the mechanics of their appropriation.

The first layer contains the authoritative and canonical foundation provided by the great Indian texts (rgya gzhung) such as the Abhisamayālaṃkāra (Ornament of Realization, henceforth referred to as the Ornament), a commentary on the Perfection of Wisdom literature attributed to Maitreya; Nāgārjuna’s Treatise of the Middle Way; and Candrakīrti’s Introduction to the Middle Way. ¹⁵ Each supports an entire field of study. Thus the study of the path is organized around the memorization and study of the Ornament, and the study of Madhyamaka philosophy of emptiness revolves around either of the latter two works. These treatises are the root texts (rtsa ba, mūla), written in kārikā (tshig le'ur byed pa)...

Tibetans did not invent the reliance on root texts; it is part of the methodology used by both Hinduism and late Indian Buddhism. In the Hindu traditions, following Patañjali’s grammatical tradition, these aphoristic summaries of a tradition's scriptural basis are called sutras. For example, the meaning of the Upaniṣads is summarized by the Brahmasūtra, which is in turn the subject of commentaries. In the late Indian Mahayana tradition, the term sutra is reserved for the teachings of the Buddha, and these texts are instead called “treatises” (śāstra, bstan bcos). They fulfill the same function as their Hindu counterparts: they summarize, systematize, and explain the meaning of the scriptures. Such works are intended to serve as the basis of further oral and written commentary. They would be read in relation to a bhāṣya or a vṛtti (‘grel ba), a commentary that in turn could be supplemented by a vyākhyā or ṭīkā (‘grel bshad), a more detailed gloss. ¹⁶ Tibetan curricula are similarly structured. Once the mnemonic verses have been committed to memory, they are studied in the light of further commentaries, which can be of three types: Indian commentaries, Tibetan commentaries, or monastic manuals.

The first type of explanatory text, the Indian commentaries (bhāṣya or vṛtti, ‘grel ba), explicates a root text. For example, in the field of Madhyamaka, commentaries on Nāgārjuna’s Treatise include Candrakīrti’s Clear Words; Buddhapalita’s commentary, which bears his own name; Bhavya’s Lamp of Wisdom; and Śāntarakṣita’s Ornament of the Middle Way, ¹⁷ all of which are considered important by Tibetan scholars. For studying the Ornament, there is a standard list of twenty-one Indian commentaries. Sometimes, the texts belonging to this second layer are autocommentaries (i.e., commentaries written by the author of the root text), such as Candrakīrti’s own explanation of his Introduction to the Middle Way.

Theoretically, the authority of the Indian commentaries is extremely important; practically, they are used in Tibetan education relatively rarely by teachers and students. As translations of the Sanskrit rendered in a highly artificial language (see chapter 7), they are quite difficult to understand; the majority of Tibetan scholars thus tend to prefer Tibetan commentaries, which authoritatively summarize them. Only extremely advanced scholars see the root texts and their Indian commentaries as the real source of their tradition and the central object of intellectual activity. ¹⁸

The second layer consists of those Tibetan commentaries (bod 'grel) that were composed later, often between the fourteenth and sixteenth centuries. Because they provide clear glosses on and explanations of the difficult points in the Indian root texts, they can easily be adopted by a school to define doctrinal positions. Each school has its own central commentaries, which are held to be authoritative. For example, Ge-luk-bas use Dzong-ka-ba’s texts, particularly his Clarification of the Thought, as their main guide in the field of Madhyamaka studies, whereas the Sa-gya-bas focus on Go-ramba's commentary. ¹⁹ Nying-ma-bas rely on Mi-pam Gya-tso’s texts, such as his commentaries on Śāntarakṣita’s Ornament of the Middle Way, and on the ninth chapter of Sāntideva’s Introduction to the Bodhisattva Way of Life. ²⁰ Ka-gyü-bas have a still different central text, the commentary on Candrakīrti’s Introduction by the Eighth Kar-ma-ba Mi-gyö-dor-jay (mi bskyod rdo rje, 1504-1557). ²¹

In the third level are found the monastic manuals (yig cha), which are used quite extensively... They present easily digestible summaries of the most important points as well as the material for debate. Manuals fall into two broad categories: summaries, a genre called General Meaning (spyi don), and debate manuals, called Decisive Analysis (mtha’ gcod). The Collected Topics (bsdus grwa) are a type of debate manual; they are a Ge-luk specialty, though they are certainly not unknown in other traditions. ²²

For each topic studied, the procedure is similar. The process starts with the heuristic memorization of the root text and sometimes of its commentaries. It continues with the interpretation of the root text through commentaries, and culminates in dialectical debates. For example, in the case of the Ornament, the first text likely to be examined is Haribhadra’s Clear Meaning, ²³ which provides a brief explanation of the root text. This explanation, which is authoritative but terse and unclear, is in turn supplemented by Tibetan commentaries (second level). Ge-luk monastic universities are likely to rely primarily on Gyel-tsap’s Ornament of the Essence of Commentaries, which is often complemented by Dzong-ka-ba’s Golden Garland. ²⁴ These two texts explain the Ornament in the light of the other commentaries, particularly the twenty-one Indian commentaries. They also present each topic more systematically. Although these texts are more accessible than Clear Meaning, they are not always easy to understand. Hence, they are in turn supplemented by the monastery’s manuals, which are more comprehensible and better organized, though less authoritative. There, students find the clearest statement about the subject matter.

As students examine each topic, they rely on this chain of commentaries, which offers an increasingly detailed and clear picture of the contents of the root text. Each level of commentary explicates the terser or less systematic texts of the preceding textual level; ultimately, the elaborate explanations provided by the authoritative Tibetan commentaries and the manuals are read back into the root text, which is assumed to implicitly contain them. By assuming identical content of commentary and commented text, scholars can build a commentarial hierarchy of increasing clarity in which more explicit statements are projected back onto the less clear but more authoritative earlier levels. Thus the views of the more explicit texts, which reflect the views of the school or the monastery, are validated and given full authority, thereby establishing the orthodoxy of the tradition.

Such a structure does not prevent critical interpretation of these texts, as the later discussion of debate will show. Scholars do question the validity of particular glosses offered by the manuals of their monastery or by Tibetan commentaries. Such questions are often freely debated. Nevertheless, the commentarial hierarchy is so central to the construction of knowledge in their tradition that few scholars are willing to discard it. Hence, they tend to gravitate toward its interpretations despite any doubts they may have.