Vasubandhu and the Vādavidhī

Summary

In this scholarly study the author re‑examines the authorship of the short treatise known as the Vādavidhi, a manual on debate and reasoning traditionally ascribed either to Dignāga or to an anonymous master in the Buddhist logico‑epistemological tradition. The article argues that the Vādavidhi should be attributed to Vasubandhu, the famous fourth‑century monk whose Abhidharmakośa became a cornerstone of later Buddhist thought. By comparing technical terms and argumentative structures used in the Vādavidhi with those found in Vasubandhu’s undisputed works, the author shows significant parallels in the treatment of perception, inference and the categories of evidence. For example, both texts classify perceptual knowledge as arising from direct contact without conceptual construction, and both use the three criteria of a valid middle term in inference. The article surveys earlier scholarship by Indian and Tibetan commentators, noting that several medieval doxographers listed Vasubandhu as the author of a lost treatise on logic, while later tradition shifted credit to Dignāga. It also examines citations of the Vādavidhi in the works of Śaṅkarasvāmin and Jinendrabuddhi to establish the treatise’s relative chronology. Linguistic evidence suggests the Vādavidhi predates Dignāga’s sophisticated Pramāṇasamuccaya yet reflects a transitional phase when Buddhist philosophers were responding to Nyāya critiques by formalizing their own theory of debate. The author discusses doctrinal implications: Vasubandhu’s approach in the Vādavidhi remains grounded in the Sarvāstivāda school’s realism even as it anticipates Yogācāra idealism. This reassessment not only clarifies the literary history of Buddhist logic but also elevates Vasubandhu as a pioneer who systematized methods of argumentation long before Dignāga. The article concludes by urging further philological study of fragmentary commentaries and Tibetan translations to reconstruct the development of Indian dialectics.