Towards the Russian Translation of Study of Ātman as It Appears to the Mīmāṃsakas From Tattvasaṃgraha of Śāntarakṣita, 2nd Part

Readers are invited to the 2nd part of the translation of the Study of Ātman as it Appears to the Mīmāṃsakas (Mīmāṃsakaparikalpitātmaparīkṣā, section of the chapter Investigation of Ātman (Ātmaparīkṣā) of the treatise Compendium of Essential Questions (Tattvasaṃgraha)), a text written by Śāntarakṣita, an Indian Buddhist philosopher of the 8th century (with a commentary of his student Kamalaśīla (also 8th century)). The text is a refutation of the theory of ātman (self, soul) of the Mī māṃsakas from the standpoint of Buddhism. The introductory paper gives a concise summary of the main theses and key arguments of both polemizing parties from the 1st and the 2nd parts of the translation. The view of Mīmāmsakas is interesting in that they try to argue that the nature of ātman as consciousness (caitanya), substance (dravya) and reality (sattva) is immutable and at the same time to explain away the actual presence of changeable states in it. The Buddhists, on the other hand, show that if we de facto concede the actual existence of activity and karmic retribution, the subject of these necessarily turns out to be changeable. The translation tries to render the text as close as possible to the original and at the same time to be clear and easy to understand for people who are not specialists in Indian/Buddhist philosophy. Unlike other translations, key-terms and terms difficult for translation into Russian are supplied in Sanskrit throughout the text in brackets (in Latin transliteration). The author used the latest translations and studies of the text. To make it easier to keep track of the reasoning the text was supplied with notes on the structure of the argument, such as [Counterargument of the Buddhists (1)], [Counterargument of the Mīmāṃsakas (1)], etc.