Influence of Nagarjuna's heritage on Indian philosophy

The article sheds light on the life and activity of the famous Buddhist philosopher Na-gaijuna and his influence on classical Indian philosophy. We address to Nagarjuna’s engagement in the debates on the problems of logic and epistemology with representatives of other Indian philosophical schools, which concerned also the means of cognition and their relation to cognizable objects. The peculiarities of using various forms of argumentation by Nagarjuna, such as “catus-koti”; “vitanda”; “prasanga”, are discussed. It is noted that the method of tetralemma was used by Nagarjuna in combination with the concept of universal emptiness to deny the very possibility of predicting something to any object. We have discussed the influence of introducing by Nagarjuna the three-term syllogism instead of the classical five-term on the Indian logic. The article also studies the features of Nagarjuna’s argumentation of the non-existence of both substantiality and non-substantiality and the followed two truths doctrine (Samvrti-satya and Paramartha-satya) in “Yuktisastika” and “Vyavaharasiddhi”. In “Ratnavali” and “Suhrillekha” Nagarjuna developed the Mahayana social concept. The thesis that Nagarjuna relied to some extent on the ancient Vedic ideas, reflected in particular in “Bri-hadaranyaka”, is substantiated. It has been concluded that the traditions of the patron and priest relationship found their continuation in the well-known “two laws” or “two regimes” (cho-yon), which characterize the symbolic relations between the Tibetan lamas and the Mongol nobles. These traditions later became the basis of the relationships between the Manchu emperors and the following Dalai Lamas. We have presented an application with our own translation of Nagarjuna’s hymn “Lokatitastava”, which summarizes the foundations of his philosophical concept.