The “Science of Reasons” in China and the Problem of “Sinification”

While not exactly “science” in the modern sense, the Buddhist “science of reasons” (yinming 因明) aims to provide universal criteria for assessing the validity of arguments and claims. Describing the development of this discipline in China in terms of “sinification” might, therefore, appear to be a generous euphemism for what some scholars have previously dismissed as a flawed transmission, or plain misunderstanding, of these intricate Indian theories. However, in my talk I would like to provide some arguments for reconsidering the fate of “science of reasons” in China, not as a failed attempt at reproducing the original Indian system, but rather as a case of its “domestication” within a new intellectual and cultural context.  I will focus on Chinese interpretations of pramāṇas (“means” of valid cognition) in the late-Ming period, demonstrating how these Indian epistemological concepts became reconstructed and recontextualized within a distinctly Chinese intellectual framework.