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A Yogācāra Buddhist Theory
of Metaphor
 A Yogācāra
Buddhist Theory
of Metaphor
z
ROY TZOHAR

1
 1
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Tzohar, Roy, 1973– author.
Title: A Yogācāra Buddhist Theory of Metaphor / Roy Tzohar.
Description: New York, NY, United States of America : Oxford University Press, [2018] |
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2017011352 (print) | LCCN 2017036990 (ebook) |
ISBN 9780190664404 (updf) | ISBN 9780190664411 (epub) |
ISBN 9780190664428 (oso) | ISBN 9780190664398 (cloth)
Subjects: LCSH: Buddhism and philosophy. | Buddhist philosophy. | Metaphor.= |
Metaphor—Religious aspects—Buddhism. | Yogācāra (Buddhism)
Classification: LCC BQ4040 (ebook) | LCC BQ4040 .T96 2018 (print) |
DDC 181/.043—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017011352

1 3 5 7 9 8 6 4 2
Printed by Sheridan Books, Inc., United States of America
For Rotem
 Contents

Acknowledgments xi

Abbreviations xv

Introduction 1
1. What Do Buddhists Have to Say About Figurative Language? 3
2. A Bit of Methodology: On Determining the Relevant Textual Field and
Handling Intertextual Borrowing 8
3. An Outline 16

PART ONE

1. Metaphor as Absence: The Case of the Early Nyāya and Mīmāṃsā 23

1.1. What Is Metaphor (Upacāra)? 23
1.2. Upacāra in the Early Mīmāṃsā School 28
1.3. Upacāra in the Early Nyāya School 34
1.3.1. The view that nouns do not refer to an individual entity
(vyakti) 35
1.3.2. The view that nouns directly refer to the generic
property (jāti) and refer to the individual
only figuratively 36
1.4. Summary 40
viii Contents

2. Metaphor as Perceptual Illusion: Figurative Meaning

in Bhartṛhari’s Vākyapadīya 42
2.1. Figurative Meaning in the Second Kāṇḍa of
the Vākyapadīya 46
2.1.1. Some preliminary distinctions regarding polysemy
and metaphor 47
2.1.2. Figurative meaning and the analogy with
perceptual error 49
2.2. Figurative Meaning in the Third Kāṇḍa of the Vākyapadīya 63
2.2.1. The semantic problems at stake 64
2.2.2. Bhartṛhari’s proposed solution and its interpretations 66
2.2.3. An alternative interpretation:
Reading the third kāṇḍa in light of the second kāṇḍa 69

PART TWO

3. It’s a Bear . . . No, It’s a Man . . . No, It’s a Metaphor! Asaṅga on

the Proliferation of Figures 77
3.1. The Authorship and Dating of the Tattvārtha Chapter of
the Bodhisattvabhūmi and Its Relation to
the Viniścayasaṃgrahaṇī 78
3.2. Metaphor-​Related Arguments: A Close Reading 84
3.2.1. Asaṅga’s argumentative strategy 84
3.2.2. Demonstrating the inexpressibility of an essential
nature in the TApaṭ: Some preliminary distinctions 86
3.2.3. Demonstrating the inexpressibility of an essential nature
in the VS: Some preliminary distinctions 88
3.2.4. The TApaṭ “first argument”: The argument
from polysemy 95
3.2.5. The TApaṭ “second argument”: An essential nature is not
apprehended or determined by the designation 99
3.2.6. The TApaṭ “third argument”: An essential nature is not
apprehended or determined by the object 100
3.2.7. Part I of the VS account: The designation is not dependent
on the semantic-​ground 103
 Contents ix

3.2.8. Part II of the VS account: The magical creation analogy

and what it says about the role of metaphor 106
3.2.9. Part III of the VS account: The essential nature is not
apprehended or determined by anything other than the
designation and the semantic-​ground 111
3.2.10. Part IV of the VS account: Designations do not even
“illuminate” or reveal an essential nature 112
3.2.11. The opponent’s objection: The claim that the essential
nature is inexpressible is self-​contradictory 114
3.2.12. Doesn’t inexpressibility presuppose the annihilation of
phenomena? Asaṅga on language and intersubjectivity 119
3.3. Summary 123

4. The Seeds of the Pan-​Figurative View: Metaphor in Other

Buddhist Sources 125
4.1. Metaphor in Vasubandhu’s Abhidharmakośabhāṣya
and Sthiramati’s Commentary 126
4.2. Metaphor in the Laṅkāvatārasūtra 137
4.2.1. The dating of the Laṅkāvatārasūtra and its relation
to Yogācāra thinkers 137
4.2.2. The Sagāthakaṃ on discursive thought and causality 139
4.2.3. The Sagāthakaṃ on metaphors and mental
causal reality 141
4.3. Metaphor in the Fifth Chapter of Dignāga’s Pramāṇasamuccaya 144

PART THREE

5. What It All Comes Down To: Sthiramati’s Pan-​Metaphorical Claim

and Its Implications 153
5.1. A Permanent Absentee: Sthiramati’s Definition of Metaphor 157
5.2. Sthiramati’s Refutation of Opposing Claims 161
5.3. What Remains of Ordinary Language? A Causal Figurative
Theory of Sense 166
5.4. It Is All About Discourse: Sthiramati’s Arguments Against
the Madhyamaka 173
x Contents

6. Conversing with a Buddha: The Yogācāra Conception

of Meaning as a Means for Overcoming Incommensurability 178
6.1. The Awareness Following Nonconceptual Knowledge as
an Ultimate Outlook on Causality 180
6.2. Sthiramati’s Theory of Meaning and the Problem of
Incommensurability 188
6.3. Perceptual Meaning and the Yogācāra Understanding of
Intersubjective Agreement 190
6.4. Coming Back Full Circle: Perspectival Experience,
Polysomic Language 201

Conclusion: The Alterity of Metaphor 205

Appendix A: A Translation and Exposition of the Vākyapadīya 2.250–​256 221

Appendix B: A Running Translation of the Vākyapadīya 2.285–​2.297 227

References 233

Index 253
 Acknowledgments

This book evolved out of my PhD dissertation at Columbia University, and

my first debt of gratitude is owed to the scholars who painstakingly midwifed
that project: Gary Tubb, whose exceptional knowledge and love of Sanskrit
literature are an always-​present source of inspiration; Robert Thurman, who
has guided me with unending patience and skill in means through the intri-
cacies of Tibetan Buddhist texts; and Laurie Patton, whose graduate seminar
on metaphor, which I attended over a decade ago when she was on Fulbright
at Tel Aviv University, is in many ways the intellectual point of departure for
the present book, and whose guidance and encouragement have accompa-
nied me ever since. At Columbia, I benefited from the superlative scholarship
and teaching of other faculty members, who also provided me with invalu-
able advice on issues both philological and philosophical; for this, my deepest
thanks goes to Bernard Faure, Jack Hawley, Venerable Geshe Lozang Jamspal,
Sheldon Pollock, and Wayne Proudfoot.
In the same spirit, I wish to thank the numerous scholars and friends
who have helped me form and improve this book through stimulating con-
versations over the years, in particular Orna Almogi, Eyal Aviv, Daniel Arnold,
Michael Stanley-​Baker, Joel Bordeaux, Christian Coseru, Thibaut d’Hubert,
Florin Deleanu, Martin Delhey, Rupert Gethin, Paul Hackett, Charles
Hallisey, Jowita Kramer, David Kittay, Dan Lusthaus, Richard Nance, Parimal
Patil, Andrea Pinkney, Mark Sidertis, Jonathan Silk, Dorji Wangchuk, Jan
Westerhoff, and Michael Zimmermann. Special thanks go to several people
who have read drafts of all or part of the book and offered their comments:
Mario D’amato, a fellow rōnin, for his extremely helpful and detailed feedback;
Elisa Freschi, for her thoughtful and spirited comments; Jonardon Ganeri, for
a memorable philosophical debate about the work in a Berlin bar; Jay Garfield,
a true kalyāṇa-​mitra, who read this book cover to cover with incredible and
generous attention and made this work so much better; Jonathan Gold, the
best interlocutor that one could hope for; Janet Gyatso, whose interest and
xii Acknowledgments

wise suggestions were a consistent source of support over the years; Sonam
Kachru, for his friendship and intellectual bonhomie; and Robert Sharf, for
insightful reactions to ideas developed here. Of course, all errors that remain
in the book are my own.
I am grateful to Cynthia Read and Drew Anderla at Oxford University
Press for their interest in this manuscript, for their close attention and impor-
tant guidance, and for their ever-​professional and -​sympathetic way.
I am thankful also to several institutions and departments that provided
financial and logistical support for my research. The funding for the initial
research for this book, conducted in India, was provided through the American
Institute of Indian Studies (AIIS) Junior research fellowship (2007–​2008).
In Sarnath, I wish to thank the eminent faculty at the Central University
of Tibetan Studies (CUTS), and especially Shrikant Bahulkar, Venerable
Wonchuk Dorje Negi, Venerable Geshe Damdul Namgyal, Venerable Tsering
Sakya, Venerable Lobsang Norbu Sastri, and Ramshankara Tripathi for gener-
ously sharing with me their vast stores of knowledge on Buddhist texts. In
Pune, I wish to thank the faculty of Deccan College, and especially Vinayaka B.
Bhatta, head of the Sanskrit Dictionary Project, and Jayashree Sathe, its editor-​
in-​chief, who kindly allowed me access to the institute’s scriptorium. And in
Mysore, my thanks are extended to H. V. Nagaraja Rao, for many formidable
hours of reading Sanskrit poetics.
In the years 2011–​2015, I was a beneficiary of the Marie Curie Grant of
the European Union (CORDIS), which gave me the resources and time to
complete the research for this book and present it at international forums.
An extended sabbatical stay in Berlin between 2013 and 2015 afforded me
the time needed to complete the first draft of this book. I am grateful to Tel
Aviv University, for allowing me to take this leave; to the Zukunftsphilologie
Program, Forum Transregionale Studien, Freie Universität, Berlin, where I
have been an affiliated postdoctoral fellow; and to Islam Daya, the program’s
director.
Six additional months as a stipendiary research fellow at the Max Planck
Institute for the History of Science, Berlin (2014–​2015), provided me with the
rarest gift—​time to write and think uninterruptedly in the most intellectu-
ally stimulating environment. I am grateful to all of my colleagues there, and
foremost to Dagmar Schäfer, the managing director of the institute and the
director of Department 3, for her generosity and vision, and for her commit-
ment to rethinking the history of science beyond Europe and the West. Finally,
funding received from the Yad-​Hanadiv Grant, the Department of East and
South Asian Studies at Tel Aviv University, enabled me to hire Alex Cherniak,
who expertly proofread the many Sanskrit and Tibetan passages included in
 Acknowledgments xiii

this book; Oren Hanner, a great research assistant; and Natalie Melzer, my
first reader. I am grateful to them all.
In the last years I have been sustained in all aspects of my academic life by the
solidarity, assistance, and friendship of my colleagues at Tel Aviv University’s
South and East Asian Studies Department and Philosophy Department,
where my thanks go out to Yoav Ariel, Ehud Halperin, Asaf Goldschmidt, Ofra
Goldstein-​Gidoni, Jacob Raz, Dani Raveh, Galia Patt-​Shamir, Meir Shahar, and
Ori Sela. My profound thanks are extended to Shlomo Biderman, my teacher
of old, whose lifetime project at Tel Aviv University gave me the rare oppor-
tunity to teach Indian philosophy unapologetically as an integral part of the
philosophy department’s curriculum. I am also grateful to my colleagues over
on the mountain, at Hebrew University, Yael Bentor, Yigal Bronner, Yohanan
Grinshpon, David Shulman, and Eviatar Shulman; though institutionally
remote, they were so close in their support and helpful input.
Finally, I am thankful beyond measure to my family: Rahel, Menahem,
and Lea; and above all to Rotem and Asya, who have travelled with me, both
metaphorically and literally, along this path, and without whose love this book,
like so much else, would not have been possible.
Chapter 5 contains a revised version of my article “Does Early Yogācāra
Have a Theory of Meaning? Sthiramati’s Arguments on Metaphor in the
Triṃśikā-​Bhāṣya,” which appeared in the Journal of Indian Philosophy, 45(1),
99–​120; and Chapter 6 integrates sections from my article “Imagine Being
a Preta: Early Indian Yogācāra Approaches to Intersubjectivity,” from Sophia,
doi:10.1007/​s11841-​016-​0544-​y. Both are reprinted here with the kind permis-
sion of Springer Science and Business Media.
 Abbreviations

AKBh Abhidharmakośabhāṣya [Vasubandhu]

AKBhṬT Abhidharmakośaṭīkā Tattvārthā (chos mngon pa’i mdzod kyi bshad
pa’i rgya cher ’grel pa don gyi de kho na nyid ces bya ba) [Sthiramati]
AS Abhidharmasamuccaya [Asaṅga]
ASBh Abhidharmasamuccayabhāṣya [Sthiramati]
BBh Bodhisattvabhūmi [Asaṅga]
H: Lhasa (lha sa) recension of the Tibetan canon
KP Kāśyapaparivartasūtra
KPṬ Kāśyapaparivartaṭīkā (’phags pa dkon mchog brtsegs pa chen po chos
kyi rnam grangs le’u stong phrag brgya pa las ’od srungs kyi le’u rgya
cher ’grel pa) [Sthiramati]
LAS Laṅkāvatārasūtra
MBhū Maulībhūmi section of the YB [Asaṅga]
MBh Mahābhāṣya [Patañjali]
MBhD Mahābhāṣyadīpikā [Bhartṛhari]
MīS Mīmāṃsāsūtra [Jaimini]
MMK Mūlamadhyamakakārikā [Nāgārjuna]
MS Mahāyānasaṃgraha (theg pa chen po bsdus ba) [Asaṅga]
MSBh Mahāyānasaṃgrahabhāṣya (theg pa chen po bsdus pa’i ’grel pa)
[Vasubandhu]
MSA Mahāyānasūtrālaṃkāra [Maitreya/​Asaṅga]
MSABh Mahāyānasūtrālaṃkārabhāṣya [Vasubandhu]
MV Madhyāntavibhāgakārikā [Maitreya/​Asaṅga]
MVBh Madhyāntavibhāgabhāṣya [Vasubandhu]
MVṬ Madhyāntavibhāgaṭīkā [Sthiramati]
NyS Nyāyasūtra [Gautama]
NySBh Nyāyasūtrabhāṣya [Vātsyāyana]
NySVā Nyāyasūtravārttika [Uddyotakara]
P Peking Edition of the Tibetan Buddhist Canon
xvi Abbreviations

PP (VP) Prakīrṇaprakāśa (VP) [Helārāja]

PS Pramāṇasamuccaya [Dignāga]
PSV Pramāṇasamuccayavṛtti [Dignāga]
PSkV Pañcaskandhakavibhāṣā [Sthiramati]
ŚāBh Śābarabhāṣya [Śabara]
SNS Saṃdhinirmocanasūtra
ŚrBh Śrāvakabhūmi [Asaṅga]
T. Taishō Revised Tripiṭaka
TApaṭ Tattvārthapaṭalam of the Bodhisattvabhūmi [Asaṅga]
TD Sde dge (Derge) recension of the Tibetan canon
Ṭīkā (VP) Vākyapadīyaṭīkā [Puṇyarāja]
Triṃś Triṃśikā [Vasubandhu]
TriṃśBh Triṃśikābhāṣya [Sthiramati]
TriṃśṬ Triṃśikā-ṭīkā [Vīnitadeva]
TSN Trisvabhāvanirdeśa [Vasubandhu]
U Upanibandhana on the MS [Asvabhāva]
Viṃś Viṃśikākārikā and vṛtti [Vasubandhu]
VP Vākyapadīya (Trikāṇḍi) [Bhartṛhari]
Vṛtti (VP) Vākyapadīyavṛtti [Bhartṛhari]
VS Viniścayasaṃgrahaṇī (mam par gtan la dbab pa bsduBa) [Asaṅga]
VV Vigrahavyāvartanī [Nāgārjuna]
Vy Vyākhyāyukti (rnam par bshad pa’i rigs pa) [Vasubandhu]
YB Yogācārabhūmi [Asaṅga]
 Introduction

Put simply, according to the Buddhists, at the root of human suffering

lies a deep discord between how we ordinarily conceive of reality and how it
truly is. Major factors in actively creating and maintaining this discord are
language and the way in which our conceptual schemes parse, attempt to fix
as permanent, and desperately hold on to what is by nature a fleeting and
fluctuating stream of events. In this respect, language is not merely a veil that
obscures true reality, but rather an active force (according to some Buddhist
philosophical schools, a causal element) involved in its fabrication: It is the
metaphysical workshop in which entities are forged and, once produced, are
erroneously believed to be real.
Language is, therefore, part of the disease, but inevitably it is also part of
the cure. This is because on the one hand, while Buddhist thought is under-
lined by a deep devaluation of language as a means for representing, describ-
ing, or reaching reality, on the other hand, insofar as it is required for any
salvific discourse, language is viewed as necessary for liberation. The staunch
antirealism of some Buddhist schools deprives language of its obvious refer-
ents, and Buddhist views regarding the basic inexpressibility of the ultimate
reality further undermine its status; but at the same time, Buddhist thought
faces the need to uphold the meaningfulness not just of ordinary language,
but of the (often overtly metaphysical) Buddhist discourse itself.
At the heart of Buddhist philosophical thought, then, lies the para-
dox that is language. As a consequence, Buddhist philosophical texts pres-
ent a palpable tension that arises from the inherently paradoxical need to
argue against words by using words, to devalue language through language.
Resolving, or at least in some way containing, this tension was arguably one
of the main challenges confronted by Indian Buddhist thought, the story of
which can indeed be told through the successive strategies and solutions
2 Introduction

employed by its various schools to meet this challenge. This book focuses on
the ingenious response to this tension that one Buddhist school, the early
Indian Yogācāra (3rd–​6th century ce), proposed through its sweeping claim
that all language use is in fact metaphorical (upacāra).
Over the last several decades, the so-​called metaphorical turn, propelled by
a scholarly fascination with the fundamental role that metaphors play in our
concept formation, has explored the implications of a similar pan-​metaphorical
picture. In a sense, this theoretical trend cast metaphor as a substance that
is in many ways like the air we breathe: all-​pervasive, essential to (mental)
life, and transparent to us most of the time. But what if it ceased to be trans-
parent? What if our awareness were awakened to the metaphorical nature of
nearly everything we say, including our most prosaic utterances? What if our
language—​that “reef of dead metaphors,” in the memorable image coined by
the linguist Guy Deutscher1—​suddenly came alive? The Yogācāra, this book
argues, were keenly aware of this overwhelming pervasiveness of metaphor, as
well as of the philosophical benefits of being made aware of it.
Exploring the profound implications of the school’s pan-​ metaphorical
claim, the book makes the case for viewing the Yogācāra account of meta-
phor as a broadly conceived theory of meaning—​one that is applicable, in the
words of the 6th-​century Yogācāra thinker Sthiramati, both “in the world and
in texts.” This theory of meaning, I argue, allowed the Yogācāra to carve out
a position that is quite exceptional in the Buddhist landscape: a position that
views ordinary language as incapable of representing or reaching reality, but at
the same time justifies the meaningfulness of the school’s own metaphysical
and salvific discourse. This scheme, I hope to show, bears on our interpreta-
tion of the Yogācāra by radically reframing the school’s controversy with the
Madhyamaka; by reinstating the place of Sthiramati, who is known for his
commentaries, as an innovative thinker in his own right; and by establishing
the importance of the school’s contribution to Indian philosophy of language
and its potential contribution to contemporary discussions of related topics in
philosophy and the study of religion.
In this respect, this book is also about the wider Indian philosophical con-
versation about meaning that took place around the middle of the first mil-
lennium. Although some of what the Yogācārins had to say about metaphor
was highly innovative, their reflections on this issue should be understood
against the backdrop of, and as conversing with, specific theories of mean-
ing put forward by such non-​Buddhist schools as the Mīmāṃsā, the Nyāya,

1. Deutscher (2005, 118).

 Introduction 3

and the Grammarians. By grounding the Yogācāra’s pan-​metaphorical claim

in its broader intellectual context, both Buddhist and non-​Buddhist, the book
uncovers an intense philosophical conversation about metaphor and language
that took place in India during that time and which reached across sectarian
lines. This picture reframes the usual depiction of the Buddhist thought of the
period as somewhat isolated and less engaged in exchange with non-​Buddhist
philosophical schools. Integrating formal analyses of Indian philosophy with
the history of ideas, the book thus functions as an argument for a deeply con-
textual consideration of Buddhist philosophy—​one that looks beyond sectar-
ian demarcations and traditional narratives of textual transmission, even in
this early period.
Finally, then, this book is about how Buddhist thinkers reflected on and
understood the metaphorical function of language, and about what meta-
phors mean and do within Buddhist philosophical texts. Figurative language
is palpably present in Buddhist philosophical texts in general and in the
Yogācāra lore in particular, and yet there are relatively few existing studies of
this topic, and when theorizing, these studies tend to appeal to contempo-
rary philosophical and literary theories of metaphors. In the present study,
by contrast, I attempt to reconstruct a body of theory on metaphor as for-
mulated by Buddhist thinkers (i.e., using their own terms). My hope is that
this book will provides readers of Buddhist philosophy with a fresh scholarly
perspective for appraising not only the overall Buddhist understanding of
language but also, more concretely, how particular metaphors operate within
these texts.

1. What Do Buddhists Have to Say

About Figurative Language?
The systematic argumentation that is the mark of early Mahāyāna philosophi-
cal treatises is counterbalanced rather strikingly by the school’s ubiquitous use
of figurative language in these works. The stock analogies, similes, and meta-
phors can usually be traced to a number of Buddhist root figures that, far from
being merely ornamental, are highly important in developing argumentation
and outlining its soteriological horizons. But given the overwhelming visibil-
ity of figurative language in Buddhist literature, its role and use have received
relatively little attention in scholarship to date. While various scholarly works
engage with figurative language as a subtopic of Buddhist hermeneutics
(which will be discussed in more detail shortly), or with the philosophical
work performed by particular Buddhist metaphors (see, for instance, Wayman,
1984; Lusthaus, 2002, 491–​495, 508–​517; Wood, 1991, 42–​47; Garfield, 2002,
4 Introduction

147–​151; Gold, 2006), only a handful consider its overall status or function as
an independent topic, and often these works approach it by employing con-
temporary theories of metaphor developed in Western disciplines.2 With few
exceptions,3 there has been no sustained attempt to examine how Buddhist
thinkers reflect on and theorize their own application of figurative language.

2. Notable studies of this sort include McMahan (2002), on the role and meaning of visual
metaphors in Indian Mahāyāna sūtras. McMahan argues for the centrality of the visual as a
paradigm for knowledge in these texts but draws mostly on contemporary conceptual theo-
ries of metaphor. This study is not concerned, however, with the linguistic side of meta-
phors, disregarding the fact that visual metaphors are ultimately also linguistic devices (see
Gummer, 2005). Covill (2009) convincingly demonstrates that Aśvaghoṣa consciously and
strategically used recurrent metaphors to encapsulate a central theme of religious conver-
sion. In this respect, her work is attuned to the way in which Buddhist thinkers under-
stood their own deployment of linguistic metaphor, yet her analysis turns on the content
of a particular web of metaphors, and to this extent remains text-​and usage-​specific. In
fact, one of the reasons that Covill gives for her somewhat counterintuitive decision to rely
on contemporary Western theory of conceptual metaphor rather than on Indian theory of
poetics is precisely that the latter disregards the specific content of metaphor (adhering
instead to a general theorization of meaning). Focusing on another work by Aśvaghoṣa, the
Buddhacaritaṃ, Patton (2008) explores the hermeneutical and conceptual role of figura-
tive language in pre-​alaṃkāraśāstra Indian literature. Additional notable essays that address
the topic of Buddhist metaphors, but not as their main focus, include Collins (1982 and
1997), on the ways in which the Pāli imaginaire utilizes certain patterns of imagery concern-
ing either personal identity or the concept of nirvāṇa, respectively; and Eckel (1992), whose
study of Bhāvaviveka’s philosophical works draws attention to the metaphors that frame the
latter’s arguments. Other writers whose engagement with the topic is notable, if more nar-
rowly defined, include Goodman (2005), who has presented what he calls the Vaibhāṣika
“metaphoricalist” approach to personal identity, and Flores (2008, 87–​100), who proposes a
literary reading of the figurative language in the Dhammapada.
3. Gold (2007, 2015) deals with the place of upacāra in Vasubandhu’s understanding of cau-
sality. D’Amato (2003) reconstructs a Buddhist theory of signs presented in the eleventh
chapter of the Mahāyānasūtrālaṃkāra and its conception of lakṣaṇā. Kragh (2010) exam-
ines several cases of figurative use within Candrakīrti’s work and calls for the formulation
of a literary theory—​distinct from Sanskrit poetics—​that is especially attuned to the genre
of śāstra. As for scholarship that deal with the general Indian theorization of figurative
language before the existence of a full fledge theory of poetics, notable (but by no means
exhaustive) examples include Gonda’s (1949) methodical and extensive study of similes
in Indian literature (including a section on Buddhist similes). Kunjunni Raja (1977) deals
extensively with the understanding of figurative language of the Nyāya, Mīmāṃsā, and
Grammarians, and elsewhere (1965) specifically with Pāṇini’s understanding of lakṣaṇā.
Gerow (1977) provides notes on some limited early Indian engagement with poetics and
addresses the meanings and terminology related to figurative language in classical Indian
thought (1984). Piatigorsky and Zilberman (1976) deal with the range of meanings and uses
of the term lakṣaṇā, mostly in the Upaniṣads; and Gren-​Eklund (1986) compares certain
features of both philosophical and later poetic understanding of figurative language with
the Aristotelian conception of figurative transference. Patton (2004), focusing on the notion
of viniyoga, presented the centrality of metonymical thinking as a vehicle for constructing
ritualistic meaning, and her account can perhaps be regarded as a first-​of-​its-​kind scholarly
 Introduction 5

My aim in this book, therefore, is to present a systematic account—​the first

of its kind, as far as I know—​of a homegrown Buddhist theory of metaphor.
What, then, does the Mahāhyāna philosophical discourse have to say about
figurative language, and where does it do so (under which subdiscourses)?
Two obvious places in which to search for answers do not yield them. First, the
later Buddhist epistemological discourse (pramāṇavāda), despite its tendency
toward comprehensive categorization, does not define or expressly delineate
the rules and role of figurative language in any distinct way.4 Second, there is
no early Buddhist theory of poetics (alaṃkāraśāstra)—​or, for that matter, any
extant systematized theory of poetics from that period—​that deals with these
issues.5

description of ritualistic-​qua-​performative Indian theory of metaphor. Another noted work is

Myers (1995), who, following the program initially proposed by Potter (1988), examines the
role of central metaphors in broadening and exceeding given conceptual spheres in Vedic
and Advaita-​Vedāntic literature. Most recently, Keating (2013a, 2013b, 2017), deals extensively
with the understanding of various categories of figurative use in the work of the 9th-​century
Kashmiri thinker Mukula Bhaṭṭa, as well in the works of other Indian philosophical schools
of thought.
4. On Dignāga’s (rather limited) engagement with the issue of figurative language, see
Chapter 4, section 4.3. Within this discourse, the epistemic function of figurative ele-
ments usually overshadows the linguistic one. This is true, for instance, of the discus-
sion of “examples” (dṛṣṭānta), which is usually limited to a consideration of their validity in
the inferential procedure (anumāna), and the same goes for the consideration of relevant
valid means of knowledge such as “analogy” (upamāna); in this respect, see Zilberman’s
expansive but unfortunately unfinished work on analogy in Indian thought (2006, 49).
As for “testimony” (āptavāda, āptāgama), while both Asaṅga and Vasubandhu accept it
as a valid means of knowledge, its bearing on such specific speech particles as figures is
never discussed in epistemic discourse. For Asaṅga’s reference to the role of testimony in
his Abhidharmasamuccaya (AS), the Bodhisattvabhūmi, and the Hetuvidyā section in the
Śrutamayībhūmi, see Tatia (1976, 253), Dutt (1978, 25, lines 17–​19), and Wayman (1999, 23),
respectively.
5. The first full-​fledged extant works on Sanskrit poetics are Daṇḍin’s Kāvyādarśa and
Bhāmaha’s Kāvyālaṃkāra, whose chronology and order of appearance are a longstanding
conundrum in contemporary scholarship. Bronner (2012a, 99, 110) convincingly places
Daṇḍin’s Kāvyādarśa c.700 ce and as postdating Bhāmaha. Both writers mention (and
Bhāmaha even names and quotes) predecessors as authors of earlier poetical works whose
absence still puzzles scholars; in this respect, see the opposing views of Pollock (2003, 42;
2006, 89–​90) and Bronner (2012a, 110–​113). Regarding much earlier works that deal with
poetical terms, though early writers like Yāska and Pāṇini did theorize figures to a certain
extent, their engagement, while significant for subsequent theory of poetics, is far from uni-
form in its scope or concerns (see Gerow 1977, 221). As for the Nāṭyaśāstra, Pollock (2003,
42n.5) points out that although an early version of the text, now lost, could have been avail-
able from the 2nd century ce (and is referenced for the first time in the 4th century), its main
focus was the structure of drama, not poetics (although it probably influenced the latter’s dis-
cussion of rasa), and Gerow indicates that only in the 8th century ce, with the commentary
6 Introduction

Nevertheless, early Mahāyāna Buddhist literature is keenly aware of the

stakes involved in the deployment of figurative language as a liberative tool.
This awareness is most conspicuous in two related contexts. The first is the
Buddhist notion of “skillful means” (upāya), which counts figurative language
as one of many pedagogical means applied by Buddhist teachers. The second
context is discussions of hermeneutics, in which figurative language is seen as
the textual expression of implicit intention (abhisaṃdhi, abhiprāya) and inter-
pretable meaning (neyārtha) of the Buddha’s words.6 Both these perspectives
on figurative usage, however, reduce it either to its function (pedagogical) or
to indirect intention ascriptions, telling us little about the semantics and prag-
matics of figurative meaning; i.e., its enabling conditions, cognitive impact,
and the referential mechanism involved in its employment.
Where we do find these issues addressed is in the early Yogācāra treatises,
which often take up the subject of figurative usage as part of a broader philo-
sophical engagement with the relation between language and reality. Within
these accounts, situated at the juncture of discourse on associative language
and discourse on theories of meaning, a prominent concept is upacāra, a term
best translated as “figurative designation,” or simply “metaphor.” While the
term is not exclusive to the Yogācāra, it is especially prevalent in the writings

of Lollaṭa, does it become a truly “creative basis for the tradition” (1977, 225–226n.34). As
for Buddhism, despite some pronounced suspicion on the part of canonical sources toward
poets and the composition of poetry, Buddhists are strongly connected to the history of the
composition of poetry in India, from the very early so-​called Pāli kāvya literature—​namely,
the Thera-​ and Therīgāthā anthologies, the poetical works of Aśvaghoṣa from the second cen-
tury CE, which are the first extant instances of extensive poetry (mahākāvya), those ascribed
to Kumāralāta and Mātṛceṭa, and up to the poems ascribed to Dharmakīrti (for references to
the latter, see Ingalls 1965, 445). See Tieken (2014, 86–​87, 103–​106) for a discussion of the
roots of kāvya and its possible relation to Buddhism, and Ollett (2015) for a discussion of
some Buddhist writers in what he conceives of broadly as a “kāvya movement” from 50 bce
to the 2nd century CE. Nevertheless, there is no indication of a particular Buddhist contribu-
tion to or a distinct tradition of theory of poetics in Sanskrit.
6. The issue of figurative use as a subtopic of a discussion about skillful means and herme-
neutics is taken up in a variety of sources; in the context of the Mahāyāna literature, these
include Thurman (1978), Hamlin (1983), Lopez (1988, 1993), Schroeder (2001), Pye (2003),
Ganeri (2006b), and Collier (1998). The latter is noteworthy, insofar as his analysis of indi-
rect intention and nonliteral speech in a variety of Mahāyāna sources draws comparisons
with accounts of Indian poetics, revealing interesting connections between the work of
medieval Indian thinkers, such as Haribhadra, and the theory of poetics prevalent in his
time. Regarding early Buddhism, Hamilton (2000) has argued for a reading of the early
Buddhist sources that emphasizes the intended figurative nature of many of the Buddha’s
assertions (above all, the nonself claim); Hwang (2006) supplies a doctrinal history of the
metaphor of nirvāṇa attuned to the various interpretative schemes provided by the suttas
and early Abhidhamma, and Cox (1992) discusses at length the Abhidharma hermeneutical
mindset (see, in this respect, Chapter 4, section 4.1).
 Introduction 7

ascribed to Asaṅga and Vasubandhu (c.360 ce),7 and receives its most com-
prehensive and systematic treatment in the commentarial works of Sthiramati
(470–​550), which advance the claim that all language use is metaphorical.8
The scholarly engagement with Sthiramati as an important Indian philos-
opher in his own right is limited, perhaps in part because of the commentarial
nature of his work. Yet his place along the continuum of the Yogācāra’s tex-
tual development and the perspective that this position offers are unique and
give his work a special significance. Relative to previous thinkers like Asaṅga
and Vasubandhu, Sthiramati operated under a much more defined notion of
the Yogācāra as a distinct school, or at least a more defined textual tradition;
accordingly, his interpretive challenge—​and contribution—​consisted in syn-
thesizing a varied textual corpus into a coherent and consistent worldview,
adding to it in the process some original and strikingly innovative insights.
Highlighting Sthiramati’s substantive philosophical contribution to the
Yogācāra tradition is one of the goals of this book.
With respect to the understanding of language and metaphor in particu-
lar, the scope and reach of Sthiramati’s treatment of this topic are especially
notable, insofar as he explicitly situates these issues within the wider non-​
Buddhist Indian conversation about meaning and reference, and also proceeds
to synthesize various Yogācāra ideas about language into a unified theory of
meaning. To mount his pan-​figurative claim, as we will see, Sthiramati inge-
niously weaves together the Yogācāra’s multiple and dispersed comments on
language, joining a critique of a correspondence theory of meaning with a
positive account of the causal and mental underpinnings of language in terms
of the activity of consciousness.
But what does this pan-​figurative claim entail, and what purpose did it
serve for the Yogācāra? Where does it leave ordinary language use, and no
less important, how does it bear on the status and meaning of the language
of Buddhist scriptures? Where did this sweeping claim originate, and to what
extent was it innovative?
By addressing these questions, I aim to present an account of the Yogācāra
understanding of upacāra, formulated as far as possible in the school’s own
theoretical terms. At the same time, my reading of the school’s views brings
into account their broader pan-​Indian context, which is, as I will argue, a nec-
essary context for any proper understanding of the school’s claims.

7. For more on Vasubandhu’s dating, see Chapter 4, section 4.1.

8. For more on Sthiramati’s dating, as well as to the question of his authorship in respect to
the list of works attributed to him by the tradition, see Chapter 5, note 1 and 2.
8 Introduction

2. A Bit of Methodology: On Determining

the Relevant Textual Field and Handling
Intertextual Borrowing
Upacāra has a broad range of meanings in non-​Buddhist Sanskrit literature.9
Conducting early research for this book at the scriptorium of the Sanskrit
Dictionary Project at Deccan College (Pune, Mahārāshtra), I reviewed hun-
dreds of slips of paper that in theory quote all appearances of upacāra in 1,541
representative works of Sanskrit literature (Ghatage et al., 1976).10 Apart from
locating references to upacāra in Sanskrit sources, this vast database allowed
me to identify patterns in the changes of meaning that the term underwent
across periods and genres. Specifically, it demonstrated quite distinctly that
the use of upacāra in the sense of metaphor is prominent in the philosophical
literature—​non-​Buddhist and Buddhist alike—​from its earliest phases, as well
as in the later alaṃkāraśāstra literature, but it is relatively scarce or nonexistent
in other genres. While this observation needs to be qualified by the fact that it
inevitably reflects the principles of selection applied by the dictionary’s compil-
ers, as well as the historically constructed notion of a Sanskrit canon,11 it none-
theless enables us to outline a general working context in which upacāra was
highly visible, and more important, suggests that this context reaches across
sectarian lines. Both these observations came to form my working hypotheses,
which eventually, through close readings in a variety of upacāra-​related textual
sources, proved to be well founded.
Given the wide scope of this textual context, my lineup of sources had
to be selective. The initial criterion guiding my selection of texts, apart from
their thematic relevance to the issues brought up by the Yogācāra, was the

9. Monier Williams’s Sanskrit-​English Dictionary (1956/​1899) lists the following meanings

(before the word’s sense as figurative usage): approach, service, attendance, act of civility,
reverence, proceedings, practice, behavior, attendance on a patient, ceremony, offering,
solicitation, ornament, and usage. (197).
10. The project was inaugurated in 1948 by S. M. Katre. The first volume of the project’s
dictionary was published in 1978, and in 2013, the first part of the 11th volume appeared. The
process of cataloguing and sorting vocables from all selected Sanskrit sources is ongoing. Its
information is stored in an archive of handwritten slips of reference paper, each containing
the Sanskrit headword, an approximate English translation, and a textual reference to the
passage in which the word appears.
11. The totality of the works used in the dictionary is said to represent the traditional branches
of Sanskrit literature from the Ṛgveda to 18th-​century commentarial literature, but the list
reflects mostly Sanskrit classical Brahmanic works and presents (for instance) a relatively
small body of Buddhist and Jain works (the dictionary also excludes meanings that are
unique to Buddhist sources—​i.e., “hybrid” Sanskrit).
 Introduction 9

presence of a substantial theoretical engagement with upacāra, either as the

main topic of discussion or in a philosophically significant manner, and also,
in the case of sources other than the Yogācāra treatises, the text’s chronologi-
cal availability to early Yogācāra thinkers. The selection of sources was also
motivated by what I had initially regarded as a natural goal of this study: trac-
ing, if not the textual origin of, then at least the main source of influence
on, the Yogācāra understanding of upacāra so as to come nearer to providing
the term with an intellectual history of sorts. This entailed reading sources in
ever-​widening contextual circles that moved chronologically from the obvious
core of the early Yogācāra treatises’ often quite disperse references to upacāra,
to their immediate Buddhist context (Mahāyāna sūtras, other Buddhist philo-
sophical schools like the Madhyamaka, Pāli and Sanskrit Abhidharma, and
Pāli canonical sources), and then to the less immediate non-​Buddhist philo-
sophical śāstric context.
Serving as the rather stable focal point of this exploration of the textual field
was Sthiramati’s explication of upacāra in his commentary on Vasubandhu’s
Triṃśikā (Treatise in Thirty Verses, Triṃś). Representing the apex of the early
Yogācāra treatment of metaphor, this text came to mark the upper limit of
my survey—​ both chronologically (mid-​ 6th century ce) and thematically.
The most chronologically distant Yogācāra literature that I reviewed is the
Tattvārthapaṭalaṃ (Chapter on the Meaning of Reality, henceforth TApaṭ) of the
Bodhisattvabhūmi (Levels of the Bodhisattva, BBh),12 one of the early sources (if
not the earliest) of Yogācāra thought, whose influence on the school’s subse-
quent works cannot be overstated. The TApaṭ and its accompanying sections
in the later Viniścayasaṃgrahaṇī (Collection of Clarifications, VS), both belong-
ing to the vast corpus of the Yogācārabhūmi (Levels of Spiritual Training),13
traditionally ascribed to Asaṅga,14 offer a highly sophisticated philosophical
account of the relation between language and reality, in which the concept of
upacāra plays an important argumentative role.

12. Deleanu (2006, 195) proposes an approximate dating of the BBh to c.230–​300, of the
Saṃdhinirmocanasūtra to c.300–​350, and of the first strata of the Viniścayasaṃgrahaṇī to
c.320–​350 and its later parts to c.380 CE. For a discussion of the relative chronology of these
texts, see Chapter 3, section 3.1.
13. In this context, bhūmi can be taken to refer either to a stage or a foundation, and Yogācāra
to the practice of yoga or to the practitioners of yoga. Here, I follow Delhey (2013, 501). For an
alternative translation, see Kragh (2013, 49–​50).
14. Despite this ascription, the texts most likely could not have been the work of a single
author, or even a single compiler. The doctrinal and philological stratification of the YB cor-
pus indicates that it was redacted over a long period of time. See the discussion of this issue
in Chapter 3, section 3.1.
10 Introduction

Proceeding next to examine the immediate Buddhist doctrinal context of

the Yogācāra treatises, I turned to the various Mahāyāna scriptures associ-
ated in the broad sense with the Yogācāra.15 But here, defying my early expec-
tations, apart from a noteworthy philosophical engagement with upacāra in
the 10th chapter of the Laṅkāvatārasūtra (Descent into Laṅkā Scripture, LAS),16
I found that the Yogācāra-​oriented sūtras included little or no reference to the
term in its relevant sense. As for the philosophical works of other Buddhist
schools of thought, the Madhyamaka treatises composed up to Sthiramati’s
time contain, as far as I found, no significant references to upacāra,17 but the
term is employed ubiquitously (mostly in a hermeneutical context) both in the
Sanskrit Abhidharma commentarial literature—​most notably in Vasubandhu’s
Abhidharmakośabhāṣya (Commentary on the Treasury of Abhidharma, AKBh)—​
and also in the works of Dignāga (c.480–​540).
Any attempt to determine the textual origins and context of the Sanskrit
Abhidharma use of the term leads naturally to the early canonical materials;
but here too, counter to my expectations, I found that even though the term is
indeed used in the Pāli sources with a variety of meanings, nowhere in these
sources does it appear in the sense of figurative application.18 By contrast, the
use of upacāra in this sense is highly present in fundamental non-​Buddhist
philosophical texts of the early Mīmāṃsā (25 ce, 420 ce) and Nyāya (150 ce,
450 ce),19 and in the Grammarians (especially Bhartṛhari, 450–​510 ce),20 all
of which address it mostly in the context of theories of meaning.21 Moreover,

15. These include Mahāyāna sūtras like the Saṃdhinirmocanasūtra, the Laṅkāvatārasūtra, the
Daśabhūmikasūtra, the Śrīmālādevīsiṃhanādasūtra, the Ghanavyūha, and the Maitreya sec-
tion of the Pañcaviṃśatisāhasrikāprajñāpāramitā. See Powers (1991, 2) and Lugli (2011, 103–​
104, 146) on some of the features that make these Yogācāra or Yogācāra-​affiliated sources.
16. This section of the sūtra was probably composed between 433 and 513 CE. For more on the
dating of the Laṅkāvatārasūtra, see Chapter 4, section 4.2.1.
17. The few sporadic references are mostly in the works of Bhāvaviveka, such as in the
Prajñāpradīpa-​mūlamadhyamaka-​vṛtti (dbu ma rtsa ba’i ’grel pa shes rab sgron ma) P5253, vol.
95, 67a2; and in the Madhyamakahṛdaya-​vṛtti-​tarkajvālā (dbu ma’i snying po’i ’grel pa rtog ge
’bar ba) P5256, vol. 96, 66a6, 241a5.
18. For a more detailed account of the Pāli canon’s use of the term upacāra, see Chapter 4,
section 4.1.
19. Dates are approximate and refer to the composition of the sūtra and bhāṣya, respectively,
and are based on Potter (1983). For a survey of the various dating schemes (which differ
greatly) for the early texts of the Mīmāṃsā, see Slaje (2007, 131n61).
20. For more on the dating of Bhartṛhari, see Chapter 2.
21. As far as I found, there are no references to the term in this sense in the early literature
of the Sāṃkhya and Yoga schools. As for the early Advaita-​Vedānta, the Gauḍapāda-​ kārikā
 Introduction 11

as I show throughout the study, there are instances of clear similarity and
often plain identity, both thematic and stylistic, between the Buddhist and
non-​Buddhist textual employments of the term (recurring formulaic phrases,
stock examples, etc.). These correspondences are also evident in another way
in the Yogācāra philosophical accounts of upacāra, which to varying degrees
derive their opponents’ views from and respond to the non-​Buddhist śāstras’
arguments about upacāra.
Hence, the absence of references to upacāra in the Pāli canon and their
scarcity in the Mahāyāna sūtras and the Madhyamaka treatises, on the one
hand, and overwhelming parallels between the Sanskrit Abhidharma and the
early Yogācāra use of the term and that of non-​Buddhist śāstric sources, on the
other, all underscore the cross-​sectarian context in which the explanation of
this term must be sought.
Broadly speaking, the deeply contextual investigation of an idea across
primary textual sources and sectarian lines seems to demand a diachronic
perspective, at least as a safeguard against anachronism and an ahistorical,
essentializing approach to the realm of ideas. This need is all the more pro-
nounced in view of the tendency of the scholarship of Indian thought in the
not-​so-​distant-​past toward perennialism. In the present case, this calls ide-
ally for something like a conceptual history, if not an outright genealogy, of
upacāra.
The attempt to apply such an approach to a study of upacāra, however,
encounters several difficulties that render the very idea of tracing the ori-
gin of the concept or supplying a linear narrative of intertextual borrowing
on this theme highly problematic. First are the empirical difficulties associ-
ated with any attempt to arrange this textual field chronologically—​a predica-
ment shared by the scholarship of both early and classical Indian thought,
as both typically need to make do with indeterminate and approximate dates
based in many cases on doctrinal or philological analysis.22 Second, when
brought under analysis, the texts at hand appear to challenge some of the

offers one significant use of the term, which can be taken to mean “in a figurative sense”;
this is how Karmarkar (1953, verse 36, and 102–​103) suggests to translate it, whereas King
(1995, 250) takes it to mean “practice.”
22. See the volume on the periodization of Indian philosophy edited by Franco (2013), partic-
ularly Franco’s introduction (2013a) on the historical and contextual situatedness of scholarly
periodization schemes, and Lipner’s (2013) contribution to this volume for a methodologi-
cal consideration of the way in which different models and central metaphors guide the
practice of periodization. On some of the difficulties involved specifically in dating early
Indian thought, see Bronkhorst (2007, 175–​258). I discuss the dating of early Yogācāra texts
in Chapter 3, section 3.1.
12 Introduction

most basic interpretative presuppositions heuristically applied to the field,

such as the idea of a single authorship of texts or of clear-​cut sectarian iden-
tities or doxographical categories within the Buddhist world, as well as the
traditional and scholarly assumption regarding the chronological priority of
sūtra over śāstra.23 Without the reliable benefit of such interpretative heuris-
tics, and with little to go by in the way of hard chronological evidence or reli-
able biographical information on the authors of these texts, we are left with
an intricate intertextual realm in which questions of the origin of particular
theories or the direction of intertextual borrowing can be resolved only pro-
visionally. This is not to undermine the legitimacy of interpretation offered
in the absence of hard extratextual evidence (I am about to offer such an
interpretation myself). Instead, I wish to emphasize that in the absence of
such evidence, any diachronically organized scheme based on philological
analysis is at one and the same time interpretation-​dependent and the very
foundation that justifies the interpretation, resulting in a potentially vicious
hermeneutical circle. This is ultimately why the case at hand seems unsuited
to a genealogical analysis; there is simply not enough conclusive chronologi-
cal evidence to support (for instance) a Foucauldian critical genealogy; i.e.,
an “archeology” of knowledge in which meaning is never fixed abstractly to a
discourse but is derived from its history and process of becoming (Foucault
1972, 138–​140).
If we still wish to make sense of intertextuality in this context, there-
fore, it seems we would do well to search for an additional approach to the
strictly diachronic interpretive approach.24 Now, the intertextual realm that
concerns us here is defined first, as I have said, by the general concerns
and vocabulary of early Indian śāstric theories of meaning and their engage-
ment with upacāra (before the first extant works on Sanskrit poetics). Within
this framework, the merits of a synchronic account—​which is something

23. See especially Chapter 4 for a discussion of the viability of these categories when
approaching Buddhist texts.
24. One can argue, for instance, for the interpretative gain in viewing cases of intertextual
borrowing in terms of an imaginaire in the broad sense of the term (i.e., a common cultural
and literary context). This may be further complemented by the poststructuralist under-
standing of the notion of intertextuality as designating not the mere context or the simple
fact of “cross-​citation,” as the term is often and rather flatly employed, but an interpretive as
well as a creative activity within a certain interrelational semiotic and ideological field (see
Kristeva, 1980). An example of such an integrative approach is Patton’s examination of the
way in which such an imaginaire is at work in the background of Aśvaghoṣa’s Buddhacaritaṃ,
in its textual reliance on various Brahmanical sources, and in his use of a set of metaphors to
bridge the differences between Buddhist and Brahminic worldviews (2008, 54–​55).
 Introduction 13

of a methodological default in this case—​include the richness of interpre-

tive possibilities that comes from understanding a discourse as a multidi-
rectional conversation rather than one composed of discrete and linearly
organized monologues. Thus, it allows us, for example, to acknowledge that
there is circularity in the conversation, with texts at once both responding
to and already assuming one another.25 As such, a synchronic approach car-
ries the promise of moving beyond the rhetoric of sectarian demarcations or
accepted narratives of textual transmission. Conversely, the main danger it
poses, apart from the trap of ahistoricity, is losing track of the distinctness of
the voices that participate in the conversation and reading too much context
into a particular text.
To maximize the advantages offered by this scheme and avoid its pitfalls, in
the following study, working synchronically within the boundaries of whatever
approximate diachronic framework is available, I attempt to engage with each
individual text as much as possible as an autonomous entity that advances an
independent argument. But this approach is complemented by a view of these
texts as situated within, and hence conversing with, the broader context of
Indian śāstric theories of meaning. This means that I remain attuned always
to any recurrence of themes and to the possibilities of intertextual variation,
reverberation, and cross-​citation as marks of the texts’ awareness of their own
situatedness within a broader context, and attempt to offer a philosophical

25. Such an understanding of the Indian textual realm is presupposed to some extent by
the argument by McCrea and Patil (2010) for the use of the term “text traditions” (rather
than “schools”) in respect to major players in this field; and I believe that this perspective
finds support in Ganeri’s compelling and revisionary argument regarding what an adequate
interpretative context should look like in the case of Indian philosophical texts (2011, 63–​73).
Drawing on Quentin Skinner’s methodology for recovering the illocutionary force of past lin-
guistic acts in order to determine their intended “intervention,” Ganeri nonetheless points
out that Skinner’s conception of the context required for such recovery is overly restricted.
This is because apart from its emphasis on the level of detail about individual circumstances
of authors, which is not always available, Skinner’s conception does not account for the way
in which Indian authors, for instance, sought to perform their “interventions” with respect
above all to an existing intertextual realm. In this sense, the relative lack of chronological
and biographical hard data in the Indian realm of ideas—​the fact that it appears to be “all
text and no context”—​is seen, for a change, not merely as a lamentable predicament, but as
an indication of what this realm regards as its most relevant context—​namely, other texts.
Expanding the Skinnerian methodology to the realm of Indian intellectual history, Ganeri
argues, would therefore require us to consider the interventions of individual authors in
terms of their illocutionary force within such intertextual contexts. Regarding Buddhist
thought in particular, for a discussion of the various forms of intertextual borrowing and
the methodology for its analysis, see Cantwell, Freschi, and Kramer (2016), and especaiily
Wallace (2016) in that issue.
14 Introduction

reconstruction of the conversation about upacāra that nourished and affected

the Yogācāra pan-​figurative claim.
Finally, a word about the “elephant in the room”—​namely, the question
of the Yogācāra’s alleged idealism.26 The proper interpretation of the early
Indian Yogācāra philosophical worldview, and especially of its claim that all
phenomena are merely mental representations (vijñapti-​mātra), is the subject
of ongoing scholarly controversy.27 Roughly speaking, on the one side of this
debate are scholars who maintain that the Yogācāra arguments do indeed aim
to establish a kind of subjective or metaphysical idealism, according to which
nothing exits outside of the perceiving consciousness,28 and on the other are
scholars who question the adequacy of attributing any “idealistic” ontologi-
cal claims to the Yogācāra and instead interpret the school as offering a vari-
ant of epistemic idealism,29 a stance according to which direct knowledge of
externality as such is impossible, and hence all knowledge is given within a
mental realm. As is often the case with longstanding scholarly conundrums,
especially when they are understood dichotomously as posing an either/​or
question, this controversy can sometimes seem to take on a life of its own
somewhat independent of its subject matter. One of the symptoms of this
weight that the debate takes on is the expectation that every new study on the
Yogācāra will address the issue and take sides, even if it is not directly engaged
in the debated question.
In practice, however, the vast array of interpretations proposed by cur-
rent scholarship with respect to this question seem to illustrate above all the
resistance of the early Yogācāra textual corpus to such a binary approach.
Among other things, such an approach implicitly presupposes that in the first
half of the first millennium, the early Yogācāra was already a homogenous
and distinctly defined doxogrpahical entity, while in fact this was hardly the

26. The following comments are based on my survey of this topic in Tzohar (2017a).
27. For opposing interpretations of Vasubandhu and a thorough picture of the current state
of this debate, see Garfield and Gold’s public polemic (2011) and Schmithausen’s (2005)
critique of Lusthaus (2002).
28. This sort of interpretation of the Yogācāra ideas can be found, for instance, in the early
translations and interpretations by La Vallée Poussin (1928), and in D. T. Suzuki’s study
of the Laṅkāvatāra-​sūtra (Suzuki, 1930) and later in Matilal (1974), Griffiths (1986), Wood
(1991), Hopkins (1999), Siderits (2007), and Schmithausen (2005).
29. Works that feature such an interpretation—​w hile varying in their ontological
commitment—​include Wayman (1965), Ueda (1967), Willis (1979), Kochumuttom (1982),
Kalupahana (1987), and most recently Gold (2015). Works that set the epistemic idealist inter-
pretation against the background of a distinctly phenomenological approach are Lusthaus
(2002) and Garfield (2015).
 Introduction 15

case. These multiple interpretations, when considered not so much in light

of their ability to resolve the debate but in terms of their diversity, yield a
much more nuanced and variegated picture regarding the relation between
the Yogācāra and idealism. They suggest that the answers to this question
are deeply context-​and text-​specific, as well as influenced by factors such as
the applied textual selection and the scope of inquiry. 30As we will see, posing
a question, for instance, about the ontological claims of the BBh, the LAS,
or Sthiramati’s TriṃśBh—​all texts that are loosely grouped under the label of
Yogācāra –​–​will yield very different accounts. In this respect, the controversy
regarding the Yogācāra idealism, that “elephant in the room,” may turn out to
be something of a magical creation, insofar as it is appears differently to dif-
ferent spectators—​to borrow the Yogācāra analogy.
By this, I do not mean that the question of the proper interpretation of
Yogācāra idealism is not worth pursuing—​indeed, it must be addressed
since it is both taken up by the traditional doxographic schemes and
required by current philosophical discourse; rather, I intend to suggest the
usefulness of a bottom-​up approach. In this book, accordingly, the ques-
tion of the Yogācāra idealism is temporarily bracketed to make way for more
context-​and text-​specific inquiries, yet without losing sight of the ways in
which these inquiries may eventually contribute to a better understanding
of the issue as a whole.

30. So, for example, regarding the question’s context sensitivity, various scholars have
emphasized the dynamic intellectual development of the Yogācāra textual corpus, point-
ing out the differences on this note between the earliest strata of the Yogācārabhūmi (as
well as the abhidharmasamuccya) and other independent Yogācāra treatises ascribed to
Asaṅga and Vasubandhu and their interpreters. See, for instance, Schmithausen (2005,
9–​10). Regarding the way in which this question depends upon the method of inquiry and
its textual scope, the various interpretations of Vasubandhu’s Viṃśikā offer a good exam-
ple: When read in light of Gold’s extensive philosophical analysis of several fundamental
themes and concerns across Vasubandhu’s unified body of works (2015), the text seems
to align with epistemic idealism, whereas considered in light of the focus of Kellner and
Taber (2014) on the text’s argumentative strategy (rather than individual isolated argu-
ments, an approach supported on hermeneutical grounds by tracing similar strategies in
the AKBh), it appears to align with metaphysical idealism. In another vein, other schol-
ars have shown that much of the controversy regarding the Yogācāra’s idealism turns
on the precise semantic and philosophical meaning attributed to the term “idealism.”
Most recently, Garfield (2015, 186–​199) has demonstrated that the Yogācāra philosophical
worldview does not adequately align with the framework of the realist/​idealist dichotomy.
Considering its relation to contemporary philosophical perspectives, Garfield argues that
it is best described as presenting a phenomenological approach, which is distinct how-
ever from the two main phenomenological strands in contemporary continental philo-
sophical thinking, identified with Edmund Husserl and Martin Heidegger, respectively.
16 Introduction

3. An Outline
The overall structure of this book is guided by the attempt to clarify the Yogācāra
stance on metaphor, which receives its strongest articulation in Sthiramati’s
pan-​figurative claim in the Triṃśikā-​bhāṣya. Its chapters are therefore orga-
nized thematically, rather than according to the chronology or sectarian affili-
ation of the texts discussed, as best serves the progressional philosophical
understanding of this claim, with each chapter building on the explication of
terms, themes, and arguments introduced in the preceding chapters.
Chapters 1 and 2, the first part of the book, provide a gradual entry into
the basic terminology and presuppositions of the Indian philosophical under-
standing of figurative meaning. Specifically, they examine the semantic and
conceptual scope of upacāra among the Yogācāra’s non-​Buddhist intellectual
milieu, in the fundamental works of the Nyāya and Mīmāṃsā schools, and
among the Grammarians, especially Bhartṛhari.
Chapter 1 presents a working definition of metaphor on the basis of the
common features that underlie its understanding by the various Indian
schools of thought. I examine the understanding of metaphor in the early
works of the Mīmāṃsā and Nyāya, which consider the issue as part of their
broader discussion of the denotation of nouns. While these schools’ theories
of meaning share much in their basic understanding of the mechanism of
metaphor, their interpretations can be seen as archetypes of the two poles of
Indian thinking about figurative language—​as either buttressing or under-
mining ordinary language use, respectively. These two approaches, we will
see, recur as a leitmotif in the works of other schools of thought.
Chapter 2 turns to the understanding of metaphor in the school of gram-
matical analysis, focusing on Bhartṛhari’s Vākyapadīya (Treatise on Sentences
and Words, VP) along with its commentaries, and examining its relevance to
later Buddhist formulations of the topic. Here, I focus on Bhaṛthari’s famous
argument, in the third book (kāṇḍa) of the VP, for the figurative existence of
all the referents of words, and on his less explored analogy between metaphor
and perceptual illusion in the second book of the VP. In the latter, I argue,
Bhartṛhari lays the foundations for a sophisticated pragmatist account of
both linguistic and perceptual meaning, which along with the pan-​figurative
claim of the third book, allows an explanation of the operation of ordinary lan-
guage that is independent of the ontological status of the referents of words.
Subsequent chapters will reveal the importance of this account for our inter-
pretation of the Yogācāra understanding of metaphor, motivated as it is by a
similar need to explain the practical value, and what is more, the meaningful-
ness of discourse without appealing to an external objective grounding.
 Introduction 17

In the second part of the book (Chapters 3 and 4), I turn my attention to the
larger Buddhist context of the Yogācāra. Here, I examine the unique aspects of
the theoretical understanding of metaphor in the Abhidharma literature, some
Mahāyāna scripture, and the earliest Yogācāra treatises, without losing sight
of their conversation with the broader context of Indian Sanskritic theories of
meaning.
Chapter 3 deals with the Yogācāra understanding of metaphor as
expressed in one of the school’s earliest sources, the TApaṭ of the BBh,
along with its commentarial sections in the VS, both ascribed to Asaṅga.
The body of works ascribed to Asaṅga is foundational for Yogācāra thought,
yet to date, there is very little scholarship in English about these texts’
understanding of language, with the bulk of the literature focusing either
on their metaphysics or on their theory of meditation. My analysis in this
chapter, which incorporates materials translated into English for the first
time, demonstrates that the writings attributed to Asaṅga also put forth an
influential philosophy of language. The chapter’s translation and analysis
of the metaphor-​related passages in both texts serve to present a unique
Buddhist understanding of the performative philosophical role of figurative
language and of its relation to the possibility of the ineffable. Although we
will see that the arguments in Asaṅga’s texts do not amount to the elaborate
pan-​metaphorical claim presented by later Yogācāra sources, they nonethe-
less anticipate and lay the foundation for the school’s subsequent under-
standing of metaphor.
Concluding the book’s survey of the Buddhist context of the Yogācāra,
Chapter 4 explores the possible ways in which a variety of Buddhist sources—​
including Vasubandhu’s AKBh (and a commentary on it which is ascribed
to Sthiramati), the Yogācāra-​related LAS, and Dignāga’s Pramāṇasamuccaya
(Collection on Reliable Knowledge, PS)—​contributed to Sthiramati’s full-​fledged
theory of metaphor. Here, my reconstruction of the context of the Yogācāra
understanding of metaphor becomes more specific, tracing not only the com-
mon broad presuppositions underlying figurative usage, but also the possibil-
ity of a more concrete intertextual exchange that helped shape Sthiramati’s
claims—​some of them highly innovative—​on this topic.
The third and final part of the book (Chapters 5, 6, and the Conclusion)
puts the pieces of the puzzle together. It explicates Sthiramati’s pan-​figurative
claim in his Triṃśikā-​bhāṣya and draws out its ramifications for the Yogācāra
worldview and its broad conception of meaning, both linguistic and percep-
tual. Here, I also examine how this perspective on metaphor can serve us to
approach the Buddhist application of particular figures and the use of literary
tropes within philosophical texts.
18 Introduction

Chapter 5 concerns Sthiramati’s discussion of metaphor in his com-

mentary on Vasubandhu’s Triṃśikā, and it is here that I draw out the crux
of Sthiramati’s philosophical contribution. The chapter demonstrates how
he incorporates many of the elements introduced by his predecessors into a
highly sophisticated, mostly innovative, philosophical theory of meaning. The
innovation lies above all in tying together, through the pan-​figurative view, the
Yogācāra understanding of the causal activity of consciousness with a linguis-
tic theory of sense.
The chapter discusses Sthiramati’s motivations for presenting this view,
as well as its ramifications for the Yogācāra understanding of the role and
meaning of the school’s own doctrinal and salvific discourse. I argue that
this framework enabled Sthiramati to present an understanding of discourse
that distinguishes between varying levels of meaning within the conventional
realm. This understanding sat well with the Yogācāra soteriological and theo-
retical needs, and crucially, allowed Sthiramati to establish the meaningfulness
of the school’s own metaphysical discourse. Securing this meaningfulness
was especially important to Sthiramati in meeting the challenge posed by
the radical conventionalism of the Madhyamaka, and his response, as we will
see, suggests that the prominent dispute between the early Yogācāra and the
Madhyamaka in fact turned on linguistic rather than on ontological issues.
Chapter 6 explores the broader epistemic ramifications of the Yogācāra
theory of meaning and metaphor. It points out an important feature that this
theory shares with contemporary analytical causal theories of reference—​
namely, the ability to counter the problem of incommensurability—​the relativ-
istic claim that vast differences in our conceptual frameworks imply that we
may be talking at cross-​purposes without acknowledging that fact.
A version of the challenge of incommensurability is palpably present in
the Buddhist tradition in general and in the Yogācāra lore in particular, where
it takes the form of a question concerning the possibility of explaining how
beings at different ends of the Buddhist path can converse in a meaningful
way despite the epistemic abyss that separates them. This discussion presents
the Yogācāra understanding of this problem, notably in Sthiramati’s TriṃśBh
and Asaṅga’s Mahāyānasaṃgraha (Compendium of Mahāyāna, MS), and exam-
ines how Sthiramati’s figurative theory of meaning addresses it.
The chapter finishes by pointing out deep structural affinities between the
Yogācāra understanding of linguistic meaning and its understanding of expe-
rience, particularly of intersubjective experiences of the external world. This
allows us to identify several fundamental themes that run through Yogācāra
thought in general, and through the school’s conception of meaning in
 Introduction 19

particular, implying a broadly conceived theory of meaning that is not merely

linguistic, but also perceptual.
Finally, in the Conclusion, I draw out those features and themes that are
common to the various accounts of metaphor presented in the preceding chap-
ters and gesture at their possible applications. I briefly examine further ways
in which these features may be applied to deepen and enrich our understand-
ing of the Buddhist, and more generally Indian, philosophical engagement
with figurative language. As a quick case study, I explore how the Yogācāra
theory of meaning sheds light on the concrete use of distinct figures, focusing
on a list of similes prevalent in the school’s literature.
PART ONE
 1

Metaphor as Absence
The Case of the Early Nyāya and Mīmāṃ s ā

1.1. What Is Metaphor (Upacāra)?

The idea of metaphor (upacāra) means different things to the various thinkers
that this book examines. But while we will find nothing like a standardized and
unified account of the term in these sources, their respective understandings of
it do exhibit certain common features and presuppositions. Indeed, as we will
see, it is these commonalities that enabled the cross-​sectarian conversation about
upacāra to occur in the first place.
One good way to begin exploring these commonalities is by considering how
they stand in relation to the more standardized understanding of metaphor that
we find in the Sanskrit theory of poetics (alaṃkāraśāstra) that appeared much
later. This standardization is characterized, above all, by the formulation of the
necessary discursive conditions for indirect denotation. In his Indian Theories of
Meaning, Kunjunni Raja (1969, 231–​232) summarizes these conditions as follows:

This function of the word, denoting a referent different from its nor-
mal and primary one, but somehow related to it, is called lakṣaṇā or
upacāra; other terms like gauṇī vṛtti and bhakti are also used to refer to
this secondary significative function of words . . . The three essential
conditions generally accepted by the later Ālaṃkārika-​s as necessary in
lakṣaṇā or transfer are (a) the inapplicability or the unsuitability of the
primary meaning in the context, (b) some relation between the primary
and the actual referent of the word and (c) sanction for the transferred
sense by popular usage, or a definite motive justifying the transfer.1

1. These conditions are summarized from Mammaṭa’s Kāvyaprakāśa II.9. The third condi-
tion [i.e., the motive (prayojana)], which justifies the figurative use, can be sought either in
24 A Yogācār a Buddhist Theory of Metaphor

Applied, for instance, to the figurative phrase “siṃho māṇavakaḥ” [the

“boy (is a) lion”]—​a śāstric stock example of a metaphor based on qualitative
similarity (gauṇī vṛtti)—​this formulation suggests that the primary referent of
the word “lion” is a lion (be it a particular or an instantiation of a universal,
etc.), while its actual referent, or its locus of reference2—​that to which it refers
figuratively—​is the boy. Since we are normally barred from assuming that
there is literally a lion before us, we may instead assume, in accordance with
convention, that the boy and the lion have qualities that are similar, and thus
understand the phrase as implying that the boy is in certain respects like a
lion. It is important to note the difference in this formulation between the
primary object (lion) and the secondary object that serves as the locus of refer-
ence (the boy): while the lion, as an object, is absent from the locus of refer-
ence, the boy is not.
This may seem counterintuitive, given that the post-​Aristotelian Western
discourse of metaphor refers to the boy as the tenor (topic) of the metaphor
and the lion as its illustrative vehicle. Gren-​ Eklund (1986, 81–​82, 92–​ 93)
explains this difference by drawing a distinction between what she calls “meta-
phoric transference,” which describes how figurative usage is conceived in the
Western philosophical tradition, and “secondary attribution,” which describes
its understanding in Indian philosophical and poetic discourse. According
to Gren-​Eklund, metaphoric transference occurs when a word that has one
meaning is understood to mean something else; in the Indian context, how-
ever, figurative attribution marks cases in which a referent is denoted not by
the supposedly “usual” word, but rather by some other word (through seman-
tic imposition, etc.). Thus, the emphasis in Indian discourse is not on the
changed meaning of a word, but on the difference in the referential relations
between a word and its referent.
The understanding of upacāra foremost in terms of its underlying con-
ditions is characteristic of the later Sanskrit theory of poetics. Whereas the
accounts of upacāra discussed in this chapter, all of which refer to philo-
sophical discourse and to an earlier time frame, largely comply with these

the context of its utterance and reception (an option chosen by the early Mīmāṃsā school) or
in the “speaker’s” intention in using the figure (as in the case of the later Ālaṃkārikas). See
also McCrea (2000, 454n.34).
2. The word “locus” here stands for the Sanskrit grammatical technical term adhikaraṇa.
These terms reflect the particular Sanskrit śāstric way of making sense of referential relations
(and also of relations of predication) in terms of loci. See Hayes (1988, 146)
 Metaphor as Absence 25

conditions for figurative usage, they do not treat them as central; as we will
see, they give them less (if any) attention.
Furthermore, while the Indian theory of poetics and later philosophical
treatises engage wholeheartedly in the theorizing and classification of terms
that stand for various kinds of metaphorical use, such concerns are not central
to the philosophical discourse of the time that we are considering. As we will
see, there is no standardized or unified use of these classifications among
the various schools of thought (and sometimes even among early and later
thinkers of the same tradition).3 The same is also true of the attempts (usually
within Western scholarship) to identify parallels in Indian Sanskrit lore for
the different senses of metaphor, metonym, and synecdoche (Gerow, 1984;
Gren-​Eklund, 1986): the texts show us that, in practice, these terms are often
conflated under the rubric of upacāra, a concept whose center of gravity for
these thinkers (unlike for later Sanskrit poetics) is found not in its classifica-
tory or discursive impact, but in its hermeneutical and mostly in its referential
function within theories of meaning.4
Within this framework, the central concern that the highly varied accounts
of upacāra discussed here do share—​indeed, the factor that enables them to
partake in a single debate—​is the referential mechanism underlying figu-
rative usage. Although they diverge in their respective explanations of this
mechanism—​each account according to the philosophical work that it seeks
to perform—​we find in all of them an understanding of figurative use in terms

3. A basic classification distinguishes metaphors based on qualitative similarity (gauṇī vṛtti,

as in the “boy-​lion”) from Indication (lakṣaṇā) -​type metaphors. The latter are based on rela-
tions other than qualitative similarity, as in the phrase “gaṅgāyāṃ ghoṣaḥ,” meaning “a village
on the Ganges.” Since the village cannot literally sit on the river, one resorts to a figurative
understanding of the word Ganges as denoting the riverbank due to their relation of proxim-
ity (sāmīpya). See Kunjunni Raja (1965, 257). So, for instance, Sthiramati and Dignāga gen-
erally identify upacāra with the former kind, Uddyotakara uses it in his Nyāyasūtravārttika
(NySVā) to describe cases of the latter kind, and the Nyāyasūtrabhāṣya understands it as
incorporating all kinds of figurative transference.
4. Patton (2004, 45) suggests a point of more or less general agreement in the scholarly
debate regarding the differences between metaphor and metonym: “In metaphor, two ele-
ments from different conceptual domains are related. In metonym, two elements from the
same conceptual domain are related [italics in the original].” Even through the lens of this
broad definition, however, the term upacāra appears to be applied to both cases. Thus, for
instance, Sthiramati uses the term to describe the expression the “boy (is) fire” (a metaphor),
while Vasubandhu applies it to the phrase “the eye sees,” which he regards as a metonym
(as there is no real agentive element involved and the sense faculty is conflated with its
produced cognition).
26 A Yogācār a Buddhist Theory of Metaphor

of the absence of the primary referent from the locus of reference (as in the
previous example, with the absence of a lion in the boy).5
This conception of upacāra should be considered against the background
of a feature common to all Indian schools of thought, whether Buddhist or
non-​Buddhist—​ namely, their general adherence to referential theories of
meaning (i.e., theories that identify a word’s meaning with its designatum).
This sort of scheme, in which, to quote Mark Siderits, “the name-​bearer rela-
tion seems to reign supreme as the central metaphor of semantics,” does not
give center stage to the distinction between an expression’s reference and its
“sense” (akin to Frege’s Sinn) and thus perforce does not take “sense” to be a
distinct element of meaning over and above the reference (see Siderits, 1986,
81; Mohanty, 1992, 60–​67; Ganeri, 2006a, 9–​12).
One can only speculate about the reasons for the strict adherence of Indian
theories of meaning to the referential model. One possible explanation may
be found in the initial role allocated to verbal testimony (śabda) in Indian epis-
temic discourse. Discussing this issue in the context of an analysis of linguis-
tic comprehension (śābdabodha) of sentences, Mohanty (1992, 79) points out
the following:

Neither the Mīmāṃsā nor the Nyāya is concerned, in the strict sense,
with what one can call “understanding the meaning of an expression.”
One is rather concerned with how hearing a sentence, under appro-
priate conditions (e.g. when the speaker is honest and reliable and
known to be so), serves as a means of acquiring valid knowledge, i.e.
as a pramāṇa. When those appropriate conditions are fulfilled, under-
standing amounts to knowing, i.e. grasping, not the sense, but rather
the ontological structure that obtains, e.g. the individual over there as
possessing cowness, and as characterized by a color-​particular which
possesses the universal whiteness.

Mohanty captures what can be seen as a constitutive feature of Indian lin-

guistic discourse—​namely, that the linguistic understanding of an expression

5. In the words of the Nyāya: “yadi na vyaktiḥ padārthaḥ kathaṃ tarhi vyaktāv upacāra iti?
nimittād atadbhāve ’pi tadupacāraḥ/​. . . ,” NySBh_​2.261, Tarkatirtha (1936–​1944, 662). The
Nyāyasūtrabhāṣya (NySBh) is here cited from the following Sanskrit e-​text: Indology Student
Team, University of Tokyo, “Gautama: Nyayaāsūtra with Vātsyāyana’s Nyāyabhāṣya” (http://​
gretil.sub.uni-​goettingen.de/​gretil/​1_​sanskr/​6_​sastra/​3_​phil/​nyaya/​nysvbh1u.htm). This
electronic edition is based on Tarkatirtha’s edition of the text, and all page numbers given
for the Sanskrit verses refer to that edition. In this chapter, unless otherwise indicated, all
translations are my own.
 Metaphor as Absence 27

(parallel to its “sense”) was always conceived in this discourse as dependent

on, and therefore subordinate to, its epistemic function.6 Within this scheme,
language usage had to maintain a relation to an actual or possible state of
affairs if it was to fulfill its epistemic role, and hence it was meaningful only
insofar as it was referential.7 Given these assumptions, expressions with a
sense but no reference (such as “the son of a barren woman”) were naturally
seen as an anomaly that threatens the epistemic function of words. We will
see that the Buddhists, although operating with the same view of discourse
as referential, generally rejected this realist semantics8 and indeed ultimately
sought to undermine it by capitalizing precisely on the threat posed to the real-
ist picture by referenceless expressions.
Within this overwhelmingly semantics-​oriented framework, the meaning
of a word is necessarily a function of the actuality (ontological, epistemic) of its
referent. Under these conditions, secondary denotation—​and the ideas that a
word may denote a referent other than its “primary” one and that this primary

6. Mohanty qualifies this claim, however, by pointing out that despite the overwhelming
interest in the epistemic role of words, some theorization of the linguistic understanding
of expressions is found in both the Nyāya and the Mīmāṃsā explication of śābdabodha. He
argues that the theoretical need for a perspective that allows śābdabodha to involve a sort of
“quasi-​sense,” in addition to being a mode of knowledge, was recognized by the tradition—​as
exemplified, for instance, in the query whether there is śābdabodha even when there is doubt
concerning semantic competence (i.e., whether one can comprehend an expression when
it is referenceless or a sentence when it is false). Mohanty (1992, 61, 83, 89, 253–​254). This
view is supported by Ganeri (2006a, 146–​154), who examines this possibility with respect to
the Navya-​Nyāya; he concludes that the school’s presentation of cognitive modes can indeed
be seen as similar to Frege’s distinction between sense (Sinn) and meaning (Bedeutung) once
it is taken as a general theoretical distinction (without adopting the theoretical implications
proposed by Frege, such as in his theory of communication).
7. An additional cause can perhaps be traced to another fundamental feature of Indian
semantics—​namely, the denotative power (śakti) behind the denotative function (abhidhā-​
vṛtti) of words. Insofar as this power is considered an innate capacity of words (regardless of
the question of the origin of the connection between a word and its meaning), it appears to
privilege a referential conception of meaning. See Kunjunni Raja (1977, 19–​20) and Coward
(1990, 6–​7).
8. But they did not necessarily reject the epistemic function of verbal testimony (śabda
pramāṇa) as a possible means of valid knowledge. For instance, both Asaṅga and Vasubandhu
accept scriptural testimony (āptavāda, āptāgama) as an autonomous pramāṇa, although this
went hand in glove with a rather wary approach to the authority of scripture (see Tzohar,
2017b). This ambivalent approach to the issue is also manifest in the works of thinkers like
Dignāga and Dharmakīrti, who, despite rejecting testimony as a pramāṇa, still held scrip-
ture to have a certain epistemic purchase by allowing for a type of inference that was based
on scriptural sources, over and above the so-​called ordinary kind of inference [the latter
defined as vastubalapravṛttānumāna, literally—​an inference that functions by the force of
(real) entities—​i.e., an inference that is evaluated on the basis of facts and states of affairs].
See Tillemans (1999, 27–​30).
28 A Yogācār a Buddhist Theory of Metaphor

referent may be absent from the locus of reference—​poses an explanatory

challenge for theories that maintain a word-​world correspondence.9 The var-
ied, often highly creative ways in which Indian thinkers have explained away,
utilized, and sometimes succumbed to the philosophical challenges posed
by figurative meaning are my topic throughout all the chapters of this book.
We begin, in the next section, with a discussion of the Mīmāṃsā and Nyāya
schools.

1.2. Upacāra in the Early Mīmāṃsā School

The early Mīmāṃsā, the school of Indian hermeneutics par excellence, seems
like the natural starting point for a discussion of the Indian philosophical con-
ception of figurative meaning. Apart from the school’s deep interest in impli-
cative language as part of its focus on the interpretation of Vedic utterances—​a
framework that, as we will see, influenced the Buddhist Abhidharma—​the
Mīmāṃsā’s hermeneutical concerns also deeply shaped the school’s concep-
tion of language and meaning. This resulted, as we will see shortly, in a theory
of meaning in which figurative transference became more the norm than the
exception, bringing the Mīmāṃsā much closer to the Buddhist view than one
would expect.
The Mīmāṃsā requirement for a decisive and consistent interpretation of
the Vedas, and especially of Vedic injunctions, does not allow meaning to be
determined either by convention or by an appeal to pragmatics. The school,
therefore, requires a system of semantics in which the relation between
words and their referents is invariable, a condition expressed in the school’s
notion of this relation as autpattika—​“innate” or “originary.” A definition of
this relation is supplied in Śabara’s commentary (Śābarabhāṣya, ŚāBh) on the
Mīmāṃsāsūtra (MīS) 1.1.5:10

“Autpattika” –​what we mean by this is nitya. It is “origin” that is indi-

rectly spoken of as existence (presence). It is the existence, inseparable
from the word and the object, that constitutes the relation and there is

9. Bronkhorst (2001, 475–​477) has suggested that the need to respond to the bedrock
assumption of a correspondence between language and reality has been a driving force in
shaping the landscape of Indian philosophical discourse.
10. In this chapter, I use Pohlus (2010) diplomatic e-​text edition of the MīS and ŚāBh, based
chiefly on M. C. Nyayaratna’s edition (1863–​1889), compared with five other editions. Page
numbers refer to Nyayaratna’s edition.
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prolonged absence in town seemed futile, his daughter wrote, still to
the care of “Old Betty’s,” informing him that she could no longer bear
the suspense, and that she had written to Kemble to say that she
was coming to town immediately, and would drive at once to his
house, where, “if he cannot see me then, I have requested him to
leave word when and where he will see me.”
The matter was evidently settled and the play arranged to be
produced at Drury Lane Theatre on Saturday, October 11. Writing
this information to Sir William Elford a week or so before the
production, Miss Mitford said: “Mr. Young plays the hero, and has
been studying the part during the whole vacation; and a new
actress[24] makes her first appearance in the part of the heroine. This
is a very bold and hazardous experiment, no new actress having
come out in a new play within the memory of man; but she is young,
pretty, unaffected, pleasant-voiced, with great sensibility, and a
singularly pure intonation—a qualification which no actress has
possessed since Mrs. Siddons. Stanfield[25] is painting the new
scenes, one of which is an accurate representation of Rienzi’s
house. This building still exists in Rome, and is shown there as a
curious relique of the domestic architecture of the Middle Ages. They
have got a sketch which they sent for on purpose, and they are
hunting up costumes with equal care; so that it will be very splendidly
brought out, and I shall have little to fear, except from the emptiness
of London so early in the season. If you know any one likely to be in
that great desert so early in the year, I know that you will be so good
as to mention me and my tragedy. I do not yet know where I shall be.
I think of going to town in about a fortnight, and, if the play succeeds,
shall remain there about the same time.”
Mrs. S. C. Hall, in her Memories, gives us a delightful picture of
the flurry and bustle which preceded the Rienzi production, a bustle
which was accentuated by an alteration of the date to one week
earlier. Miss Mitford was up in town superintending the
arrangements, lodging meanwhile at the house of her friend, Mrs.
Hofland, in Newman Street. “Mrs. Hofland invited us to meet her
there one morning. All the world was talking about the expected play,
and all the world was paying court to its author.
 “‘Mary,’ said Mrs. Hofland to her visitors, ‘is a little grand and
stilted just now. There is no doubt the tragedy will be a great
success; they all say so in the green-room; and Macready told me it
was a wonderful tragedy—an extraordinary tragedy “for a woman to
have written.” The men always make that reservation, my dear; they
cramp us, my dear, and then reproach us with our lameness; but
Mary did not hear it, and I did not tell her. She is supremely happy
just now, and so is her father, the doctor. Yes, it is no wonder that
she should be a little stilted—such grand people coming to call and
invite them to dinner, and all the folk at the theatre down-upon-knee
to her—it is such a contrast to her life at Three Mile Cross.’
“‘But,’ I said, ‘she deserves all the homage that can be rendered
her—her talents are so varied. Those stories of Our Village have
been fanned by the pure breezes of “sunny Berkshire,” and are
inimitable as pictures of English rural life; and she has also achieved
the highest walk in tragedy——’
“‘For a woman,’ put in dear Mrs. Hofland. She had not forgiven our
great tragedian—then in the zenith of his popularity—for his
ungallant reserve.”
It is pleasant to read that Macready could praise this tragedy,
although we cannot forget that spiteful entry in his Diary, under date
November 24, 1836—“I have no faith in her power of writing a play.”
Stilted or not, Miss Mitford was contented to appear in a garb
which spoke, all too plainly, of the country cottage and country
fashion.
“I certainly was disappointed,” continues Mrs. Hall, “when a stout
little lady, tightened up in a shawl, rolled into the parlour in Newman
Street, and Mrs. Hofland announced her as Miss Mitford; her short
petticoats showing wonderfully stout leather boots, her shawl
bundled on, and a little black coal-scuttle bonnet—when bonnets
were expanding—added to the effect of her natural shortness and
rotundity; but her manner was that of a cordial country gentlewoman;
the pressure of her fat little hands (for she extended both) was warm;
her eyes, both soft and bright, looked kindly and frankly into mine;
and her pretty, rosy mouth, dimpled with smiles that were always
sweet and friendly. At first I did not think her at all ‘grand or stilted,’
though she declared she had been quite spoilt—quite ruined since
she came to London, with all the fine compliments she had received;
but the trial was yet to come. ‘Suppose—suppose Rienzi should be
——,’ and she shook her head. Of course, in full chorus, we declared
that could not be. ‘No! she would not spend an evening with us until
after the first night; if the play went ill, or even coldly, she would run
away, and never be again seen or heard of; if it succeeded——’ She
drew her rotund person to its full height, and endeavoured to stretch
her neck, and the expression of her face assumed an air of
unmistakable triumph. She was always pleasant to look at, and had
her face not been cast in so broad—so ‘outspread’—a mould, she
would have been handsome; even with that disadvantage, if her
figure had been tall enough to carry her head with dignity, she would
have been so, but she was most vexatiously ‘dumpy’; but when Miss
Mitford spoke, the awkward effect vanished—her pleasant voice, her
beaming eyes and smiles, made you forget the wide expanse of
face; and the roly-poly figure, when seated, did not appear really
short.”
On October 4 Rienzi was played—played to crowded houses, with
audiences so rapt that a pin might have been heard had one
dropped in the house. The author, fearful of failure, dare not witness
the first production, but remained near at hand, praying for success
from her inmost soul, “for on it hangs the comfort of those far dearer
to me than myself.” It was Haydon who was the first to bring her the
news of success, and it was a message the bearer of which she
never forgot.
On October 20 she wrote informing Sir William Elford that “the
triumph has been most complete and decisive—the houses crowded
—and the attention such as has not been since Mrs. Siddons. How
long the run may continue I cannot say, for London is absolutely
empty; but even if the play were to stop to-night, I should be
extremely thankful—more thankful than I have words to tell; the
impression has been so deep and so general. You should have been
in London, or seen the newspapers as a whole, to judge of the
exceedingly strong sensation that has been produced.”
 “The reception of this tragedy,” wrote George Daniel, the famous
critic and Editor of Cumberland’s British Theatre, “is a proof that,
though the public have been wont to feed on garbage, they have no
disinclination to wholesome food.... If in the character of Rienzi, Miss
Mitford has shown that she can write with masculine energy, let
Claudia bear witness that her wonted dominion over the heart is still
in full force; that, with the power of agitating the soul by the fierce
conflict of contending passions, a fine sensibility, a true pathos, a
bewitching tenderness, are still her own, to relieve and illumine the
dark shadows that veil the mysterious grandeur of the tragic muse.
“The sentiments are just and noble; the language is vigorous,
picturesque and poetical.
“It was to be expected that the actor who plays Macbeth and
Hamlet with such skill and effect as Mr. Young should be highly
successful in Rienzi. His performance was a fine specimen of the
Kemble school—chaste, vigorous and grand. Miss Phillips proved
herself fully equal to sustain the character of the gentle Claudia. Her
excellence lies in the expression of tenderness.”
Congratulations poured in upon the author from all quarters, and
these, with countless invitations to festivities in her honour, nearly
turned her head. Fulfilling a promise made at the Hofland’s house to
Mrs. Hall, she went to dinner one evening during the run of Rienzi,
and was, unconsciously, the cause of much merriment, fortunately
suppressed. Mrs. Hall describes her as not appearing to advantage
that evening; “her manner was constrained, and even haughty. She
got up tragedy looks, which did not harmonize with her naturally
playful expression. She seated herself in a high chair, and was
indignant at the offer of a footstool, though her feet barely touched
the ground; she received those who wished to be introduced to her
en reine; but such was her popularity just then, that all were gratified.
She was most unbecomingly dressed in a striped satin something,
neither high nor low, with very short sleeves, for her arms were white
and finely formed; she wore a large yellow turban, which added
considerably to the size of her head. She had evidently bought the
hideous thing en route, and put it on, in the carriage, as she drove to
our house, for pinned at the back was a somewhat large card, on
which were written in large letters, ‘very chaste—only 5s. 3d.’ I
had observed several of our party passing behind the chair,
whispering and tittering, and soon ascertained the cause. Under
pretence of settling her turban, I removed the obnoxious notice; and,
of course, she never knew that so many wags had been merry at her
cost.”
All very amusing; and yet, a picture which cannot fail to evoke our
sympathy for the little woman so anxious to enjoy to the full her
wonderful hour of success.
The play ran for fifty nights and enjoyed a truly remarkable sale in
book form. In view of the popularity of Rienzi and, possibly, because
she feared it might affect the run in some way, Miss Mitford now
begged Kemble to postpone the production of Inez de Castro until
some future date, to which he, of course, agreed.
Meanwhile, and in the November of the same year—that is, while
Rienzi was still running—she made preparations towards the writing
of a new play, founded on a German story, and to be called Otto of
Wittelsbach.
Upon her return to Three Mile Cross she was again inundated with
congratulations, both personal and written, and this, of course,
proved a serious delay to her work, and, incidentally, led to a
temporary break in her correspondence with her old friend, Sir
William Elford. Conscience-stricken, she sent him a pretty letter—an
amusing blend of contrition and excuse—on her birthday.
“Thinking over those whom I love and those who have been kind
to me, as one does on these annual occasions, it occurred to me, my
dear friend, that I had most unkindly checked your warmhearted
interest in my doings. I was very busy—not quite well—and
overwhelmed, beyond anything that can be conceived, by letters and
visits of congratulation. I am now quite well again; and though still
with much to do—much that I ought to have done to make up—yet,
having fairly stemmed the tide of formal compliments, I steal a
moment to tell you and your dear circle that Rienzi continues
prosperous. It has passed the twentieth night, which, you know,
insures the payment of four hundred pounds from the theatre (the
largest price that any play can gain); and the sale of the tragedy has
been so extraordinary, that I am told the fourth edition is nearly
exhausted—which, as the publisher told me each edition would
consist of at least two thousand, makes a circulation of eight
thousand copies in two months.... Heaven grant I may ever do as
well again! I shall have hard work to write up to my own reputation,
for certainly I am at present greatly overrated.”
Among the many tributes of praise received by Rienzi’s author
none gave greater delight than the one embodied in Lord Lytton’s
Preface to his novel, Rienzi, which first appeared in 1835. “I cannot
conclude,” it runs, “without rendering the tribute of my praise and
homage to the versatile and gifted Author of the beautiful Tragedy of
Rienzi. Considering that our hero be the same—considering that we
had the same materials from which to choose our several stories—I
trust I shall be found to have little, if at all, trespassed upon ground
previously occupied. With the single exception of a love-intrigue
between a relative of Rienzi and one of the antagonist party, which
makes the plot of Miss Mitford’s Tragedy, and is little more than an
episode in my Romance, having slight effect on the conduct and
none on the fate of the hero, I am not aware of any resemblance
between the two works; and even this coincidence I could easily
have removed, had I deemed it the least advisable; but it would be
almost discreditable if I had nothing that resembled a performance
so much it were an honour to imitate.”

FOOTNOTES:
[24] Louisa Anne Phillips; she was only sixteen when she made
her début.
[25] W. Clarkson Stanfield—the famous marine-painter.
 CHAPTER XXI

A GREAT SORROW

Prominent among the many and varied characteristics of Miss

Mitford’s life is the remarkable and unfailing interest she ever
displayed towards struggling genius. Nothing gave her more
pleasure than news of some individual who, possibly humbly born,
was making a strenuous fight for fame; while to be brought into
personal relationship with the struggler was a circumstance which
seemed at once to quicken her mothering instinct, and it would not
be long before she became a self-constituted champion, using her
influence to secure the interest and support of all who were likely to
be of service to her protégé.
For Haydon she had an unfailing regard and would fight his battles
with any who dared to disparage him or his work in her hearing. Of
Talfourd’s achievements she was never tired of talking and writing,
even after he had forfeited any claim to her interest by his stupid
jealousy. Lough, the sculptor, son of a small farmer in
Northumberland, excited her admiration when, barely two years after
he had left his father’s cornfields, he achieved fame with his Statue
of Milo. And now, following her own success with Rienzi, we find her
interesting herself in young Lucas, the painter, of whom she wrote to
Harness: “He is only twenty-one, was bound to Reynolds, the
engraver, and practised the art which he was resolved to pursue,
secretly, in his own room, in hours stolen from sleep and needful
exercise, and minutes from necessary food. Last July he became his
own master, and since then he has regularly painted. Everybody
almost that sees his pictures desires to sit, and he is already torn to
pieces with business. In short, I expect great things of him. But what
I especially like is his character. I have seen nothing in all my life
more extraordinary than his union of patience and temper and
rationality, with a high and ardent enthusiasm.” That was written in
the January of 1828. In the following November she wrote to
Haydon: “I am now going to tell you something which I earnestly
hope will neither vex nor displease you; if it do, I shall grieve most
heartily—but I do not think it will. The patron of a young artist of great
merit (Mr. Lucas) has made a most earnest request that I will sit to
him. He comes here to paint it—and there is a double view; first to
get two or three people hereabout to sit to him; next to do him good
in London, by having in the Exhibition the portrait of a person whose
name will probably induce people to look at it, and bring the painting
into notice. The manner in which this was pressed upon me by a
friend to whom I owe great gratitude was such as I really could not
refuse—especially as it can by no accident be injurious to your
splendid reputation, that an ugly face which you happen to have
taken, should be copied by another. There is a project of having the
portrait engraved, which would increase the benefit that they
anticipate to Mr. Lucas, and would be so far satisfactory to us as it
would supersede a villainous print out of some magazine, from a
drawing of Miss Drummond’s, which is now selling in the shops.” To
this Haydon good-naturedly replied that he would not be offended
and that he should be glad to be of use to Mr. Lucas, or of any
service to the print; but, as a matter of fact, he was not at all pleased
and was really jealous of the young painter for a while.
Meanwhile the sittings for the Lucas portrait took place, and by
January of 1829 the picture was advanced enough for its original to
bestow her praise. Sir William Elford was, of course, among the
earliest to learn the particulars. “The portrait is said by everybody to
be a work of art. It certainly is a most graceful and elegant picture—a
very fine piece of colour, and, they say, a very strong likeness. It was
difficult, in painting me, to steer between the Scylla and Charybdis of
making me dowdy, like one of my own rustic heroines, or dressed
out like a tragedy queen. He has managed the matter with infinite
taste, and given to the whole figure the look of a quiet gentlewoman.
I never saw a more lady-like picture. The dress is a black velvet hat,
with a long, drooping black feather; a claret-coloured high gown; and
a superb open cloak of gentianella blue, the silvery fur and white
satin lining of which are most exquisitely painted and form one of the
most beautiful pieces of drapery that can be conceived. The face is
thoughtful and placid, with the eyes looking away—a peculiarity
which, they say, belongs to my expression.”
Assuming that these millinery and drapery details were
understandable to Sir William, the catalogue must have given him
something of a shock, for he would assuredly wonder what had
come over his little friend, in the first place, to have become
possessed of such a heap of finery and, in the second place, to have
submitted to being decked out in it.
The truth is that Lady Madelina Palmer—wife of the Reading
Member, Fyshe Palmer—had taken a leading part in the
arrangement for this portrait and, determined that the author of
Rienzi should make a brave show, had dressed up the homely figure
in some of her own society garments. The effect was worse than that
of a parlour-maid masquerading as the mistress, for Miss Mitford had
neither the figure nor the artificiality which could set off the
bedizenments of a duke’s daughter. Poor Lucas—“the sweet young
boy,” Miss Mitford afterwards called him—fumed inwardly when he
saw what he had to portray, daring not to criticize lest he offend the
owner of the clothes, who was near by. He stuck manfully to his task,
fretting at the bad taste of the whole thing, only to cancel the picture
in the end. Fortunately an engraving of the picture has been
preserved, of which we are able to present a copy in these pages.
As a picture it is undoubtedly graceful and admirably proportioned,
but as regards the tout ensemble it must be regarded as a failure.
 Mary Russell Mitford.
(From a painting by John Lucas, 1829.)
During the sitting Miss Mitford composed some graceful lines to
the painter, which are worthy of quotation here, because apart from
their intrinsic value as a poetical tribute, they also contain a piece of
self-portraiture most deftly interwoven:—
“To Mr. Lucas
(Written whilst sitting to him for my Portrait, December, 1828).

“Oh, young and richly gifted! born to claim

No vulgar place amidst the sons of fame;
 With shapes of beauty haunting thee like dreams,
And skill to realize Art’s loftiest themes:
How wearisome to thee the task must be
To copy these coarse features painfully;
Faded by time and paled by care, to trace
The dim complexion of this homely face;
And lend to a bent brow and anxious eye
Thy patient toil, thine Art’s high mastery.
Yet by that Art, almost methinks Divine,
By touch and colour, and the skilful line
Which at a stroke can strengthen and refine,
And mostly by the invisible influence
Of thine own spirit, gleams of thought and sense
Shoot o’er the careworn forehead, and illume
The heavy eye, and break the leaden gloom:
Even as the sunbeams on the rudest ground
Fling their illusive glories wide around,
And make the dullest scene of Nature bright
By the reflexion of their own pure light.”

During the year Dr. Mitford developed a most curious and

inexplicable dislike to his daughter’s friends and acquaintances.
Possibly he was growing tired of the congratulatory callers, but even
so, he must surely have recognized that this sort of thing was the
penalty exacted of popularity. “My father,” she wrote to William
Harness, “very kind to me in many respects, very attentive if I’m ill,
very solicitous that my garden should be nicely kept, that I should go
out with him, and be amused—is yet, so far as art, literature, and the
drama are concerned, of a temper infinitely difficult to deal with. He
hates and despises them, and all their professors—looks on them
with hatred and with scorn; and is constantly taunting me with my
‘friends’ and my ‘people’ (as he calls them), reproaching me if I hold
the slightest intercourse with author, editor, artist, or actor, and
treating with frank contempt every one not of a station in the county. I
am entirely convinced that he would consider Sir Thomas Lawrence,
Sir Walter Scott, and Mrs. Siddons as his inferiors. Always this is
very painful—strangely painful.
 “Since I have known Mr. Cathcart I can say with truth that he has
never spoken to me or looked at me without ill-humour; sometimes
taunting and scornful—sometimes more harsh than you could fancy.
Now, he ought to remember that it is not for my own pleasure, but
from a sense of duty, that I have been thrown in the way of these
persons; and he should allow for the natural sympathy of similar
pursuits and the natural wish to do the little that one so powerless
and poor can do to bring merit (and that of a very high order) into
notice. It is one of the few alleviations of a destiny that is wearing
down my health and mind and spirits and strength—a life spent in
efforts above my powers, and which will end in the workhouse, or in
a Bedlam, as the body or the mind shall sink first. He ought to feel
this; but he does not. I beg your pardon for vexing you with this
detail. I do not often indulge in such repining.”
It is difficult to read such a letter without experiencing a feeling of
intensest indignation against the almost inhuman selfishness of Dr.
Mitford, who, content to batten on the fruits of his daughter’s
industry, would yet make her path more difficult by his unreasonable
and capricious jealousy. The incident can only be likened to that of a
brute creature biting the hand that feeds him. And what, after all, was
the cause of this cruel conduct? Nothing other than that his daughter
was interesting herself in a young actor whose welfare she hoped to
promote.
Contrast this episode with one of a few months later, which Miss
Mitford was delighted to relate—it showed such admirable traits in
the “dear papa’s” character, and could not go unrecorded. “Dash has
nearly been killed to-day, poor fellow! He got into a rabbit burrow so
far that he could neither move backward nor forward; and my father,
two men and a boy, were all busy digging for upwards of two hours,
in a heavy rain, to get him out. They had to penetrate through a high
bank, with nothing to guide them but the poor dog’s moans. You
never saw any one so full of gratitude, or so sensible of what his
master has done for him, as he is.... My father was wet to the skin;
but I am sure he would have dug till this time rather than any living
creature, much less his own favourite dog, should have perished so
miserably.”
 In the tragedy of Rienzi there are some fine lines embodied in
Rienzi’s injunction to his daughter, which we cannot refrain from
quoting at this point:—

“Claudia, in these bad days,

When men must tread perforce the flinty path
Of duty, hard and rugged; fail not thou
Duly at night and morning to give thanks
To the all-gracious Power, that smoothed the way
For woman’s tenderer feet. She but looks on,
And waits and prays for the good cause, whilst man
Fights, struggles, triumphs, dies!”

Did we not know that Miss Mitford was incapable of a harsh

thought towards her father, we should be inclined to read a satire
into these lines. Who smoothed the way for her? What time had she
wherein to wait and pray? Her days she spent in treading the flinty
path of duty, made more rugged and hard by that one who, had he
done his duty, would have exerted himself rather in smoothing the
way.
Writing to Haydon late in the year to congratulate him on a
success, she said:—“Be quite assured that my sympathy with you
and with art is as strong as ever, albeit the demonstration have lost
its youthfulness and its enthusiasm, just as I myself have done. The
fact is that I am much changed, much saddened—am older in mind
than in years—have entirely lost that greatest gift of nature, animal
spirits, and am become as nervous and good-for-nothing a person
as you can imagine. Conversation excites me sometimes, but only, I
think, to fall back with a deader weight. Whether there be any
physical cause for this, I cannot tell. I hope so, for then perhaps it
may pass away; but I rather fear that it is the overburthen, the sense
that more is expected of me than I can perform, which weighs me
down and prevents me doing anything. I am ashamed to say that a
play bespoken last year at Drury Lane, and wanted by them beyond
measure, is not yet nearly finished. I do not even know whether it will
be completed in time to be produced this season. I try to write it and
cry over my lamentable inability, but I do not get on. Women were
not meant to earn the bread of a family—I am sure of that—there is a
want of strength.... God bless you and yours! Do not judge of the
sincerity of an old friendship, or the warmth of an old friend, by the
unfrequency or dulness of her letters.”
Added to all this weight of work and the forbearance exacted of
her by her father, there was the worry consequent upon Mrs.
Mitford’s failing health. Judging by the letters of the period it is
evident that the mother’s condition was growing serious. Her mind
was often a blank and, as the winter drew on, there was a
recurrence of the asthma which sapped the little strength remaining
to her. “My mother, whom few things touch now, is particularly
pleased,” wrote Miss Mitford to William Harness à propos of a visit
he had promised to pay them, and concerning which she added:
—“You don’t know how often I have longed to press you to come to
us, but have always been afraid; you are used to things so much
better, and I thought you would find it dull.”
On Boxing-Day, 1829, Mrs. Mitford’s condition was very grave, for
she was seized with apoplexy, and had to be put to bed. There she
lingered hovering between life and death until the morning of
January 2, 1830, when she passed away, in the eightieth year of her
age. The account of her last illness and death is amongst the most
touching things ever penned by her daughter—to whom
sentimentality was abhorrent. It is too long for extensive quotation,
but we cannot forbear making a brief extract describing the last sad
moments.
“She was gone. I had kissed her dear hand and her dear face just
before. She looked sweet, and calm, and peaceful: there was even a
smile on her dear face. I thought my heart would have broken, and
my dear father’s too.
“On Saturday I did not see her; I tried, but on opening the door I
found her covered by a sheet, and had not courage to take it down....
On Thursday I saw her for the last time, in the coffin, with the dear
face covered, and gathered for her all the flowers I could get—
chrysanthemums (now a hallowed flower), white, yellow and purple
—laurustinus, one early common primrose, a white Chinese
primrose, bay and myrtle from a tree she liked, verbena, and lemon-
grass also. I put some of these in the coffin, with rosemary, and my
dear father put some.
“We kissed her cold hand, and then we followed her to her grave
in Shinfield Church, near the door, very deep and in a fine soil, with
room above it for her own dear husband and her own dear child.
God grant we may tread in her steps!... No human being was ever so
devoted to her duties—so just, so pious, so charitable, so true, so
feminine, so industrious, so generous, so disinterested, so lady-like
—never thinking of herself, always of others—the best mother, the
most devoted wife, the most faithful friend.... Oh, that I could but
again feel the touch of that dear hand! God forgive me my many
faults to her, blessed angel, and grant that I may humbly follow in her
track!... She told Harriet Palmer (of whom she was fond) that she
meant to get a guinea, and have her father’s old Bible—the little
black Bible which she read every day—beautifully bound, with her
initials on it, and give it to me. She told me, when Otto should be
performed, she wanted a guinea—but not why—and would not take
it before. It shall be done, blessed saint!”
 CHAPTER XXII

“THE WORKHOUSE—A FAR PREFERABLE

DESTINY”

“For my own part I have plenty that must be done; much connected
painfully with my terrible grief; much that is calculated to force me
into exertion, by the necessity of getting money to meet the
inevitable expenses. Whether it were inability or inertness I cannot
tell, but Otto is still but little advanced. I lament this of all things now;
I grieve over it as a fault as well as a misfortune.”
So wrote Miss Mitford to William Harness on January 9, 1830, the
day following her mother’s funeral. And truly there was plenty to be
done and she would need all her woman’s courage, for now “the
weight which Dr. Mitford had divided between two forbearing women
had to be borne by one.”
A new volume—the fourth—of Our Village was now almost ready
for publication, for which Whittaker agreed to give £150, and during
the month an agent from a publisher had called at Three Mile Cross
with a view to arranging for a work to be entitled Stories of American
Life by American Writers, which were to be selected and edited, with
prefaces by Miss Mitford. The suggested publisher was Colburn.
This, of course, necessitated a great deal of labour, in the midst of
which the negotiations for the American book nearly fell through by
reason of a quarrel between the publisher and his agent.
It was a most trying period, for Dr. Mitford grew more exacting day
by day, demanding more and more attention from his daughter,
whom he expected—nay, forced—to play cribbage with him until he
fell asleep, when, being released, she read and worked far into the
night. Then, to make matters worse, the Doctor began to imbibe
more wine than was good for him—it will be noticed that his creature
comforts did not diminish—and, whilst returning alone from a dinner-
party in the neighbourhood, was thrown out of the chaise and the
horse and vehicle arrived empty at the cottage in the dead of night.
His daughter, who had been waiting for him, made the discovery that
he was missing and, rousing the man and servants, they all set off
along the road to Shinfield, finding him lying stunned by the roadside
a mile away, “Only think,” wrote his daughter, “what an agony of
suspense it was! Thank Heaven, however, he escaped uninjured,
except being stiff from the jar; and I am recovering my nervousness
better than I could have expected.”
 Very truly yours
M. R. Mitford
THE AUTHOR OF OUR VILLAGE
Miss Mitford “attended by a printer’s devil to whom she is
delivering ‘copy.’” (From a sketch in Fraser’s Magazine,
May, 1831.)
The success of Rienzi in America, and the previous re-publication
in that country of a small volume of the Narrative Poems on the
Female Character, had brought Miss Mitford’s name prominently
before the American people, and towards the end of 1830 she was
gratified by the receipt of a long letter of congratulation from Miss
Catharine Maria Sedgwick,[26] an American author of some repute in
her day, who had, that year, published a novel entitled Hope Leslie.
The letter mentioned the despatch of an author’s copy of one of the
writer’s books and asked for particulars of the village and home-life
of Miss Mitford, whose volumes on Our Village were being read with
avidity across the Atlantic. It drew a long and characteristic reply.
“I rejoice,” wrote Miss Mitford, “to find that your book is not merely
reprinted but published in England, and will contribute, together with
the splendid novels of Mr. Cooper, to make the literature and
manners of a country so nearly connected with us in language and
ways of thinking, known and valued here. I think that every day
contributes to that great end. Cooper is certainly, next to Scott, the
most popular novel writer of the age. Washington Irving enjoys a
high and fast reputation; the eloquence of Dr. Channing, if less
widely, is perhaps more deeply felt; and a lady, whom I need not
name, takes her place amongst these great men, as Miss Edgeworth
does among our Scotts and Chalmerses. I have contributed, or
rather, am about to contribute, my mite to this most desirable
interchange of mind with mind, having selected and edited three
volumes of tales, taken from the great mass of your periodical
literature, and called Stories of American Life by American Authors.
They are not yet published, but have been printed some time; and I
shall desire Mr. Colburn to send you a copy, to which, indeed, you
have every way a right, since I owe to you some of the best stories in
the collection.” Then followed a short description of the events which
led up to the removal from Bertram House to the cottage at Three
Mile Cross. “There was, however, no loss of character amongst our
other losses; and it is to the credit of human nature to say, that our
change of circumstances has been attended with no other change
amongst our neighbours and friends than that of increased attentions
and kindness. Indeed I can never be sufficiently thankful for the very
great goodness which I have experienced all through life, from
almost every one with whom I have been connected. My dear
mother I had the misfortune to lose last winter. My dear father still
lives, a beautiful and cheerful old man, whom I should of all things
like you to know, and if ever you do come to our little England, you
must come and see us. We should never forgive you if you did not.
Our family losses made me an authoress ... and I should have
abstained from all literary offence for the future had not poverty
driven me against my will to writing tragic verse and comic prose;
thrice happy to have been able, by so doing, to be of some use to
my dear family.”
In response to the invitation contained in this letter Miss Sedgwick
did call at the cottage when, some years later, she paid a visit to this
country. It was a visit ostensibly undertaken to see the sights and
meet the lions—particularly the literary lions. The record of the trip
was embodied in two small volumes published in 1841 by Moxon, in
London, and entitled Letters from Abroad to Kindred at Home. Miss
Sedgwick possessed a telling style, picturesque to a degree, and
there can be no shadow of doubt that her “kindred at home” were
delighted to have her spicy epistles, but they shocked Miss Mitford.
“If you have a mind,” the latter wrote to a friend, “to read the coarsest
Americanism ever put forth, read the Literary Gazette of this last
week. I remember, my dear love, how much and how justly you were
shocked at Miss Sedgwick’s way of speaking of poor Miss Landon’s
death; but when you remember that her brother and nephew had
spent twice ten days at our poor cottage—that she had been
received as their kinswoman, and therefore as a friend, you may
judge how unexpected this coarse detail has been. The Athenæum
will give you no notion of the original passage nor the book itself—for
John Kenyon, meeting with it at Moxon’s, cancelled the passage—
but too late for the journals, except the Athenæum. Of course its
chief annoyance to me is the finding the aunt of a dear friend so
excessively vulgar. Do get the Literary Gazette—for really it must be
seen to be believed.”
We quote the extract from the Literary Gazette of July 10, 1841.
“Our coachman (who, after telling him we were Americans, had
complimented us on our speaking English, ‘and very good English,
too’) professed an acquaintance of some twenty years standing with
Miss M., and assured us that she was one of the ‘cleverest women in