Dharmakīrti’s Sambandhaparīkṣā and its Yogācāra Reception

Dharmakīrti’s Sambandhaparīkṣā [SP] (Analysis of Relation) and its principal vṛtti (Sambandhaparīkṣavṛtti) are not considered ‘Yogācāra’ texts. However, subsequent Yogācāra thinkers like Śaṅkaranandana interpreted the relational eliminativism of the SP to chiefly entail that cognition is devoid of subject-object duality, and hence ultimately implies a mind-only doctrine. This paper argues that, although the SP does not explicitly endorse any Yogācāra ideas,  Śaṅkaranandana’s commentary identifies important conceptual roots of Dharmakīrti’s rhetorical ‘slide’ from external realism to epistemic idealism. Namely, Dharmakīrti believes that the reality of both causal and conceptual relations is similarly vitiated due to the inherent incapacity of particular moments to instantiate any dyadic forms of necessary dependence. In this way, Dharmakīrti treats existential and semantic relations according to a univocal conception of ‘internal relatedness’—a potentially major error for later Hindu realists.