The Grammatical Philosophy on Vijñāna and Vijñapti in Yogācāra

The traditional Buddhist Sanskrit term vijñāna cannot be given the meaning “consciousness” in accordance with the grammatical rules of Pāṇini’s Aṣṭādhyāyī. In Vedic texts the traditional Sanskrit terms citta and manas refer to the eternal cognitive entities, which were also popular in some Indian Prakrit languages at the time of Buddha. It seems possible that Buddha himself created the new Prakrit term to denote the impermanent cognitive apparatus, which is produced by object and sensory organ. The sound of the Prakrit term is recorded and written as vijñāna with Sanskrit letters. In the case of a hypothetical debate between a Buddhist and a Brahmanist, the Brahmanist would insist on strictly following Sanskrit Grammar in order to interpret the Sanskrit word vijñāna. Discrepancies arising from the non-native usage of this term would lead to a great many mistakes and cause debates to become impossible. Vasubandhu, therefore, introduced a new Sanskrit term vijñapti to refer to consciousness and remedy this confusion. Through the analysis presented in Pāṇini’s Aṣṭādhyāyī, we find that the root of vijñapti is not jñā as some scholars have said, but jñap. Although vijñapti looks like a substantive thing, it is just a momentary aggregation of cognitive efficacies (vyāpṛti) without any ontic base. Therefore, the new term vijñapti can not only be translated as consciousness, but it is also in conformity with the Mahāyāna doctrines of anityatā, niḥsvabhāvatā and śūnyatā well.