Relational Realism and Practical Reason in Utpaladeva’s Sambandhasiddhi

One debate that occupied Pratyabhijñā philosophers and their Buddhist interlocutors was the question of the reality of sambandha, or relation. A central treatise on the topic is Utpaladeva’s (∼10th c.) Sambandhasiddhi [SS] (‘Proof of Relation’), a response to Dharmakīrti’s (∼7th c.) Sambandhaparīkṣā [SP] (‘Analysis of Relation’). As the contrasting titles suggest, Dharmakīrti held that relations are merely conceptual constructions (kalpanā), inferred post hoc from discrete perceptual cognitions (pratyakṣa)—and thus ultimately unreal. Utpaladeva, on the other hand, attempted to ‘prove’ (siddhi) the truth (satya) of relation as a genuine ‘division-non-division,’ or ‘unity-in-diversity’ (bhedābheda). In this article, I reconstruct Utpala’s ‘proof’ as a pragmatic argument to the effect that Dharmakīrti, in virtue of his nominalist metaphysics, mistakenly treats the general form of relation as an inferential concept, rather than the mode of ‘intentional’ action (śakti) manifest in reflexive judgment (vimarśa). In doing so, Utpala suggests that Dharmakīrti inadvertently renders the relational conditions for the recognition of determinate intentional content unintelligible.