ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the semiotic thought in Fǎxiàng system as encountered in one of Xuánzàng's translations: Dharmapāla's commentary on Āryadeva's Treatise in Four Hundred Verses. According to Dharmapāla's commentary on Āryadeva the Vaiśeṣika system advances three theses on the question of time. In Buddhist studies the schema that Dharmapāla follows is normally referred to as 'three characteristics of reason' for a valid inference. Sarvāstivāda and Sautrāntika disagree with each other on the ontological nature of the three periods. The Dàzhìdù Lùn criticises them for engaging in futile polemics. The Buddhist, especially the Buddhist of the Fǎxiàng Vijñānavāda School, is not concerned with the material evidence of the original object. The Yogācāryabhūmi-śāstra, an early Vijñānavāda text to which the Fǎxiàng thought system can be traced, most felicitously describes this detachment by evoking the analogy of an art student learning to imitate his master. The non-Buddhist schools normally attribute a reason to object to be inferred, and reason normally specifies perceptible mark.
