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Praise & Reviews "For those intrigued by Tibetan interpretation of Indian Madhyamaka thought, The Svatantrika-Prasangika Distinction is a must read. [...] The contributors to this volume do not all agree, which is one reason this anthology is so compelling. It stands as a contemporary enactment of a long-standing debate rather than its authoritative closure. Readers can look forward to edifying discussions of intellectual history in the development of Madhyamaka thought from India to Tibet." —Buddhadharma "A brilliantly riveting and scholarly tour-de-force. Every essay brings forward crucially illuminating insights into the famous, but little studied, distinction between Svatantrika and Praasangika. Constructed over many centuries, this difference has enormous significance for our understanding of Buddhist intellectual and philosophical developments in India and Tibet from Candrakiirti to Tsong kha pa. A vitally important work." —Anne C. Klein, Rice University, author, Path to the Middle The Svatantrika-Prasangika Distinction is the most important work on Madhyamaka published in years. With an impressive mix of linguistic expertise, philosophical acuity, methodological sophistication, and clarity of style, the contributors—who include many of the world's top Madhyamaka scholars—illuminate a controversy that has significant ramifications for our understanding of the relation between Indian and Tibetan Buddhism, the complexity of Madhyamaka in both India and Tibet, and, ultimately, the origins and ideologies of this most influential of all Indian Buddhist philosophical schools. It is a work of the highest standard, and should find its way onto the bookshelf of every serious student of Madhyamaka, anywhere in the world." —Roger R. Jackson, Professor of Religion, Carleton College "This fine volume is on the leading edge of what promises to be an important development. Collected here are nine essays by well-known and well-regarded American, European, and Japanese authorities, all attending to the difference between the two primary schools of the 'middle way': the Independent school (Svatantrika) and the Reductive school (Prasanghika). The essays are divided into the Indian tradition (five essays) and the Tibetan tradition (four essays) although some seem to cross back and forth between the two. It is gratifying that the volume presents Tibetan Buddhism as an independent form, not as a simple reiteration of Indian ideas, and that the discontinuities between the two cultures are as important as the continuities." —Religious Studies Review "[The Svatantrika-Prasangika Distinction ] provides a valuable historical examination of the creation and significance of the distinction between Svatantrika and Prasangika, a distinction that is usually traced back to Candrakirti. Comprising nine papers by leading contemporary scholars, this is an essential work for study of Candrakirti's place in medieval Indian Buddhist thought and the ways in which the distinction he is considered to have established has been understood through the lens of Tibetan attempts to systematize the wealth of philosophic texts and issues inherited from India. While the distinction between Svatantrika and Prasangika forms the unifying topic of the collection, the theme developed by the editors in their introduction is doxography, that is, the writing about beliefs. This is a critical dimension of all Buddhist thought, and was as much a central part of the development of Buddhism in East Asia as it was in Tibet. For this reason, the value of the collection extends far beyond the study of Indian and Tibetan Buddhism." —Richard Payne, in Pacific World "The Svatantrika-Prasangika Distinction represents the most important attempt to date to address systematically the basic questions raised by the distinction, questions that constitute the heart of Madhyamaka philosophy in India and Tibet. [ . . . ] This book will substantially alter common misperceptions concerning the history of Madhyamaka in India and Tibet. [ . . . ] As a study in the ways that meanings arise, are contested, and evolve historically, this book provides ample material for future philosophical explorations of the creation and use of doxographical distinctions and order. THEThe Svatantrika-Prasangika Distinction is marked by the virtues of the best edited volumes...The editors' introduction does an excellent job of articulating the questions that motivate the collection and summarizing the contributions. And the index is extremely thorough, differing from the indexes of most edited volumes in that it is actually intended to be a valuable research tool. The work of the editors, together with uniformly excellent contributions, makes The Svatantrika-Prasangika Distinction one of the most important contributions to the study of Madhyamaka in contemporary scholarship." —Philosophy East and West

Georges B.J. Dreyfus, Editor Georges Dreyfus was the first Westerner to obtain the title of Geshe Lharampa, the highest degree confered within the traditional Tibetan monastic system. He is presently Professor of Religion at Williams College. Sara L. McClintock, Editor Sara L. McClintock is an assistant professor of religion at Emory University, where she teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in Indian and Tibetan Buddhism. She obtained her bachelor's degree in fine arts from Bryn Mawr College, her master's in world religions from Harvard Divinity School, and her doctorate in religion from Harvard University. She has spent time as a researcher at the Central Institute for Higher Tibetan Studies in Sarnath and the University of Lausanne, and has taught at Carleton College and the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Her interests include both narrative and philosophical traditions in South Asian Buddhism, with particular focus on issues of metaphysics, hermeneutics, and rhetoric. Her work includes articles on these themes, as well as a translation, with John Dunne, of Nagarjuna's Ratnavali She has also co-edited a volume of articles on Indian and Tibetan Madhyamaka with Georges Dreyfus, The Svatantrika-Prasangika Distinction: What Difference Does a Difference Make? Her current research centers on the intersection of philosophical and literary conceptions of time and timelessness in Indian and Tibetan Buddhism.