The problem of whether there are other beings beside oneself who possess thoughts, emotions, etc., is a philosophical issue of perennial interest. It is especially important for Yogācāravijñānav̄adins of Indian Buddhism to take a clear position on this issue, for they deny the existence of the external world, claiming that it is merely our mental representation. Dharmakīrti's Santānāntarasiddhi is one of the first independent treatises on this topic among the vast number of Buddhist philosophical texts. The present article presents a Japanese translation of the Santānāntarasiddhi together with its synopsis as a preliminary study of the Other Minds Problem in Buddhist Philosophy, which I intend to write on in future.
The text is now available only in its Tibetan translation, which has been edited by Th. Stcherbatsky (Bibliotheca Buddhica XIX, 1916). I have compared the printed edition with the Peking and Derge versions, which sometimes provide better readings. The treatise has been translated into Russian by its editor and then retranslated into English by H. Ch. Gupta (Papers of Th. Stcherbatsky, 1969, Calcutta). H. Kitagawa has published the summary (Bunka 18-3, 1954) and an English translation (J. of the Greater India Society, XIV-1, 2, 1955). Despite these earlier efforts, I have chosen to publish my own translation because I feel that recent work on Dharmakīrti and other Buddhist logicians has considerably improved our understanding of this text.