A Textual Study of the *Lakṣaṇaṭīkā

The present thesis is comprised of an introduction to and a critical edition of a newly found collection of notes provisionally called the *Lakṣaṇaṭīkā (*LṬ).The first part of the thesis can be summarized as follows: The *LṬ consists of brief notes on three of Candrakīrti’s Madhyamaka treatises as well as notes on the small treatise attributed to Nāgārjuna and a short section of unidentified Sanskrit notes. The text was originally put together by a Tibetan scholar, called Dharmakīrti or gNur/sNur D[h]arma grags, at Vikramaśīla monastery in India, most probably during the first quarter of the 12th century CE. The text can be regarded as the lecture notes of the Tibetan student most likely in order to prepare for the Tibetan translations. In all likelihood, furthermore, the present MS was made by another Tibetan called Śīlākāra/sTeng lo tsā ba Tshul khrims ’byung gnas who would have carried it with him to Tibet by the middle of the 12th century CE.The second part of the thesis is a critical edition of the *LṬ, in which the words and phrases occurring in the commented treatises are identified.