 It is still debated in the modern community of researchers on Dharmakīrti whether one should place this philosopher in the seventh century C.E. or in the sixth. Part of the reason for this indecision is that a significant time seems to have elapsed before Dharmakīrti achieved notoriety in India, although it is unclear how much. Erich Frauwallner came out strongly for 600–660 C.E. as Dharmakīrti’s dates, using an argumentum ex silentio that is short of conclusive—hardly more than one piece in the  puzzle.[3]  One problem is that there may indeed be some counterevidence that would place Dharmakīrti a half-century earlier, inter alia his possible connections with Dharmapāla, a sixth-century idealist philosopher who, according to Tibetan historians, was the monk that ordained Dharmakīrti. Some have thought that there is even a reference to Dharmakīrti in Dharmapāla’s commentary to Dignāga’s Ālambanaparīkṣā (“Analysis of the object [of perception]”). However, because this commentary is only available to us at this time in Chinese in an unreliable translation by Yijing, it is not clear that the passage in question does in fact refer to Dharmakīrti. Caution or even agnosticism on the matter of Dharmakīrti’s dates still seems to be warranted, although the scales are tipping towards an earlier date. Krasser (2012) relies heavily on connections between Dharmakīrti, Bhāviveka and Kumārila to push the dates of Dharmakīrti’s activity back to the mid sixth century C.E.  [4]  Balcerowicz (2016) argues that Dharmakīrti directly influenced the Jaina writer Samantabhadra. He proposes 530-590 as the dates for the latter and 550-610 as the dates for Dharmakīrti.