- Early system building
Further developments of the system
- Key People:
- Ramanuja
- Nagarjuna
- Sri Aurobindo
- Keshab Chunder Sen
- Ramana Maharshi
- Related Topics:
- karma
- jiva
- samsara
- nāstika
- shabdadvaita
Developments in Mahayana
Nagarjuna and Shunyavada
Though the beginnings of Mahayana are to be found in the Mahasangikas and many of their early sects, Nagarjuna gave it a philosophical basis. Not only is the individual person empty and lacking an eternal self, according to Nagarjuna, but the dharmas also are empty. He extended the concept of shunyata to cover all concepts and all entities. Emptiness thus means subjection to the law of causality or “dependent origination” (pratitya-samutpada) and lack of an immutable essence and an invariant mark (nihsvabhavata). It also entails a repudiation of dualities between the conditioned and the unconditioned, between subject and object, relative and absolute, and between samsara and nirvana. Thus, Nagarjuna arrived at an ontological monism, but he carried through an epistemological dualism (i.e., a theory of knowledge based on two sets of criteria) between two orders of truth: the conventional (samvritti) and the transcendental (paramartha). The one reality is ineffable. Nagarjuna undertook a critical examination of all the major categories with which philosophers had sought to understand reality and showed them all to involve self-contradictions. The world is viewed as a network of relations, but relations are unintelligible. If two terms, A and B, are related by the relation R, then either A and B are different or they are identical. If they are identical, they cannot be related; if they are altogether different then they cannot also be related, for they would have no common ground. The notion of “partial identity and partial difference” is also rejected as unintelligible. The notion of causality is rejected on the basis of similar reasonings. The concepts of change, substance, self, knowledge, and universals do not fare any better. Nagarjuna also directed criticism against the concept of pramana, or the means of valid knowledge.
Nagarjuna’s philosophy is also called Madhyamika, or “Middle Path,” because it claims to tread the middle path, which consists not in synthesizing opposed views such as “The real is permanent” and “The real is changing” but in showing the hollowness of both the claims. To say that reality is both permanent and changing is to make another metaphysical assertion, another viewpoint, whose opposite is “Reality is neither permanent nor changing.” In relation to the former, the latter is a higher truth, but the latter is still a point of view, a drishti, expressed in a metaphysical statement, though Nagarjuna condemned all metaphysical statements as false.
Nagarjuna used reason to condemn reason. Those of his disciples who continued to limit the use of logic to this negative and indirect method, known as prasanga, are called the prasangikas; of these, Aryadeva, Buddhapalita, and Chandrakirti are the most important. Bhavaviveka, however, followed the method of direct reasoning and thus founded what is called the svatantra (independent) school of Madhyamika philosophy. With him Buddhist logic comes to its own, and during his time the Yogacharas split away from the Shunyavadins.
Contributions of Vasubandhu and Asanga
Converted by his brother Asanga to the Yogachara, Vasubandhu wrote the Vijnapti-matrata-siddhi (“Establishment of the Thesis of Cognitions—Only”), in which he defended the thesis that the supposedly external objects are merely mental conceptions. Yogachara idealism is a logical development of Sautrantika representationism: the conception of a merely inferred external world is not satisfying. If consciousness is self-intimating (svaprakasha) and if consciousness can assume forms (sakaravijnana), it seems more logical to hold that the forms ascribed to alleged external objects are really forms of consciousness. One only needs another conception: a beginningless power that would account for this tendency of consciousness to take up forms and to externalize them. This is the power of kalpana, or imagination. Yogachara added two other modes of consciousness to the traditional six: ego consciousness (manovijnana) and storehouse consciousness (alaya-vijnana). The alaya-vijnana contains stored traces of past experiences, both pure and defiled seeds. Early anticipations of the notions of the subconscious or the unconscious, they are theoretical constructs to account for the order of individual experience. It still remained, however, to account for a common world—which in fact remains the main difficulty of Yogachara. The state of nirvana becomes a state in which the alaya with its stored “seeds” would wither away (alayaparavritti). Though the individual ideas are in the last resort mere imaginations, in its essential nature consciousness is without distinctions of subject and object. This ineffable consciousness is the “suchness” (tathata) underlying all things. Neither the alaya nor the tathata, however, is to be construed as being substantial.
Vasubandhu and Asanga are also responsible for the growth of Buddhist logic. Vasubandhu defined perception as the knowledge that is caused by the object, but this was rejected by Dignaga, a 5th-century logician, as a definition belonging to his earlier realistic phase. Vasubandhu defined inference as a knowledge of an object through its mark, but Dharmottara, an 8th-century commentator, pointed out that this is not a definition of the essence of inference but only of its origin.
Contributions of Dignaga and Dharmakirti
Dignaga’s Pramanasamuccaya (“Compendium of the Means of True Knowledge”) is one of the greatest works on Buddhist logic. Dignaga gave a new definition of perception: a knowledge that is free from all conceptual constructions, including name and class concepts. In effect, he regarded only the pure sensation as perception. In his theory of inference, he distinguished between inference for oneself and inference for the other and laid down three criteria of a valid middle term (hetu)—that it should “cover” the minor premise (paksha), be present in the similar instances (sapaksha), and be absent in dissimilar instances (vipaksha). In his Hetuchakra (“The Wheel of ‘Reason’ ”), Dignaga set up a matrix of nine types of middle terms, of which two yield valid conclusions, two contradictory, and the rest uncertain conclusions. Dignaga’s tradition is further developed in the 7th century by Dharmakirti, who modified his definition of perception to include the condition “unerring” and distinguished, in his Nyayabindu, between four kinds of perception: that by the five senses, that by the mind, self-consciousness, and perception of the yogins. He also introduced a threefold distinction of valid middle terms: the middle must be related to the major either by identity (“This is a tree, because this is an oak”) or as cause and effect (“This is fiery, because it is smoky”), or the hetu is a nonperception from which the absence of the major could be inferred. Dharmakirti consolidated the central epistemological thesis of the Buddhists that perception and inference have their own exclusive objects. The object of the former is the pure particular (svalakshana), and the object of the latter (he regarded judgments as containing elements of inference) is the universal (samanyalakshana). In their metaphysical positions, Dignaga and Dharmakirti represent a moderate form of idealism.
Purva-Mimamsa: the Bhatta and Prabhakara schools
Principal texts and relation to Shabara
Kumarila commented on Jaimini’s sutras as well as on Shabara’s bhashya. The Varttika (critical gloss) that he wrote was commented upon by Sucharita Mishra in his Kashika (“The Shining”), by Someshvara Bhatta in his Nyayasudha (“The Nectar of Logic”), and by Parthasarathi Mishra in Nyayaratnakara (“The Abode of Jewels of Logic”). Parthasarathi’s Shastradipika (“Light on the Scripture”) is a famous independent Mimamsa treatise belonging to Kumarila’s school.
Prabhakara, who most likely lived after Kumarila, was the author of the commentary Brihati (“The Large Commentary”), on Shabara’s bhashya. On many essential matters, Prabhakara differs radically from the views of Kumarila. Prabhakara’s Brihati has been commented upon by Shalikanatha in his Rijuvimala (“The Straight and Free from Blemishes”), whereas the same author’s Prakaranapanchika (“Commentary of Five Topics”) is a very useful exposition of the Prabhakara system. Other works belonging to this school are Madhava’s Jaiminiya-nyayamala-vistara (“Expansion of the String of Reasonings by Jaimini”), Appaya Dikshita’s Vidhirasayana (“The Elixir of Duty”), Apadeva’s Mimamsa-nyaya-prakasha (“Illumination of the Reasonings of Mimamsa”), and Laugakshi Bhaskara’s Artha-samgraha (“Collection of Treasures”).
Where Kumarila and Prabhakara differed, Kumarila remained closer to both Jaimini and Shabara. Kumarila, like Jaimini and Shabara, restricted Mimamsa to an investigation into dharma, whereas Prabhakara assigned to it the wider task of inquiring into the meaning of the Vedic texts. Kumarila understood the Vedic injunction to include a statement of the results to be attained; Prabhakara—following Badari—excluded all consideration of the result from the injunction itself and suggested that the sense of duty alone should instigate a person to act.
Metaphysics and epistemology
Both the Bhatta (the name for Kumarila’s school) and Prabhakara schools, in their metaphysics, were realists; both undertook to refute Buddhist idealism and nihilism. The Bhatta ontology recognized five types of entities: substance (dravya), quality (guna), action (karma), universals (samanya), and negation (abhava). Of these, substance was held to be of 10 kinds: the nine substances recognized by the Vaisheshikas and the additional substance “darkness.” The Prabhakara ontology recognized eight types of entities; from the Bhatta list, negation was rejected, and four more were added: power (shakti), resemblance (sadrisa), inherence-relation (samavaya), and number (samkhya). Under the type “substance,” the claim of “darkness” was rejected on the ground that it is nothing but absence of perception of color; the resulting list of nine substances is the same as that of the Vaisheshikas. Though both schools admitted the reality of the universals, their views on this point differed considerably. The Prabhakaras admitted only such universals as inhere in perceptible instances and insisted that true universals themselves must be perceivable. Thus, they rejected abstract universals, such as “existence,” and merely postulated universals, such as “Brahmanhood” (which cannot be perceptually recognized in a person).
The epistemologies of the two schools differ as much as their ontologies. As ways of valid knowing, the Bhattas recognized perception, inference, verbal testimony (shabda), comparison (upamana), presumption or postulation (arthapatti), and nonperception (anupalabdhi). The last is regarded as the way that human beings validly, and directly, apprehend an absence; this was in conformity with Shabara’s statement that abhava (nonexistence) itself is a pramana (way of true knowledge). Postulation is viewed as the sort of process by which one may come to know for certain the truth of a certain proposition, and yet the Bhattas refused to include such cases under inference on the grounds that in such cases one does not say to himself “I am inferring” but rather says “I am postulating.” “Comparison” is the name given to the perception of resemblance with a perceived thing of another thing that is not present at that moment. It is supposed that because the latter thing is not itself being perceived, the resemblance belonging to it could not have been perceived; thus, it is not a case of perception when one says “My cow at home is similar to this animal.”
The Prabhakaras rejected nonperception as a way of knowing and were left with a list of five concerning definitions of perception. The Bhattas, following the sutra, define perception in terms of sensory contact with the object, whereas the Prabhakaras define it in terms of immediacy of the apprehension.
Ethics
As pointed out earlier, Kumarila supported the thesis that all moral injunctions are meant to bring about a desired benefit and that knowledge of such benefit and of the efficacy of the recommended course of action to bring it about is necessary for instigating a person to act. Prabhakara defended the ethical theory of duty for its own sake, the sense of duty alone being the proper incentive. The Bhattas recognize apurva, the supersensible efficacy of actions to produce remote effects, as a supersensible link connecting the moral action performed in this life and the supersensible effect (such as going to heaven) to be realized afterward. Prabhakara understood by apurva only the action that ought to be done.
Hermeneutics and semantics
In their principles of interpretation of the scriptures, and consequently in their theories of meaning (of words and of sentences), the two schools differ radically. Prabhakara defended the thesis that words primarily mean either some course of action (karya) or things connected with action. Connected with this is the further Prabhakara thesis that the sentence forms the unit of meaningful discourse, that a word is never used by itself to express a single unrelated idea, and that a sentence signifies a relational complex that is not a mere juxtaposition of word meanings. Prabhakara’s theory of language learning follows these contentions: the child learns the meanings of sentences by observing the elders issuing orders like “Bring the cow” and the juniors obeying them, and he learns the meaning of words subsequently by a close observation of the insertion (avapa) and extraction (uddhara) of words in sentences and the resulting variations in the meaning of those sentences. From this semantic approach follows Prabhakara’s principle of Vedic interpretation: all Vedic texts are to be interpreted as bearing on courses of action prescribed, and there are no merely descriptive statements in the scriptures. Furthermore, only the Vedic injunctions yield the authoritative verbal testimony that may be regarded as a unique way of knowing, whereas all other verbal knowledge is really inferential in character. In matters concerning what ought to be done, Prabhakara therefore regarded only the Vedas as authoritative.
Kumarila’s theory is very different. In his view, words convey their own meanings, not relatedness to something else. He therefore was more willing to accommodate purely descriptive sentences as significant. Furthermore, he regarded sentence meaning as composed of separate word meanings held together in a relational structure; the word meaning formed, for him, the simplest unit of sense. Persons thus learn the meaning of words by seeing others talking as well as from advice of the elders.
Religious consequences
The Mimamsa views the universe as being eternal and does not admit the need of tracing it back to a creator. It also does not admit the need of admitting a being who is to distribute moral rewards and inflict punishments—this function being taken over by the notion of apurva, or supersensible power generated by each action. Theoretically not requiring a God, the system, however, posits a number of deities as entailed by various ritualistic procedures, with no ontological status assigned to the gods.
