Traditional And Modern Sanskrit Scholarship How Do Tthey Relate To Each Other

SR No.: 269458
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: Johannes Bronkhorst
Publisher: Johannes Bronkhorst
Total Pages: 14
Language: English
Classification: Article
File Size: 2 MB

Page 11

Traditional and Modern Sanskrit Scholarship
177
Madhyamaka or Madhyamika, survived for a long time in India and to this day among Tibetan Buddhists.
My reflections so far have shown, I hope, that at least two crucially important doctrines held by different schools of Indian philosophy found their historical origin, not in meditative experience or supernatural revelation, but in the need to deal with difficulties arising from positions taken. The satkāryavāda of Samkhya and the nihilism of Madhyamaka are both to be understood as responses to a conviction, shared by all thinkers of that time, concerning the relationship between language and reality which at first view would barely seem to justify such encompassing metaphysical conclusions.
Let me add a few more words about the doctrine of karma. We have already seen that this dogma profoundly influenced the fundamental shape of several Brahmanical schools of thought. We now turn to some later effects of this dogma on Indian thought.
I have already several times mentioned the tradition of rational enquiry without which the history of classical Indian philosophy cannot be correctly understood; I think this is a point that cannot be sufficiently emphasized. The classical Indian schools of thought could not afford to present a mere bunch of incoherent ideas. They had to deal with inconsistencies and other blemishes, and somehow iron them out. This critical, and therefore selfcritical, approach could not but force them to confront the question as to how karma is supposed to work. If the deeds I carry out in this life bring about results in a next life, by what mechanism do they do so? The question became particularly difficult for those thinkers who were of the opinion that the deeds of living beings literally shape the future world. Texts like Vasubandhu's Abhidharmakośabhäṣya-one of the most important dogmatic texts of Indian Buddhism during the classical period-leave no doubt about it that the shape of the world is determined by the deeds that living beings have carried out in an earlier world period. How should we imagine this process to have taken place?
Time does not permit me to discuss the issue and the solutions offered in detail. It seems however likely that Prasastapāda introduced the notion of a creator God into Vaiseṣika precisely in order to explain the mechanism of karmic retribution. And Vasubandhu, the Buddhist thinker who turned to idealism later in his life (if the legend about his life is to be believed) did so in order to make the link between deeds and their effects intelligible: both now found their place in the mental continuum of a person, and karmic efficacy was no more puzzling than the occurrence of a dream.
Both Prasastapāda and Vasubandhu took radical decisions which were to have consequences for the further development of Indian thought. They did so because they saw no other way to account for a dogma which they accepted as certain: the dogma of karmic retribution.