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The context of Indian Philosophy
Author who was both a philosopher and a grammarian. I take this example because here. exceptionally, we have a fair amount of contextual information. The name of this scholar was Bhattoji, or Bhattoji Diksita, and he lived around the year 1600 CE in Benares. Bhattoli has remained famous until today as a result of a number of technical grammatical treatises which he composed. The most well-known of these is the Siddhanta Kaumud, text which is still used in India to teach Sanskrit grammar to students. Another text composed by Bhattoji is a long and extremely learned commentary on his own Siddhanta Kaum (called Proudha Manorama) Whereas the Siddhanta Kaumud was written for students, this commentary is meant for specialists. One has to be quite advanced in traditional Sanskrit grammar in order to understand it, and one might be inclined to think that this learned text is very far removed from the every day life of its author. A closer study reveals that this is not the case.
Bhattoji's commentary, in its learned discussions, frequently compares different points of view, different interpretations of the ancient grammar of Panini. Bhattoji discusses these interpretations, discards some of them, and accepts others. Rarely does he specify who held the interpretations be discards, with the result that the text makes the impression of being an evenhanded discussion of ideas, without entering into personal matters.
Bhattoji's contemporaries knew better. Those among them who were themselves learned grammarians, knew that many of the views discarded in this commentary, were the views of Bhattoji's teacher, i.e., the scholar from whom Bhattoji had learned grammar to begin with. And criticizing one's teacher, in the milieu to which Bhattoji belonged, was an extremely serious matter. Instead of showing respect to his teacher, Bhattoji was here doing the opposite. Bhattoji did not use inappropriate words, certainly. He did not even admit that he was criticizing his teacher, and modern scholars might not have noticed it. But the descendants and other pupils of his teacher needed no time to find out what was happening and they reacted. They wrote grammatical treatises which tried to destroy all the point of view which Bhattoji had presented as his own. Once again, the style of these treatises is very learned and highly technical. There are only some odd remarks, usually at the beginning or end of these treatises, which reveal that their authors held a personal grudge against Bhattoji, that they could not forgive him for having behaved in an inappropriate manner toward their teacher.
But why did Bhattoji behave in this inappropriate manner? The situation is not completely clear, but it seems likely that there were reasons for this which our texts do not even hint at One explanation that has been suggested is the fact that Bhattoji and his teacher had different religious affiliations. Both were, of course, Rrahmins, and both were Vedantins. But whereas Bhattoji was an Advaita Vedantin, his teacher was follower of the school of Vedanta created by Madhva some centuries earlier. We know about these religious affiliations from other sources. The grammatical treatises of Bhattoji, his teacher, and all the others who became involved in this long drawn-out debate, do not mention this issue. It is only our knowledge of the context which allows us to guess what was going on below the surface of polished and erudite discussions of details of Sanskrit
know a lot about Bhattoji and his family, we know the name of his father and of various other members of his family, we also know the names of some of his pupils and the pupils of his pupils. We are similarly informed about his teacher and the children and pupils of his teacher. And we have works composed by many of these people, and other information about their lives. In some cases we know who financially supported these scholars.
About Carlier philosophers in India we do not have such detailed information. Great and important thinkers of classical India, among them the Buddhist Nagarjuna and the Vedantin Sankara, remain completely unknown to us, except through their own works. We are not sure when exactly Nigiruna and Sankars lived, or where they wrote the works that made them famous. We do not know the names of their fathers and of their pupils. We do not know for sure at what age they died, and whether their lives had been peaceful or otherwise. We are ignorant as to who supported them, and what encouragement they received from their surroundings. And what have just said about Nagkrjuna and Sankara-perhaps the two most famous philosophers of classical India is equally true for practically all other Indian philosophers of that period. Sometimes there are legends, but these legends are often late and unreliable, or mere inventions All this makes it extremely difficult to situate the philosophers of classical India in their respective contexts. The temptation to abandon hope and to concentrate exclusively on the contents of the surviving texts is therefore great
However, I am of the opinion that this would be a mistake. We need all the contextual information we can get about our philosophers, for sometimes this is the only way to understand what underlies their philosophical thinking. Sometimes, as in the case of the grammarian Bhattoji the deeper motivation may be philosophically insignificant, such as a family feud or a difference in sectarian affiliation. In other cases the deeper motivation is of great philosophical interest. As an example I will briefly present a case to which attention was drawn a few years ago by a Swiss scholar, Vincent Eltschinger. He discusses it in his book Cartes et philosophie bouddhique ("Caste" and buddhist philosophy) that came out in 2000.
Buddhist and brahmanical philosophers of the first millennium CE were engaged in a long and technical debate about the existence of universals. At first sight this is a purely philosophical question, with parallels in the history of European philosophy. The question, as it presents itself in India, can be explained with the help of a simple example. We know that the nouns of our language can be used to designate a large number of objects. The word "cow, for example, can be used not just for one cow, but for all the cows that exist in the present in the past, and in the future. The same can be said about practically all other souns, such as "house" or "car". If we stick to the example "cow", we may wonder whether all these cowspast, present, and future have something in common that justifies this common denomination. Is there such a thing as "cow-ness", a universal that is different from each single cow but that is yet connected with each of them! The same about houses: is there a universal "house-ness" that justifies the application of the word "house" to so many different objects? Brahmanical philosophers had a tendency to accept that such universals exist, Buddhist thinkers denied their existence.
This purely philosophical debate took a special turn in the seventh century with Kumarila Bhatta, a brahmanical thinker, and Dharmakirti, a Buddhist. Kumirila applied his belief in the existence of universals to the classes, or "castes", of society. Being a Brahmin, he claimed that all Brahmins share a universal Brahmin boss", which distinguishes them fundamentally from all other human beings, just as the universal "cow-ness" separates all cows from other animals, such as horses. Dharmakirti and his followers did not accept this line of reasoning. They did not think that Brahmins were essentially different from other human beings.
I have taken the example of Bhattoji because, being a relatively recent author, we can find out things about him and his personal life. His own works, but also those of his teacher, and those of some of his critics, have been preserved, and with them various introductory verses and final colophons that throw light upon the situation. Besides this, there are other sources of information that have survived, and which allow us to piece together a coherent picture of what happened. We
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