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The Context of Indian Philophy
my head to apologizel After the passage of several days, nobody came out to accept the challenge. The Master 1-Genjo) then asked his personal servant to take down the poster, destroy it, and trample the broken pieces under his feet. Being greatly enraged, the Brahmin asked, "Who are you?' The servant said in reply, 'I am a servant of the Mahayana-deva.' The Brahmin, who had already heard of the fame of the Master, was ashamed of himself and did not say anything more. The Master sent for him and brought him to the presence of the Venerable Silabhadra (Genjo's teacher at Nalanda Monasteryl, with various virtuous monks as witnesses, to start a debate with him about the principles of his school and the theories founded by other heretical sects as well.
The debate as recorded in Huili's account is somewhat one-sided, presumably because the Brahmin opponent is too shy to speak in the presence of Genjo. Genjo first demonstrates his knowledge of a number of brahmanical ascetic and philosophical schools, and then refutes one of them, supposedly the one to which his opponent belongs, in detail. At the end of this the text sums up the result:
of its history. This feature, this social custom, is the existence of public debates between philosophers of different persuasions
The history of Indian philosophy is full of references to debates that presumably had taken place between prominent representatives of different schools of thought. Many of these accounts may be legendary, or fully imaginary, others may be less than reliable because coloured in favour of one of the parties involved. It would yet be extremely interesting if someone were one day to make the effort of collecting all those accounts, whether from brahmanical, buddhist, or Jain sources, whether reliable or not. Such an overview might even include the panditaparpads, the "assemblies of wise men", that are still sometimes held in India, and that are occasionally organized at international Sanskrit conferences. These panditaparişads are, to be sure, no more than fossilized survivals. But living debates, with sometimes serious consequences for the participants, accompanied Indian philosophy for most of its history. We know, for example, that the brother of Bhattoji, the philosopher and grammarian whom we referred to above, won a debate at the court of a South Indian king called Venkatappa. Given that this debate took place at the court of a king, we must conclude that this king allowed, or even encouraged, this debute to take place.
King Venkatappa was not exceptional in organizing, or allowing such debates at his court As a matter of fact, he continued a very long tradition in doing so. It is this social customit is really a social custom which, I believe, made Indian philosophy what it is. Participants in such debates could win much, they could also loose all they had. Participating in such debates was not, therefore, a matter of mere amusement. It was through such debates that philosophers of different orientations combated each other, and tried to obtain a maximum of advantages for themselves and for the groups they represented. But since the stakes were so high, every potential participant had to prepare himself as well as he could. He had to be able to present his views, or those of his school, in such a way that an outside judge, sometimes the king himself, would be convinced by them. In practice this meant various things. First of all, mere wisdom teachinge would not impress anybody. Teachings had to constitute coherent wholes, free from inner contradictions and loose ends. Second, the debater should, to the extent possible, know the ideas of his opponent, including whatever weaknesses it might contain. It would of course be very impressive to be able to show, during a public debate, that the opponent held incoherent or even nonsensical views
As I said above, debates are not recent phenomenon in Indian philosophy. For the middle of the first millennium Ce--the classical period of Indian philosophy, we have a number of reports from foreign visitors. We will look at two of them in some detail. The first of these two derives from the Chinese Buddhist pilgrim Xuanzang (or Hellan-chuang); since he is called Genjo in Japanese, I will use that name in what follows. Genio has left us a detailed account of his visit to India in the first half of the seventh century of the Common En. In this account he regularly mentions debates between representatives of different schools of thought. The debates he refers to normally took place in the presence of a king, and tended to end in victory for one of the two parties, and defeat for the other. According to the biography of Genjo composed by his pupil Huili, Genjo himself volunteered to participate in a debate on one occasion. The event is described as follows:
At that time a heretic of the Lokliyatika school came to seek a debate and wrote his argument in fourteen points, which he bung on the door of the monastery, while he announced, "If anybody is able to refute any one point of my argument, I shall cut off
In this manner the argument was carried on with repeated refutations, and the Brahmin remained silent and said nothing. Then he rose to his feet and said with apology. 'I am defeated, and I am ready to keep my word.' The Master said, "We Buddhists do not take any man's life. I now make you my slave, and you should work according to my orders.' The Brahmin was glad to obey the Master's orders with reverence, and was brought to
his living quarters. All those who heard about this event praised it with delight, It is unlikely that this passage accurately presents what happened. It is hard to believe that a Brahmin who was seeking a debate would accept total defeat without as much as uttering a word But nor would we expect historical accuracy in a document that primarily sings the glory of Master Genjd. It will be interesting to see what kind of arguments supposedly led to his victory in debate.
The text does not offer much in terms of arguments, with one notable exception. The Master is recorded to have dealt with the Simkhya system of thought in a rather more detailed manner First he presents an outline of the system, which agrees with what we know about it. After this exposition he draws attention to what he considers its lack of coherence. It is not likely that a real Samkhya would have felt defeated by the reflections brought to bear on their system by the Chinese pilgrim. It is yet interesting to see that Genjo is here depicted as presenting what is an accurate description of the main features of the Samkhya philosophy, and that, having presented this outline, he tries to show its inner incoherence. The fundamental assumptions of this philosophy do not according to the position attributed to Genjo, justify the functions it ascribes to the various entities it postulates.
Accounts like this are extremely interesting, and give a glimpse, if ever so faint of situations India's philosophers may have been familiar with. In the present context it is noteworthy to see what could be at stake in such debates. Genjo's unfortunate opposent was lucky to get away with his life, and be merely reduced to the state of being enjo's slave. We do not know to what extent we are here confronted with an exaggeration on the part of Genjo's biographer, but we will see that death as a result of a lost debate is a recurring theme. But even without death or loss of
$ Surpris ed of the Sikhe school of though, even though his opports a Coklatila On this quis, sem
feminile Tubade ud Lay"
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1995: 132 medited); transp. 245 )
