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languages. This makes a good knowledge of Sanskrit still more indispensible here than it is for the study of those schools of Indian thought that have been more 'popular in the West, such as Advaita,
Dvaita is the one school of Hindu realistic thought (-realistic' in contradistinction to 'illusionistic') that has remained vigorously alive up to the present. Throughout the history of their school, Dvaiti authors have tried to demonstrate the fallaciousness of particularly the māyāvāda of Advaita, by employing a powerful logic to bring forword arguments which till today have never been successfully met by the Advaitis. The school originated in south-western India in the 13th century, in the south-western part of what is now the state of Karnataka, where Madhva was born in a village only a few miles from the capital of a missionarily inclined Jaina king. From there, Dvaita spread all over India, with followers concentrated in Karnataka and also in north-eastern India, where Madhva is recognized as one of the gurus in the paramparā of Gaudiya Vaişņavism. In south-western India, Vaişņavism' is popularly considered synonymous with the teachings of Madhva.
The Dvaitis themselves, as we could expect, claim that their teachings stem from Brahminical tradition. (Here we may note that the first author to point out the Buddhist influence in Sankara argumentatively was Madhva, and the well-known term 'pracchanna-bauddha' to designate the Advaitis seems to have originated in Dvaiti circles) A comparative study of early Dvaiti writings and Jaina texts from the same period and region shows, however, that there was a fundamental Jaina philosophical influence in the formation of Dvaita, and I will give a few examples, drawn from the writings of Madhva, his main commentator Jayatirtha, and the Jaina author Bhāvasena.
Although Dvaita shows some similarities with earlier schools of Hindu realistic thought and elements of Sānkhya, Nyāya-Vaiseșika and Purva-Mimāmsă can be found in it, it cannot be said to be a direct continuation of any of these older schools. Dvaita differs from Sankhya in accepting that the soul is a real agent and not a mere passive experiencer; it differs from Nyāya in declaring that consciousness is a permanent and essential characteristic of the soul and that truth has svatah-prāmānya, i.e., it is self-evident. This particular combination of epistemological ideas is unique in Hindu philosophy; but Jainism
3 According to B. N. K. Sharma, Madhya did so in his work Tattvoddyota. Cf.
B. N. K. Sharma, A History of the Dvaita School of Vedanta and its Literature, 2 vols., Bombay, 1960 : vol. I, p. 190.
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