Literacy And Rationality In Ancient India

Author(s): Johannes Bronkhorst
Publisher: Johannes Bronkhorst

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JOHANNES BRONKHORST
LITERACY AND RATIONALITY IN ANCIENT INDIA
815
and tended to end in victory for one of the two parties, and defeat for the other According to the biography of Xuanzang composed by his pupil Huili, Xuanzang himself volunteered to participate in a debate on one occasion. The event is described as follows:
or imposed) in all areas, the case could be made that the early Indian philosophers, who had to deal with critics who would not grant them an inch, are at least as much if not more entitled to the qualification 'rational'than Panini."
It is important to add some specifications to the above. Debates between proponents of different currents of belief or practice took place long before the beginning of classical Indian philosophy. We can be sure that early Buddhism and Jainism, for example, being missionary movements, did not eschew meetings and discussions with others. The early Buddhist canon preserves memories of such encounters, and the descriptions there found of early Jainism, to take this example, tum out to be fairly reliable. Yet neither early Buddhism nor early Jainism felt obliged to improve its own position as a result of such meetings. They did not need to, because there was no one to reward the winner and punish the loser in such informal debates. This, however, appears to have changed in subsequent centuries. We know that in classical India kings might oblige representatives of different movements to participate in public debates, in which much c.g. the life or freedom of the participants, or the well-being of their movement-might be at stake. Public debates of this kind have no doubt inspired authors to compose the manuals of debating skills that come into existence during the first centuries of the Common Era. And these same kinds of public debate appear to have inspired thinkers to revise and improve their positions, thus creating the schools of classical philosophy. It seems however likely that beside these public debates informal debates continued to be held. After all, the Buddhists and the Jainas were still interested in making converts, and for this purpose discussions with as yet unconverted people are necessary.
We are informed about the classical debates mainly through the reports of foreign visitors; two examples will here be briefly presented. The Chinese Buddhist pilgrim Xuanzang has left us a detailed account of his visit to India in the first half of the seventh century of the Common Era. 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,
At that time a heretic of the Lokayatika school came to seek a debate and wrote his argument in fourteen points, which he hang 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 my head to apologize! After the passage of several days, nobody came out to accept the challenge. The Master Xuanzang) 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
Xuanzang's teacher of Nalanda Monastery), 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.
At this point Xuanzang starts to criticise various heretical schools, among them the two Brahmanical schools of philosophy called Sāmkhya and Vaišeşika, but not, surprisingly, the Lokayatika school. Only his criticism of the Samkhya school is given in some detail. The text then continues:
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.
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This is easily misunderstood. Houben, for example, criticises this notion in the following words (2001:170 n.8): "there may very well be areas of reality which, for the thinkers involved, are fundamentally beyond critical inquiry". This rnay indeed be true for individual thinkers, but that is not the point. The point is that in a rational tradition thus conceived the chemies and opponents of thinkers will be free to criticise issues which for the latter are be. yond critical inquiry, and that the thinkers criticised will yet have to listen and respond to this criticism. A rational tradition can in this way be understood as a social phenomenon, not as a description of the habits of thought of individual thinkers. For an elaboration of this idea of rationality and references, see Bronkhorst, 1999:56
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 Xuanzang. 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 supposed to have dealt with the Samkhya system of thought in a rather more detailed manner. First he presents an outline of the
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LI, 1995:132
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