Literacy And Rationality In Ancient India

Author(s): Johannes Bronkhorst
Publisher: Johannes Bronkhorst

Page 12

818
JOHANNES BRONKHORST
LITERACY AND RATIONALITY IN ANCIENT INDIA
819
that the heretics had nothing left for them to fall back upon. In this way, without meeting Vindhyavāsa, Vasubandhu took full vengeance on him and wiped off the disgrace put upon his teacher.
These examples show that losing a debate could have serious consequences. It is not surprising that debating manuals were produced, some of which have survived. Public debates had to be won, and all possible means were used in order to attain that goal. This included trickery, but also straightforward, and soundly based, criticism of each other's positions. It is this aspect of the debate tradition which has no doubt exerted a more lasting influence. Criticism directed at others and criticism received from others had the unavoidable effect that all participants in these debates straightened out their own positions. Incoherent or inconsistent views might not survive scrutiny, not by an opponent in debate, but neither by the thinker who did not wish to be exposed by those who disagreed with him.
This process of improving and systematising the own position becomes visible, perhaps for the first time, in a scholastic development of Buddhism during the centuries preceding the Common Era. Buddhist scholasticism of that period, called abhidharma, has mainly survived in two bodies of texts, belonging to two schools of Buddhism. One of the two, belonging to the Theravada school of Buddhism, shows an ongoing refinement, but little or no attempt to develop a coherent system of thought. Such an attempt characterises the other school, Sarvästivāda, several texts of whose canonical "Basket of scholasticism" (abhidharma-pitaka) testify to the innovations made in this domain. Since the innovations concerned were made on the basis of traditional material, the result is often quite complex, and this is not the place to deal with them in full detail. Only some striking features must here be mentioned. The Sarvästiväda conception of the world is essentially atomistic. The macroscopio, and therefore composite, objects which we are acquainted with from everyday experience do not really exist. What really exist are the ultimate constituents, called dharmas. A particularly important composite object is the human person which, too, does not really exist. The atomistic understanding of the world also finds expression in the belief in momentariness: nothing exists for more than a single moment.> Various questions linked to this atomistic vision of the world
are raised and often answered by introducing an appropriate dharma. The question, for example, how different bundles of dharmas stick together so as to form different persons (remember that persons do strictly speaking not exist), is answered with the introduction of a dharma called präpti 'possession'. Other difficulties were connected with the belief that mental events occur only one at a time in one person. This leads to difficulties in the case where someone observes, say, his own desire. This activity involves two mental events, the observation and the desire, which cannot simultaneously exist. When the observation is present, the observed desire must of necessity be non-present. Observation of a desire is therefore only possible if a non-present object (the desire) exists. The Sarvästivadins concluded from this that past and future exist. This particular view, incidentally, is responsible for their name, Sarvästivada, the "position (vdda) according to which everything (sarva) exists (asti)". Sarvästivāda, as will be clear from this very brief presentation, made a major effort to rationalise its teachings, Theravada did not. Sarvāstivāda played a major role in the tradition of debate that came to involve all schools of philosophy, whether Buddhist, Brahmanical, or Jaina; it seems even likely that the Sarvistivadins were the first to adhere to this tradition of debate in India. Theravāda played no such role, and indeed left India before this tradition of debate had attained a prominent position.
The marginal role of Theravāda Buddhism is illustrated by one of the earliest surviving texts in India dedicated to criticising the positions of others. This text is the Kathavatthu "Text dealing with disputes", according to tradition composed 218 years after the death of the Buddha (Hinüber, 1996:70 f.), and belonging precisely to the Theravada branch of Buddhism. It criticises in its oldest portions a position which we know was held by the Sarvästivădins, mentioned earlier. An analysis of the criticism presented in the Kathavatthu shows that its author had not understood, and had perhaps no knowledge whatsoever of the arguments used by the Sarvāstivādins to justify their position. The Sarvästivādins held that past and future exist, and their argumentation, as we have seen, was built on their fundamental belief that no two mental events can simultaneously occur in one person. The author of the Kathavatthu presents instead an argument that is totally nonsensical."
The Kathāvatthu, then, is a text which criticises the position of others without being properly informed about it (at least in this case). No wonder that its uninformed criticism carried little weight. The Sarvāstivādins did not, and did not need to change their views as a result of the criticism expressed in this
37
For a slightly more detailed, but still very incomplete, presentation, see Bronkhorst, 2000:76-127. Momentariness is not explicitly mentioned in early Sarvistivada Abhidharma texts, but this position can quite safely be attributed to their authors; see Bronkhorst, 1995.
38
39
Bronkhorst, 1993.