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Reading the Past: Texts and History
Bronkhorst: Systematic Philosophy between the Empires
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All this raises questions. How did these early thinkers communicate with each other? and above all: why did they bother? The answer to these kinds of questions will not come from a mere analysis of doctrines. The very existence of shared epistemes takes us to the sociopolitical background of early Indian philosophy.
SOCIOPOLITICAL FACTORS
down to the last detail a future event that may be one or many lifetimes away. How is that possible without the interference of numerous other causal "trains"? Is such a longterm causal mechanism really conceivable without outside supervision?
A school like Samkhya was not much bothered by such questions. It seems likely that Samkhya had never adopted the causal mechanism of the first episteme to begin with; its surviving texts shamelessly resort to teleological explanations. Buddhist Sarvästivāda was not much concemed either: its specific doctrine, to the extent that the past exists in the future, allowed for the possibility of direct intervention at the right moment. But other Abhidharma schools and the Brahmanical school of Vaisesika were deeply affected by this difficulty. Some of their thinkers took drastic steps to remove it.
According to tradition Vasubandhu, the author of the Abhidharmakofa and -bhäsya, converted later in life to become a Yogäcira vijfdnavddin. He was not the first Buddhist idealist, but his reasons for adopting this position are clearly set out Vimsatika, in the following words (commentary to verse 7): "The impression (wisand) of a deed enters into the series (santāna) of consciousness, nowhere else. Why don't you accept that the fruition (comes about) right there where the impression is, and is (therefore) a corresponding modification of consciousness? What is the reason that you imagine the fruition of an impression to come about there, where the impression is not?" Vasubandhu considers all these three deed, the impression it leaves, and its future result-mental events. The causal connection between a deed and its karmic retribution much later being different mental events in the one long concatenation of mental events that make up a person and her reincarnationgooses in this way most of its mystery. Karmic retribution seen like this is no more difficult to explain than an agreeable or disagreeable dream.
Vaišesika was, once again, not inclined to abandon the commonsense view of reality. It did not therefore opt for idealism, and made a determined effort to discover the mechanism of karmic retribution. This effort did not succeed, and by the time of Prasasta the school tumed to the one remaining option: it introduced the notion of a creator god, whose primary task it was to supervise karmic retribution (Bronkhorst 2000b).
Philosophical ideas do not grow on trees, nor do they find their origin in some Platonic heaven, isolated from the realities of life. This does not imply that the inner logic of philosophical developments can be ignored. It does however call for reflection on the circumstances which allow philosophies to develop in accordance with their "inner logic." What do we know about these circumstances in early India?
The testimonies of Buddhist pilgrims from China as well as a multitude of legends preserved in India itself inform us that philosophical debates frequently took place, often at royal courts. Exponents of different positions would confront each other and try to show the superiority of their own views over those of their opponents. Winning such a debate could bring great advantages, and losing one could have catastrophic consequences not only for the debater but for his group as a whole. The outcome of debates was often decided by the king and his advisers, but this should not make us conclude that the art of debating played no role. The Chinese pilgrim Xuanzang tells us of a public discussion in which Dharmapala, a Buddhist, had gained a great victory over non-Buddhists. Yet this discussion had been organized by a king who wished to destroy Buddhism in the country. This shows that other factors than political power could play a decisive role in these discussions (Watters 1904-05: 372-373).
There is every reason to believe that debates of this kind were already a feature of the period that concerns us at present. One clear indication is that debating manuals were being composed during this period. One early surviving manual of this kind has been preserved as part of the Caraka Samhitd, a treatise on medicine (dyurveda). 11 Part of the Nydya Sitra also counts as a debating manual. Nigarjuna may have composed one (Kajiyama 1991). Debating, as is clear from the numerous more recent testimonies referred to above, was not a leisure occupation for scholars in ivory towers, but a matter of life and death, sometimes literally so. The obligation to defend one's positions against decidedly unfriendly critics obliged all actual and potential participants to thoroughly think and rethink their positions, and revise them where they had reason to fear that they might look less than totally coherent to an outsider. What is more, debates encouraged potential participants not only to rethink their own positions but also to pet to know the details of the positions of their opponents in the hope of finding weaknesses in them. The inevitable result was that ideas traveled quickly and easily from one group to the next, and were also studied by those who were not inclined to accept them.12
11 Prets 2000. The Caraka Samhitd also "records" debates, us does Kausalya's Arthastra; see Wezler 1993.
12 Caraka Samhita, Viminathina 8.15; Vidyabhusana 1920: Solomon 1976, 1978; Bronkhorst 2002e.
Summary and Implications The preceding sections indicate how a number of what may appear at first sight unrelated positions that find expression in classical Indian philosophy--such as sarkaryavdda, asarkaryavdda, fünyaydda, ajativdda, anekantavdda, pohawdda, vijfdnavada, Livaravdda, to mention but these are to be understood against the background of the two epistemes specified above. This in its turn implies that the history of Indian philosophy, even in its early phases, is more than the story of a number of unrelated schools of thought. Quite on the contrary, it consists of a web of interrelated developments, in which thinkers participated who, even though from different backgrounds and without much sympathy for each other, shared several presuppositions and questions. It is also clear that many of these thinkers were aware of each others' ideas, even across the boundaries of school, religion and, we may assume, geography.
