in the Ganges valley to match Buddhism; the destruction by the Shaiva king
of the Hunas of Buddhist stupas and monasteries in the northwest in the early
500s; the weak penetration of Buddhism in south India, and its disappearance
around 500 or 600 amidst militantly Hinduizing states; the spread of Hindu-
ism into Kashmir, balancing Buddhism and then displacing it in the 900s;
and the battle of Buddhist and Hindu kings in the lower Ganges—a deliber-
ately Hinduizing king in the late 700s, followed by the militantly pro-Buddhist
Pala kings, then a reverse swing with the Hindu destruction of Buddhist
temples in Bengal ca. 1050. By 1200 Buddhism had expired entirely, the coup
de grâce administered by Muslim raiders (OHI, 1981: 171, 201; Dutt, 1962:
206–207, 376).
After Buddhism was gone, internecine political conflict within Hinduism
escalated to take its place. During the time when Buddhism was fading out,
Jaina-Hindu conflict was at its height, and the most violent persecutions
centered in those places, especially in the south, where the Jainas were most
closely identified with the rulers. Here too, in the centuries following Hindu
victory over court Jainism (roughly 1100–1400), were kings who supported
either Shaiva or Vaishnava cults and persecuted the other. Creativity peaked
among the religious intellectuals located at the key transition points—both on
the way up and on the way down.
The Long-Term Politics of Intellectual Splits and Alliances
Strong schools subdivide; weak schools ally. This is the general principle
governing the long-term dynamics of intellectual factions. Hence the two-step
causality whereby external sociopolitical changes strengthen or weaken the
base for an intellectual-supporting organization, and motivate its members to
fractionate or unify their philosophical positions.
Intellectual politics is further governed by a second principle. The intellec-
tual law of small numbers holds that the attention space allows three to six
distinctive positions; this constitutes the limit within which a politically domi-
nant school can split. The law of small numbers can be violated, but with a
penalty: beyond the upper limit of about a half-dozen positions, additional
intellectual factions fail to propagate themselves across the generations. They
fail to recruit successors, and their memory fades out, either because they are
neglected or because they are lumped in with some more prominent position.
The long-term intellectual history of India nicely illustrates these principles.
(1) When the sacrificial cult is dominant, the Vedic priests split into five
factions; later they unite in opposition to the Buddhist ascendancy. (2) The
Upanishadic pre-Buddhist period spawns a large number of individual philoso-
phies, most of which are squeezed out by the law of small numbers. (3) Bud-
External and Internal Politics: India • 191