In the 600s, readjustments in the Nyaya and Mimamsa schools were
bringing about developments which would culminate in the turning point of
Hindu philosophy, the Advaita revolution. But first we must retrace our steps
to examine a second dimension of Hindu-Buddhist interaction, on the onto-
logical side.
Rival Element Cosmologies
Let us go back to the centuries following the rise of Buddhism. The major
Upanishads as late as 200 c.e. describe a tremendous diversity of positions
among the Brahman intellectuals engaged in continuing debates. We see a great
many individual sages, none of whose substantive position received sufficient
focus to achieve lasting fame. The problem of intellectual success is to find a
distinctive position vis-à-vis one’s rivals; the Brahman philosophers of this
period fail to stand out from the morass of crosscutting positions. The first
movement to appropriate a clearly delineated slice of the turf was the Nyaya,
with its textbook of debating tactics. But the Nyaya philosophers were simul-
taneously participants in substantive debates about ontological issues; the
Nyaya sutras had their own position on the elements which constitute the
universe, and in this respect they overlapped with other philosophers, especially
those of the Vaisheshika school, which was also solidifying out of the morass
of Upanishadic positions. A third position which gradually crystallized an
identity around this time was the Samkhya. These positions eventually became
more distinctive, and more famous, as they carved up the field in opposition
to one another, the pluralist realism of Nyaya and Vaisheshika against the
Parmenidean tendencies which came to the fore in Samkhya.
All this took place on the Hindu side of the field, among the religiously
orthodox Brahmans; the real intellectual dominants of the time were the
Buddhists, and it was Buddhist ontology and soteriology which set the style
for the emerging Hindu philosophies. There is a striking parallel between
Abhidharma scholasticism developed ca. 300 b.c.e., and the regroupings of
later Upanishadic philosophies in the Nyaya, Vaisheshika, and Samkhya. All
these positions are element philosophies; they enumerate the contents of the
cosmos, albeit with rival lists, and with increasingly distinctive and explicit
ontological assumptions. And all these positions progressively lengthened and
systematized their lists in what looks like imitation of one another. In some of
the Upanishads, especially the earliest ones, there was a tendency to look for
a single, ultimate constituent of the universe, but these monist strains were
overtaken by the scholasticizing tendency, as if in competition over the most
comprehensive list of all the things that various philosophers had mentioned
as constituents of the world.
External and Internal Politics: India • 233