strategy of formulating a Hindu orthodoxy extracted from the Upanishads.
One such position was the theistic school of thought called Bhedabhedavada,
whose leading figures were Bhartriprapañcha (104 in the key to Figure 5.4)
and Bhaskara. Accusing Shankara of capitulating to Dharmakirti, Bhaskara
countered that Brahman cannot be a consciousness devoid of attributes, nor
can the world simply be maya, illusion, in the style of Buddhism. Brahman has
the dual aspects of a transcendence beyond form while at the same time
possessing real characteristics as the cause of the world, which is manifested
as its effect (Isayeva, 1993: 14, 178, 243). In opposition to this more conven-
tional theism, Advaita promoted as the central doctrine of the Vedantic tradi-
tion—and therefore of Hindu orthodoxy—the Upanishadic doctrine of the
identity of the human soul with the Absolute. For the first time among the
organized Hindu darshanas, the cosmos itself was to be interpreted as funda-
mentally and solely consciousness. The territory proved to be fruitful in am-
biguities. Within Advaita itself three stances emerged.
Deep Troubles of Ontological Monism. The ex-Mimamsa philosopher Man-
dana Mishra produced a version of Advaita which eventually became known
as Bhamati. To protect the purity of the higher Brahman, it gives a certain
independence to individual souls as the location of the ignorance which con-
stitutes the world of illusion. Using the tools of the logicians, Mandana points
out there can be no relation between Brahman and nothing, since the rela-
tion would lack one of its terms; the world exists in some sense, but it is
“that about which one cannot speak” (Potter, 1976: 163; Halbfass, 1992: 44;
Isayeva, 1993: 66–67). This resembles Dharmakirti’s inutterable “thusness”
upon which distinctions are imposed by linguistic inference.
The second stance of Advaita was formulated by Shankara’s pupil Padma-
pada and developed by Prakashatman (in the period 1100–1300) and the
so-called Vivarana school. They chose the other horn of the dilemma: rather
than diminish the powers of Brahman, Brahman is declared to be the source
of illusion. Vivarana comes close to absolute idealism and solipsism; it holds
that the plurality of the world depends on the knowing subject, and the
plurality of selves is an illusion like the many moons reflected in rippling water
(Potter, 1976: 168–181). But Brahman itself must contain two natures, de-
scribed as essential and accidental: the pure witness consciousness, plus a
primal ignorance which is the material and efficient cause of the world. The
difference between Bhamati and Vivarana Advaita parallels the differences
between Dharmakirti’s radical empiricism and Yogacara idealism in the Bud-
dhist camp (Potter, 1976: 232–233; Isayeva, 1993: 240–243).
This idealist strand in turn was criticized by a third Advaita branch,
stemming from Shankara’s pupil Sureshvara. The latter’s follower, Sarvajñat-
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