issues of the past into historical compilations. The energy of Indian philosophy
was dying of its own success, in much the same way that the technical
sophistication of the Nominalists in the Christian universities of Europe ob-
scured the attention space in esoteric refinements. It is not merely that intel-
lectual acuteness was lost as bhakti emotionalism gained popularity; the ex-
citement of the intellectual networks was declining from within. Although
long-term reputations, especially of hyper-technical fields such as Neo-Nyaya,
make it hard for us to appreciate it, this drying up occurred at the climax of
the most sophisticated philosophical activity in Indian history.^69 The creative
networks lost their reputation and their impetus at a time of institutional
success as well as cumulative development. The social pattern of such failures
is revealed by comparative analysis, provided at the end of Chapter 9.
We see a tendency toward a “neutral” scholarly heritage in the growing
acceptance of the “six darshanas” scheme. Originally this was the rubric used
by Jaina historians, on the sidelines of the intellectual action, observing the
scene around them in the 700s. In the 1300s Vidyaranya introduced the “six
darshanas” scheme into Hinduism; by this time it was already archaic, since
Yoga was hardly a live philosophical school, Vaisheshika was not independent,
and virtually all the intellectual action would have to be categorized under the
contending varieties of Vedanta. Old schools were now revived, but more as
memories than as independent lineages defending their own positions; their
sharp edges were rounded off, and all were made compatible with a currently
orthodox theism. The most independent as an organizational base seems to
have been Mimamsa, which still had its specialists in textual exegesis down
into the 1800s and beyond. Its glory days as a realist epistemology and
ontology had long since passed; abandoning its aggressive atheism, late Mi-
mamsa turned theist.^70
The last creative flurry of Hindu philosophies was in the 1500s, this time
largely under the banner of syncretism. The last big name was Vijñanabhikshu,
who put together a combination of scholastic doctrines—Mimamsa, Yoga,
Nyaya, Samkhya, most of these long since fossilized and out of date—with
contemporary Vedanta. If Vijñanabhikshu drew together Hindu scholasticism
into a grand non-Advaita syncretism, Appaya Dikshita (ca. 1600) was the
syncretist within the monist camp. Considering the violence of the conflict in
previous centuries between Shaivas and Vaishnavas, this was a remarkable
conciliation. The acute philosophical differences between Advaitins and plu-
ralists, and the dialectics of conceptualist and aconceptualist epistemologies,
were smoothed over, no longer a matter of living interest. This is not to say
that no one was still creatively defending a distinctive position in the 1500s;
two of the great dialecticians, Madhusudana of the Advaitins and Vyasa-tirtha
of the Madhvas, still carried on the debate over knowledge and world illusion.
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