Indian Sequence” (pages 818–826). There is no overall narrative history of Indian
philosophy as a sequence of ongoing arguments; most histories segregate Buddhist
and Hindu developments from each other, and within each camp divide the expo-
sition among separate schools as isolated rubrics. The volumes of the Encyclopedia
of Indian Philosophy^ (EIP) provide corrective material at a high level of detail;
and partial sketches of overall dynamics and interactions among the schools exist
in Stcherbatsky’s (1962) and Frauwallner’s (1953–1956) classic works; see also
Rubin (1954). A recent exception is Phillips (1995), which concentrates primarily
on the interaction between Nyaya and Advaita.
- These included lengthy classifications of fallacies, which the Greeks tended to
ignore; that is to say, the Indians treated logic as the science of argument rather
than the study of valid inference. See Potter, (1976: 56–92); Stcherbatsky (1962);
EIP (1977); on the development of Indian logic and its conflictual interaction with
Buddhist logicians, see Shastri (1976); and generally Matilal (1986, 1990).
- In this ecumenical mood Bhartrihari interpreted the Vedic aum as identical to the
Madhyamika shunyata; in the succeeding generations, Bhavaviveka (500s) and
Chandrakirti (600s) accepted Hinduism as propaedeutic to Buddhism (Halbfass,
1991: 66). Grammar became among the most intersectarian of disciplines. Bhar-
trihari’s grammar was commented upon by the Yogacarin Dharmapala, the head
monk of Nalanda, in the 500s.
- The details of Bhartrihari’s argument are connected with discussions by his grand-
teacher Vasubandhu about the nature of time in the Buddhist Abhidharma (EIP,
1990: 41–44, and Potter, 1976: 130–134) as well as with issues then debated
between the rival Hindu substance philosophies Samkhya and Vaisheshika.
- Dignaga’s doctrine is something like Saussure’s structuralist theory of language, in
which words take their meaning not by indicating instances but by marking
differences from one another. As the later commentator Dharmottara (700s) puts
it: pure sensation is all that exists; thought makes it definite by negation; negation
is the essence of thought, not of reality (Stcherbatsky, 1962: 1:536).
- Dignaga here expresses the equivalent of the position of Duns Scotus and William
of Ockham that God—the ideal condition of knowledge—perceives everything in
its radical particularity, its haecceitas, without the distorting lens of universals.
46.EIP (1987: 4); an early version was known simply as the “sixty topics.” A rather
similar activity is implied in the name of the Vaisheshika, which originally seems
to have meant “those who make distinctions” (Halbfass, 1992: 272–273). Samk-
hya lists paralleled in many details the Buddhist Abhidharma. Samkhya as the
philosophy of “enumeration” seems to have made its turf the coordination of
various lists of this sort, setting up parallels, and deriving further categories from
more basic generative ones. Later lists were created by cross-classifying, resulting
in mega-systems of 28 or 50 items or more.
47.Purusha is the older concept. In the Rigveda it is the primal Man from whose body
the universe was divided; in the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad, it is identified with
atman, which divides itself into man and woman, from whose copulation were
created the living species. Prakriti, material nature, is eventually identified with the
female side, while Purusha becomes a plurality of individual soul substances. In
Notes to Pages 229–234^ •^967
