VAJRAYANAAND LATER INDIAN BUDDHISM 121alectics (the science oflogical argument). The institution of the public debate
continued unabated until the destruction of the universities. Mter a brief hia-
tus, it was revived in Tibet and continues today in the Tibetan tradition. The
debates played a major role in shaping the development ofBuddhist thought.
Nagarjuna, for instance, presented his views in the form of answers to a de-
bater's criticisms; Asanga and Vasubandhu, in the course of their writings,
rewrote the rules for a deductive proof.
As the volume of philosophical literature grew, both in Buddhist and in
non-Buddhist traditions, the training of debaters increasingly became a full-
time job. Training centers were required, equipped with vast libraries and of-
fering organized courses of instruction, and it was thus that some of the major
Buddhist monasteries became the world's first universities. The one at Na-
landa-home of Sariputra, the reputed father of Abhidharma studies-seems
to have been the first. Although other universities developed in various parts
oflndia, most notably Valabhi in western India, Nalanda remained the most
renowned and influential. The first records mentioning it as a center of studies
date from the second century C. E. By the end of the Gupta period in the sixth
century C.E., Nalanda was a major university enjoying the patronage even of
Hindu monarchs. Nagarjuna is said to have taught there in the second cen-
tury, followed by Asanga in the fourth and Dignaga in the fifth.
Dignaga's main fields of interest were logic and dialectics. His works in
these fields were so revolutionary that they rewrote the ground rules for de-
bate and had a wide influence even on non-Buddhist philosophers. More im-
portant historically, however, was his contribution to epistemology, the theory
of knowledge. Prior to his time, epistemology had been taught in Buddhist
circles as an adjunct to logic, and logic as an adjunct to the study of the Sutra
and Abhidharma. Dignaga's writings, however, endowed epistemology with
foremost importance, stating that the pursuit of true knowledge first requires
familiarity with the criteria or means of knowledge. Thus the study of these
criteria should come first so that the texts could be judged against them. This
program, which was generally accepted, helped to universalize and secularize
the curriculum at the university, making it a place where the texts of all tradi-
tions could be studied on an equal footing, subject to the overarching disci-
pline of dialectics. Even the schools that consciously rejected Dignaga's
thinking were influenced by him. In the seventh century, Dharmakirti-who,
like Dignaga, appears to have been a Sautrantika-wrote commentaries on
Dignaga's thought, defending it against critics and reworking it so skillfully
that he came to eclipse Dignaga as the major authority in the field of episte-
mology.
After the fall of the Guptas, the Pala dynasty (eighth-twelfth centuries
C.E.) continued sponsoring the university at Nalanda, which enjoyed its hey-
day during its rule, becoming internationally renowned. Missionaries were
trained to spread Buddhism outside of India, students came from all over the
Buddhist world in search of texts and teachers, and royal patronage came from
as far away as Java. The curriculum broadened to cover, in addition to Bud-
dhism, the Vedas, grammar, linguistics, logic, philology, medicine, music,
belles lettres, literary criticism, art, architecture, sculpture, astronomy, and the