dana Mishra is there in the days of the Mimamsa-Advaita revolutions in the
700s; the great syncretizer Vacaspati Mishra is there in the 900s; and from the
900s down into the 1300s it is the base for most of the leading Nyaya-
Vaisheshikas. Neo-Nyaya grows up there before migrating farther downriver
into Bengal.
The founding generations of the new Mimamsakas and Advaitins interlock
with the Buddhists. Gaudapada is reputedly a converted Mahayanist; by some
indications he also wrote a Samkhya commentary before becoming an Advaita
Vedantist (EIP, 1981: 104; EIP, 1987: 209–210). In other words, Gaudapada
traversed both the leading old Hindu philosophy, Samkhya, and the wing of
the Buddhist world which was being challenged by Vasubandhu’s followers—
Madhyamika anti-conceptualism. He (or a series of authors who assembled a
text under this name) adumbrates a new space on the Hindu side, an anti-con-
ceptualism which claims orthodox roots in the Upanishads.^51 Intellectual revo-
lutions take place by simultaneously rearranging opposing sides of conceptual
space, and the move to Advaita goes along with the development of the most
extreme realism in Indian philosophy, by the Mimamsakas Kumarila and
Prabhakara.
Shankara brings together both these chains. Picking, choosing, and rear-
ranging, he splits Mimamsa from within. We thus have double revolutions in
rapid succession: the “Mimamsa revolution,” which rises above Vedic exegesis
to a realism which multiplies ontological entities to an extreme degree; and a
“revolution within the Mimamsa revolution,” in which Advaita explicitly
rejects realism. Once again it is creativity by negation, a movement in rapid
succession to opposing extremes. For all its attacks on Buddhism, early Advaita
is taking over Buddhist conceptual space. Prior to 600 or 700, the prominent
Hindu philosophies (Samkhya, Vaisheshika, the various naive theisms) were
on the pluralist and materialist side of the field; it was the Mahayana Buddhists
who occupied the wing of the field comprising monism, idealism, and illusion-
ism. We see here the result of a long-term shift in the philosophical center of
gravity within Buddhism. During its centuries of institutional dominance, the
classic Hinayana philosophies were on the realist side, led by the Sarvastivadin
pluralism of evanescent world elements. A shift begins as Abhidharma realism
is challenged, but not displaced, by Madhyamika and Yogacara. The turning
point is when Buddhism starts to cede the turf of realist element cosmologies.
Already in the early generations of Hindu attack, the Buddhists respond by
distancing themselves from the realism represented by Samkhya and Nyaya-
Vaisheshika. Vasubandhu II’s revision of Abhidharma, and its anti-conceptual
development by Dignaga and Dharmakirti, move the pluralist branch closer to
the position which regards the ordinary world as illusory. The climax of
Buddhist philosophy, as is so often the case, is the creativity of realignment
during a grand intellectual retreat.
242 • (^) Intellectual Communities: Asian Paths