into subfactions, while the other side remains relatively stable. In this case the
splitters and innovators are the expanding movement of Vaishnavas. The
followers of Vishnu had never been strictly orthodox in the eyes of Hindu
pandits, since this meant a Brahmanical education guided by respect for the
Vedas. The Vaishnavas claimed their own revealed scriptures and thus were
regarded as something of a heretical challenge, although the popular appeal of
the Vaishnava epic the Mahabharata enabled them to capture much of the
central Hindu identity. The Shaivas had an even more shockingly unorthodox
background; but while skull-carrying phallic image worshippers repelled the
orthodox, there were also more socially conventional followers of Shiva among
the core intellectuals: generally they had the sympathy of the Nyayas and
Vaisheshikas, and Shankara himself was claimed by the Shaivas (perhaps
inaccurately; EIP, 1981: 119; cf. Pandey, 1986; Eliot, 1988: 2:209–210). A
tendency developed for Shaivism to be identified with Advaita monism, with
a spiritual force which transcends the world through paradox into the unspeak-
able, whereas Vishnu acquired more of the normal qualities of theism, a
creator-and-ruler God, and was thus philosophically compatible with pluralist
positions such as Samkhya and Mimamsa.
Nevertheless, as Vaishnavism expanded and split, over the long run it
appropriated a range of philosophical tools and acquired a variety of philo-
sophical positions. The Vaishnava upsurge, from Ramanuja down to Nim-
barka, was directed philosophically against the Advaitas. That is to say, the
Vaishnavas took the opposite philosophical tack from the most prominent and
respectable of the Shaivas, the well-established monastic movement founded
by Shankara. By challenging Shankarites, Ramanuja (ca. 1100) was making a
claim to bring Vaishnavas into an equal position of orthodoxy within Hindu-
ism; he built an order of monks as a direct parallel and competition.^66 Shankara
had explicitly rejected Vaishnava devotional theism as non-Vedic (Raju, 1985:
438). Ramanuja, originally trained in Advaita philosophy in a Shaivite math,
launched a counterattack against the Shankara ontology of Maya, the world
illusion which is mere appearance. Yamunacharya, Ramanuja’s predecessor,
had already criticized Shankara’s fundamental argument, the cogito: the self
cannot perceive itself unless it is split, and to perceive the second one in turn
leads to an infinite regress of separate selves (Potter, 1976: 83). Ramanuja
exploited the pluralist tensions within monism, creating a position known as
Vishishtadvaita, qualified non-dualism. Brahman is the one reality, but the
modes of its existence comprise both matter and souls and may be regarded
as the body of God pervading the universe. Borrowing technical ammunition
from the Nyaya, Ramanuja describes the relation of the world to the Absolute,
Spinoza-like, as that of attributes to an underlying substance.
It follows that the visible world cannot be an illusion. Rejecting Shankara’s
264 • (^) Intellectual Communities: Asian Paths