the Advaita merging of man with God is treated as sacrilege (Dasgupta,
1922–1955: 4:52–54; Eliot, 1988: 2:237–240; Potter, 1976: 249).
On philosophical terrain, Madhva defended an explicitly pluralistic meta-
physics. He repudiated not only Advaita but also the qualified non-dualism of
Ramanuja. Seizing on prior traditions of logic, and occupying an intellectual
space left vacant since Dharmakirti’s Buddhist followers, Madhva argued that
everything is a particular, including both eternal and transient things, even
God. The Nyaya-Vaisheshika included particulars among their fundamental
categories, but had reified them as entities different from the substances in
which they inhere. Madhva radicalized the concept, making the particular the
basic feature of beings; for it is “the power of everything to be itself” (Raju,
1985: 475). Madhva similarly radicalized the concept of universals, which
Nyaya-Vaisheshika treated as eternal entities. Madhva held that the universals
of non-transient entities are themselves transient, and he attacked anything like
Platonist realism in favor of an omni-particularism that cut through every
ontological level. Through the same move, he counteracted the anti-conceptual
dialectics of Advaitins such as Shri Harsha. The pluralistic world is real exactly
as it is—as particulars.
In these same centuries (ca. late 1000s to early 1400s), Nimbarka launched
yet another Vaishnava sect. He and his followers continued the fight against
Advaita, refuting Shankara on the illusory nature of the world but simultane-
ously separating themselves from the philosophical terrain of the Ramanujans.
Duality, Nimbarka holds, cannot be an attribute of Non-duality because at-
tributes distinguish a substance from other substances, but only one substance
exists. Duality is a subordinate reality within the Non-duality, and is both
different and non-different from it: different because a subordinate dependent
existence; non-different because it has no independence existence. (Hence the
name of the position, Dvaitadvaita.) Drawing on concepts from both Advaita
and the energy-ontology of Shaktism, Nimbarka describes the single Substance
as comprising a static self-identical aspect and a energetic and potentiating
aspect (Chattopadhyaya, 1979: 1:267–270; Isayeva, 1993: 250). The result is
something like Spinoza transposed into the Indian modalities of the aconcep-
tual and the energizing rather than the mental and material.
Vaishnava splits continued, led by Chaitanya in the 1400s or early 1500s,
and soon after him by Vallabha (Eliot, 1988: 2:248–256; Dasgupta, 1922–
1955: 4:320–448). Splitting from the Madhva sect, Chaitanya turned to bhakti
devotionalism. He repudiated his own youthful training in intellectual argu-
ment and dominated debates by pure emotionalism. His Krishna sect down-
played asceticism and allowed its monks to marry; in place of ceremony,
worship took the form of repetition of divine names to the accompaniment of
music and rhythmic bodily swaying. Chaitanya was known to dance until he
266 • (^) Intellectual Communities: Asian Paths