India. The creative periods in philosophy occurred when the networks were
geographically most concentrated. The Upanishadic sages were in the middle
Ganges, notably at Banares. In this region the rival consolidating states, Ma-
gadha and Kosala, were the locations where the rival networks of debating
ascetics built up, culminating in the organizations of Buddhists, Jainas, and
Ajivikas. The literary creativity of the Hindu “renaissance,” by contrast, came
in dispersion, the epics assembled by pioneers migrating away from the Ganges
heartland. The apex of abstract philosophy occurred in the generations when
Hindu and Buddhist networks meshed and debated, above all at Nalanda, the
headquarters monastery in old Magadha which became an intersectarian cen-
ter, cosmopolitan and virtually secularized as a modern university. Flanking
this Buddhist center were a few others monastery-universities, in wealthy
Gujarat in the west, and downriver in Bengal. On the Hindu side, Banares
became an intellectual center again at the time of Shankara, drawing Hindu
students from the south.
As Buddhism disappeared from India, Hindu monastic orders took its
place, expanding and splitting into rival movements. Educational organizations
(maths), were created teaching the doctrine of each sect. For a time abstract
philosophy continued to develop; this was concentrated at the moments when
splits occurred, leaders of new factions such as Ramanuja and Madhva branch-
ing off from the older networks and developing new philosophical standpoints
to go along with the particulars of their theology and the independence of their
organization. Some creativity flared up where the older schools of the estab-
lished darshanas intersected the new religious movements, as in Kashmir
during 800–1000, where the tail end of a longstanding Buddhist lineage amal-
gamated with the Nyaya logicians and entered debate with Shaiva sectarians,
resulting in a unique brand of Shaivaite energy ontology. Another center was
in the old central region of the middle Ganges, where the Nyaya school—the
last holdout from the pre-sectarian schools of Hinduism—maintained a head-
quarters at Mithila (very near Nalanda), and where the technicalities of Neo-
Nyaya were created, a last gasp of innovation from 1350 to about 1500. The
maths became increasingly sectarian after about 1300, immersed in articulating
their own position; formal education proliferated around India, but there were
no great central places where debates were focused. Indian philosophy dissi-
pated in scholastic handbooks and eclectic syncretisms, flanked by popular
devotional cults outside the ranks of the professional scholars. The material
bases of schooling were more abundant than ever at just the time when
philosophy dried up.
Japan. During the Buddhist period, virtually all of the important new devel-
opments spun off from the great monastery complex at Mount Hiei overlook-
508 •^ Intellectual Communities: Western Paths