phistication, which is transposable outside the religious frame. The same can
be said about medieval Islamic and Christian philosophy, where the concept
of God is not merely a matter of dogma; it is philosophically fruitful because
it operates as an epistemological ideal (perfect knowledge), and an ideal of
metaphysical ultimates (infinite causal power, ultimate ontological foundation,
and so on).
In the dominant Buddhist and Hindu schools, the critique of illusion holds
prestige as the path to higher religious insight. This is also the driving force of
the epistemology-metaphysics sequence in Indian philosophy. The premise of
world illusion is the basic challenge, the locus of arguments. It can be regarded
as an institutionalized skepticism about the reality of objects. At first discussion
concerns the underlying ingredients which undercut surface appearances; sub-
sequent debate goes on to critique the reality of the ingredients as well. Indian
realists, Idealists, and those who held that metaphysical ultimates are inex-
pressible all had to deal with the challenge of this institutionalized skepticism,
this perennially available weapon wielded against any assertions whatever. An
assertion as to the reality of anything could always be met by the charge that
it was a move away from religious enlightenment.
Freed from the religious animus—and there were times, especially at the
height of cosmopolitan debates, when philosophers seemed only nominally
religious—the same skeptical claim held up an abstract standard as to how the
philosophical game would be played. In point of fact, considerable portions of
Indian philosophy have not regarded the world in general as illusory. All of
the Hindu darshanas before the rise of Advaita non-dualism rested valid
knowledge on sensory perception of material objects. The Abhidharma wing
of Buddhist philosophers also generally accepted various world elements as
real, denying only the mentally imposed reifications of permanent objects and
of the self—a position which is not so different from that of a modern physicist.
Even after Shankara, Advaita opponents flourished by taking their stand on
the reality of the world. Intellectual life plays out by oppositions. The world
illusion issue in the Indian debates meant that realist positions too would be
explicated with epistemological sharpness.
The question of illusion required all of Indian philosophy to grapple with
epistemology. That is why, once we abstract it from its religious garb, Indian
philosophy is so rich in the themes that characterize the deepest puzzles of the
Greek-Christian-European sequence.
- From about 400 b.c.e. to 200 c.e., the philosophical splits among Bud-
dhist sects, culminating with the rise of Mahayana and Nagarjuna’s dialectical
negation. Extending the time period to about 350 c.e., still keeping within the
unfolding of Buddhist sectarian rivalries, we can include the rise of Yogacara,
making Buddhism a full-fledged idealism.
It will be convenient to combine this period with the next.
Sequence and Branch in the Social Production of Ideas^ •^819