are supplied by the mind, which imposes the relation of externality on subjec-
tive ideas.
Parallel problems over causality arose on the Hindu side. Samkhya was hit
by Buddhist criticism of conundrums in its dualistic metaphysics. If a material
world substance is posited, along with a pure detached witness consciousness
looking down upon it, how are these separate and distinct substances related?
Samkhya seems to have made repairs by making the witness consciousness ever
more detached, and incorporating the empirical and dynamic aspects of mind
in the material substance. Critics attacked this too: If substance is permanent
and at rest, why does it ever set itself in motion? This is equivalent to the deep
trouble uncovered by Parmenides, the turning point to higher abstraction in
Greek philosophy. Samkhya responded with a solution parallel to Aristotle’s:
substance includes latency or potentiality; the world substance periodically
extrudes the visible world, like a tortoise putting out its claws.
A deep trouble locates a fruitful spot, where layers of debate build up.
These arguments echo throughout Indian philosophy. Positions are taken on
the side of satkaryavada, which holds that the effect preexists in the material
cause, and asatkaryavada—that causes and effects are distinct entities, and
these cannot be connected, because that would reduce one substance to an-
other. The Vaisheshika pluralists took the latter position, holding that latency
does not exist, and that new combinations of ingredients lead to completely
new entities. The division cropped up on the Buddhist side as well: an early
inter-sectarian dispute was whether past, present, and future exist indepen-
dently, or whether all are contained in the earlier existent. Nagarjuna elimi-
nated time and substance entirely, opting in effect for monism, whereas Yoga-
cara Idealism held that all plurality derives from seeds of potentiality in the
storehouse consciousness. Later, after the big realignment of positions remov-
ing both Samkhya and Buddhism from the field, Advaita (“non-dualism”) took
over the Samkhya satkaryavada stance (effects preexist in the cause), eliminat-
ing the embarrassment of dual substances and elevating Parmenidean immu-
tability to a purer monism. Debate did not end here; the deep troubles of
plurality and change were exploited repeatedly in each subsequent round of
Indian philosophical creativity. The same deep troubles were exploited in the
West: Spinoza and Leibniz, later Bradley and Russell, worked through the
facets of the satkaryavada puzzle; the occasionalist question, raised both in
Islamic theology and in post-Cartesian Europe, is another variant on the
plurality of substances problem.
- The height of the Buddhist-Hindu confrontation, when their networks
cross and their positions mix and transform (500–800 c.e.). The deep troubles
of the previous generations are recombined. Again the nominalism versus
universals controversy provides fertile grounds. Bhartrihari—a cosmopolitan
Sequence and Branch in the Social Production of Ideas^ •^821