the tantric Yoga cult that became popular after 800 c.e., the naked woman who
copulates with the yogi (in inner visualization or in the flesh) is regarded as an
incarnation of Prakriti (Eliade, 1969: 259).- The Yoga-sutras, compiled around 500 c.e., differed from previous sutra collec-
tions on meditative practice by incorporating an explicit metaphysics from Samk-
hya, and by adding Hindu theism. Classic Samkhya culminating in Ishvarakrishna
was atheistic, following the tendency toward a naturalistic cosmology which comes
from raising the level of abstraction on a mythological tradition of anthropomor-
phic world elements. The Yoga-Samkhya combination heightened the Hindu iden-
tity of both positions. Before this time, Yoga meditation was more typically
identified with Buddhism; the Yogacara school simply meant “those who medi-
tate.” Philosophical intellectuals looked down on this rather eclectic Hindu syn-
cretism. Yoga is not counted as one of the “six darshanas” by Haribhadra in the
700s; by the time it gets standard mention (around 1400), it is usually lumped
in a rubric of positions that are no longer intellectually alive. Shankara in the
700s considered Yoga meditation beneficial mainly for “persons of slower under-
standing,” and regarded its plurality of souls, and its progression through which
the meditator rises from matter to atman, as obstacles to understanding the true
non-dualist reality (Halbfass, 1991: 226). - It is worth stressing, insofar as the image of Indian philosophy is so heavily colored
retrospectively by the later dominance of Advaita, that all five darshanas that
existed before 700 c.e. were at least partially materialist, and included sense
perception among the valid sources of knowledge.
50.EIP (1981: 15–16, 177, 346). As usual there is debate over the authenticity of
these connections. I follow Potter (EIP, 1981) in dating Shankara in the early 700s
rather than the traditional 788–820. See also Wood (1990: 38, 47); Isayeva (1993:
83–87). - Gaudapada’s famous commentary was on one of the most Buddhist-influenced
Upanishads, the Mandukya (ca. 200 c.e.). This Upanishad was also devoted to
the cult of the mantra aum, which we have seen Bhartrihari advocating across
Buddhist-Hindu lines a few generations earlier. In his commentary on this text,
Shankara blatantly inserted the terminology of Brahmanistic Vedanta (Isayeva,
1993: 61). On the composite nature of the Gaudapadiya-Karika and its relation-
ship to Buddhism, see King (1995). - Halbfass (1991: 301–310). The complexities of how a sacrifice could bring about
its consequences became a fertile ground for debate among the Naiyayikas, from
Uddyotakara in the 500s to Jayanta in the 800s. They raised issues such as how
a sacrifice gave merit to the sponsor who merely paid the Brahmans to carry it
out, or how deficiencies in the karma of the sacrificer could offset the potency of
the ritual. - After Prabhakara’s Mimamsa had disappeared as an active school, this structural
conflict was repeated 400 years later: Prabhakara’s extreme epistemological realism
was reappropriated by Ramanuja as part of the differentiation of Advaita intellec-
tual space. - For Shankara, the self cannot observe itself, just as “even hot fire cannot burn
968 •^ Notes to Pages 237–246