itself, and even the most able actor cannot climb on his own shoulder” (Brahma-
sutra-bhasya 3.3.54). Shankara also takes over Prabhakara’s argument for the
self-validity of knowledge, while transferring its conclusion from the empirical
world to the self, which is in the nature of the case not delimited by any of the
concepts which apply to objects. In addition, Shankara cuts short any infinite
regress of consciousness observing consciousness, since its knowledge is immedi-
ately self-revealing (Isayeva, 1993: 126, 184–185).
- For instance, in opposing the Mimamsa doctrine of karmic action through ritual,
Shankara defends salvation by insight alone, which was the mark of the Mad-
hyamika school. Shankara engages in his lengthiest polemics with the Yogacara
school (Isayeva, 1993: 172). This is in keeping with the sociological principle that
conflict is most intense when it occurs over close identities (Coser, 1956: 67–71).
- Shankara’s disciple Sureshvara formulated the argument: “No doubts can arise in
relation to the Self, since its nature is pure immediate consciousness” (Deutsch,
1969: 19).
- Orthodox scholars count between 10 and 14 Upanishads as fundamental, out of
the hundred created by this time. Shankara established 11 as classic by citing them
in his commentary on the Brahma-sutras, and wrote commentaries on 10 of them
(EIP, 1981; Nakamura, 1973: 77–79). Badarayana had referred to 6 of these;
Gaudapada’s Advaita commentary had publicized yet another Upanishad, the
Buddhist-influenced Mandukya, which Shankara (if his surviving commentary is
authentic) added to the canon.
- Shankara’s home math at Sringeri in south India was probably founded on the site
of a Buddhist monastery (Eliot, 1988: 209–211).
- Basham (1951: 284). Time is the only unextended substance the Jainas recognize,
and that too is a substance. On Jaina philosophy generally, see Raju (1985:
106–123); Potter (1976: 115, 145–149).
- Although Buddhist texts disappeared from India as Hindu triumphed, Sanskrit
texts by Shantarakshita and Kamalashila were preserved in Jaina collections,
further testifying to the cosmopolitanism and the marginality of Jaina observers in
this period (Dutt, 1962: 239).
- Nakamura (1980: 309–311, 332–341); Stein (1972: 72–74, 165, 224); Dutt (1962:
350–351). Prominent sexual-yogic tantrists in the 800s included the Bengal king
Indrabuddhi and his sister.
- The Shaiva movement became philosophically creative when it came into contact
with a long-standing network of Nyaya logicians in the midst of declining Bud-
dhism in Kashmir. The Shaivas’ mythology of their god of death and destruction
was the ideological counterpart of their practices of overturning orthodox Hindu
taboos through ritual orgiasticism and even violence. The Shaiva order branded
their bodies with the mark of a phallus, inhabited charnel yards, carried skulls,
and daubed their bodies with ashes. Theirs was the charisma of emotional shock;
nevertheless it entered the field of intellectual argument when Shaivas began to
convert the Nyaya and Buddhist logicians. The emotion-centered mythology was
rationalized into a cosmology in which the universe is composed not of conscious-
ness, substance, or even nothingness but of the energy of creation and destruction.
Notes to Pages 248–259^ •^969
