Contacts and debates with Advaitins resulted in identifying the pan-energy cult
with metaphysical monism. A variant on this position, Shaktism, identified this
energy with metaphysical potentiality (Pandey, 1986; Eliot, 1988: 2:211–222;
Muller-Ortega, 1989). The internal debates of this network cannot be followed
here. Leading thinkers were in a network from about 900 to early 1000s c.e.
passing from Utpala to Abhinavagupta and Shri Kantha, including the minor
figures listed as 137–134, 161–165, and 185–189 in the key to Figures 5.4 and
5.5, but not depicted in these network diagrams.- The story goes that Udayana defeated Shri Harsha’s father in a public debate; the
son exacted revenge (Phillips, 1995: 75). - Shri Harsha was in Bengal, and thus in the sphere of whatever Buddhist networks
survived in India during these generations of Buddhism’s death. - Potter (1976: 181); Halbfass (1992: 235). A Buddhist philosopher ca. 1090,
Ratnakirti, had also taken the step of refuting the existence of other minds.
Culminating earlier debates of Advaitas and Buddhists, which seem to have treated
any solipsistic conclusion as a reductio ad absurdum, Ratnakirti let the argument
for solipsism stand on its own merits. The Buddhist criterion of being—Dignaga’s
standard, that which is causally effective—underlies all other conceptions of being;
the resulting primacy of momentariness further entails the non-existence of other
minds and other experiences (Halbfass, 1992: 24; Nakamura, 1980: 310). Rat-
nakirti, coming as the very last gasp of Buddhist thought in India, was an isolate
indeed; his boldness gained him no following among the unphilosophical tantrists
of his own camp, and his reputation was swallowed up in the Hindu tide. The
same matrix of argument, in the following generations would lead again to an
extreme with Chitsukha. - The sect claimed a succession of at least three previous leaders, including the
philosopher Yamunacharya, a relative of Ramanuja’s father. Ramanuja codified
the rituals and hymns of prior south Indian poet-saints, while bringing the lineage
onto philosophical turf by providing a comprehensive theology. Ramanuja was the
great organizer, founding some 700 maths and establishing monastic rules. Unlike
Buddhists and Shaivites, Ramanuja monks were allowed to marry, and abbotships
were hereditary, a feature which was imitated by several other Vaishnava sects,
and which no doubt added property interests to sectarian barriers and hostilities
(Eliot, 1988: 2:231–237, 316; Dasgupta, 1922–1955: 3:63–165). - Phillips (1995: 145) regards Ragunatha’s Neo-Nyaya as similar to the ontology of
David Armstrong. See also Potter (1976: 122); Phillips (1995: 142–144). - Gangesha, the creative founder of Neo-Nyaya, acquired a reputation as impene-
trably scholastic; for example, in his major work he considers the merits and defects
of 35 definitions of veridicality (Phillips, 1995: 130). - Phillips (1995: 145) argues that Neo-Nyaya is an unrecognized contribution that
will eventually become part of the forefront of world philosophy: “It is inevitable
that on-going work in [Western] ontology embrace eventually the Nyaya-Vaisesika
tradition, i.e. when its most astute contributors, Raghunatha, Jagadisa, and Gadad-
hara, have been recognized by the broad philosophical community [of the future]
as the great philosophers they are.”
970 •^ Notes to Pages 261–269