Philosophical developments

South India was the arena in which significant philosophical and theological reflection occurred. These speculations often took the form of discourses, even arguments, between various communities, including Buddhists, Vaisnavas, and Saivas.

The reflection of two schools of thought rooted in the south will illustrate these “philosophical” developments. One tradition is associated with Saivism and the other with Sri Vaisnavism, the primarily brahmanical sect in which Visnu and his consort Sr! are worshipped. First, the Saiva alternative.

Saiva Siddhanta

Around the eleventh century ce one Meykantar Tevar, a Tamil velala (a landowning community), articulated a theological system that came to be known as Saiva Siddhanta.¹⁸ His thought was rooted in the belief system of the earlier Saiva bhaktas but was expressed in terse Tamil couplets, known as the Swajnanapotam. The devotional experience formed the basis for the intellectual system which then gave further legitimation to devotion- alism. Here, as in many Indian schools, it was experience - that is, understanding with proper insight - that constituted the most effective way into comprehending what the universe was about.

In Saiva Siddhanta - there were three fundamental concepts. The first concept was the divine (pati). The divine could take an abstract, aniconic, or non-anthropomorphic form (civam) such as may be expressed in the lingam (the creative principle embodied in a pillar).

The second basic concept was pacu (“soul,” but literally, “cow”). The “soul” took on the character or form of that to which it was attached. The “souls” of all human beings were “attached” to the bonds of existence, hence unable by nature to relate to and become like the deity.

The third concept was paca (the bonds of existence). These bonds constituted the fundamental problem of human being. These bonds were three in number: egocentricity (anava) - this was the orientation of one’s life by selfishness and the will to have one’s own way; maya - this was the tendency to overvalue the “tangible world”; and karman - the principle of causation which, because it was ill-trained, tended to keep one attached to the bonds.

The goal of existence was to become attached to the lord (pati) through the grace (arul) of god. The summum bonum of the religious experience was for the soul and the lord to become inseparable as in a new compound. Several analogies were used for this experience: it was like iron filings on the magnet; or like the fragrance of the flower - different from it but inseparable from it. One could attain this experience in a variety of ways, but most commonly, it occurred through darsan (viewing the deity) after the temple ritual sequences. The experience was illustrated in the context of worship in a temple when the foot of the deity (in the form of a crown) was placed on the head of the devotee.

Vedanta

The other major school rooted in the south is known as Vedanta (that is, the “end” or culmination of the Vedas) or Advaita (non-dualism) and its variants. This school was rooted in the Upanisads and was associated with the brah­mans of the Sri Vaisnava sect.

The start of this school is ascribed to one Badarayana (apparently not a South Indian), who is said to have compiled the Vedanta Sutras around the second century ce as a form of commentary on selected Upanisads. The tradition was maintained and refined in the south primarily by a succession of acaryas, that is, priests who were also preceptors or tutors affiliated with Srlvaisnava temples. One of the early awryas was Yamuna (ninth century?), who was followed in succession by others, including the famed theologian Ramanuja, who was associated with the temple at Srlrangam, and Madhva, a dualist who became especially popular in Karnataka. An important figure in this intellectual climate was Sankara (or Samkara), an eighth-century brahman from Kerala, who eschewed the life of a householder and of a priest-preceptor in order to become a samnyai sin, a celibate-seeker cum teacher. Eventually, Sankara is claimed by Saivites and especially by smarta brahmans as the teacher par excellence and an “incarnation” of Siva.

Most of the advaitin thinkers shared certain common principles.¹⁹ The universe had as its fundamental essence brahman. Brahman, once the form­less, nameless reality of the early Upanisads, is now understood to be either aniconic and formless or iconic - that is, manifested in specific forms. Hence, most agreed that specific deities were manifestations of brah.man. Similarly, there was the individualized form of brahman, that is, atman, which in its natural state was one with brahman, but for most human beings existed in “bondage” within organisms. The atman was involved in the world because of avidya the inability to discern the reality about existence. The world was an expression of brahman, it was derived from brahman, and/or was pervaded by briilmiirn.

How does one know the truth? In two ways - through “experience,” that is, through intuitive wisdom or enlightenment, but also through the sacred texts especially those that are sruti (heard or revealed). More specifically, the Upanisads were revealed and were thus self-validating but also were validated by experience. Other smrti literature was cited by some as authoritative (e.g., the Bhagavadgita or the Avars).

The ultimate destiny to which one should aspire was moksa (union with brahman). Bhaskaran insisted only brahmans could attain moksa, but Ramanuja maintained any and all could approach the deity. Most of the proponents of the school, however, tended to exclude sndias from those eligible for moksa.

Most believed there was logic to the cycle of life. Samsara, the continual cycle of life, death, and rebirth could be sorrowful inasmuch as it could lead to a “second death.” The logic of karma could affect one’s birth and rebirth, a matter that critics point out becomes self-serving for brahmans to maintain. Most of them accepted the Puramc imagery of massive cosmic cycles of evolution and devolution known as yugas; replicated in smaller cycles of time, down to moments within the day. There is a desirability of breaking through to moksa at moments which serve as the junctions of these cycles.

There was also a hierarchy of space - there was a center to the world, that is, “Mt. Meru” - where the gods reside. There were then mythical concentric circles of the universe (land, ocean, land, ocean, etc.) - the further one was from the center the further into chaos and away from the sacred center. The implication of the cosmology was that cities and temples were to reflect this pattern: temples were at the center of a city; brahmans lived near that center; while outcastes were to live on the fringes.

Enlightenment was generally thought to occur in stages.

Individual members of the Vedanta school obviously made their own contributions and diverged to varying degrees from the above consensus. It is worth looking briefly at two of the most creative of South India’s thinkers - Sankara and Ramanuja.

Sankara was born a Nambudiri brahman around 788 ce in Kerala. Clearly a prodigy, tradition claims he was initiated into Vedic learning at the age of seven and within two years had mastered much of the tradition. Early in his youth, the tradition continues, he persuaded his mother to let him become a samnyasi without having to become a householder first. He is said to have had teachers who were influenced by a Buddhist heritage. Gaudapada, for example, one of his gurus, had been influenced by Bhavavineka, a Buddhist philosopher.²⁰ In short, Sankara may have been indirectly influenced by a line of such Buddhist thinkers as Asvaghosa, Vasubandhu, and especially Nagarjuna. Indeed, his contemporary and rival, Bhaskaran, called him a crypto-Buddhist. In fact, Sankara wrote commentaries on certain of the Upanisads and sought to base his reflections on those texts while appro­priating some quasi-Buddhist ideas. The end result of his lifetime was his ability to outthink the alternative discussants of his day, including Buddhist ones and thereby, in effect, pulling the intellectual rug out from under Buddhist speculation and linking brahmanic speculation more persuasively to the Upanisadic sages. It could be argued that Sankara was the brightest mind of his century in the world.

It is impossible to do justice to Sankara’s system in a brief space. Among other things, he argued that the world, and the self as well, were derived from brahman. The world was created at the act of brahman, but the result was less nearly “real” or “pure” than the source just as curds, though derived from milk, are less “pure” than the source. Hence, there were two forms of reality: vyavahara - the manifold or phenomenal world; the many (a concept stressed by Ramanuja); and paramatman - the one supreme atman - that “reality” stressed by Sankara. Maya described our misunderstanding of the world, our propensity to think a rope is a snake, to assume what we see is ultimate. Avidya (ignorance) caused one to think the world was ultimate, when, in fact, as one’s consciousness was raised, one saw the world as having been derived from brahman. Sankara’s sense of the ultimate was nirguna - that which was without attributes. His followers, however, especially smarta brahmans insisted he believed that several specific deities (saguna), representing the various sectarian options of the time, were personifications of the absolute (n/lguna), and that these deities were thought to reside within one.

For Sankara, perceptions (pratyahara) were of different kinds: sabda, for example, was perception through inner understanding (i.e., jhana or buddhi). Anusamdhana was “reflective consciousness,” while anumana was inference. Anubhava was to know the oneness of all things, an awareness that came at the highest stage of consciousness (turiya). Sankara was a strict monist - everything was of one nature, though that which was derived was inferior to its source.

Sankara is said to have traveled throughout India and to have established at least four monasteries (matham) including in Kasl (Banaras), Sriiigeri in Southwestern India, and at Kanclpuram near what is now Chennai (Madras). He is said to have died by the age of thirty-two but left behind a legacy still being interpreted by commentators and scholars alike.

Ramanuja was of very different background. He was an dcdrya (priest­preceptor) in the famed Vaisnava temple in Srlrankam, son of an äcäryä and a disciple of Yamuna. Ramanuja sought to give the worship of a personal god a “philosophical” basis.²¹ That is, he was perhaps India’s greatest “theologian.” He based his ideas on the songs of Alvars, on the later theistic Upanisads, and especially the Isa and Svetlsvatara Upanisads, on the Bhagavadgita and those Puranas relating to the exploits and worship of Visnu.

For Ramanuja, brahman was both formless (purusa) and accessible in various forms (prakrti). The world was the form, the extension of god, like a paintbrush in the hand of an artist and the painting once completed. Hence, creation was the rhythm and energy of god and the phenomenal world was relatively good because it was a manifestation of the divine. The divine had its own forms (svarUpa) and those forms were many. Moreover, the divine had at least six functions in relation to the world: providence - that is, god was constantly interacting with the world; heroism (virya); majesty or prestige (tejas); power (bala); creativity (sakti); and omniscience (/«ana).

Ramanuja is famed for his articulation of the two forms of grace operative in bhakti. Using analogies already known, he suggested, on the one hand, there was “cat grace” - the grace of “faith.” The kitten surrenders itself to its mother, who picks it up by the scruff of its neck. So too was the grace of god - it is freely given, the divine does the work while the devotee surrenders in an act known as prapatti. He suggested this is most appropriate for followers of Visnu.

The other kind of grace was “monkey grace” - the grace of “works.” In this case the young monkey clings to its mother’s fur. So too does the devotee work to experience divine grace. By doing certain deeds one could attain the deity’s grace. Prasada was a way of mediating grace - it is exemplified in the priest’s sharing of the offerings with gathered devotees after the completion of a temple ritual.

Ramanuja was responsible for the spread of Vaisnavism in the south. Several temples were converted. It was also after Ramanuja’s time that virtually all deities, represented iconographically in the south, were given two consorts: one, according to the tradition, representing the devotee who merited the deity’s favor, that is, the “grace of works”; the other representing the devotee whose faith was such that the deity bestows his grace freely. Further, while many other of the Srlvaisnava acaryas believed that spiritual knowledge was available only to brahmans, Ramanuja is said to have shared his ideas even with dalits, some of whom to this day claim Ramanuja influenced their ancestors.