Jainism/Buddhism in Tamilnadu

[vidya at cco.caltech.edu]

C. A. Coleman writes: 


> Has anyone ever suggested that this implied absorption of Buddhism  
> into a growing fourth and fifth century Brahminic renaissance could  
> be attributed to, in part, an emerging lay-buddhist ethic that
> Tathagatagarbha philosophy introduces in the third century?

I have, in a non-academic debate on the Usenet newsgroups, alt.hindu  
and soc.religion.eastern. Mani Varadarajan and I were contributing to  
a discussion on the various schools of Vedanta. I examined the   
"pracanna bauddha" criticism against advaita, in some detail in one  
posting titled Gaudapada. The tone of the discussion is somewhat  
polemical in character, but in the process a few key issues were  
thrashed out in great detail. My article on Gaudapada can be found at  
the alt.hindu archiuves under the following URL -

http://rbhatnagar.csm.uc.edu:8080/alt_hindu/1994/msg00403.html

I am aware of one article by de la Vallee Poussin - Journal of the  
Royal Asiatic Society, 1900, p. 132 - where he says "At least in some  
of its ontological characteristics, vijnAnavAda is like Vedantism in  

disguise." Here the shoe is put on the other foot, to make a mahAyAna  
school to be "pracanna vedAnta". 


Personally I have no doubt that the description of tathAgatagarbha as  
a kind of personal God contributes to the absorption of Buddhism into  
Hinduism, at least within India - tathAgata is endowed with power and  
perfection; he has completely eliminated passion and karma and the  
obscurations of kleSAvaraNa and jneyAvaraNa; he is sarvajna, and he  
is sarvakArajna, having a full knowledge of the truth and the  
empirical world likewise. This could be a desciption of an avatAra of  
VishNu. Another important factor in this assimilation is the  
popularity of vajrAyAna and yogAcAra schools, which can easily get  
absorbed into a Brahminical SAktism. 



> Of 

> course the main problem with this suggestion entails questioning 

> how much exposure the laity had to such esoteric teachings as 

> tathagatagarbha

I don't see this as a major problem. We can likewise question how  
much exposure the laity had to such burning questions as the old  
Atman/nairAtmya debate, the doctrine of two truths of the mAdhyamika  
school vs. the upanishadic doctrine of parA and aparA vidyA, and  
other such esoteric teachings. The laity must have known of the early  
antipathy between the Buddhist sangha and the VaidIka BrahmaNas, but  
how much else did they know about the major philosophical  
differences? Still, the fact remains that Buddhism had a separate  
identity for a millenium or more and then more or less disappeared  
from the Indian scene. The idea of tathAgata as a personal god in  
tandem with the recognition of the Buddha as an avatAra surely had  
much more power to absorb Buddhists into a Hindu fold, than the  
supposed philosophical rapprochement that GauDapada tried to effect  
in his mANDUkya kArikAs. 


Regards,

S. Vidyasankar