History of Debate

[nanda chandran]

Dear Ferenc,

>I think there is only Chinese (also Corean and Japanese) Buddhist
tradition
>on the point; a detailed account with the relevant passages
translated (into
>French) can be found in
>M. J. Takakusu: La sAMkhyakArikA etudiee a la lumiere de sa version
>chinoise. in: Bulletin de l'Ecole Francaise d'Extreme-Orient. Tome
IV.,
>1904. pp. 1-65 & 978-1063, esp. pp. 37-49.

With my level of proficiency in French, I doubt if I'll make much
headway with that :-) Anyway thanks for the reference.

>The identification of kAlidAsa with IZvarakRSNa seems to me
impossible; but
>I am rather interested as to its source. In paramArtha's _The Life of
>vasubandhu_ it is said that the king who gave 3 lacs of gold for the
triumph
>to the author of the 70 sAMkhya verses was vikramAditya; so this
could have
>been the source of the confusion.

Why should that be a source of confusion? Wasn't KAlidhAsa one of the
nine jewels in the court of VikramAditya (Chandragupta II ?)?

If the identification is indeed wrong, isn't it strange that such a
famous exponent of a leading school of philosophy, has no other
references in Indian literature?

But KAlidhAsa's frequent use of the concept of Shiva (Being) and
Shakti (Creative power) in his works, seem to mark him more as a
VedAntin than a SAmkhyan.

Could others with knowledge of KAlidhAsa's world view, throw more
light on this?

Rgds,
Nanda


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