Date of Udhayana

[Birgit Kellner]

nanda chandran wrote:

> So given that the God and "no God" argument had been going on for quite a
> while and KumArilla Bhatta himself who came before Shankara had argued so
> forcefully against the concept of a creator God and Shankara himself having
> given up trying to prove the existence of God on logical grounds which but
> reflects the theologicians position (that a creator God cannot be logically
> proven) in the chronology of Indian philosophy, isn't it strange that
> UdhayAna, if he came after Shankara would try to prove the existence of god
> on logical grounds?

First: I am not familiar with the "Udhayana" referred to by SaGkara, but are you
sure of the spelling? The later NyAya-VaiZeSika philosopher's name is correctly
transliterated as "Udayana".

Second: Even if it were admitted to be strange that Udayana should continue a
debate that SaGkara decided not to continue - which I personally would not
consider strange at all -, such "atmospheric" considerations are not a reliable
basis for establishing the relative chronology of Indian philosophers, nor do
they constitute sufficient evidence to call into question datings that are
otherwise firmly established.

What matters in this context are factors such as the mention of dates for the
completion of works in manuscript colophones, the express mention of an author's
or his work's (works') name in other works, the mention of ideas which can be
shown to be peculiar to the philosopher in question, and so on. Based on this
type of criteria, Udayana's dates were established for somewhere in between the
2nd half of the 10th century and the 1st of the 11th (with certain margins of
variation). I'm not at my office at the moment, so I can't go into further
detail, but I hope this initial bit of information proves nevertheless useful.

Best,

Birgit Kellner
Institute for Tibetan and Buddhist Studies
Vienna University