Dear Bill,

Not only did the Viśiṣṭādvaitins and others refer to Advaita Vedāntins as crypto-Buddhists; in his Śatadūṣaṇī, Vedānta Deśika also labelled the Bhedābheda Vedāntin Bhāskara as a "Vedāntin who smells like a Jain" (jainagandhivedāntin).

I have never seen a similar term in the premodern literature for a "crypto-Hindu." Might we find similar epithets in Jain intra-religious polemics (perhaps a vedāntigandhijaina)?

Andrew

Andrew J. Nicholson
Associate Professor
Graduate Studies Director
Asian & Asian American Studies
Stony Brook University
Stony Brook, NY 11794-5343 USA
(631) 632-4030

http://philosophicalrasika.com/

On Fri, Oct 14, 2016 at 8:28 PM, Matthew Kapstein <mkapstei@uchicago.edu> wrote:

Hi Bill,

The "crypto-Buddhist" charge against Śaṅkara is, I think, inspired by RamAnuja's
(at least, I recall it as RamAnuja's) castigation of him as prachanna-bauddha, for
which crypto-Buddhist is fair enough as a translation. I don't think that we find
a similar emic notion of "crypto-Hindu," though there are some Buddhist polemics
I know that may suggest this. Tibetan critics of Dol-po-pa's theory of "extrinsic
emptiness" (Gzhan-stong), for instance, often condemn it as disguised sAMkhya or vedAnta,
but I doubt that Ritzinger or Hodge had this in mind.

best,
Matthew

Matthew Kapstein
Directeur d'études,
Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes

Numata Visiting Professor of Buddhist Studies,
The University of Chicago