Ve?ka?an?tha’s Engagement with Buddhist Opponents in the Buddhist Texts he Reused

Abstract

Ve?ka?an?tha (1269—1370) was the most important systematiser of the Vi?i???dvaita school of Ved?nta. This article describes his use of Buddhist sources and shows how Ve?ka?an?tha reused Buddhist texts to a much more significant extent than his predecessors Y?muna and R?m?nuja. The reused text-passages come mostly from the epistemological school of Buddhist philosophy (Dign?ga, Dharmak?rti and his followers) but there are important exceptions, attesting that Ve?ka?an?tha was also aware of Buddhist schools such as the Vaibh??ikas, of whom only little is preserved today. Given that Buddhist philosophy was no longer an active presence in South India at the time of Ve?ka?an?tha, his interest in it must be due to factors other than his polemical agenda. Perhaps, his project of enlarging Vi?i???dvaita Ved?nta made him confront outsiders such as Buddhist thinkers and his intellectual interest in philosophy made him engage in a genuine confrontation with them.

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