Some Remarks on the Role of the Supernatural in Philosophical Contests in Vedānta Hagiographies

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Scholars and Wonder-Workers: Some Remarks on the Role of the Supernatural in

Philosophical Contests in Vednta HagiographiesAuthor(s): Phyllis GranoffSource: Journal of the American Oriental Society, Vol. 105, No. 3, Indological StudiesDedicated to Daniel H. H. Ingalls (Jul. - Sep., 1985), pp. 459-467Published by: American Oriental SocietyStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/601521.

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SCHOLARS AND WONDER-WORKERS:SOME REMARKS ON THE ROLE OF THE SUPERNATURALIN PHILOSOPHICAL CONTESTS IN VEDANTA HAGIOGRAPHIESPHYLLIS GRANOFF

MCMASTERUNIVERSITY

HAGIOGRAPHIES FORM A DISTINCT AND RECOGNIZA-BLECLASS of literature in both Sanskrit and the vernac-ular languages in medieval India. Hagiographies havebeen written of the major Vedanta founders, the lead-ers of many other religious movements and some oftheir followers as well. In keeping with the fact that thefounders of the different schools of Vedanta, forexample, Safikara, Ramanuja and Madhva, wereregarded by the tradition as intellectuals with whomoriginated major developments in philosophy, thebiographies of these figures generally pay careful atten-tion to the thought of these men and to their conquestof rival schools in systematically conducted debates.Thus philosophical debates may occupy as prominenta place in the biographies of the Vedanta founders asdo stories of their unusual birth, religious vocation andultimate attainment of perfection. Despite the central-ity of the philosophical debate, however, its position inthese texts is not without ambiguity. As part of anongoing study of religious biography in Sanskrit, thepresent paper examines in detail several descriptions ofphilosophical debates from religious biographies andone from a popularJain text, the Kathdkosaof Prabhd-candra (late I1 th c. A.D.). The texts used in this studyinclude the SrLmacchankaradigvijayaof Vidyaranya,the Prapannamrtaof Srimadanantacdrya,a biographyof Ramdnuja dated to the 17th c. A.D., and Nardyana-carya's two works on Madhva, the SrTsumadhvaviyayaand the Manimaniari of the 14thc. A.D.1 It will beargued that these texts all reveal a deep-seated suspi-cion of the ability of debate to determine the truth andconvince people of the validity of any given philoso-phical doctrine.

Debate and rigorous argument had always formedthe backbone of Indian philosophical texts from thetime of their earliest composition. Nonetheless, Indianreligious scholars who engaged in these debates hadalso always been consistent in emphasizingthe primacyof sruti, or revealed doctrine, over human reasoning.Within the Vedanta tradition itself, classical thinkers,regardless of their particular scholastic affiliation,agreed in confining human reasoning unsupported bytextual authority to the sphere of the mundane.2 Bythis they meant to imply that no religious truth couldbe determined by human intellectual activity alone.The source of such truth must ultimately remain theauthoritative texts. It seems obvious that in such anatmosphere the philosophical debate itself wouldoccupy a somewhat uneasy position. Involving humanreason to the extent that it does, the debate thoughnecessary for the practical purposesof winning popular

Sankara, Brahmasatrahhaisi'a, .1.27; Brhadaranvakabha-sia, introduction; Ramdnuja, SrThhaisva, .1.27; ?rTsuniadh-vavijavia,14.13. Compare Sri Harsa's statement of the sameprinciple in P. Granoff, Philosophj and Argument in LateVedanta, Dordrecht: D. Reidel, 1978, pp. 192 ff. For modernmaterial see Dilip Kumar Visvas, Rammohan SamnTksia(Bengali), Calcutta: Sdrasvata Library, 1983.

2 Kathakosa, ed. A. N. Upadhye, Manikcandra DigambaraJaina Granthamald, no. 55, Delhi: Bhdratiya JRina Pitha,1974. Srimahanhkaradigvijava of Vidyaranya,AnanddiramaSeries, vol. 122, Poona, 1932. On the date and authenticity ofthis text see W. R. Antarkar, "Samnksepa Sankara Jai'a ofMadhvdcdrya or SankaraDigvijava of Sri Vidyaranyamuni,"Journal of the Univer.sityof Bombav, vol. XLI, 77. 1972,pp. 1-23. As with all the hagiographies mentioned in thispaper, research on this and related texts is in its infant stages.Dr. Antarkar informs me in a letter that he is continuing hiswork and collecting manuscripts of the various hagiographiesof Sankara. We must await his final results. Prapannanirtaof Srimadanantacdrya, ed. Swami Rdmanarayanacarya,Benaras: SrTVenkateivara Press, V.S. 2023. On the date ofthis text see Friedhelm Hardy, Virahahhakli, The EarlvHistory of Krsna Devotion in South Indlia. Delhi: OxfordPress, 1983, p. 243. SrTsumadhivav'ijayaith commentary ofSrfvisvapatitTrtha,Udipi, N.D. I thank Professor KamaleN-vara Bhattacarya for providing me with a copy of this text.Maniniafjari, ed. Visnupada~rifrimadbhaktisiddhantasaras-vatTgoswdmi,Dacca: grimadhave Gaudiya Math, Gaura 440,Bengali script.

459

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460 Journal of the American Oriental Societ' 105.3 (1985)support and gaining converts, required at the sametime ample assistance from numerous citations fromthe texts in order to provide much needed support forthe purely human syllogisms that formed its mainstay.For the Vedanta philosopher, in short, rigorous argu-mentation and respect for the texts must go hand inhand. Indeed textual authority unsullied by human fal-libility must and does take precedence in every caseover logic and wrangling which could in fact be mis-used, and the efficacy of which could depend in partmerely on the cleverness of the debaters who mightmanipulate the rules that govern such argumentation.

The writers of the religious biographies to be exam-ined in this paper and Prabhacandra, the compiler ofthe Katha-kosa,for the most part record a very differ-ent attitude towards philosophical debates in the color-ful accounts that they give of such contests. Thephilosopher distrusted human reasoning on principle(precisely because it was human and therefore subjectto error)and sought refuge in the superhumanrevealedliterature. By contrast, the participantsand bystandersin the debates recorded in the hagiographies generallyturn this objection upside down and suspect the out-come of debates because they fear in fact that thedebate has transcended the merely human and that thedebaters have invoked some form of supernaturalaid.This supernatural aid may take the form of enlistingthe help of a benign deity, usually a major protector ofthe faith, or of summoning up minor and often evilpowers in order to deprive an opponent of victory. Inboth these instances recourse to the supernaturalis hadbecause a debater fears that human effort will not beadequate to the task, besting an opponent of superiorwit and skill. At times it is the hero of a story who turnsto the Gods for help in his moment of adversity, feelingthat his own position is correct but fearing that it willbe defeated in the debate at hand. At other times it is avillain who is described as resorting to trickery andmagic, convinced that his doctrine is wrong and that itcould otherwise never triumph, or perhaps with evenbaser motives in mind than the simple propagation ofheresies. In addition, if one may judge from a samplingof the Vedanta hagiographies and popular storycollections, the fear of supernaturalintervention in thephilosophical debate and the overriding doubts thatdebate could determine truth were so widespread thateven those debates seemingly conducted with allpropriety and according to all the correct rules requiredsome form of divine sanction in order to convinceonlookers that nothing untoward had occurred.It is convenient for purposes of discussion to organ-ize the accounts of debates from the texts earlier

named into three broad thematic categories. The firstcategory consists of stories in which divine assistance isinvoked in a debate. The second category involvesblack magic (abhicarakrid) and differs from the firstin that the powers that aid the debater are not majorprotecting deities, but belong to that class of super-natural beings generalily invoked in magical rites. Thethird group is of stories that reveal a generalizedsuspicion of the results of debate and introduce themotif of divine sanction or divine ordeal or some othersupernatural act to validate an argument. These threesections will then be followed by some general com-ments on the uses of supernatural intervention in thisquintessentiallyhuman contest.The basic point will be made that the introduction ofsupernatural elements into the debate is in each casepurposeful though the purpose it serves is specific tothe individual story. The paper by no means intends tobe exhaustive in its treatment, but only to illustrate afew types of stories that must have circulated orally aswell as proliferated in written versions. In defendinghis own processes of selection that governed hiscomposition of Madhva's biography, Narayanacaryain his commentary the BhaivaprakaPao his Srisu-madhvaviija'a remarked:3

Cari'i drslainaraih kaV id v'ismriadevamivaialAvismrlaV.a purusair nasmina/hihakalkh sruia-hSruld.s (a ka-k-in naiv'okiah cldeaguhl'ail aanii,(aai7hv."Some of his wondrous deeds in fact seen by men wereforgotten, hidden from their memories by God's magicpower of illusion; and some of them, though notforgotten, were not heard by me. And some of them,though heard, I have elected not to tell, convinced thatthey are too secret for mortals to hear."

I can only plead the first two, and hope that futureresearch will supplement the present discussion.1. TRUSTING IN GOD: A JAIN-BtJDDHIST DEBATE ANDCONVERTING BY CHARISMA IN THE PRAPANNAMRTA

The Kathikosa of Prabhacandra forms part of theAra-dhana-iterature, a species of literature in Jainismdealingwith the successful accomplishment of religious,particularly ethical norms. Prabhacandra's text fol-lows closely the Bhagavati Ariidhana, a Prakrit workattributed to Sivarya,whose date remainsproblematic.4

3 Cited p. 15, introduction to Srivuniadlhv'avzi/aa.4 For an excellent discussion of the Arddhand literature seeA. N. Upadhye's introduction to Harisena's Brhatkathdko.5a,

Singhi Jain Series, 17,Bombay:BhdratiyaVidya Bhavan, 1943.

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GRANOFF: Scholars and Wonder-Workers 461The second story, entitled "Jnanodvotanakathai,""A Tale on the Display of Knowledge," tells of adebate between the Jain savant Akalanka and aBuddhist master, Samgharir. Akalanka has fled fromManyakheta to Kalifiga, after being discovered in aBuddhist monastery in Manyakheta, where he hadconcealed his true identity in order to learn Buddhism.Angry Buddhists pursue him, and after some stirringadventures he arrives in the town of Samcayaputra.Theking of the town is named Himasitala, and his wifeMadanasundarT is a pious Jain. She is about tocelebrate a chariot festival in honor of the Jina, when ahaughty Buddhist, Samghasri declares before the king,"You must not allow this celebration of the chariotfestival in honor of the Jina, for the very doctrine ofthe Jinas is a ludicrous impossibility."And with that heoffers to the Jains a challenge to meet him in debate.The king goes to his queen and tells her that she cannotcelebrate the festival until she first establishes the truthof her Jain religion. For her part, the queen is of coursedistressed, but mostly angry and she retires to herpalace. She seeks the advice of the Jain monks whoinform her that the pandits of distant Manyakheta arefar smarter than Samgha'rT.To the queen this seemslittle consolation; as she herself says she feels ratherlike a person about to be struck by a snake while thesnake charmer is miles away. She abandons the royaldwellings and retires to a Jain (aitla where she swearsthat she will starve herself to death unless someonecomes who can crush Samghasri's prideso that she cancelebrate her chariot festival to the Jina. In the middleof the night the seat of the image begins to trembleandCakreivarTDevTappears to the queen. The Goddesstells the queen to set aside her worries, for on the verynext day the divine man Akalanka will come and hewill destroy the pride of Samgha?ri. The queen is over-come by joy and sends out messengers in all directionsto search for Akalanka. Those sent to the Eastfind the Jain monk in a garden resting from hisjourney with some of his disciples. The queen herselfthen goes to meet Akalanka, and honoring himwith gifts she tells him of the great danger to theJain sarngha that the Buddhist Samgha~ri poses.Akalanka's wrath is aroused as he declares, "Who isthis worthless fellow, SamghasrT? Why, even theBuddha himself could not debate with me " And hetenders to SamghasrTa letter of challenge, summoninghim to debate. At the very sight of the letterSamghaSrishakes; he lacks even the courage to open it up andread its contents. The king HimasTtalamust intervene;he escorts Akalanka into the assembly and demandsthat SamghasrTdebate with the Jain sage. Samghariris

quick to see that he hasn't a chance in front ofAkalanka, and he in turn summons all the Buddhistsavants he knows from all over India. But human aid isnot sufficient. Samghasri must turn to divine aid, andhe invokes the Goddess Tara, with the brief andperemptory statement, "O Goddess, there is no way Ican debate with this man Listen, you debate with himfor me and defeat him." The Goddess agrees andfurther instructs Samgharir to place a pot behind acurtain; she will come down into the pot and debatewith Akalahka on Samgharir's behalf.5 The nextmorning Samgharir declares before the king that hewill no longer debate with Akalanka face-to-face; fromnow on all discussions will take place with him behinda curtain. This strange request does not seem to haveoccasioned any suspicion, but once hidden from publicview Samgharir begins his machinations. He worshipsthe Buddha and Tara, and summons Tara to take upher station in the pot and begin debating for him. Thefirst thing Tara does is to set forth the Buddhist doc-trine of momentariness, only to have it shattered byAkalanka who in turn establishes the Jain doctrine ofanekantatva, wherein he proves that all objects in factpossess a multitude of characteristics, their naturesencompassing all possibilities. After six months ofrigorous debating, one night Akalanka is struck by thethought of how odd it is that a mere human should beable to debate with him for so many days, day afterday. Suddenly Cakresvari Devi appears to Akalahkaand explains to him what has happened: "No meremortal could ever debate with you these many days. Itis the Blessed Tara who has argued with you all thistime. Now tomorrow you must ask her what she said inthe past days; thus will she be defeated." Akalanka, hisstrength renewed by the vision of Cakre'vari, makesthe solemn vow, "I have just been amusing myself allthis time by arguing with the Goddess Tard. Nowtoday I shall finish off the debate and have a properfeast." And so Akalahka follows the advice that hisGoddess has given him. He asks Tara what she hadsaid on an earlier occasion. As the narrator of theKathakoga tale explains, this completely throws Taraoff balance, for the speech of the Gods is one, that is,

Summoning a God or Goddess into a pot is common inIndian popular religion. Cf. for example the variouspratisthdceremonies according to the paificara-traexts (Jaya'khva,Padnia, Sanatkumirasarnhitis) and the Saivdgamas(Raurasva,Ajita, Mrgendrdgamnas).See also Sudhir Kakar, Shamans,Mastics and Doctors: A PsYchologicalInquirY nto IndiaandIts Healing Traditions. Bombay:Oxford Press, 1982, p. 104.

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462 Journal of the American OrientalSociety 105.3 (1985)without limitation with respect to time, and Tara istherefore unable to answer. She flees in defeat.Akalanka immediately jumps up, pulls back thecurtain and with a swift kick breaks the pot in whichTara had been contained. He then gives his Buddhistopponent another swift kick and shouts, "This wretchedSamgha'rT I defeated on the very first day of ourcontest. I only continued to argue with the BlessedTara in order to display the greatness of the Jain doc-trine." The king and his court all rejoice in the victor-ious Jain doctrine, as the story ends, exhorting othersto follow in Akalanka's footsteps and display thesuperiority of Jainism.

Divine intervention in this debate takes place at sev-eral junctures in the story; the first is simply a predic-tion by Cakreivari DevT o the queen Madanasundarithat Akalanka will come and rout the proud BuddhistSamgharir. The outcome of the debate, then, from thestart has been divinely ordained. The Goddess support-ing the Jains has promised their victory, although it isstill possible at this point in the story that the contestwill take place in the human realm, its result predeter-mined by the Gods. Samghairt alters the arena of thedebate, however, when he plaintivelyand peremptorilyorders the Goddess Tara.to take his place and debatethe Buddhist side. The debate is no longer between twoexceptional human scholars; it is now between a Bud-dhist Goddess and a Jain monk whom the Jain God-dess has described as a "div'a purusa," a man withdivine nature. As the debate proceeds, Akalanka, themortal, is unable to defeat his opponent, the BuddhistGoddess Tara. He realizes that for a mere mortal todebate with him for so many days is a singular situa-tion, and it is necessary for further divine interventionto take place to put an end to the contest. CakresvariDevi tells Akalafika how to silence her Buddhist rival,which Akalafika then does. He adds, of course, that hehimself had defeated Samghairt on the first day of thedebate, which would be before the divine intervention.His further debating with Tara just further shows thegreatness of the Jain doctrine-the Jain GoddessCakre'varT s greater than the Buddhist Goddess Tara.On human and suprahuman spheres Jainism is trium-phant. The function of supernatural intervention, then,in this narrative, is hinted at by the text itself: thesimple victory of one man over another might haveredounded to the credit of the winner alone. Thevictory of the protective deity of one faith over theprotective deity of another is a clearer, unambiguousstatement of the superiority of the winning doctrineover the losing doctrine, though the text creditsAkalanka with the victory, where it more properlybelongs to Cakre'vari Devi.

The next text to be considered is considerablydiffer-ent in tone, and supernatural intervention where itoccurs in a debate is required not to settle an unequalcontest waged between God or Goddess and mortal asin the case of the Buddhist Tara versus Akalanka, butto assist a mortal, Ramanuja, the propounder of thecorrect doctrine in arguing against clevererbut wrong-minded opponents. In addition the attitude towardsdebate expressed in this text comes closest to that ofthe philosopher, but for different reasons, revealing abasic distrust in human intellect in favor of divineassistance. The Prapannamrta, a late hagiography ofRamanuja in Sanskrit, in contrast to hagiographies ofthe rival Vedanta teachers Madhva and Safkara, doesnot consistently present Ramanuja as a toweringintellect. All of these hagiographies share a similarstructure,which I have outlined elsewhere.6The subjectof the biography is regarded as an avatara or incarna-tion of a major deity, come to earth at the request ofthe Gods to destroy heretical demons who arepropagating the wrong faith. The digvijaya or world-conquest of the religious hero, clearly modeled on thatof the king, usually consists in a series of philosophicalcontests which are again most often related in thehagiographies in great detail. In addition, in keepingwith the divine origin of the sage, his earlychildhood isdescribed in grandiose terms, with particularattentiongenerally given to his prodigious feats of learning. So,for example in the Sahkaradigvijavaof Vidyaranya welearn that by age seven Sankara had mastered all therevealed scriptures. Furthermore, the text repeatedlymakes mention of Sankara's debating skills and hiswisdom and reiterates that he will destroy the hete-rodox teachings.7 Similarly, in the SrTsumadhvavijai'aMadhva as a child displays extraordinary knowledge,correcting his elders when they misinterpret passagesfrom the sacred books; later he defeats skilled debatersand his marvelous intelligence is repeatedly praised inthe text by his biographer.8 By contrast, although thePrapanndmrta does give a glowing account ofRamanuja's earliest intellectual achievements, havinghim at the age of eight days learn the Veda and as astudent criticize his teacher Yadava's interpretation ofthe scriptures,9 in general the picture of the mature

6 "Holy Warriors"A Preliminary Study of Some Biogra-phies of Saints and Kings in the Classical SanskritTradition,"vol. II, 1985, pp. I-13. Journal of Indian PhilosophY.

' 1.86; 3.83; 4.6-9; 4.16-20; 4.46; 4.51; 4.61; 4.63; 4.74-87;4.96; 4.105-106; 5.1, etc.

8 3.22; 3.28-30; 3.52; 4.46-54; 4.54-56; 6.1ff., etc.9 2.27; 3.59-60.

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GRANOFF: Scholars and Wonder- Workers 463Ramanuja provided by this biography is of the piousdevotee who achieves direct communication with hisGod, and not of the militant philosopher whose dialec-tical acumen is such that he marches from victory tovictory in debate with other schools of philosophy. Infact, of all the texts of the major Vedanta philosophersexamined to date the Prapannamrta is unique in itssingular lack of interest in the philosophical debate.The biographies of of Madhva and Sankara namedabove are filled with painstaking details of philoso-phical arguments, which makes the texts often difficultto comprehend without the elaborate commentariesprovided for these verses, and indeed removes themfrom the sphere of the popular, oral biography into theerudite, esoteric, studied literature of the academicphilosopher, with descriptive verses on the seasons andlocales rivaling the most difficult of Sanskrit courtpoetry. The Prapannamrta reads in fact more like apuran, and debates are reduced to mere statements ofvictory and defeat, with few or no details given. Inaddition, Ramanuja most often accomplishes hisdigvijava, his conversion of his opponents, by meansother than philosophical argument. For example inchapter 46 of the Prapannamrta Ramanuja convertsthe Advaitins at Salagrama by having his discipleDasarathi dip his feet into the tank from which theAdvaitins draw their drinking water. They are thenconverted by the taste of the water which touched hisdisciple's feet, belief in the curative and magicalpropertiesof the teacher'sfoot-water being well attestedin this text, for example in the same chapter whereRamanuja's footwater cures a girl who is possessed bya demon.'0

Perhaps even more telling for the present investiga-tion is the treatment of Ramanuja's role in debatewhere debates are specifically described. In chapter 46,vs. 51ff. some Buddhists learn that the King Vitthala-deva, whose daughter Ramanuja has just cured frompossession, has become Ramanuja'sdisciple. Enraged,they order Ramanuja to appear in the court anddebate with them. Rammnuja is frightened at thedemand, as the Prapannamrta says, "feeling like a frogcaught in the mouth of a snake," "dvijihvavakrasam-krantaplavavad vatibhiipatih" (vs. 55). In a pitiablevoice he beseeches God, "Kim karomi Hare deva kvagacchamij agatpate ityevam dTna1ava-cavadan . . .,""Whatshall I do, 0 Lord, 0 Hari, where I shall I go, 0

Ruler of the Universe"(vs. 56). Ramanuja is regardedas the incarnation of Sesa, the serpent on which Visnulies. In answer to this prayer he becomes again hisdivine self, Sesa, and like the Buddhist Tara, hiddenbehind a curtain he fires off a thousand rejoinders toeach of the arguments advanced by the Buddhists. TheBuddhists are astounded by his superhuman power(divyasakti, vs. 59); some flee, but others become hisdisciples. Ramanuja's response, then, to a humanchallenge is to remove the contest to a higher sphere. Itis as the God Sesa that Ramdnuja debates; it isin response to the Divine superiorityof Ramanujathatthe Buddhists are converted and not in response tohis prodigious human intellect as in the case ofMadhva and Sankara in their respectivehagiographies.Ramdnujathe man trembles at the thought of enteringinto debate; Sesa the God establishes the supremacyofVaisnavism over Buddhism.This is not the only debate in the Prapanndmrtawhere Ramanuja shrinks from the challenge presentedby his opponents and resorts to divine intervention.Earlier in the text, in chapter 25, Ramanuja meets theMdyavadin or follower of Sankara, whose name isgiven as Yajfiamrirti.Ramanuja is unable to hold hisown against this cleverer opponent. Losing the debatehe offers up his prayers to RafigasvamTwho thenappears to him in a dream. Ranfgasvamiells Ramanujathat Yamuna's refutation of the Advaita doctrine iscorrect. Ramdnuja should rely on it to defeat his rivalYajfiamriirti.Emboldened by the divine vision of hisdream Rdmdnuja the next day proudly enters theassembly hall. But instead of resuming the debate, henow conquers his opponent by his charisma, a tech-niqueused repeatedly by the Buddhain the Lalitavistaraand Maha-vastu, but less frequently by later Indiansages. YajfiamiUrtiimply capitulates before the splen-dour of Rdmrnuja's renewed spiritual power; hedeclares Ramanuja to be Visnu and bows at hisfeet. The chapter concludes that it was by the graceof God that Ramanuja conquered Yajfiamrirti,"gSrdevarajasia Krpiavasena nirjitra svatejasa saXa/fiamiirtimn vvaracaaditv a iva dvityivahsvate/asakrantatamo l'atzndrah,""Having conquered Yajfia-muirti n debate by the Grace of the God of Gods, thatLord of ascetics shone like a second sun, having bestedthe darkness with the power of his own light."The next chapter of the Prapannamrta continuesthis story, and in fact makes absolutely explicit whathas happened between Yajfiamirti and Rdmanuja.Thechapter opens,

Tatovicinfaini ausa i'tndrahkarunakarah / praiiva'a vidi'a'a vaapi te/asd va.zasai

") 46.46 The belief in the magical properties of the teacher'sfoot water is widespread and finds frequent mention inmedieval story literature, particularlythe extensive story col-lections of the Jains.

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464 Journal of the American OrientalSociety 105.3 (1985)srij'a/1/matto 'dhikona sandeho X'ajiamuirtir a}am mahan. /devarajakatdksena.si.yo 'bhhnmamasanipratam/2/Vadenajetumkah saktas tam imam vibudhottaman. /upari'uparivartante i'uktai'ahgatagastada/3/"And then that compassionate Lord of Asceticsthought, 'There is no doubt that Yajniamiirtis greaterthan I am, both by reason of his cleverness and hisknowledge; he surpasses me in his inherent charisma,his fame and his glory. Such a one has become mydisciple now only because of the Grace of the Lord ofLords. Who could have defeated such a man, the bestof the wise, in debate? For he has hundreds andhundredsof clever argumentsat his disposal'."

There could be perhaps no clearer statement of theattitude of the author of the Prapannimrta to thephilosophical contest between the monk Ramanujaand his opponents: Ramanuja is by no means thestronger in debating skill, learning or even naturalabilities. He needs supernaturalaid in his conversion ofopponents by debate, and he is not depicted in the textas a towering intellect. Indeed the text displays aprofound anti-intellectual bent in later chapters whenit clearly states that one should not take pride in hislearning, but should take refuge in the lotus feet ofRdmdnuja."

The introduction of supernatural aid in the debatesin this text is thus more than a narrative devicedesigned to emphasize the superiority of one doctrineover another, as it has been described in the story ofthe debate between Akalanka and Samghasri from theKatha-kosa.The fact that Ramanuja requires divineassistance in order to win a debate must be understoodin combination with several other peculiar features ofthis text: its lack of emphasis on Ramanuja's ntellectualachievements in general and consequent downplayingof the debate as part of the digvijaj'a or spiritualconquest Ramanuja undertakes, and its openly hostileattitude towards the intellectual approach to religion,with its strong support of surrender and devotion toGod as the only means to release. Supernaturalintervention in debate and the downgrading of humanintellectual activities thus representtwo parallel meansto achieve a clear statement of religious doctrine: thatGod alone by His Grace can bring a soul into thecorrect path and that the way to prepare oneself to

receive this grace is through service and devotion, notthrough rigorousstudy and argumentation.The debate,so central in the biographies of Sankara and Madhvato be discussed below, is reduced in the Prapannamrtato but one of many arenas for God to display Hispowers.2. BLACK MAGIC AND THE DEBATE:RELIGIOUSBIOGRAPHY AS A WEAPON IN SECTARIAN CONFLICT

One of the most importantincidents in the biographyof gankara is his victory over Mandana Mi~ra, in adebate which is detailed in chapter 8 of Vidyaranya's?ankaradigvijaya. The wager between Sankara andMandana Misra is that the loser must accept the life-station of the winner; Mandana Misra is a householdermarriedto Ubhayabharatithe incarnation of SarasvatT,the Goddess of Learning, while Safikarais a monk. Ingeneral the debate between the two philosophers isstraight-forwardand stays within human possibilities;the only supernatural element in the contest is thedivine sanction that Safikara's victory receives whenSarasvati garlands the two and the condition is formu-lated that the loser will see his garland wither,while thewinner's garland will remainfresh, a reminderperhapsthat the Gods have eternally fresh flowers and that thephilosopher who wins, S~akara, is god-incarnate.While debates which receive divine sanction such asthis will be the subject of the next section, it is neces-sary to turn to a rival school's treatment of this samephilosophical contest to see a further use that could bemade of supernaturalintervention in the debate.Narayanacarya's Manimafjari is a curious text.Often described as a biography of Madhva; it is farmore an anti-biography of Madhva's arch-opponents'founding father, the Advaitin Sankara. Sankara isdepicted in the Manimafijarias a demon, Manimat,come to earth to delude people with his false teachings,and ultimatelyto be extirpated by BhTma's ncarnation,Madhva. Sainkara'sname is taken to be evidence of hisdisgusting origins; he is the offspring of a loathedmixed-caste union. More important throughout thetext his knowledge is ridiculed and his actions areseverely castigated, perhaps nowhere more so than inchapter 7 where the great debate between Sankara andMandana Misra is rewritten. According to theManimanfjariit is not without significance that thewager in the contest is an exchange of life-station.Sankara has actually been involved in an illicit liasonwith Mandana Misra's wife; the wager that if hedefeats Mandana Mandana will have to become amonk holds out the promise that he will be able to' 62.53-55; 63.64-67; 63.70-75.

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GRANOFF: Scholars and Wonder-Workers 465dally with Mandana's wife without any interferencefrom her lawful husband. It is this that spurs Sankaraon. In keeping with his ignoble motives gafikaraproceeds to fight with underhanded means. The debatebecomes not a display of his prodigious learning,but a magical contest in which he uses Tantricmantras, named as the Bhairaviand Kukkutamantras,to defeat his unsuspecting opponent. What in the?ankaradigvijaila was a moment of unparalleledgloryfor gankara is here turned into a shameful exercise ofblack magic in pursuit of vile ambitions.That a debate could be manipulated by the useof spells or mantras was widely acknowledged inmedieval India. Jain texts tell of Buddhists usingspells against their Jain opponents when all elsefailed,'2and the Indrajalavidv'a-samgraha,compilationof texts on magic, supplies its readers with thedetails of the black magic rites that would ensurevictory in debate." The use of black magic against anopponent was not of course confined to the arena ofthe debate. Abhinavagupta casts spells at Saikara inthe ?ahkaradigvijai'a chapter 16, vs. 2, for example,making him ill. But Saikara eventually triumphs as amagician as well as a philosopher; having defeatedAbhinavagupta in debate he now hurls back at him thedisease caused by his spells and kills Abhinavaguptaaltogether.14Black magic formed an important element in Tantricrites and it is not surprising to see examples of itspractice in the medieval hagiographies. Nonethelessthe introduction of the motif of a debate won by blackmagic in the Manimafijari does more than merelyreflect popular belief. It serves the important functionof denegrating the chief representative of the schoolthat was regardedby the followers of Madhva as theirmain opponent. The rewriting of the famous debatebetween Safikara and Mandana which had been usedby the followers of Sankara to exalt their founder'swisdom into a sordid scene in which both Sahkara'sknowledge and his morals are impugned is part andparcel of the many devices available to the religiousbiographer in an atmosphere of intense sectarianrivalry. To bring magic into this debate allowsNarayanacarya to make light of Safikara's celebratedvictory, and indeed cast aspersions on his motives and

character. The Manimaijari is an intensely aggressiveshort text, which takes every opportunity to attack theAdvaitins, but all of the hagiographies of the Vedantafounders are informed with a spirit of sectarianrivalryand display hostile attitudes towards opposing schools.Black magic in the debate is an effective device indeedfor the Madhvaites to challenge the claims of theirmajor opponents."53. DIVINE SANCTION AND DIVINE ORDEALS

Thus far we have reviewed stories that indicated thatphilosophical arguments might in fact be more than anexchange of words and ideas between two meremortals. The Kathakosa story of the debate betweenSamgha?rtand Akalanka revealed that it was possibleto call upon the Gods for aid and involve a God orGoddess directly in the debate, tipping the balance ofpower in favour of the mortal who had secured suchdivine assistance. In addition, the Prapannamrtatreatment of the debate shifted the emphasis from adisplayof brilliance and learningto a show of charisma,again divinely bolstered. Maniman-jariadded anothersupernatural factor to the debate: it told of a debaterigged by black magic. What is clear from all of theseaccounts and common to them all is an unambiguousunderstanding that a philospohical debate between twocontending parties may not settle anything at all, forthe result of the debate might be due not to thecorrectness of the winning position, nor even to thebrilliance of the winning party. A debate was as likelyto be won from supernatural causes as from naturalcauses. Many suspicions thus color debates in theVedanta hagiographies, and even where there is nodirect supernatural intervention detectable debates arenot immune to suspicion. It is to a few such suspectdebates that we now turn.The ?ahkaradigvijaya of Vidyaranya opens with astory of a debate between Kumarila, regarded as anincarnation of the God Skanda, against a Buddhist.Kumariladefeats the Buddhists, but the king in whosecourt the debate takes place is not satisfied with theresults. His objection seems natural enough; winning ina debate might be due to nothing more than skill inargument. A good debater should be able to arguesuccessfully even for a wrong doctrine. How then, theking asks, is a bystander to know who was really right?The king then demands that the two parties undergo a12R. N. Saletore, indtiat7 Witchcrafi,Delhi: Abhinav Publi-cations, 1981, p. 165.

K1i3aramna, pp. 37-38 in Indra/ilavi(da'sasingraha, ed.riTnityabodhavidydratna nd Srisubodhavidydbhusana, Cal-

cutta: Bdcaspatya Press, 1915.1 16.29-32.

'" For other techniques see my "God as Idol: The Role ofSpecial Images in SectarianConflict in MedievalVaisnavism,"SARAS, 2, October 1983, pp. 12-25.

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466 Journal of the American Oriental Societv 105.3 (1985)trial by divine ordeal; he orders them to jump off acliff; whoever is unharmed will be accepted as beingcorrect. Kumarilaof course comes through unscathed,but the Buddhists now object, saying that he couldhave survived his terrible fall through the power ofspells and magical herbs. The king Sudhanvan thensets up another trial for the opposing parties;this timethey must guess what is concealed in a hidden pot.Kumarila again wins, and the Buddhists are at lastsilenced.' In this contest between Kumarila and theBuddhists, supernatural events are necessary to cor-roborate and confirm the results of the human contest.The philosophical contest is secondary to the contestthat takes place after victory is achieved on a naturalplane; the hero of the story must now triumph inanother sphere, asserting his ultimate strength andsuperiority.

The great debate between Sankara and MandanaMisra that is recorded in the Sankaradigvijava alsomakes use of a supernaturalsign to confirm the victoryof Safikara;as mentioned earlier, the victor's garlanddoes not wither."' It is not insignificant that it isUbhayabharati, the incarnation of Sarasvati, the God-dess of Learning,who possesses this magic garlandandplaces it around their necks. One of the functions ofSarasvati was to arbitrate in philosophical disputes. Abrief story in the Jain Puratanaprabandhasamgraha'8entitled the Saddarsanaprabandha or "Account of theSix Philosophical Systems" tells of King Bhoja'sdeterminationto bring agreement amongst the compet-ing schools of thought. He summons all six of themand announces, "Here, here Release is one, but thepaths are five. You must get together and agree witheach other." Understandably, the competing systemsare unable to follow the king's orders, and in turn askhim to summon the Goddess Sarasvat whom Bhojahas the unique ability to perceive directly. The kingfasts and performs the necessary ritual, after which theGoddess of Learningappears to him and asks why shehas been summoned. Bhoja replies, "Tell me what istrue. What path shall I follow?" The Goddess replieswith a compromise, drawing from each system ofthought something that may be followed, and thendisappears.Sarasvati is also widely known as bestowingupon mortals the ability to solve philosophical

problems."9That her garland should pass final judge-ment on which doctrine is correct in the momentousdebate between Sankara and Mandana Misra is thus anaturalchoice.The Srisumadhvavi/ayva lso contains an example ofa debate in which a supernatural event corroboratesthe results of the human contest and helps convince theonlookers that the victory was correctly won. In chap-ter 6, vs. 18 Madhva has been instructingpeople on hisinterpretationsof the revealedscriptures.His audience,however, is reluctant to accept his views. Madhva thenpredicts that a Brahman will come and tell them thatthe text means exactly what he has said it means. It isthis prediction of the future and its coming to fruitionthat convinces Madhva's listenersas much as any logi-cal argument he has offered them.In all of these cases we move from direct manipula-tion of the debatethrough divine intervention or the useof black magic into an atmosphere where debate isregarded as insufficient to convince third parties ofwhich view is correct; it is insufficient, then, to convertthe philosopher's opponents, which is, after all, hisultimate aim. In one case, the contest between Kumarilaand a Buddhist in the Sahkaradigvijava, the debate issuspect because its results might be due to merecleverness on the part of a debater who in fact holdsthe wrong position, something we have seen thePrapannanrna acknowledge as well when Ramanujapraisedthe wit and learning of Yajfiamflrtiand creditedhis own victory to God. In other cases the reasons whysupernatural signs are required to validate the debateare not given, but stories in other texts help the readerto fill in the gap-the results of a debate could bedetermined by divine aid or magical spells. The super-natural sign in these debates, then, surely reflects ageneral hesitancy about the usefulness of debate as aconversion strategy. At the same time it also bringsinto line the philosopher's activity as philosopher withsome of his other deeds, for in all of these textsthe Vedanta philosophers are depicted as wonder-workers as well as thinkers. Thus, for exampleRamdnuja in the Prapannamrta cures people sufferingfrom demonic possession, and receives visions fromGod that lead him to magical images;20Sankara in theSankaradigvijava alters the course of a river; he fliesthrough the sky and he causes a dead child to berevived and an idiot to shine with wisdom.2' Madhva's6 1 73ff. A similarstory is told of Udayana. See Karl Potter,

Enrc/lopedia of Indian Philosophies, Niwfa, Princeton:Princeton University Press. 1977, p. 52.

17 8.67-68.18 Puratanaprahandhasarngraha,d. JinavijayaMuni, Singhi

Jain Series, 2, Bombay: BhdratiyaVidyd Bhavan, 1936,p. 19.

'9 Brahmav'aivartapurdna,Prakrtikhancla, 5.21-27. 1 amindebted to my student Mrs. LuitgardSoni for this reference.

20 3.40-41; 46.5-8.21 5.9; 7.121; 8.1; 12.21;21.63-70.

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GRANOFF: Scholars and Wonder- Workers 467miraculous deeds in the SrTvsumadhvax'i/avare legion;he cures headaches by breathing in the sufferer'sears;he predicts the future; he travels at supernaturalspeedand eats a superhuman amount of food, and crossesrivers without any boat.22 The introduction of asupernatural element into the debates discussed here,then, not only reflects a suspicion of debate as a meansof persuasion but also serves to harmonize the human,intellectual achievements of the subjects of thesebiographies with their more wondrous, superhumandeeds, and reflects a resolution of the tension betweenmortal and divine that is essential to the biographies ofthe Vedanta founders who are regarded as humanavatdras of Gods, partaking of both human and divineessence.4. CONCLUSIONS

This paper has reviewed a number of stories revolv-ing around philosophical debates and drawn primarilyfrom biographies of the three Vedanta philosophers,Sankara, Ramanuja and Madhva. In each case aneffort has been made to understand the function of thesupernatural elements that appear in the accounts ofthe debate under discussion. In brief, supernaturalelements function differently in these stories, some-times serving to bolster the narrator's doctrine byasserting its triumph on a supermundaneplane as wellas the mere human spherewhere the debate takes place(SamghasrT s Akalanka). Inanother case the introduc-tion of the supernatural was seen as intimately relatedto the narrator's religious viewpoint, in which humanintellectual activity was regarded as less significantthan divine grace (the Prapannimrta). In a third case,the Manimafjari, the use of the supernatural in theform of black magic was seen as a weapon in asectarian battle, the assertion that Sankara won by

black magic allowing Narayanacarya both to denegrateSankara's intelligence and impugn his motives. Finally,the use of the supernaturalto corroborate the resultsofdebate was regarded on the one hand as a reflection ofa generalized suspicion about the honesty of debateand its ability to determine the truth and convincepeople, and on the other hand, as a means to elevatethis human activity into the superhuman, furtheraggrandizing the winner who is capable of bringingabout such acceptance from the Gods, passing such adivine ordeal or himself reinforcing his own positionwith a small miracle. A singledebate may in fact involvemore than one of these types of supernatural interven-tion. There is a famous debate between the DigambaraJain Kumudacandra and the Svetambara Devastirirecorded by Merutunga in his Prabandhacintamani, inwhich the protectingGoddess Cakre~varT evi instructsthe intended victor Devastiri, much as she doesAkalanka in the Kathdkosa story discussed above.Later in the debate Kumudacandra employs blackmagic against his opponent, but his evil actions areuncovered and a witness, another Svetambara, issuccessful in countering with his own black magic.23In all of the stories reviewed in this paper thephilosopherwhose victory or defeat in debate is detailedis singled out for the reader's attention by the super-natural events that accompany his intellectual feats,whether that attention is meant to be laudatory ordefamatory. Supernaturalevents thus serveto emphas-ize and draw our interest into a scenario that mightotherwise seem far less exciting, the rigorous battle ofwits in a philosophical debate. Finally, they alsogreatly enhance the structuralunity of the hagiography,integratingthese philosophical sections into the rest ofthe text which sparkles with stories of the unusual.

22 3.53; 5.31-33; 6.18; 6.51-52; 10.8.23Merutunga, Prabandhacintamani,edited JinavijayaMuni,

Singhi Jain Series, 1, Sdntiniketan:Singhi Jaina Jndnapitha,1933, pp. 66-69.

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