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Sankara and the Buddhists---a query
I found the following sentence in Romila Thapar's `A History of
India' (Vol 1) about Sankara and the Buddhists:
The philosophy and organization adopted by Sankara closely
resembled those of the Buddhists, who were indignant,
as can be well understood, at a movement intended to destroy
them by their own methods. (p. 185)
I am a little puzzled by this. Are there any Buddhist responses
to Sankara? Has any later Buddhist philosopher criticized him,
like the Vishishtadvaitins and the Dvaitins have done? I have a
book on Sankara by the eminent scholar Prof. K. Kunjunni Raja,
where he discusses various pieces of textual evidence used to fix
the date of Sankara. There is no mention of any Buddhist texts
that refer to Sankara. Sankara's time period is narrowed down to
the following:
- Sankara refers to the Buddhist philosopher Dharmakirti who has
been placed in the 6th (or early 7th) century.
- Vacaspati Misra's `nyAyasUcInibandha' in the 10th century.
(Vacaspati wrote the `bhAmati' commentary on Sankara's
Brahmasutra-bhasya.)
The `traditional' date is given as 788-820 A.D., based on
`SankaramandArasaurabha' of Nilakantha. Since this is consistent
with the other facts, Prof. Raja says that the traditional date
can be accepted.
There is no mention of *any* Buddhist references to Sankara at
all. Indeed, if there were any, they would also have been of
immense help in narrowing down the date of the great philosopher.
If there are no textual references, how do we really know that
the Buddhists were indignant, etc.?
Did Thapar just make this up?
Narendran
