Religion and Reason in Vedanta of Medieval India

According to rational theology, the existence of a supreme being can be proved by reasoning as well as by the testimony of scripture. Rational theology became a major philosophical force in Hindu philosophy in the works of the Nyaya philosopher Udayana (fl. 984). Udayana responded to the arguments not only of Buddhist, Jaina and materialist philosophers, but also to voices within Hinduism that doubted the power of human reason to prove the existence of God. These discussions ran deep into philosophical questions, including the nature of causality, the question of Gods embodiment and the limits of human reason, as well as scientific questions about atomic theory and the nature of mathematical entities. The thirteenth century witnessed the rise of Hindu voices in South India that dissented from Nyaya rational theology and emphasised a return to the Veda as the sole means for establishing metaphysical truth. Philosophers from the Madhva and Visiadvaitin schools sought to subordinate reason to exegesis: inference can only help establish metaphysical truths by assisting in the interpretation of the Veda. According to both schools, human reason is inadequate to prove the existence and nature of God, and only the Veda can prove the existence of a supreme being. Recent research by Marcus Schmücker has explored the critique of Nyaya rational theology found in the work of the Visiadvaitin philosopher Vedanta Desika (fl. 1350). One result of the project will be a monograph containing a philosophical reconstruction based primarily on original translations of Nyaya, Madhva and Visiadvaita philosophical texts written in Sanskrit. The central focus will be on a relevant part of Vyasatirthas (14601539) Death- Dance of Logic (Tarkataava), which will be translated into English. None of Vyasatirthas major works have been translated, but scholars such as Lawrence McCrea, Valerie Stoker and Michael Williams (the project employee) have recently begun to explore Vyasatirthas leading role as a public intellectual and political figure in the Hindu Vijayanagara Empire. The project will make Vyasatirthas philosophical arguments available to a larger audience of interested non- specialists. The project will also be concerned with obtaining manuscripts attesting to Sanskrit commentaries on the Tarkataava which have not yet been published. Vyasatirthas arguments will be compared with those of the Visiadvaitin philosopher Vedanta Desika. A further goal of the project will be to organise a conference that will bring together scholars working on comparative religions and philosophy with scholars of Indian philosophy. The project will be based at the Austrian Academy of Sciences under the supervision of Marcus Schmücker. Michael Williams will be the only project employee.

The project succeeded in completing a monograph containing both a philological study of the text of the V and a philosophical reconstruction of Vysatrtha's arguments that would make the project's findings accessible to researchers working on different philosophical/theological traditions. It contains a critical edition, translation, and study of the śvaravda (=V) of Vysatrtha's Tarkatava, a Sanskrit text written in South India in the sixteenth century as a critique of the rational theology of the Navya-Nyya tradition. The resulting translation is the first rendition of any chapter of the Tarkatava into a modern European language. Four different manuscript witnesses of the Tarkatava from the Mysuru library had been recovered. All four manuscripts were collated and allowed the project to overcome the limitations of the existing editions of the V, which were found to contain numerous errors and problematic readings. Thus new insights could be provided into Vysatrtha's account of Gageśa's formal inferences in favour of the existence of god, his arguments against the earlier Naiyyika Udayana, and crucial passages from the section of the V where he argues that Gageśa's inferences are undermined by everyday observations of embodied creators. Further on the project was able to obtain images of a unique witness to Vijayndra Trtha's commentary on the Tarkatava preserved at Mysuru, as well as of the Abhinavatava of Satyantha Trtha, an intellectual sequel to the Tarkatava written in the seventeenth century. These works were largely unknown to Western scholarship. Both texts were observed to contain new readings of the text of the V, as well as new insights into the meaning of the text which reflect the knowledge of the Mdhva tradition during the centuries after Vysatrtha. On the basis of these resources, the project was able to shed new light on the reception of Navya-Nyya in South India to an extent not anticipated in the project application. Through the careful study of the secondary sources, it could be demonstrated for the first time the profound influence of the fifteenth century Navya-Naiyyika Jayadeva Pakadhara over Vysatrtha's arguments in the V, and to study how Jayadeva's interpretation of Gageśa shaped Vysatrtha's critique.