Chapter V · NOTES.
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Svabhâvam parabhâvanca, bhâvancâbhâvameva ca, Ye paçyanti, na paçyante tatvam hi buddhaçâsane.
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Astîti çâçvatagrâho, nâstîtyucchedadarçanam: Tasmâdastitvanâstitve nâçriyeta vicaksanah
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Astîti nâstîti ubhe ‘pi antâ Çuddhî açuddhîti ime ‘pi antâ; Tasmâdubhe anta vivarjayitvâ Madhye ‘pi syânam na karoti paṇditah.
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Anirodham anutpâdam anucchedam açâçvatam, Anekârtham anânârtham anâgamam anirgamam. (Mâdhyamika Çâstra, first stanza.)
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Param nirodhâdbhagavân bhavatîtyeva nohyate, Na bhavatyubhayam ceti nobhayam ceti nohyate: Atiṣṭhamâno ‘pi bhagavân bhavatîtyeva nohyate, Na bhavatyubhayam ceti nobhayam ceti nohyate. (Mâdhyamika, p. 199).
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Here, a very interesting question suggests itself: Which is the original and which is the copy, Mahâyânism or Vedantism? Most of European Sanskrit scholars would fain wish to dispose of it at once by declaring that Buddhism must be the borrower. But I am strongly inclined to the opposite view, for there is reliable evidence in favor of it. In a writing of Açvaghoṣa, who dates much earlier than Çankara or Badarayana we notice this distinction of absolute Suchness and relative Suchness. He writes in his Awakening of Faith (p. 55 et seq.) that though Suchness is free from all modes of limitation and conditionality, and therefore it cannot be thought of by our finite consciousness, yet on account of Avidyâ inherent in the human mind absolute Suchness manifests itself in the phenomenal world, thereby subjecting itself to the law of causality and relativity and proceeds to say that there is a twofold aspect in Suchness from the point of view of its explicability. The first aspect is trueness as negation (çûnyatâ) in the sense that it is completely set apart from the attributes of all things unreal, that it is a veritable reality. The second aspect is trueness as affirmation (açûnyatâ), in the sense that it contains infinite merits, that it is self-existent. Considering the fact that Açvaghoṣa comes earlier than any Vedanta philosophers, it stands to reason to say that the latter might have borrowed the idea of distinguishing the two aspects of Brahma from their Buddhist predecessors.
Çankara also makes a distinction between saguna and nirguna vidya, whose parallel we find in the Mahâyânist samvṛtti and paramârtha satya. (return)
Max Mueller in another place (op. cit. p. 210) speaks of the Vedantists’ assertion of the reality of the objective world for practical purposes (vyavahârârtham) and of their antagonistic attitude toward “the nihilism of the Buddhists.” “The Buddhists” this seems to refer to the followers of the Mâdhyamika school, but a careful perusal of their texts will reveal that what they denied was not the realness of the world as a manifestation of conditional Suchness, but its independent realness and our attachment to it as such. The Mâdhyamika school was not in any sense a nihilistic system. True, its advocates used many negative terms, but what they meant by them was obvious enough to any careful reader. (return)