Parimal G. Patil. Against a Hindu God: Buddhist Philosophy of Religion in India. New York: Columbia UniversityPress, 2009. xi + 406 pp. $50.00 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-231-14222-9.

Reviewed by Stephen Phillips (University of Texas)Published on H-Buddhism (January, 2010)Commissioned by Daniel A. Arnold

Whose Omniscience?

Early in the history of classical Indian philosophy,the Nyya Stra directs arguments against recognizablyBuddhist positions, as does Ngrjuna against Nyya andits sister school Vaieika, without, on either side, iden-tication of the opponent by name. Great thinkers ofboth campsfrom Vtsyyana (c. 400) through Vcas-pati (950) and Udayana (1000) on the Nyya side, andespecially Dignga (500) and Dharmakrti (625) amongBuddhist reasonersaack the others theses or rebut theothers objections to positive arguments. By the eleventhcentury, Udayana is able to ll two large volumes with al-most nothing but close combat with the Dignga school,Discernment of the Truth about the Sel (tma-tava-viveka) and Handfuls of Flowers of Critical Reason-ing [Proving the Existence of God, vara] (Nyya-kusumjal ). Almost contemporaneously, Ratnakrti(1050), one of the latest Buddhist luminaries to writein Sanskrit, engages Nyya in tightly reasoned treatises,one of which, Refutation of Arguments Establishing -vara (vara-sdhana-daa), is the main focus of thebook under review.

e Buddhist-Nyya debate is multidimensional, in-volving epistemological controversy regarding the na-ture and status of perception, inference, testimony, andother issues, aswell asmetaphysical disputes concerning,in particular, whether there is an individual self or anyother thing (including God) that endures, or whether ev-erything is essentially momentary. And as Parimal Patilshows, much of the general conict is relevant to Rat-nakrtis purported refutation of what is historically thecentral Nyya inference for vara. ere are a dozenor so theistic inferences, invented for the most part byUdayana, but the one Ratnakrti targets was advancedby Vtsyyana and all the early Nyya Stra commen-tators, and was the only theistic inference defended byGagea in the fourteenth century in his solidifying ofNew (navya) Nyya.

Patil has brought to bear on his study and interpre-tation of Ratnakrtis refutation most of the interlockingtheses of Ratnakrtis Buddhist worldview. He is par-ticularly good at showing the soteriological point of therefutation, while at the same time establishing that Rat-nakrti considers his reasoning epistemically rationali.e., that Ratnakrti thinks his argument objectively co-gent from the Nyya or any point of view irrespec-tive of purpose (except to that of believing the truth).In this review, I shall emphasize limitations of Patilsstudy, showing what it is not but perhaps might havebeen. What the book is, though, is outstanding scholar-ship making innovative use of distinctions ironed out incontemporary epistemology to presentwithout jargonRatnakrtis philosophy in its full glory, which is glori-ous indeed. Painstaking examination of the refutation ofNyyas theistic inference launches the deepest of probesinto Ratnakrtis entire system.

Patil reveals an amazing degree of interlock amongRatnakrtis positions. e refutation of the theistic argu-ment ties up tightly with Ratnakrtis rejection of what hetakes to be theNyya epistemology of inference, and con-nects with his alternative theory of the nature and under-pinnings of the source of knowledge, which is, accordingto the Dignga school, along with perception one of onlytwo pramas. (Patil translates prama here, appropri-ately, as instrument of warranted awareness, not givingit a realist rendering such as generator of knowledgeor generator of true cognition.) e value of this booklies as much in the holism of its presentation (matchingthe coherence of the system portrayed) as in the clar-ity with which Ratnakrtis refutation is displayed. Bythinking critically along with Ratnakrti as he elaborateshis complaints against Nyya, and by careful study ofRatnakrtis other works and those of his most impor-tant Buddhist predecessors, Patil has given us a must-read. By us I mean mainly scholars of classical In-

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dian thought, whatever themore specialized interest. Butalso, to his great credit, Patil has made Ratnakrtiand In-dian Buddhist philosophy in general, which in Ratnakrticomes arguably to its fullest expressionavailable to non-specialists. at this scholar can write is an understate-ment. Ratnakrtis views are easily grasped. Withoutvery many explicit comparisons, Patils exposition is fullof resonances with Plato, David Hume, Immanuel Kant,G. W. F. Hegel, and much analytic reection. e foot-notes, which are prodigiously extensive, provide perti-nent text and translation along with the best philosophicand scholarly references, but can be ignored without los-ing the train of the argument. Everyone has much tolearn from this book.

ere are a couple of ironies, however, in what Patiltells us about his project at the beginning. I shall bringthese out at the end of the review. First, the heart ofthe book, the inference that Ratnakrti refutes, which canbe reconstructed formally as an inference for others(parrthnumna):

(1) Earth and the like have an intelligent maker as aninstrumental cause.

(2) For they are eects.(3) (is is) like a pot (which has an intelligent maker

as an instrumental cause), and unlike an atom (which isnot an eect); where an eect, there an intelligent makeras an instrumental cause.

(4) Earth and the like are similar (fall under the rule).(5) erefore earth and the like have an intelligent

maker as an instrumental cause.e supplementary argument that the intelligent

maker is vara (God) is that this is the best candi-date, no hypothesis being as simple as vara as creator.Nyyas moo in reasoning about entities that are the-oretic (in the sense that in no instances are they knownimmediately by perception) is to assume only as muchabout a posited cause as is necessary to account for an ef-fect in view. Nyya philosophers formulate causal prin-ciples on the basis of correlations without bias about thesorts of things that can be linked, so long as the cause hasthe character that makes it able to perform the role forwhich it is proposed in the rst place. us, the God in-ferred by Naiyyikas is not considered omnipotent, sinceatoms, ether, and individual selves are eternal and uncre-ated, and laws of karmic justice, etc., are what they areindependently of Gods creative action. But God is om-niscient, knowing all there is to know about everything;otherwise, God would not be able to play the requiredcausal role, since only an agent thoroughly familiar withthe material with which he or she works is capable of

producing the intended result, like a weaver with threadto be woven.

Ratnakrti counters that all that can be known aboutthe property to be provedthe sdhya, rendered by Patilas target, which in this case is the property having anintelligent makeris that it is not unconnected with theinferential subjectthe paka or site in Patils transla-tion, in this case, earth and the like. But according toRatnakrti (and others), there are obvious counterexam-ples to the purported pervasion of the prover propertythe sdhana, rendered by Patil as the reason, which inthis case is being an eectby the target. For instance,growing grass is an eect but does not have an intelli-gent maker.

e Nyya response is to include all seeming coun-terexamples in the set of things taken to be the inferentialsubject. us, growing grass is to be included in the andthe like (etc.) part of the phrase earth and the likeat step (1) above, and no counterexample can be drawnfrom the paka, or site, on pain of begging the question.e whole point of inference is to make us know some-thing about an inferential subject that we did not knowpreviously, and so we cannot assume we know, prior tothe inference, whether the site is or is not qualied by thetarget. Patil shows that Ratnakrti exposes the trick here,which has to do with whether there is signicant doubtabout grasss not having an intelligent maker. He arguesthat growing grass cannot legitimately be part of the siteif there is no such doubt. With sophisticated epistemo-logical moves, Ratnakrti succeeds, it seems, in makingthe case that there is no signicant doubt about growinggrasss not having an intelligent maker, at least of thesort familiar to us through the likes of examples such asa pot and a poer.

e issues I have identied (following Patil) are re-lated: extrapolation is limited to instances that are wellknown, according to the Buddhistinstances where weare acquainted with an eect and the intelligent agentwho is an instrumental cause thereof, and indeed, ac-quainted with an extrapolatable characteristic of the con-nection such that we may say that the reason or proverproperty is due to the target. Ratnakrtis rival theory ofpervasion as inference-warranting, which Patil shows tobe based on the apoha (exclusion) theory of concept-formulation, avoids the error of making us know toomuch, and for this reason does indeed seem to be prefer-able to the Nyya theory. Patil is at his best in illuminat-ing the Buddhist exclusion theory, which on his read-ing is the knot at the center holding together the separatestrands of Ratnakrtis system. e apoha theory is in my

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view abstruse, including, Patil shows, both selective andnegational components. However, Ratnakrti does seemto derive from it the right scope for inferences capacityto generate knowledge. About a chapter is devoted toapoha and Ratnakrtis epistemology of inference, whichare as central to the book as a whole as the refuted theis-tic reasoning.

Now to the two ironies. e rst has to do with whatPatil tells us about the disciplines in which he works,which include, he says, philosophy as well as indologyand religious studies. But is it doing philosophy to walkus up to the edge of an evaluative overview withouttelling us anything about what we should nally think,i.e., about whether Ratnakrtis refutation is really suc-cessful, or whether his is really the superior epistemol-ogy? Ratnakrti here comes across as seeming right be-cause Ratnakrti himself surely takes his reasoning to becogent, and Patil channels its force admirably. But wenever really hear the voices of the other side, and Patildoes not himself take a stance.

It is signicant that Ratnakrti argues not only neg-atively, but also puts forth several positive argumentsfor momentariness in particular, as well as for the the-sis that meditation on momentariness has soteriologicalvalue. ere are weak positions here on which Patil doesnot dwell. For example, the hinge thesis that from med-itation on momentariness we become capable of yogicperception of dharma is mysterious but not illumined byPatil. (Why should such meditation reduce selshnesswhich is all that is mentioned in defense of the claim -any more than, say, meditation on tman la Nyya?-) And it is surely highly implausible that we have thepower to construct external, intersubjective objects, theobjects of bodily and linguistic acts. Ratnakrtis subjec-tivist thesis is, however, glossed over by Patil in my judg-ment. I am suggesting, then, that a properly philosophicstudy would not be the mere mouthpiece for Ratnakrtithat this book becomesalbeit there is tremendous meritin allowing Ratnakrti to address us in our own philo-sophic terminology in a study that is, all told, like a lucidtranslation but beer.

e second irony is that Ratnakrti argues that Bud-dha is omniscient. In broad perspective, Nyyas ari-bution of omniscience to vara seems like a species oferror common to all the religious philosophies of clas-sical Indiaincluding Jainism (which, like Buddhism, isatheistic while yet aributing omniscience to the Jina).Furthermore, as Patil mentions but does not elaborate,Ratnakrti accepts that earth and the like do have an intel-ligent maker, just not Nyyas vara. Within Nyya, V-

caspati argues that insofar as one of the causal functionsfor which vara is posited is to combine atoms, varamust be bodiless; for if an embodied being were thoughtto bring this about, then another combiner would be re-quired, ad innitum, all bodies being made up of atoms.us the intelligent maker could not be much like us, it isprey evident, in both the Nyya and Buddhist concep-tions.

To be sure, Patil tells us repeatedly that RatnakrtisNaiyyikas are not necessarily the real McCoys, but onlythe interlocutors of his treatises, saying RatnakrtisNaiyyikas so frequently that when the qualifying pos-sessive is not used (but only the word Naiyyikas),we assume an ellipsis and understand that it is onlythe Naiyyikas of Ratnakrtis own conception that aremeant. is is not entirely true, however, in chapter2, where the Nyya epistemology is laid out before thevara inference is dissected in chapter 3. ere Patildoes an excellent job overall in presenting Nyyas the-ory of knowledge. Early Naiyyikas are quoted, and, Irepeat, he has mastered the philosophic idiom requiredto make the views plain, including some terric inno-vations. However, there are distortions from the Nyyapoint of view, it seems to me, probably due to his slightlyconfusing RatnakrtisNaiyyikas for Vcaspati and com-pany when these are not the same. e diculty is per-haps compounded by Ratnakrtis being quite a bit morefair-minded towards Naiyyikas than is, say, Udayanain presenting Buddhist theories. We are talking mostlyabout subtleties. But the certication conditions, for ex-ample, that Patil stresses belong alone to Ratnakrti. Rat-nakrti has a brilliant rhetorical strategy in his Proof ofMomentariness by Positive Correlation (Kaa-bhaga-siddhi anvaytmik), showing that his inference does notfall to certain well-known fallacies, to wit, Patils certi-cation conditions, and he employs the same strategyor, we could say, holds his Naiyyikas to the same stan-dards with respect to their vara inferencealbeit in theone case the examined inference passes the tests and inthe other it fails them. But this is not how Nyya looks atcertication. If a specic fallacy is alleged, the proponenthas an epistemic duty to show it to be non-genuine, butnot a duty to consider all defeating possibilities.

A related misconstrual: Patil tells us in several placesthat Ratnakrti criticizes the Nyya theory for its viewthat a nite, unspecied number of empirical observa-tions and nonobservations can establish the absence of areason property in all dissimilar cases (p. 149). is is astraw man. To know baleya as a cow is to know some-thing about any particular cow, including future cows.Similarly, one knows about anything smokey that it is

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something ery (and about anything non-ery that it isnon-smoky). But negative correlation, like the positive,delivers a fallible projection, and a judgment of perva-sion can be wrong though appearing to be warranted.Unlike Ratnakrtis Naiyyikas, the real ones are not sopresumptuous. e deep issue is how sensitive to poten-tial defeaters we have to be in order to act condently onour inferences. Surely, contra Patils Ratnakrti (304-305),we neednt be aware of all possible defeaters. Inferencesmay have to be certied when challenged, but we do not

have to be as sensitive to defeaters as Ratnakrti and Patilmake out, at least not according to Nyya.

Patil has given us a great book on Ratnakrti, par-tially through learning and presenting the views of Rat-nakrtis opponents, which he has done admirably well,although the book lacks an evaluative overview and doesnot present equally the two sides of the debate about -vara. It is a penetrating study of Ratnakrtis entire phi-losophy for all that, indeed perhaps beer for the restric-tions.

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Citation: Stephen Phillips. Review of Patil, Parimal G., Against a Hindu God: Buddhist Philosophy of Religion in India.H-Buddhism, H-Net Reviews. January, 2010.URL: hp://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=25550

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