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Vada in Theory and Practice: Studies in Debates, Dialogues and Discussions in Indian Intellectual Discourses c5.s12: Vāda as a Digvijaya

Vāda in Theory and Practice: Studies in Debates, Dialogues and Discussions in Indian Intellectual Discourses c5.s12

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English

Vāda as a Digvijaya

c5.s12.1

With the growth of religion in the organized forms, the abbots and heads of diverse sects assumed political power and started behaving like kings and masters. Debates came to be conducted on war-footing basis. Veṅkaṭādhvarin in his *Viśvaguṇādarśacampū* (564) uses the metaphor *vādāhava* (debate as a battle). A man engaging himself in a series of scholastic debates at different places was projected as a warrior set out for *digvijaya* — a journey for victory throughout the country. The word has been used in the context of *vāda* perhaps for the first time by Śrīharṣa in his *Khaṇḍanakhaṇḍakhādya* — a text on refutation of all philosophical systems.⁶⁶ In many of the biographies of Śaṅkarācārya, which were written after twelfth century CE, the series of his conquests in debates are described as his *digvijaya*.

c5.s12.2

Swami Dayananda also began his *digvijaya* — the great journey for intellectual victory, and again in hundreds of Caritakāvyas that were composed after him in Sanskrit as well as in vernaculars, this great journey for the intellectual victory has been termed as *Dayānandadigvijaya*.

c5.s12.3

In the Sanskrit play *Mudrārākṣasa* of Viśākhadatta (around fifth century CE), Rākṣasa, the antagonist, compares his fight with his adversary, the great Cāṇakya, to the fight of a disputant with his rival in a debate:

c5.s12.4

That *sādhana* (army, the probans in the debate) alone leads to success (victory of the warrior/debater) which has the *sādhya* (aim, probandum), established, which has *anvaya* (unity, perfection in five-member syllogism), which has *sapakṣa* (supporters, thesis case/homologue), and is turned away from *vipakṣa* (the rival armies, dissimilar case/heterologue). By accepting a *sādhya* which is common to both and is opposite to the *pakṣa* (armies revolting, thesis case, i.e. which is fallacious) a king will be routed like a disputant in a debate.⁶⁷

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