Vada in Theory and Practice: Studies in Debates, Dialogues and Discussions in Indian Intellectual Discourses c6.s5.t9.1

c6.s5.t9.1

In the first millennium CE, various philosophical schools grew under the Hīnayāna and Mahāyāna Buddhism and *bhāṣyas* on the Sūtra texts were composed. This was the age of interpretation and reasoning. These Buddhist schools also initiated intense philosophical debates with non-Buddhist rivals on problems of universals, philosophies of logic, language and other issues. Nāgārjuna rejected the concept of *svabhāva* and emphasized the idea of *madhyamā pratipad* (the middle path). He also established the invariable relationship of the philosophy of Śūnyavāda with Buddha’s concept of *pratītyasamutpāda* (interdependent origination). *Nirvāṇa* and *saṃsāra* to him are the forms of one and the same reality.