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The Silent Conquest Brahminical Jujitsu and the Philosophical
Re-enculturation of Buddhism By the druid Finn The
history of Indian philosophy is often narrated as a dignified dialogue
between traditions—a symposium of sages exploring the nature of reality. This
view, while comforting, is naively apolitical. A more trenchant analysis,
reading history not through the lens of abstract truth but of social power,
reveals a far more strategic and profound process: a centuries-long project
of Brahminical re-enculturation, executed with such philosophical finesse
that it constitutes one of history's most brilliant and silent intellectual
conquests. The pivotal agents of this project were not warriors but
philosophers—Nagarjuna, Asanga, Vasubandhu, and later, Shankara—whose work,
when viewed through the imperative of caste preservation, reveals itself as a
coherent campaign to neutralize Buddhism from within. The threat
posed by Buddhism to the Brahminical order was existential. The Buddha’s
doctrine of anātman (no-self)
was a direct refutation of the Upanishadic Ātman (Self).
His dismissal of Vedic ritual undermined the Brahmin’s socio-economic basis,
and his establishment of a Sangha outside the caste system threatened the
very pillars of varnashrama-dharma. Direct confrontation having
failed, the Brahminical response evolved into a strategy of intellectual
jujitsu: using the opponent's strength and momentum to effect their downfall. The
first and most devastating move in this campaign was executed by Nagarjuna. A
Brahmin by birth, he infiltrated the Buddhist Sangha and achieved mastery of
its doctrine. His genius lay in weaponizing the Buddha’s core insight
of pratītyasamutpāda (Dependent
Origination). In his Mūlamadhyamakakārikā,
Nagarjuna pushed this principle to its logical extreme, arguing that if
everything is dependently originated, then nothing possesses inherent,
independent existence (svabhāva). This
was the doctrine of Śūnyatā—Emptiness. However,
Nagarjuna’s Śūnyatā was
not a mere philosophical position; it was a strategic deconstruction. He
applied this acid to every foundational concept in Buddhism: time, motion,
the self, and even Nirvana itself, demonstrating their ultimate lack of
inherent reality. The result was a philosophical vacuum. His infamous
declaration, "I have no thesis" (Vigrahavyāvartanī),
was the masterstroke. It was a pre-emptive absolution of responsibility,
allowing him to dismantle the entire edifice of Buddhist ontology while
accepting no liability for the resulting nihilistic void. He was not building
a better Buddhism; he was performing a philosophical scorched-earth
operation, leaving the tradition perilously poised between profundity and
paralysis. The goal was not to clarify, but to destabilize. Following
this strategic demolition, the Brahminical project entered its reconstruction
phase with the brothers Asanga and Vasubandhu. Also
Brahmins, they founded the Yogacara or "Mind-Only" school. In the
wake of Nagarjuna’s radical emptiness, they provided a new foundation:
consciousness. Their elaborate system, detailing the eight consciousnesses
and positing a "storehouse consciousness" (ālaya-vijñāna),
served a crucial function. To a critical eye, it subtly re-introduced a
stable, foundational principle into Buddhism. The ālaya-vijñāna,
while not a static self, acted as a continuous substratum for karmic seeds—a
concept suspiciously resonant with the Brahminical Ātman.
This was the beginning of the re-enculturation, steering a radically
non-Brahminical tradition back towards a framework compatible with, and
ultimately assimilable by, a consciousness-based metaphysics. The
final, triumphant synthesis of this project was achieved by Adi Shankara in
the 8th century CE. Facing a Brahminical tradition riddled with internal
contradiction between dualistic Vedas and monistic Upanishads, and still
challenged by Buddhist intellectual dominance, Shankara performed the
ultimate act of philosophical consolidation. He deployed the apophatic thus
"fuzzy placeholder" of Advaita Vedanta. Shankara’s
non-dual Brahman is, like Nagarjuna’s Emptiness, indefinable
and beyond all concepts. His genius was to hierarchize reality through the
doctrine of two truths. The dualistic, ritualistic world of the Vedas was
relegated to the conventional truth (vyavaharika
satya), while the non-dual Brahman of
the Upanishads was declared the ultimate truth (paramarthika
satya). This was not coherence; it was control.
It allowed him to: 1. Appropriate Buddhist Logic: Shankara’s Advaita is
structurally deeply indebted to Madhyamaka
Buddhism, so much so that he was called a "crypto-Buddhist" (Pracchanna Bauddha).
He took Nagarjuna’s destructive dialectic, rebranded the resulting void as
the positive absolute of Brahman, and used it to dismiss all
phenomenal reality—including Buddhist doctrine—as Maya (illusion). 2. Neutralize Internal Rivals: By validating ritual
at a lower level, he pacified the orthodox, while offering a supreme
non-dualism that could attract intellectuals. 3. Justify the Social Order: The world of caste and
duty was declared part of the illusory conventional reality. Thus, one must
perform one's svadharma (caste
duty) while understanding its ultimate unreality. This provided a
metaphysical justification for the caste system, making social observance a
spiritual discipline for the unenlightened, all under the interpretive
authority of the Brahmin. The
ultimate proof of this strategy's success is not in the philosophical texts
but in the cultural outcome. The Buddhism that emerged from this Brahminical
re-working was Mahayana—a form that, while spreading across Asia, had been
philosophically hollowed and reshaped in India. Its decline on the
subcontinent was followed by the final, symbolic act of absorption: the
Buddha himself was declared an avatar of Vishnu in the
Puranas, a divine agent sent to preach a doctrine of delusion to demons. The
rival was not defeated; he was canonized as a subordinate asset in the
Brahminical cosmic plan. In conclusion, to view
Nagarjuna, Asanga, Vasubandhu, and Shankara as independent philosophers
seeking abstract truth is to miss the forest for the trees. They were, in
fact, the master strategists of a long war of ideological preservation. Their
weapon was philosophy itself, wielded not for dialogue but for dominance.
Nagarjuna’s deconstruction, the Yogacara reconstruction, and Shankara’s final
synthesis represent a seamless, centuries-long campaign of intellectual
jujitsu. It was a silent conquest, where the most dangerous heresy was not
refuted, but subtly led down a path of philosophical self-annihilation and
eventual re-absorption, ensuring that the Brahminical framework, albeit
transformed, remained the ultimate arbiter of reality on the Indian subcontinent.
The victory was so complete that the very instruments of the conquest are
today celebrated as pillars of the very traditions they were designed to
subvert. Nagarjuna, The Architect of Emptiness or 5th
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