(a) Discuss Rāmānuja's criticism of Śaṅkara's conception of Brahman and Īśvara (God). (20 marks) (b) Present Bhatta's view of…

Rāmānuja on Brahman and Īśvara Rāmānuja’s critique begins with Śaṅkara’s distinction between nirguṇa Brahman and saguṇa Īśvara. For Śaṅkara, ultimate Brahman is nirviśeṣa, attributeless; Īśvara is Brahman under māyā/avidyā, the object of devotion but not the final reality. Rāmānuja rejects this as self-undermining. If Brahman is truly attributeless, it cannot be the conscious ground of the world, because consciousness itself implies a distinction between knower and known, and a real relation of qualification. A nirguṇa Brahman would be indeterminate, and an indeterminate cause cannot give rise to determinate effects; hence māyā cannot be said to originate from such a Brahman without making the cause unintelligible. Rāmānuja also attacks the locus of avidyā: ignorance cannot be located in an attributeless Brahman, because avidyā requires a conscious substrate that is also the object of its own limitation. In Viśiṣṭādvaita, Brahman is saguṇa; attributes are not external additions or illusory appearances but real internal qualifiers. The viśeṣaṇa-viśeṣya relation makes Brahman the qualified and guṇas, jīvas and jagat the qualifiers, so Īśvara is not a lower, māyā-qualified version of Brahman but Brahman himself as the conscious, attribute-bearing ground. The cit-jaḍa distinction further supports this: consciousness and matter are different, and Brahman as cit is the substrate of both, not identical with inert matter. Thus Rāmānuja preserves the reality of devotion, creation and moral agency while rejecting Advaita’s ultimate attributelessness.

Bhaṭṭa on anupalabdhi Kumārila Bhaṭṭa accepts anupalabdhi as a sixth pramāṇa, distinct from perception and inference. Its object is abhāva, a negative fact such as the absence of a pot on the floor, not a positive substance. The cognition has a svarūpa dimension: the absence itself is what is known; and a karaṇa dimension: the non-perception under appropriate conditions is the instrument or cause of that knowledge. The technical contrast sometimes drawn between vyatireka-anupalabdhi and anvaya-anupalabdhi must be handled carefully: it is not a standard Bhaṭṭa classification of anupalabdhi, and it must not be confused with the inference-formula of anvaya-vyatireka. Bhaṭṭa does not derive absence from a general concomitance of presence and absence; those terms properly belong to vyāpti. Where comparative discussions invoke vyatireka and anvaya, the Bhaṭṭa point is that anupalabdhi is a direct non-apprehension, not an inference from a relation of agreement. Prabhākara rejects anupalabdhi as an independent pramāṇa, reducing it to perception or inference, whereas Bhaṭṭa insists that negative facts are not adequately captured by those two.

Nyāya on perception and universals Nyāya divides perception into laukika and alaukika. Laukika perception is ordinary sense-perception, further divided into nirvikalpa, a pre-conceptual grasp, and savikalpa, a conceptual construction that identifies the object. Alaukika perception includes yogaja, sāmānyalakṣaṇa and jñānalakṣaṇa. Sāmānyalakṣaṇa is the extraordinary perception of the universal itself, not a single act that directly sees all individuals of a class. Nyāya argues that universals are real and inhere in particulars by samavāya; because they are real and present in the locus, they can be perceived, especially through this extraordinary mode. The Buddhist critique, associated with Dignāga’s apoha theory, denies real universals: what is perceived are particulars, and the concept “pot” functions by excluding non-pot. Nyāya replies that apoha cannot explain the positive content of recognition, the repeated application of a term, or the causal efficacy of universals in inference. Contemporary Nyāya responses refine this by distinguishing the universal from the mental concept and arguing that perception of a universal is not a direct perception of every individual but an apprehension of a real inhering property. Thus their acceptance is justified within Nyāya realism, but remains vulnerable to apoha unless the reality of inhering universals is independently defended. Together, they show Indian philosophy linking metaphysics, epistemology and soteriology as one integrated problem.