Epistemology, Śrīvaiṣṇavism and Comparative Philosophy at my new blog

Epistemology
This post deals with the epistemology of public shaming.
This post deals with arthāpatti and inference.
These two posts discuss expert knowledge (as in the case of gemmologists who recognise gems perceptually) in Sanskrit sources (especially Vedānta Deśika and Kumārila and Dharmakīrti).

This post discusses whether one can understand a sentence without believing its content to be the case.
This post discusses language as an instrument of knowledge.
This post discusses sentences and sentence-meaning according to Śabara.
This post discusses words as instruments of knowledge according to Śabara.


Śrīvaiṣṇavism and Viśiṣṭādvaita Vedānta
A tentative hypothesis about its reconstruction is discussed here.
This post focuses on the three different narratives about the reconstruction of the history of Śrīvaiṣṇavism.
This post discusses the Teṅkalai position about one's absolute love for God.
This post discusses Vedānta Deśika's relation to Nyāya.
This post is dedicated to the ways to know about God.


Comparative Philosophy
Graham Priest explains here why one should study Asian philosophy.
This post discusses whether there are infinite philosophies (African, Australian…) or whether there are just a few philosophical traditions (Greek, German, Indian…).
This post focuses on the issue of narrative as a way to overcome the crudity of pure philosophy (with references to the Islamic world).
This post discusses humans (as) animal beings.

Methodology of translations from Sanskrit
This post focuses on the translation from Sanskrit.
This post discusses the differences between jñā- and vid-.
This post discusses the history of the expression padavākyapramāṇa-.


Long sellers: Quotations and Daya Krishna
This post is dedicated to reuse in the history of art.
This post discusses my reasons for engaging with Daya Krishna's thought.

You can find further short posts, Call for papers, quotes, etc., at my new blog.

Hayagrīva in South India and other posts

You can read here a new post on Hayagrīva in South India. Another post on Hayagrīva is this one.
If you are interested in Vedānta Deśika (or Veṅkaṭanātha), read these various posts on his ontology and theology, and this one on his aikaśāstrya. On bhakti in Varanasi, read here.
Keen to know more about contemporary Indian philosophy? Read this post. And this one on comparative philosophy in general.
On ritual prescriptions, read here (for the Śrautasūtra perspective) and this one (for the Mīmāṃsā perspective).
My thoughts on how to organise oneself are here.
Some practical suggestions on how to publish one's book are here.

Reuse in texts and art, how to fund your projects and some further thoughts.

A few posts in the last month discuss about reuse in art (this one on Hayagrīva in the Hayagrīva Saṃhitā, this one and this one on the conceptual categories to deal with reuse, this post on my impressions of the first EAAA (European Association of Asian Art and Archaeology) conference).
As for the related problem of reuse in texts, some more posts could be interesting (this one discusses the reasons for marking textual reuse, and this one discusses the alteration of texts). Again, on a connected line of thought (the reuse of Buddhist texts), this post and this one discuss Buddhism in South India and this one discusses the influence of Jain libraries in making texts available.

On being a researcher in Europe, check this and this post (on having your project funded).

As for further topics, this post discusses about theology without faith, this one discusses Mīmāṃsā and Grammar.

Finally, this post discusses my methodology of reading an "Alien" philosophy.

IABS, IDhC conferences and other posts (including various CfP)

You can find a summary of my posts on the IABS (International Association of Buddhist Studies) Conference on my new blog, here.
You can find a summary of my posts on the IDhC (International Dharmakīrti Conference) on my new blog, here.
Further, you can find a post on bhakti and Daya Krishna here.
A post on common misunderstandings of Mīmāṃsā can be read here.
Are you interested in philosophy and epistemology of language and in testimony? Read this CfP.
The Call for Papers for the next CBC can be read here.

Be sure to check my new blog's archives for August and September for further short posts.

Will the journey ever come to its goal? On comparative theology in Clooney 2013

How does one compare theological poetry? Some thoughts can be read at my new blog, here.

What is involved in a religious identity? On the Introduction of Leach 2012

What are the Pāñcarātras? Is there anything like a uniform Pāñcarātra Canon and/or Theology? Or are these texts only part of a constellation which has been made consistent by its later interpreters? Read the rest at my new blog, here.

Do we need to waste our time proving that unicorns do not exist?

Do we need to prove that unicorns, tooth fairies, hobbits and so on do not exist? The question is not just funny, insofar as an upholder of the existence of ghosts and the like could easily claim that there are no evidences of their non-existence. In Indian epistemology, this amounts to say that there are no bādhakas 'invalidating cognitions' telling us that the existence of ghosts, etc. is invalid.
Please read the rest at my new blog, here.

Mystical perception, God’s intellectual intuition and normal people’s sense-perception

Is mystical perception (aka yogipratyakṣa) a kind of perception? Can we go without it, if we want to ground religious beliefs?
Read the rest at my new blog, here.

Is the Veda the body of God? (Yoshimizu 2007–II part)

How can one interpret a Vedic passage by saying that a certain meaning was not "intended" (vivakṣita), while still thinking that the Veda has no personal author?

The Mīmāṃsā cannot renounce the idea that the Veda has no personal author (apauruṣeyatva): its whole theory about the Veda's validity depends on this principle. However, Kumārila needs also to explain in which sense one can decide whether an interpretation of the Veda is right or not on the basis of whether it is intended (vivakṣita). How can one speak of intention if there is no author?

Plurality of subjects in Mīmāṃsā: Kiyotaka Yoshimizu 2007

Is the plurality of subjects compatible with the idea of a Vedāntic kind of liberation (in which there seems to be no distinction among different souls)? And can there be an absolute brahman if there are still distinct subjects?

I just read Kiyotaka Yoshimizu's Kumārila's Reevaluation of the Sacrifice and the Veda from a Vedānta Perspective (in Mīmāṃsā and Vedānta, edited by Bronkhorst and Preisendanz, 2007). The paper elaborates on thematics close to the ones dealt with by Roque Mesquita (Die Idee der Erlösung bei Kumārilabhaṭṭa, WZKS 1994) and John Taber (Kumārila the Vedāntin?, in the same Mīmāṃsā and Vedānta) and adds to the debate Yoshimizu's close knowledge of Kumārila in general and of his less studied works in particular. The article focuses in fact on the Ṭupṭīkā, Kumārila's commentary on the last part of the Pūrva Mīmāṃsā sūtra, and compares it with the fragments of the Bṛhaṭṭīkā and with the Tantravārttika.
Kumārila is the chief exponent of the Bhāṭṭa school of Pūrva Mīmāṃsā and the Mīmāṃsā is mainly a school of Vedic exegesis. The Vedic sacrifices necessarily require someone responsible for their performance and responsibility is explicitly said to be individual. In other words, the Vedic injunctions enjoin specific individuals and not human beings in general. Thus, they require a plurality of subjects.
However, Yoshimizu shows how Kumārila accepts the notion of a paramātman 'supreme Self' in different passages of his works. paramātman can be used as a synonym of God, Īśvara, but is mostly used as a synonym of the all-encompassing brahman. The latter would contradict the plurality of subjects which is required by Mīmāṃsā.
Thus, we need to imagine that Kumārila's paramātman does not entail monism. What else could it mean, then, to say that liberation is the "attainment of the supreme Self" (paramātmaprāpti, TV, quoted in fn. 6). Given that the paramātman seems to be in all authors who mention it a single entity, the TV claim seems to entail that everyone achieves the dignity of the single paramātman. How can this not contradict pluralism?
One might suggest that pluralism only exists in the saṃsāra, but could a pluralistic ontology be compatible with its monistic evolution, given that the paramātman is said to exist also along the saṃsāra? Would it make sense to think of living beings as leaving the proscenio of their plural world one after the other, in order to dissolve into the paramātman?
Alternatively, one should think of Kumārila's claim as entailing an ontology akin to the one later known as Viśiṣṭādvaita Vedānta, i.e., only God exists independently, but human beings are his features (viśeṣa) and are, hence, not identical with him.

Can you think of other ways out?

P.S. Yoshimizu kindly informed me that he might elaborate further on the topic of the paramātman a new paper for the next World Sanskrit Conference in Bangkok.

Goldberg and the problem of Anonymous Assertions

If one studies Indian accounts of Linguistic Communication as instrument of knowledge (śābda) one is immediately confronted with two different paradigms:

• the Nyāya paradigm, according to which an act of linguistic communication conveys knowledge if it is uttered by a reliable speaker.
• the Mīmāṃsā paradigm, according to which an act of linguistic communciation conveys knowledge, until and unless a flaw in the speaker interrupts this ability.

The first account presupposes a parataḥ prāmāṇya 'extrinsic validity' theory, that is, on the idea that an instrument of cognition becomes able to bestow knowledge only if connected with some external factors "enhancing" it, e.g., in the case of Linguistic Communication, a reliable speaker. The second account relies on a svataḥ prāmāṇya 'intrinsic validity' theory, that is, on the idea that an instrument of cognition is valid unless and until it is falsified.

This also entails that the Mīmāṃsā account can admit as valid the Veda (the Sacred Texts believed by Mīmāṃsā authors to be authorless and beginningless). In fact, since the Veda has no author, no author's flaw can ever invalidate it. By contrast, the claim that, e.g., the Buddhist Sacred Texts are reliable is easily invalidated, given that the very idea that their author, the Buddha, had access to unknowable realities such as dharma and karman can be easily falsified through an appeal to our common experience (where no one ever has access to unknowable realities) and to the inferential evidences about the fact that what is by itself unknowable cannot ever be intellectually grasped, even by enhanced sense- and intellectual faculties.

By contrast, the Nyāya school can only accept the Veda insofar as it regards it as authored by a reliable speaker (namely God).

Thus, it seems that if one wants to accept authorless assertions as valid, one needs to agree with the Mīmāṃsā authors and disagree with the Nyāya ones.

Similarly, a leading and thought-provoking scholar of epistemology, Sanford Goldberg, deals with Anonymous Assertions (forthcoming on Episteme, available here) relying on a theory which is quite close to the parataḥ prāmāṇya one, namely, on the idea that the validity of an assertion depends on an "epistemic norm", entailing the reliability of the speaker and the awareness of it by hearer and speaker at the same time ("in asserting something, the speaker performs an act regarding which it is common knowledge that her act was proper (warranted) only if she had the relevant epistemic authority", p. 6).

Now, what happens in the case of anonymous assertions?
1) That the speaker is not bound by any epistemic-norm-enforcing policy, since no one will be able to trace her back and hold her responsible for what she said or wrote.
2) That the audience is aware of that and has, consequently, grounds for scepticism.
Thus, "the hearer is unwarranted in thinking that the speaker satisfied the norm of assertion" (p. 27) and, consequently, anonymous assertions are (unless in particular cases), even if true, unable to convey justified beliefs.

Are there exceptions? Yes, and Goldberg (p. 29) mentions two:

• "the 'security wall' model": one where a security wall warrants for the reliability of anonymous assertions. Goldberg does not mention any example of it, but one might think of moderated blogs admitting only those anonymous assertions whose reliability has been checked.
• "the 'Wikipedia' model": one where the cost of correction is low and one can therefore hope that mistakes would have been detected.

Is this enough to make sense of all the reliable anonymous assertions we regularly encounter? I am not sure.
Let me start by listing them: Apart from the ones mentioned by Goldberg, one encounters anonymous assertions also in the case of editorials on newspapers (at least in continental Europe, the most influential articles are not signed), of encyclopaedic entries, of laws (where a pool of people is involved, many of which are not mentioned in the final text). (I will not deal with this last case, since Goldberg focuses only on assertions (and not on exhortations).)
An author would be more cautious while writing an anonymous editorial or an anonymous encyclopaedic entry than while writing a signed article, since much more is at stake. Signing an article means anchoring it (only) to its author, whereas letting it unsigned means entailing that the whole authority of the newspaper is at stake with it. Thus, the case of editorials and of encyclopaedias can be dealt with with the security wall model (i.e., it is the general reliability of a certain newspaper or encyclopaedia which vouches for the reliablity of each editorial or entry). However, they also hint at a further point, i.e., that in (Western) culture anonymity has long been a sign of authority (!), insofar as no limit to the authority is put.
This is even more evident in the case of Sacred Texts. Let us assume, as most historians do, that Sacred Texts (as, e.g., the Pāñcarātra Sāṃhitās) are authored by human authors. Let us also assume that these people were not only or not always driven by egoistic purposes, such as the desire to fool other people and/or gain money or influence in this way. Why would they nonetheless efface themselves in the works they write? Because, if they spoke as themselves, they would limit the authority of the final text to themselves. If this were the case, a certain text would be reliable insofar as its author is reliable, but not of the highest authority. Thus, it is easy to imagine that a certain person X would be careful while writing or teaching in his own name, but MUCH MORE SO while writing a Sacred Text deemed to depict an absolute Truth.

Can a justified true belief be based on an anonymous assertion? 

For another post on Western epistemology of testimony, see here (on J. Lackey). Similarly on testimony and justification, see this post. On the validity of Sacred Texts, see this post. To Linguistic Communication as instrument of knowledge is dedicated my first blog (in Italian), plus many posts on this blog labelled with "śabda".

Difficult Apologetics: How to justify evil prescriptions in the Sacred Texts

Philosophers or "free thinkers" may abruptly dismiss whatever they don't understand or believe to be false in a Sacred Text —or even decide not to open one at all. But theologians and authors of apologetics have a much tougher task: they must make sense of everything within a Sacred Text —even what seems to be immoral or unjust.

The most well-known example in Indian apologetics is that of the Śyena-sacrifice. This is a malevolent ritual which is prescribed in the Veda with the words: "The one who wants to harm his enemy should sacrifice with the malevolent ritual Śyena''. Opposers easily used it as an evidence of the flaws in the Veda, whereas Mīmāṃsakas had to reconcile it with the ideal of non-violence, also believed to be of Vedic origin. One of the solutions is that of stressing the adhikārins, i.e., the people who are responsible for performing the sacrifice. The sacrifice is not, it is explained, prescribed to everyone, but only to the ones who "want to harm their enemies". This is  something one should never desire to do, thus, they are already committing something prohibited and in this sense the Vedic prescription about the Śyena is a way to bring these evil ones under the control of the Veda (śaṭhacittaśāstravaśatopāyo 'bhicāraśrutiḥ, Parāśara Bhaṭṭa).

Today it came to my mind that this is the same way Jesus Christ used to "rescue" the Mosaic permission to repudiate one's wife. Consider Matthew 19.3–9, where some Pharisees come, as it is often the case in the Gospel narrations, to Jesus in order to test him with a conundrum he would not be able to solve, namely, the seeming contradiction between the cruelty of repudiating one's wife and the fact that this practice is sanctioned by Moses (De 24:1-4):

"Why then," they [=the Pharisees] asked, "did Moses command that a man give his wife a certificate of divorce and send her away?"
Jesus replied, "Moses permitted you to divorce your wives because your hearts were hard […]." (International Version 2011)

Do you see it? Jesus is using the same device as the Mīmāṃsakas, i.e., saying that the passage in the Sacred Text which seems unjust is in fact the best possible solution for the (cruel) people it addresses and that the prescription is in fact not a general order, but an ad hoc permission, focusing on the ones who would not have been able to follow the best way.

Do you know of other instances of this apologetic move? Do you think the parallel holds?

On the Śyena conundrum you can read also this post.

Repetitions in religious texts

illustration of the Egyptian litany of Re

Why do texts contain repetitions? Just because they reproduce oral formulas? If so, there is no need to translate them wholly, since today's readers have the text in a book (or a pdf) and can go back to it whenever they want. If, by contrast, we want to keep repetitions in our translations, this might be a sign of the fact that we are sensing that they might have a deeper meaning.
 
In an interesting post, which does not allow comments (this is why I am writing my thoughts about it here), Naomi Appleton discusses the problems a translator faces while trying to translate Buddhist Jātakas, since they are full of repetitions.

Repetitions are surely a major challenge, especially for contemporary readers and translators (as Naomi notes here, many Sanskrit texts are already boring enough!). However, besides orality, I would add that repetitions may have a transformative effect: it seems to be not a coincidence that many religions have emphasised the importance of repeating formulas/litanies/etc. I guess that the rationale behind it is the idea that by repeating a sentence you are not merely repeating it, you are allowing the text to work deeper within your psyche, so that you will start to savour all the text's "hidden" meanings. For instance, the first time you read about the glorification of the Buddha you will just savour its literary value, the next time, its narrative role within the plot, but after the third one you might start feeling yourself within the group of kinnaras, gandharvas, etc., who are praising the Buddha… 

Which other purposes may a repetition have in today's world? By the last words I mean to exclude mnemonic and rythmic purposes, which are of minor importance for today's readers.

 

I hinted at this topic already here.

 

You thought no one could still say that there is an "Asian Philosophy" stressing order over single individuals?

Consider the following statements:

This paper analyzed different texts from the Buddhist, Daoist, and Hindu religions. […] It is clear, from the reading of all the texts that each religion tries to explain the human soul’s relationship to the cosmic order of reality. The spirit of a human being is under thesupreme control of the Tao, Universal Consciousness, dharma, or whatever a religion describesas the Ultimate Reality. This connection between the human being and the Ultimate Reality cannot be broken or crafted by a third party. This connection only exists between an individual human being and that person’s ability to empty his or her consciousness, for the purposes of enlightenment. That is the sole purpose of existence on this earthly plane. This is the universal message of all of the religions examined. The similarities far outweigh the differences.

Add the fact that the chapter on Hinduism has as single reference the Bhagavad Gītā, with no word of caution added. Where do these words come from? 
A 19th c. handbook for the primary schools? No, a paper just uploaded on Academia.
 I do not know the author and his/her university's website looks suspicious enough. Still, how did it happen that the scholarship on Buddhism, "Hinduism" (and Daoism) until now has not yet managed to eradicate such simplistic views?

Should we do more to explain that "Asian religious traditions" are more complex than that? Or are the authors of such essays biased by a too strong confirmation-bias?

Nārāyaṇārya, Viśiṣṭādvaita Vedānta and Mīmāṃsā —UPDATED

Nārāyaṇārya was a Viśiṣṭādvaita Vedāntin author whose only (as far as I know) extant work is the Nītimālā. Already this work shows some of his basic tenets:

1. 1. the focus on Pūrva Mīmāṃsā (the Nītimālā has a long section on Vedic prescriptions*).
2. 2. the attempt to reinterpret Pūrva Mīmāṃsā according to the Viśiṣṭādvaita Vedānta tenets (Vedic prescriptions are read as orders of God*).

In this sense, Nārāyaṇārya is among the ones who paved the way to Veṅkaṭanātha (aka Vedānta Deśika) and it is no surprise that Veṅkaṭanātha often refers to him while justifying his attempt to interpret Mīmāṃsā and Vedānta as a single śāstra. However, Veṅkaṭanātha's use of Nārāyaṇārya includes a possible problem, i.e., the fact that Nārayaṇārya allegedly authored a text in which he dealt with only 500 of the adhikaraṇas of the Pūrva Mīmāṃsā Sūtra. Since Veṅkaṭanātha wants to say that all adhikaraṇas are to be accepted, he needs to justify Nārāyaṇārya's move as a sign of his being an advanced scholar. In this connection, he quotes the following verse, seemingly from Nārāyaṇārya:

adhyasya vyākriyādoṣaṃ ye sūtram api tatyajuḥ |
prāyaḥ sphaṭikam apy ete jahyur eva japābhramāt ||

Which seems to mean:

The ones who, after having themselves superimposed (adhyasya) a fault (doṣa) in [the sūtra's] analysis (vyākriyā) abandoned even a sūtra,
these would in general, abandon even a crystal [although the faults are not in the crystal, but have only been superimposed on it], because of a fault in the China rose (behind it).

Now, the simile can be understood as follows: the errors are not in the Pūrva Mīmāṃsā Sūtra themselves, but in their later commentators (beginning with Śabara) and one only superimposes them on the PMS, just like the faults one seems to see in a crystal are only the faults of something else, behind it.

On Vedānta Deśika, see this post (and its links).

*about which, see the excellent thesis by Himal Trikha.

Why starting with ritual and not directly with Vedānta? Veṅkaṭanātha's answer

Should a Vaiṣṇava really first start with the study of the ritual action (i.e., with the Pūrva Mīmāṃsā) and only later on reach what really matters, i.e., the study of Vedānta? —This seemed to have been a popular question at Veṅkaṭanātha's time, as testified most of all in his Mīmāṃsāpādukā:

It is possible to investigate on ritual action (karman) also immediately after the investigation on brahman. Therefore, the brahmakhaṇḍa [of the Veda, i.e., the Upaniṣads] should precede, and this (investigation on karman) should come after (and not the other way round, as the sequence of Pūrva- and Uttara-Mīmāṃsāsūtra would suggest). If it is so, the announcement of an investigation in the form of "Now, the desire to know the brahman" (i.e., Brahmasūtra 1.1.1) would regard the whole Veda, and the announcement in the form "Now, the desire to know the dharma" (i.e., Mīmāṃsāsūtra 1.1.1) would regard only what is explicitly heard [in it] (i.e., the dharma=karman). Therefore, given that there is nothing which makes one decide between the alternatives, there is no unity of the śāstra (i.e., of Pūrva and Uttara Mīmāṃsā). […] If you say that in the brahmakhaṇḍa one investigates on Sāmaveda verses, and that these are included in the karmakhaṇḍa, which thus needs to be done first, then [remember] that also the investigation on the brahman should be done before that on the karman, since Viṣṇu is the object of voiceless sacrifices and thus the cognition of various sacrifices […] depends on the cognition of him.

(Satpathasaṃcāra commentary on the Mīmāṃsāpādukā 1.1.15)

The following is (most probably;-)) Veṅkaṭanātha's answer:

Without a specific cognition of the ritual actions, one cannot perform the Udgīthas and the other [Vedic offerings and recitations]. Even without a specific cognition of the All-pervader one can perform a ritual action. The immaculate cognition which has the All-pervader as its content does not come first because it is independent.

(Satpathasaṃcāra commentary on the Mīmāṃsāpādukā 1.1.15)

 
In other words, it is out of the sequence and thus does not need to come first. Thus, the sequence is ruled by other principles, such as the fact that the ritual actions need to be investigated in order to be performed.

What led a Viśiṣṭādvaitin to the wish and need to inglobate Mīmāṃsā in his philosophy?

For further posts on Veṅkaṭanātha, check here. For his struggles with Mīmāṃsā see here ("retrospect").

Does God have Free Will? Veṅkaṭanātha's answer

Can God have free will? If He has free will, then He is above everything, including the cosmic dharma, and the Vedas, which he might have chosen to be different than they are, and this patently contradicts the Mīmāṃsā standpoint. If not, than He is not a personal God, but rather the incarnation of Order (dharma), and this patently contradicts the Viśiṣṭādvaita Vedānta standpoint. How can Veṅkaṭanātha, the eminent Viśiṣṭādvaita Vedāntin who wrote also Mīmāṃsā works, find a way out of this impasse?

Larry McCrea will hold a lecture on this fascinating topic in June in Vienna:

Larry McCrea
Does God Have Free Will?
Hermeneutics and Theology in the work of Vedāntadeśika

When:	Fr., 14. Juni, 15 Uhr
Where:	Institut für Südasien-, Tibet- und Buddhismuskunde (ISTB), Universität Wien
	Spitalgasse 2, Hof 2, Eingang 2.7, 1090 Wien
Organisation:	Elisa Freschi, Marion Rastelli, Marcus Schmücker (IKGA)
Cooperation:	ISTB, Universiät Wien

An abstract of the lecture can be read here.

Larry McCrea is Associate Professor of Sanskrit Studies at Cornell University. He received his Ph.D. in South Asian Languages & Civilizations in 1998 from the University of Chicago, and his BA in 1989 from Cornell University and he is among the world's major experts of the Indian scriptural hermeneutics (Mīmāṃsā), especially of its hermeneutical approach. Among his most recent book projects, The Teleology of Poetics in Medieval Kashmir, Harvard Oriental Series (Spring 2009), deals with the conceptual revolution in Sanskrit poetic theory brought about by the work of the ninth century Kashmiri Ānandavardhana. McCrea argues that the most crucial innovation Ānandavardhana introduced in the field of poetics was his application to literary analysis of a teleological approach to text interpretation imported from the discipline of Mīmāṃsā.

What do you think? Can God have free will?

For further posts on Vedānta Deśika's Seśvaramīmāṃsā, see this one and this one (in Sanskrit).

 

A(n Indian) world full of creatures: Gilles Tarabout on nature

From Hompi, Karṇataka

Is the world as we see it or not? Both in India and in the West, one has believed for centuries that this was not the case and that the world was full of living, though unperceivable, beings. The historian of philosophy Tullio Gregory writes that the space from earth to sky was believed —in the Western Middle Age— to be full of various kinds of angels, hierarchically ordered.

In Indian religious and popular culture (though not in the philosophical reflection, I am inclined to think, see here) one similarly sees that one believes and believed in a variety of intermediate beings occupying each inch of land, earth and sky. The anthropologist Gilles Tarabout underlined this aspect in (at least) two of his papers. In one of them, published in RiSS and dealing with astrology in Kerala, Tarabout refers of how astrologers consulted by the committee of a temple regularly describe the temple as full of presences, part of which may need to be pacified.

In his recent speech at the conference on The Human Person and Nature in Classical and Modern India, Tarabout has repeated how "No place is free of occupants". Thus, while building something new, one needs to pacify these powers, especially insofar as several of them may be malevolent or at least ambivalent. Among the former are listed bhūtas, pretas (which are described by Tarabout's informants as malevolent due to their untimely death) and are violent deities, whereas among the latter are yakṣīs which are dangerous female beings, honoured as goddesses and thought of as the spirits of unmarried dead girls. Only the serpent-deities may remain and most gardens in Kerala have a spot which is left wild and where nāgas are thought to dwell. In an interesting document of the Colonial time reported by Tarabout a spot of land is said to be sold together with cobras, the sky above, the underground with its treasures and the corresponding part of hell…

I guess that ancestors (pitṛs) would instead be counted among benevolent creatures. Do you have any evidence of the contrary?

Furthermore, this background assumptions partly explain also why non-theistic religions such as Buddhism and Jainism did not feel the need to deny the existence of nāgas, devas, and so on, and why monotheistic Indian religions acted in the same way: these beings were not the object of a specific faith but were just part of the description of the world as it is. Thus, they did not compete with the Buddha, the Jina, Viṣṇu, etc., for their believers' hearts.

For the program of the Rome conference on nature, see here. For my contribution to the conference, see here. For a further contribution to the conference, see here.

Plants in Buddhist and non-Buddhist Indian Philosophy

Plants are explicitly described as non-sentient by most philosophers. Some of them are even quite crude in denying any sentience to trees. Why? Probably because they had to contrast popular "superstitions" according too much importance to plants, especially to trees.

In many of the early Buddhist legends, drawn from such sources as the Jātakas, the Dhammapadatthakathā, the Mahāvastu, the Dīpavaṃsa, the Divyāvadāna, the Aśokāvadāna, and so forth, an important dialectic is set up between the morally and spiritually perfected Buddha and various nonhuman deities such as yakṣas (Pāli, yakkhas) and the serpent deities, the nāgas. On the one hand, the Buddha incorporates and presides over a pre-existing mythology of nature. In so doing, the new religion of Buddhism is able more readily to meet the needs of an unlettered laity (Sutherland, Yakṣa in Hinduism and Buddhism p. 26).

(I would say that the same process applies to many "Hindu" religions. For instance, Arjuna marries, among other women, a nāga-princess, and his brother a Rākṣasī.) Then, philosophers had to sort out a consistent theology out of these inclusive processes and, thus, tended to deny the sentience of plants. Buddhist may have been even more harsh in this process (see Schmithausen's illuminating essays on this topic) due to the typically "Buddhist dialectic between nature and ascetism" (Sutherland, p. 28).

Universal salvation in Appayya Dīkṣita

Some Vedāntins (beginning perhaps with Vācaspati) have conceived the possibility of universal salvation (sarvamukti), i.e. the condition in which all living beings are liberated. The most compelling depiction of it I know of is found in Appayya Dīkṣita's works (especially in his Śivādvaitanirṇaya and Siddhāntaleśasaṅgraha).

Appayya seems to come to the idea of sarvamukti in a purely logical way: liberation is possible for every living being. More than that, liberation is necessary for all of them, since the very bond is actually only illusory (given that nothing but brahman ultimately exists). Thus, given that time is endless, sooner or later  every living being will be liberated from nescience (ajñāna) and recognise his/her/its original identity with the brahman.
Until that moment, however, nescience is not completely destroyed and, thus, the brahman keeps on being reflected in the multiple mirrors of the single souls, which are no more than mirrors reflecting the only brahman but believing to be different from it. This means that the brahman is itself not completely free and that no soul, however advanced in the path, can be completely released.

Thus, the liberation of all other living beings is, so to say, in our own interest ("so to say" is needed, since ultimately speaking there are no multiple living beings), since until every one is released, no one can attain oneness with the absolute brahman.

Does this sound convincing? Do you see possible parallels/influences from the Buddhist concept of Bodhisattva and/or with the communio of human beings (NB: only human ones) in Christianity?

On endless time, have a look at this post.