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When Professor Bimal Krishna Matilal tells us that '[a] philosopher has to learn to live with the sceptic . . . [because the latter] shares the same concern for truth with the philosopher . . . [and] is first and foremost an 'inquirer', I am inclined to agree with him. I also endorse his view that both the philosopher and (the sceptic 'persist in seeking [truth] and probing [into it]'. Further, when referring to Kumarila's criticism of the hyper-sceptic and Udayana's dismissive attitude towards the sceptics, Matilal disapproves of 'the frequent jokes and insults that are normally heaped upon the sceptics' on the grounds that they are 'wide of the mark', I think Matilal betrays, at least to start with, a constructive attitude toward skepticism..¹

It is true that empiricism is generally inclined towards scepti­cism. But all forms of scepticism are not' impractical' or 'scandalous'. On the contrary, to denounce scepticism without specifying its form is highly misleading and academically unfair. It has been rightly pointed out by Matilal that philosophers, concerned as they are with truth, are akin to the sceptic who is also engaged in inquiry into or search for truth. That every philosopher, including rationalists like Descartes and Hegel and empiricists like Russell and Nagarjuna, has to take scepticism seriously and is obliged to explain it at length shows its force and significance.

In Indian tradition the Buddhist position is often taken to be the paradigm of scepticism and its attending weakness. The point to be remembered here is that the different schools in Buddhism do not agree in their formulations of what is called scepticism. For example, according to the Vaibhasikas and early schools, both

(empirical) samsara (transcendental)and nirvana are real. The Sautrantikas maintain that samsara is real but nirvana unreal, Per contra the Yogacara or the Vijnanavada holds that samsara is unreal but nirvana real. The Madhyamika defends the most radical 'view' which, to it, is the truth, viz., both samsara and nirvana are unreal, separately unreal. Among the leading Buddhist philosophers, the one who is most frequently singled out and critically referred to for his sceptical position is Nagarjuna of the Madhyamakiya persuasion.

Matilal himself has paid considerable attention to Nagarjuna's critique of prama (valid knowledge) and pramanas (means of attaining prama).

It has been said time and again that Nagarjuna's scepticism regarding all philosophical positions, comprising different forms of knowledge and their proofs, rests on his denial of what is called bhava or existence. If every view, arguments for and against it, proofs and disproofs of it, are said to be without svabhava, lacking in 'own-being', then the critic of Nagarjuna is perhaps within his rights to point out that his sweeping generalization about svabhavasunyata, essencelessness, of all prama and pramanas, renders his own sceptical thesis or theory totally inefficacious. What is worse, an apparent air of paradoxically seems to have taken away all the deemed force of Nagarjuna's critique of prama and pramanas. In fact in Vatsyayana's Nydyasutra precisely this line of argument has been carefully explicated (ii, 1.8-ii. 1.32)². But before one dismisses Nagarjuna's critique of prama and pramanas on the related grounds of alleged essencelessness / meaninglessness and emptiness, one has to be more careful about the exact formulation of Nagarjuna's own view, setting aside his detractors' interpretations put on his view.

In this connection the critic would be well advised to look into the very first sutra of Sunyaldsaplati-Karika (SSK).

Though the Bauddhas have spoken of duration (sthiti), origination (utpada), destruction (bhanga), being (sat), non-being (asat),low (hina], moderate (sama) and excellent (visista) by force of worldly convention (lohavyavaharavasat], [they] have not done [so] in an absolute sense (tattvavasat).³

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