Re:Soul Meets Body: An initial examination of the Samkhya sc...
by Florin_Andrei on Monday July 13, 2020 @09:21PM
(#23827562)
Fascinating. That's aligned with a few intuitions I had.
The atmosphere of philosophical debate was definitely alive during the time of Shankara. At what point between then and now did it die out?
The traveling orders of priests were greatly diminished and didn't hold the kind of intellectual or cultural sway among people in power that they used to. In Adi Shankaracharya's time they would travel around the country giving lectures and being feted by village heads and kings as they hosted big debates and symposiums. But once the background education system was gone, much of the continued development and education depended on the beneficence of sympathetic Muslim rulers.