Being and Nothingness in Indian thinking since RgVeda to Nagarjuna

Abstract

The paper is an inquiry on the concept of non-being and its permutations of nothing in the Indian intellectual tradition. It begins by asking whether there is anything close to the idea of creatio ex nihilo in the Ṛgveda down to the later Brahmāṇic protagonists vis-à-vis the Śramanic antagonists, in particular in the Jain and Buddhist darśanas. Here Nāgārjuna’s nuanced dialectic of emptiness is prevailed to problematize and complicate further the already troubled status of being/Being in the Indic tradition and erosion made by the rise of non-being/nothingness, and of course the doctrine of Śūnyatā (Emptiness). The paper ends with some consideration of the responses to the afore-mentioned challneges from the doyens of Vedānta, namely, Śaṅkara abd Rāmānuja.