ABSTRACT
PHILOSOPHY never returns to its former placid state after the shock of a great philosopher. It is again a saying of Hegel that the opposition that a philosophy evokes is evidence of its vitality and fruitfulness. The Śūnyatā—advayavāda—of the Mādhyamika had come to stay. It was generally accepted that the Real is Absolute—at once transcendent of empirical determinations and immanent in phenomena as their innermost essence. A necessary distinction had also to be made between what is in itself and what appears to untutored perception. Absolutism entails the distinction between the paramārtha and the vyāvahārika; it formulates the doctrine of two 'truths'; it also implies a theory of illusion.
