We find in Kumārila’s ślokavārttika a chapter entitled śūnyavāda that follows immediately another entitled Nirālambanavāda. Kumārila was evidently a contemporary of Dharmakīrti, whose doctrine he criticizes, and he is dated to ca. 600-660; thus he is in all likelihood also a contemporary of Candrakīrti, but he does not seem to be refer to this Madhyamaka master anywhere. Contrary to what one might expect of a text called śūnyavāda, it is not devoted primarily to a discussion of the Madhyamaka school. In the śūnyavāda chapter (verse 259), just as in the Nirālambanavāda chapter (verse 3), the term śūnya refers not to the Madhyamaka theory but to the absence of any separately real objective correlate (artha) in a cognition; and these two chapters of the ślokavārttika are in fact concerned mostly with a criticism of Dharmakīrti’s logico-epistemological doctrine. It is true that Kumārila’s criticism in the Nirālabanavāda (5-10) of the Buddhist theory of the two satyas – the saṃvṛtisatya and the paramārthasatya – and of the idea that the saṃvṛti is really false (mithyā) can be applied to the Madhyamaka doctrine also; and when commenting on verse 5 of this chapter, Umveka (eighth century) and Pārthasārathimiśra in fact quote Mūlamadhyamakakārikā. But it is at the same time clear that Kumārila had in mind the doctrine of the unreality of the external object, which – contrary to what has sometimes been maintained – is not a tenet of the pure Madhyamaka schools (in contradistinction to the synthesizing Yogācāra-Madhyamaka). In verse 14, Kumārila distinguishes between the Yogācāras and the Mādhyamikavādins, explaining that the first accept a cognition of an object (arthaśūnya vijñāna), whereas the latter maintain the non-existence of even such a vijñāna. Kumārila’s doctrines were subsequently discussed and criticized in śāntarakṣita’s Tattvasaṃgraha and Kamalaśīla’s Panjika on it.
The relationship between the Vedānta and the Madhyamaka poses a number of interesting questions. Reference has already been made to Bhāvaviveka’s critique of the Vedānta and to his very remarkable comparison of the supreme Brahman with the Buddhist idea of ultimate reality.
Gauḍapāda who is dated to ca. 500 but is sometimes considered to have been śaṅkarācārya’s teacher’s teacher – shows clear and unmistakable links with Buddhist thought in chapter IV of his Māṇḍūkyakārikās, in particular with the Vijñānavāda and also with the Madhyamaka. However, in the other chapters of this work, starting with the third and culminating in the first, there is to be found a progressive movement away from Buddhist ideas and towards Vedāntic sources.
In his attitude towards what he terms śūnyavāda (which in this case is unquestionably Madhyamaka), śaṅkarācārya has taken up a negative stance in his Bhāṣya on the Gauḍapādakārikās. His position on the subject is especially clear in his Bhāṣya on the Brahmasūtra and the Bṛhadāraṇyakopaniṣad, where he has simply rejected the śūnyavāda, without discussion or analysis, as contrary to all means of correct knowledge and therefore unworthy of serious attention and refutation; according to the great Advaitin, it is simply the teaching of nihilists (vaināśika) and thus like a sandy, dried-up well. It is indeed strange to find the Madhyamaka being dismissed out of hand for teaching something it has rejected. In fact, according to the Mādhyamika, nihilism is just as unacceptable a philosophical extreme as eternalism; and from the soteriological point of view it is perhaps an even more pernicious extreme than its opposite. Beginning with Nāgārjuna, the Mādhyamikas have furthermore accepted saṃvṛtisatya and lokavyavahāra as necessary to the philosophical thought and as duly recognized in the Buddha’s teaching. For śaṅkarācārya to characterize the Madhyamaka as being in opposition to all means of philosophical knowledge is then at least an oversimplification demonstrating his lack of familiarity with the Madhyamaka as set out in the very large body of literature that it had produced by his time. How this is to be accounted for it is now difficult to say. It may have been the result of inveterate hostility – perhaps more theological and sociological than philosophical – to a Buddhist thought. Moreover, śaṅkarācāra may have felt himself obliged to distance himself from Buddhist thought as much as possible, not least because of the links that seem to have connected certain earlier Vedāntic ideas and Buddhist thought. A contributing factor may, finally, have been real unfamiliarity with Madhyamaka literature and philosophy due to a scarcity of this school’s books, at least in the places śaṅkarācārya was living.
Quite different in his attitude to the Madhyamaka was śrīharṣa, the twelfth century Vedāntin author of the Khaṇḍanakhaṇḍakhādya, who employed a method he termed deconstructive reasoning (khaṇḍanayukti). This form of reasoning has been recognized to be closely related to the Mādhyamika’s dialectic and to his prasaṅga-type reasoning. śrīharṣa has moreover accepted the vitaṇḍa, which is certainly to be understood in this case as referring to the form of argument employed by an unprincipled opponent merely to win an argument at any cost, but as philosophical criticism and reduction to the impossible. Rather than a cavil, then, vitaṇḍa is here an acceptable form of discussion which may be required by a true philosopher when he confronts the ontologically indeterminate relative.
In philosophical works of the Jainas, including doxographical texts like Haribhadrasūri’s ṣaḍdarśanasamuccaya, as well as later doxographical works such as Mādhava’s Sarvadarśanasaṃgraha, we find more or less condensed accounts of some from of Madhyamaka, and in particular of its epistemology and gnoseology. No comprehensive analysis of the Madhyamaka by a classical Indian authority of an opposed school seems to exist, however.