The syllabus keeps dead enemies

Claim (verbatim)

The syllabus keeps dead enemies: Indian philosophical curricula froze their opponent-set at the moment of the opponents' extinction. After Buddhism vanished from the subcontinent, Brahmanical works kept allotting Buddhists their full traditional share of polemical space for centuries, but the Buddhists engaged should be exclusively pre-extinction classics — debate was with the syllabus's opponents, not with anyone alive. The citation ceiling of a tradition's opponents thus dates the death of real engagement even where polemical volume never flags, making doxographic conservatism precisely measurable.

Prediction clause (verbatim)

In Sanskrit philosophical works composed after 1300 available in GRETIL and SARIT (Vedanta, Nyaya, Mimamsa). Primary clause: no Buddhist author active after about 1050 — later than the generation of Jnanasrimitra and Ratnakirti — is cited or named as purvapaksin in any post-1300 Brahmanical philosophical work in these corpora; this categorical clause is primary and the verdict follows it. Secondary clause: the share of polemical space addressed to Buddhist positions in post-1300 doxographies is not lower than in pre-1200 equivalents.

Kill-dataset (verbatim)

Kill: the GRETIL and SARIT corpora for the texts, with author dates cross-checked against the Pandit prosopographical database (panditproject.org).

Novelty / leakage triage

provisional — model-triaged, shepherd review pending

A provisional first pass authored by the model (Opus), not yet confirmed by the shepherd. It carries the same dated-search requirements as an authoritative verdict but is excluded from every headline figure and cannot underwrite a prediction until a shepherd confirms it. Provisional reading: Adjacent (closely related prior work exists).

Doxographic conservatism -- Indian curricula continuing to allot the extinct Buddhists their traditional polemical share, engaging pre-extinction classics long after living Buddhist philosophy had left the subcontinent -- is a recognized feature (the Carvaka case shows the same fossilized-opponent pattern: the arguments outlived the schools). Not located: the specific categorical citation-ceiling the item makes primary -- that no Buddhist author active after ~1050 (past Jnanasrimitra/Ratnakirti) is cited as purvapaksin in any post-1300 Brahmanical philosophical work in GRETIL/SARIT, dates checked against panditproject.org -- as an executed corpus sweep.

• Ramkrishna Bhattacharya, Studies on the Carvaka/Lokayata (2011) -- refutations outliving the refuted school — The frozen-opponent pattern in Sanskrit doxography
• Pandit prosopographical database (panditproject.org); GRETIL and SARIT corpora — Author-date checks and the post-1300 text corpus (the kill dataset)

Predictions

No prediction registered yet.