Pāṣaṇḍin, vaitaṇḍika, vedanindaka and nāstika.On criticism, dissenters and polemics and the South Asian struggle for the semiotic primacy of veridiction

By reconsidering the epistemic implications underlying the marginal status to which the materials pro- duced by South Asian exponents of various forms of ‘dissenting’ or ‘anti-traditional’ intellectual activity have been consigned, in this essay I propose revisiting our understanding of why many South Asian tradi- tions that do not adhere to a dominant doxa have been omitted or given a permanent status of subordina- tion. From this perspective I here argue the paucity of textual materials produced by the ‘dissenters’ – which now survive only in fragments – is the most striking proof that over the centuries these elements have not been considered as what they really are.