Indian Knowledge Systems Part 3

Read Part 1 and Part 2.

The author does not make any claim of original scholarship in these areas. He is only trying to understand what the great scholars have already said. The essays draw heavily on the works of Śrī Chittaranjan Naik, Śrī Shatavadhani Ganesh, and Dr. SN Balagangadhara Rao. It is a paraphrasing and summarizing of their works, and hence there may be direct quoting without indication in each case. Every effort has been made to attribute the work correctly.

Knowledge (Epistemology) In Western Definitions

It is surprising that western philosophy, which prides itself on scientific innovation and technology, does not seem to have a proper theory of knowledge or epistemology. It has hardly spent time on developing the meaning of knowledge and methods to acquire it. The standard definition of knowledge in western philosophy is justified true belief (JTB). In 1963, American philosopher Edmund Gettier presented two famous counterexamples to the JTB account of knowledge. These two counterexamples came to be known as Gettier problems, along with a few more cases added by philosophers to the original two.

Gettier problems arise when there is a disconnect in the relationship between justification and truth.

A famous example for the reader is as follows:

Standing outside a field, X sees inside the field what exactly looks like a sheep. Let us call it A. X now has the belief that there are sheep in the field. He is right because behind the hill in the middle of the field there is a sheep, though he cannot see it. The justification of this belief is upon looking at A. But A is actually a dog disguised as a sheep. Hence, X has a well-justified true belief that there are sheep in the field. But is this belief, knowledge?

As per the standard definition, if a person holds a belief on justified grounds and that belief is true, then that person has knowledge. The counterexamples provided by Gettier show that the belief is true (a given), but the person’s reasons, though justified, cannot turn the belief into knowledge. It was plain luck that made the belief true. The counterexamples thus disprove the ‘justified true belief’ definition of knowledge. But there are problems in this account of both knowledge and the counterexamples that appear to undercut the definition of knowledge.

Śrī SN Balagangadhara Rao (Balu ji) in Cultures Differ Differently (Knowledge, Bullshit, and the Study of India) shows that the Gettier examples do not and possibly cannot challenge the definition of knowledge. Problems appear when we correctly interpret these examples. The role played by the indexical terms (meaning the reader, ‘you’ or we) in making the sentences true or false appears neglected in Gettier problems. Who proposes justifications for X’s beliefs? We do. It is we again who have justified true beliefs about X’s beliefs. Thus, we not only advance a claim about X’s epistemic state but construct examples in such a way that makes our claims true and justified.

However, X’s beliefs are examples of ignorance and not knowledge. Balu ji explains that “ignorance” is the negation of “knowledge.” With this move, X is in an epistemic state of ignorance, where the beliefs are wrong, and the justifications are false.

The Gettier problem arises because knowledge and ignorance are made to range over the same object in the same way at the same time and place for the same person. This move generates the ‘problem’.

In the Gettier examples, we have two different entities, ‘X’ and ‘us’, in opposing epistemic states (of ignorance and knowledge). X does not and cannot have knowledge because of ignorance (which is the negation of knowledge) and false beliefs (the negation of truth).

How could X then be said to have a ‘justified true belief’, which the definition demands? But we do have that knowledge both about the objects (the fake and real sheep) and about X’s belief. Thus, we have knowledge that X does not. Contrary to the examples, neither we nor X face Gettier’s problem. ‘Ignorance’ is when we have false beliefs and inadequate justifications.

Balu ji summarizes:

Gettier problem’ does not arise from defining knowledge as justified true belief, and the constructed philosophical examples are no counterexamples. The ‘problem’ has its roots in making ignorance mean its opposite, namely, knowledge. This move has three elements. One: ignoring the fact that the examples contain indexical terms. The other two are epistemic sleights of hand: the first draws the reader into the picture by setting up examples and ignoring the reader in the subsequent analyses; the second by equivocating about the meaning of ‘justification.

Indic Theory of Knowledge: The Role Of Pramāṇas

Knowledge is the supreme ideal in Indian traditions. One of the attributes of Brahman, or the Self, which is the ground of the universe, is knowledge, and hence the pursuit of knowledge is the most divine pursuit in human endeavors. Indian texts developed an extensive theory of knowledge. Without such a theory, we could not have produced the enormous amounts of literature covering all aspects of life in the material (aparā) and spiritual realms (parā).

Any knowledge must have a certain means of acquiring it. Pramāṇa (proof or a valid ‘means of true knowledge’) plays an important role in Indian philosophical traditions. Ancient texts identify six pramāṇas whose variable acceptance and rejection form a basis for classifying thought systems. The first three are the main ones, and the other three are auxiliaries. These are:

• Perception or direct sensory experience (pratyakṣa)
• Inference (anumāna)
• Testimony of reliable authorities (śabda)
• Comparison and analogy (upamāna)
• Postulation and derivation from circumstances (arthāpatti)
• Non-perceptive negative proof (anupalabdhi)

Materialism (Lokāyata or Cārvāka) holds only perception as a valid pramāṇa; Buddhism, perception and inference; and Jainism, perception, inference, and testimony. Mīmāṃsā and Advaita Vedānta hold all six as useful means of knowledge. The practical aspects of Yoga and meditation are acceptable routes in all systems (except Cārvāka) to access knowledge and finally reach the state of liberation.

As Śrī Chittaranjan Naik says, traditional Indian philosophies are darśanas, not speculative philosophies. Traditional Indian _darśanas _are not something derived from basic principles to finally arrive at a conclusion.

As Naik says:

A Darśana is a Single Vision in which all its elements, including epistemology, ontology, metaphysics, the practice, and the fruits of sādhanā, are like various organs that form a single integral whole. Each of the traditional philosophies, or Darśanas, is eternal and part of the Vedic structure. That is why they constitute one of the fourteen branches of learning (vidhyāsthānas) known as Caturdaśa Vidyās. ‘Darśana’ strictly is not synonymous with philosophy.

In the West, scientific propositions have a criterion of physical verifiability; however, philosophy in the West has a different criterion. It is for this reason that philosophy earned a notoriously bad name in the early years of the twentieth century, when the entire field of metaphysics became ‘nonsense.’ The attack against philosophy came from the ‘Analytical Philosophers.’ Hence, in the absence of either _empirically verifiable propositions or derivations out of already defined terms, metaphysical statements became meaningless. _Since metaphysics, philosophy, ethics, religion, and aesthetics are all of this nature, the only task that remained for philosophy was that of clarification and analysis. They concluded that the propositions of philosophy are linguistic, not factual, and philosophy is a department of logic. Based on such assertions, Analytical Philosophy swept aside two millennia of lofty human thought into the dustbin of ‘emotive’ thinking.

However, Western philosophy had failed to provide a sound basis for epistemology (the theory of knowledge), and it became a complex maze of verbiage that ultimately led to the discrediting of everything metaphysical and of philosophy itself, says Śrī Chittaranjan Naik (apauruṣeyatva of the Vedas). The justified true belief definition of knowledge is the basis of its knowledge, and Gettier showed many problems with this notion by providing counterexamples. It is once again surprising to note that the West, which prides itself on so many scientific and technological developments, does not have a proper theory of knowledge. Its criteria for scientificity have also repeatedly undergone revisions.

In traditional Indian philosophy, assertions about the objects of the world are grounded either in perception or in inference. Hence, there is no scope for these assertions to stray into speculative thought. If they do stray, it is only due to the incorrect application of the pramāṇas. And when it comes to assertions about things that lie beyond the range of the senses, the assertions are grounded in scriptural sentences (śabda) and in inferences that depend entirely on these scriptural sentences. If they do stray here too, it is again due to an incorrect understanding of the scriptural sentences, or the inferences drawn from them.

Yoga and Knowledge

Yoga _is obtaining knowledge of the immortal Self, which frees man from the shackles of prakṛti. All orthodox and non-orthodox schools (except _Cārvāka) give importance to Yoga _and meditation in their schemes of things. The first five aṅgas(parts) of _Yoga _are the preparations for the higher states: _yama, niyama, āsana, prāṇāyāma, and pratyāhāra. The first two (yama and niyama) are for control of desires and emotions; the next two (āsana and prāṇāyāma) eliminate disturbances from the physical body. _Pratyāhāra _detaches the sense organs from the mind, thus cutting the external world and its impressions from the mind.

The last three aṅgas _after this preparation are dhāraṇā, dhyāna, and samādhi. _Dhāraṇā_is confining the mind within a limited mental area; _dhyāna _is uninterrupted flow or contemplation towards an object of meditation; and the final state is _samādhi, where there is consciousness only of the object of meditation and not of the mind. The mind dissolves into the final state of samādhi. These last three together constitute the samayama, and this can be performed on any object.

Can these states give rise to knowledge of the mundane world? The Yogic answer is affirmative at one level and negative at another, as Śrī Ramakrishna Puligundla explains in his classic Fundamentals of Indian Philosophy. Samādhi has progressive savitarka and nirvitarka stages, according to Patanjali. In the savitarka _state, knowledge occurs at three levels: śabda(based on words), _jñāna (knowledge based on perception and reasoning), and artha (the intuitive knowledge of the object in its essence). In the nirvitarka final state, the yogī_is one with the Supreme Consciousness. The _savitarka state, especially the _jñāna _component, based on perception and reasoning, can construct conceptual knowledge.

According to Śrī Patanjali Mahaṛṣi, the yogī, who has reached the final state is infinitely perfect and is God. Therefore, there is nothing the yogī _cannot know since there is instant cognition of anything with a complete mastery of the universe. The highest state cannot give rise to knowledge of individual objects, but the _yogī, if he chooses to, can reach the corresponding states of consciousness, and attain knowledge of the world. Thus, the intellectual, perceptual, and conceptual knowledge (“phenomenon” of Kant) is available in the savitarka states, and the essence (or “noumenon”) of Kant is available in the nirvitarka state.

Science and Metaphysics

Science, by popular conception, seems to be the correct way of understanding the external world, whereas metaphysical thoughts appear to be other-worldly, mystical, or plainly superstitious. Thus, science triumphed over metaphysics as a solution for humanity. But can that be true?

Ananda Coomaraswamy wrote a century ago, “Whatthen are the essentials, from the Indian point of view, that, for their intrinsic value and in the interests of the many sides of human development, are so important to preserve?

A few of them were:

1. The almost universal philosophical attitude that contrasts strongly with that of the ordinary Englishman, who hates philosophy. Science is important, but there are wrong and right ways of teaching it. ‘Facts’ taught in the name of science are a poor exchange for metaphysics.
2. The sacredness of all things — the antithesis of the European division of life into sacred and profane. European religious development excludes from the domain of ‘religion’ every aspect of ‘worldly’ activity. Science, art, sex, agriculture, and commerce are, in the West, secular aspects of life, quite apart from religion. In India, this was never so; religion idealized and spiritualized life itself rather than exclude anything from it
3. Special ideas in relation to education, such as the relation between teacher and pupil implied in the words of guru and celā (master and disciple); memorizing great literature such as the epics, and embodying ideals of character; learning not to become a mere road to material prosperity; and the high emphasis attached to the teacher’s personality and presenceThis view is antithetical to the modern practice of making everything easy for the pupil.

Metaphysical conceptions are slighted in our modern world, while the scientific method is hailed as a panacea for all our ills, says Śrī Venkat Nagarajan in an incisive essay, False Supremacy of Science. This view has not been adequately challenged. Metaphysics has been relegated to mean a faith-based view of reality and is thus not considered worthy of respect.

As Śrī Nagarajan says:

Assumptions (i.e beliefs) and value judgements are at the root of all theories, whether they are scientific or metaphysical; therefore, Science is not worthy of a higher status than Metaphysics. They both approach reality from different perspectives; consequently, they cannot be compared. In fact, one could reasonably argue that they constitute mutually exclusive systems for understanding the nature of reality. Lastly, Science is not prescriptive; it does not tell a person what he or she should do to minimize his or her misery or maximize his or her happiness, given the nature of reality. A metaphysical system, on the other hand, is prescriptive; it provides an algorithm that can be followed for a person to minimize his or her misery or maximize his or her happiness.

The original argument was that only empirical evidence could validate scientific theories. Revolutionary changes in scientific theories have, however, established that empirical evidence alone cannot conclusively establish scientific theories. There is always a chance that a present theory can be falsified by a competing theory in the future, like the replacement of Dalton’s atomic model with Niels Bohr’s atomic model. The falsifiability criteria replaced the empirical evidence theory of science. Now, science is superior because, unlike metaphysical claims, a scientific theory can be falsified using evidence.

This argument also failed because a scientific theory or hypothesis is always linked to a series of supporting premises. Any falsifying evidence or observations can thus be falsifying at least one of the supporting assumptions and not the scientific theory itself. Then, an effort was made to argue that scientific theories can be shown to be conditionally true in a probabilistic sense based on empirical evidence, whereas metaphysical theories cannot. This argument also fell apart, as there may be many ways to derive the conditional probability, and there is no basis to argue that one way of deriving the conditional probability is correct.

All attempts to establish the supremacy of science over metaphysics have failed; consequently, one cannot make such a claim without making a value judgment that some form of intersubjective empirical verifiability is superior. Such a claim of supremacy would not be rooted in logic but rather in faith or belief, writes Nagarajan.

Science and metaphysics are different paradigms. Vedānta defines Being as Consciousness or the knowing Self, whereas science does not accept the notion of Being. The standard materialistic view of science is that atoms, molecules, compounds, matter, life, mind, and consciousness evolve in that order. Life, in evolutionary terms, is purposeless and accidental.

For metaphysical systems, life has meaning and a definite purpose. These systems are more holistic and give a great deal of importance to personal experience, emotions, and unexplained phenomena in explaining reality. Therefore, science and metaphysical conceptions of reality are mutually exclusive theories of reality that co-exist, and the choice of one or another is ultimately an individual’s prerogative.

Śrī Nagarajan concludes that no rational person can honestly argue that a scientific conception of the nature of reality is superior to metaphysical conceptions of the nature of reality. Such a person would have to acknowledge that assumptions and value judgements are at the root of all theories. All would have to submit to the fundamental axiom of logic that nothing is devoid of belief.

The Philosophical Underpinnings of Knowledge Generation

Bhaskar Kamble (The Imperishable Seed) shows how most of the mathematics we take for granted has its strongest roots in India. Apart from the value of zero in mathematical operations, Brahmagupta, Bhāskara 1, Bhāskara 2, Mahāvīra, and the Kerala mathematicians laid the foundations in the fields of arithmetic, algebra, geometry, trigonometry, combinatorics, linguistics, and calculus starting in the 5th century of the Common Era.

Many of the ‘inventions’ and ‘discoveries’ of European mathematics finally, as the author shows, amount to who first and best plagiarized Indian knowledge systems. The Indian mathematical developments had many applications in the construction of buildings and temples, imbuing astronomy with great precision, and conducting navigation to distant lands by sea route.

Kamble discusses the basic metaphysical underpinnings of Hindu mathematics. Indian philosophy talks of parā vidyā _and _aparā vidyā, the knowledge of the higher Self and the knowledge of the external material world, respectively. It is one of the fundamental tenets of Indian knowledge systems that these two are not antagonistic to each other and are manifestations of a single unity in the form of Brahman. In such a stance, there is an intense spiritualization of every single aspect of aparā vidyā (all the ‘secular activities’) dealing with the material world. The antagonism between the ‘word of God’ and the ‘word of science,’ present in the Abrahamic traditions, never existed in Indian knowledge systems.

Most of the secular activities are finally in search of the unity that binds the parāand the aparā. In contrast, science, as popularized in Western culture, seeks unity only in the aparā, or material realm. There is a large body of skeptics, Kamble writes, who claim that Indians did not have a proper methodology while doing mathematics. Such claims are either based on ignorance, prejudice, or both.

Indian metaphysics has deep principles of the acquisition of knowledge (epistemology), which Western philosophy is still to acquire or formulate apart from its definition of knowledge as ‘justified true belief.’

It was only after contact with Hindu mathematics that Western mathematicians progressed further and started dealing with irrational numbers, negative numbers, zeros, infinities, and many other concepts. The Roman numbers hardly had the capacity to carry numerical operations, and for a long time, Europe was using the abacus to count, and that too only for positive integers. Though the formulas and original equations were terse and short, there was a tradition of detailed commentaries that explained the equations and formulas. These proofs in commentaries were an important component of Indian mathematics, but the critics conveniently ignored them.

The Self or Brahman as the Basis of Epistemology and Ontology

The Indian corpus of extensive literature cannot stand on flimsy epistemological grounds. Sadly, this aspect is rarely taught to us in our education systems, where modern science takes precedence. Any hypothesis in Indian traditions needs verifiability for acceptance (unlike the falsifiability criterion of science).

As Śrī Chittaranjan demonstrates in his book, On the Existence of the Self, the presence of human beings introduces something more than the behavior of material objects operating solely under physical laws. He shows how one needs to presuppose the presence of some entity, namely the Self, or soul, as a resident within the body of the human being.

The invariable correlation between goal-oriented actions and the presence of living beings (the origin of the goal-oriented actions) points to the existence of an element, namely the ātman, within living beings. Thus, purely physical causes and physical processes cannot explain goal-oriented actions. It follows, then, that the physical world does not form a causal closure. Naik meticulously lays the foundational basis of Indian logic based on Nyāya, with which he refutes Western philosophers arguing against the concept of soul and substance. He discusses in detail how Western philosophers such as Hume and Kant influentially discarded the notion of the soul, which led to many inconsistencies in Western philosophy.

The Question Of Method

The opposition to the Vedic tradition comes largely from those who espouse science. When it comes to the acquisition of knowledge, “reason” alone, a broad category, is an adequate tool. Science, for example, uses a specific reasoning method that is different from the reasoning methods used in philosophy. The central idea of science—physicalcauses alone can explain all things in nature—came from the Epicureans of Greece. Later, Francis Bacon (‘The Great Instauration’ and ‘Novum Organum’), Newton, and other scientists laid the foundation for the birth of science as we know it today.

In science, we begin with a proposition (a statement) that seeks to fit the facts of observed phenomena into a hypothesis. In doing so, the scientist uses reason to see that these facts fit logically into the meaning of the propositional statement. But science says further that this (propositional) statement must be physically verifiable.This is the key factor here. This principle of physical verifiability precludes the idea of there being any cause other than physical matter for the phenomena of the world. In contrast, there is no such constraint on philosophy by such ideas, and its propositions have a different criterion of verifiability than conformance to physical verifiability.

When discussing Vedānta, we deal with a ‘parā vidyā’ in sharp contrast to every other science or discipline in the world grouped under the name of ‘aparā vidyā’. Science endeavors to shed light on, among other things, how this universe originated and how life in the universe originated. Vedānta _seeks to reveal the knowledge of a Truth by which billions and billions of cycles of creation and destruction are at once dissolved by an individual’s Self._

When we seek to know the ‘truths’ revealed by science, we use elaborately constructed tools, but when it comes to the Supreme Knowledge of Vedānta, why do we become so blasé that we feel free to disregard the methods that it advocates? Śrī Chittaranjan Naik questions whether such a predisposition on our part can be called ‘rational’?

The Trap Of Maya

When we strive to obtain knowledge about an object, there are three factors involved in the process of obtaining knowledge: the subject, the object to be known, and the internal instrument by which the subject obtains knowledge of the object. In both science and Western philosophy, the focus is entirely on knowing the object without regard to the nature of the internal instrument that we use to obtain knowledge.

In Vedānta, the situation is drastically different because it recognises that avidyā _is the root cause of the jīva’s incapacity to obtain perfect knowledge. According to _Advaita Vedānta, avidyā influences the perception of the world. Mūla-avidyā or the deep sleep that underlies the existence of ajīva, is avyakta, _or unmanifest._ It is the darkness of sleep that one ‘sees’ in deep sleep. It is the reason that when one wakes up from deep sleep, one says, ‘I knew nothing’. The ‘nothingness’ that one knows in deep sleep is the darkness that blocks the effulgence of the Self.

By its essential nature, the Self is self-effulgent with Consciousness. The deep sleep of the jīva _obstructs this effulgence and presents the darkness of ‘nothing’. Even when a _jīva _wakes up, this sleep (_bīja-nidrā) is present, and everything that it perceives is through the veil of sleep. That is why, when a man knows an object through perception, he still has the notion that he does not know it and builds theories to explain what the object is. _The theories that one constructs to explain the object become _superimpositions (adhyāsa) on the object.

In the words of Ludwig Wittgenstein, as Śrī Chittaranjan Naik explains, we look at the world through the nets of our theoretical constructs. Wittgenstein and his group in the field of Modern Analytical Philosophy tried to define a set of verifiability criteria for science. After striving for almost a decade, they abandoned the project. _They recognised that the scientific propositions that form the initial working hypotheses of the scientists are already coloured by the symbolic framework of science. _Thus, was born the idea of ‘theory-ladenness of observation’.

It is never possible for anyone to be completely free of theories when he or she looks at the world. Thus, the idea of our perceptions being coloured by avidyā _is not a mere dogmatic assertion brought forth from the pages of _Vedānta, but a similar notion is indeed evident in the phenomenon of ‘theory-ladenness’. This, then, is human predilection. The inner constitution of man is already coloured by the darkness of avidyā , and it presents a matrix of circularity from which it is difficult to escape.

The main point is that the inner instrument of cognition needs to be free of defects if we are to obtain knowledge. There is no attempt either in science or in Western philosophy to address this issue, whereas in traditional Indian philosophy, it forms a major part of the effort to acquire knowledge.

The Proof of the Self

Śrī Chittaranjan Naik demonstrates the existence of Self in his second treatise by showing that in the presence of intention (icchā śakti), the probability of ordered complexity arising from simplicity approaches one. In the absence of intent, the probability of such complexity through blind and random combinations approaches zero. Some of the most famous discoveries of science (like gravity) were made by recognising the most commonplace phenomena staring at us all along. Similarly, we are looking at a power of the Self, or of intentional action, right in its face and are not recognising it.

Naik, in presenting this proof, sets up a verifiability criterion by which the truth of the proposition can become verifiable. As seen earlier, Indian philosophy stresses verifiability criteria and not falsifiability for validity. His proof establishes a correlation between the presence of intention and the outcomes of ordered dispersions of matter happening repeatedly, millions of times every year, in the form of the production of cars, beehives, microchips, airplanes, buildings, and a million more things. In each case, there is the presence of intention and actions directed towards the material components, which acquire 100% biases to be in exactly the required spaces and the required orientations to fall in place. There is a case to establish a definite causal connection between the intention and the results of ordered configurations of matter.

This correlation, or vyāpti _in Indian logic, enables one to infer the presence of the ātman or a conscious entity (_soul in the western parlance) from the presence of goal-oriented actions. Where there is an intentional action, there is always a conscious being present as the source. Whenever there is an absence of the ātman, the probability of spontaneous order from chaos approaches zero, as he shows in the book. He addresses the Darwinian arguments about evolution too. Yet, in contemporary discourse, intention does not have the pride of place of an ontological principle. It is simply a manifestation of some underlying physical state in the brain or body. The ‘explaining away’ is not through a logical elucidation but by asserting a dogma.

The dogma lulls the mind into thinking that the phenomenon cited for the inference of the self is a mere appearance. Thus, it is imperative to undertake a philosophical investigation of the belief that goal-oriented actions are nothing more than manifestations of underlying physical processes and show it to be a mere dogma. This refutation of the dogma forms the second part of his book.

Concluding Remarks

Brahman, or Self, with the primary attributes of Knowledge (sat), Truth (cit), and Bliss (ānaṅda) is the fundamental ground of both epistemology and ontology in Indian traditions. The ontology, or perception of reality, is an inside-out process starting from the Self which directly contacts the objects of perception. Knowledge of any object in the parā or aparā _realm is an access to _Brahman. Hence, any activity can be a route to mokṣa in Indian traditions.

Ananda Coomaraswamy and Śrī Aurobindo in the past and Śrī SN Balagangadhara in the present, people who have truly understood Indian culture, repeatedly stress that the concept of secularism, or the separation of the sacred and the secular, fails to make innate sense in our culture. There is absolutely no dichotomy when a rocket scientist breaks a coconut in the temple or when we invoke _Sarasvatī _or light lamps at the beginning of a conference discussing the highest principles of science.

In this extraordinary corpus of literature dealing with hundreds and thousands of topics, what comes to represent the so-called frozen nature of ‘Hinduism’? As Śrī Balagangadhara writes, a corrupted interpretation of the Puruṣasūkta hymn and some selected passages from Manusmṛti. Except for the Vedas, to some extent, none of the Smṛtis have the status of a wide-ranging, powerful truth, normative and prescriptive, across time and space. No political, secular, or religious power enforced these on entire populations.

These traditional texts also inculcate the concept of Yuga Dharma, the changes in societal practices according to time without any change in the basic principles. This allows all the social changes without any violent revolutions. New traditions like Sikhism evolved without disrupting the fabric of society or going against any “tyranny” of priests and scriptures.

Sadly, the colonial scholars made shoddy translations of a few texts using Sanskrit dictionaries sitting miles away from the traditional learning systems that require huge amounts of auxiliary grounding even to start learning the Vedas. It takes at least eight years of rigorous training to learn one Veda, and Westerners became experts in a matter of a few years to make their own interpretations. They interpreted what they wanted to see, and our post-independent scholars simply continued this practice by reading those translations.

This was the biggest intellectual violence to our entire civilizational and cultural-literary heritage, standing miles ahead of any existing or prior civilizations. Michel Danino quotes David Pingree, saying that:

India has at least 30 million surviving ancient manuscripts in Indian libraries, repositories, and private collections. They deal with every topic under the Indian sun: philosophies, systems of yoga, grammar, language, logic, debate, poetics, aesthetics, cosmology, mythology, ethics, literature of all genres from poetry to historical tradition, performing and non-performing arts, architecture, mathematics, astronomy, astrology, chemistry, metallurgy, botany, zoology, geology, medical systems, governance, administration, water management, town planning, civil engineering, ship making, agriculture, polity, martial arts, games, brain teasers, omens, ghosts, accounting, and much more—there are even manuscripts on how to preserve manuscripts! The production was colossal and in almost every regional language.

Unfortunately, ‘colonial consciousness’ has taken hold of many Indian intellectuals, a great consequence of Macaulay’s educational policies. Deracinated and derooted from the ethos of Bhārata, these intellectuals, many times holding a dominant position in the corridors of power and deciding the narrative, simply believe that a 5000-year-old civilization (at the very least) had nothing to offer to humanity and were waiting with folded hands for the colonials to come and give us education and other positive values.

India has a deep intellectual history. It would be far better to sensitize students to this rather than filling our narratives and textbooks with blanket proclamations of an ‘unscientific, primitive, superstitious’ India before the colonials came. The narrative becomes more damaging when combined with, of course, fanatics today talking about airplanes and genetic cloning in the ancient past. We have amazing knowledge systems, and it is time to regain it.

Perhaps even the term Indian Knowledge Systems is problematic. Knowledge, in its essence, is an attribute of the immanent and transcendent Brahman. Qualifying knowledge as Indian or Western is innately as ridiculous as qualifying _Brahman _as Indian or Western.

The holistic vision of our rṣis _simply subsumes Western notions of knowledge. Our _darśanas, reflecting the philosophy of a multi-traditional land, just tell the Western world, “I am true, but you are not wrong.” The materialistic western paradigm can perhaps never have a proper ontology and epistemology in the present frameworks. It will continue to try and seek unity in the material world while our seers attained that deep unity binding both the material (laukika) and transcendental (alaukika) thousands of years ago.

Socrates believed in an immortal soul and all knowledge residing in that soul. In the rebirths that an individual takes, all knowledge gained is simply remembering what was already existing in the soul. The Greeks had a vibrant notion of the soul, which had its echoes in our darśanas. We can only speculate whether Greek thought arose independently or whether _Bhāratīya _thought influenced them.

Paradoxically, contemporary western traditions, though considering Greeks as their traditional ancestors, rejected their thought and made the notion of the soul obsolete, rues Śrī Chittaranjan Naikji. Maybe the linear idea of historical progression is at play here, where the “ancient” has to be primitive and ill-formed. Sometimes, philosophy can begin at the highest levels, as Śrī Aurobindo always reiterated.

At some point, all thinkers, east or west, will have to turn towards the Bhāratīya _ṛṣis _to address the many problems of “incommensurability.” Till that time, our seers will be smiling gently at the endeavors of humanity in seeking progress, unity, and happiness that seem impossible to discover but always exist within.

References And Further Readings

1. Gainsaying Ancient Indian Science in two parts by Michel Danino (https://pragyata.com/gainsaying-ancient-indian-science-part-1/)
2. Integrating India’s Heritage in Indian Education in two parts by Michel Danino ( https://pragyata.com/integrating-indias-heritage-in-indian-education-part-1/)
3. Indian Culture and India’s Future (2022) by Michel Danino
4. Indian Science And Technology In The Eighteenth Century (2021) By Dharampal
5. https://pragyata.com/ananda-k-coomaraswamy-on-education-in-india/
6. Understanding Hinduism: V. Foundational Texts of Hinduism - Indic Today by Shatavadani Ganesh (co-authored by Hari Ravikumar)
7. The Collected Works of Sri Aurobindo
8. The Collected Works of Sri Aurobindo
9. The Collected Works of Sri Aurobindo
10. Brahmin the Aryan and the Powers of the Priestly Class by Jakob De Roover
11. Natural Realism and Contact Theory of Perception: Indian Philosophy’s Challenge to Contemporary Paradigms of Knowledge (2019) by Chittaranjan Naik
12. On the Existence of the Self: And the Dismantling of the Physical Causal Closure Argument (2021) by Chittaranjan Naik
13. https://pragyata.com/apaurusheyatva-of-the-vedas-part-1/ by Chittaranjan Naik
14. https://pragyata.com/apaurusheyatva-of-the-vedas-part-2/ by Chittaranjan Naik
15. Cultures Differ Differently: Selected Essays of S.N. Balagangadhara (2022) Edited by Jakob De Roover and Sarika Rao
16. https://pragyata.com/false-supremacy-of-science/ by Venkat Nagarajan
17. THE IMPERISHABLE SEED: How Hindu Mathematics Changed the World and Why this History was Erased (2023) by Bhaskar Kamble and edited by Sankrant Sanu.
18. INTRODUCTION TO INDIAN KNOWLEDGE SYSTEM: CONCEPTS AND APPLICATIONS (2022) by B. Mahadevan, Nagendra Pavana, Vinayak Rajat Bhat
19. Socrates, the Senses and Knowledge: Is there Any Connection? by Moya K. Mason