1. A Panorama Of Indian Philosophy Rama Chandra Pandeya MLBD

Barcode : 99999990316343 Title - A Panorama Of Indian Philosophy Author - Pandeya, Ram Chandra Language - english Pages - 235 Publication Year - 1966 Barcode EAN.UCC-13

9 999999 031634

A PANORAMA OF

INDIAN PHILOSOPHY

RAM CHANDRA PANDEYA Vyalaranacarya, M.A., Ph.D. Reader in Phitosophy DEPARTMENT OF BUDDHIST STUDIES, UNNERSITY or DELEr

MOTILAL BANARSIDASS

DELHI PATNA VARANASI

MOTILAL BANARSIDASS Bangalow Rond, Jawahar Nagar, Delhi-7 Bankıpur, Patna Nepalikhaprı, Varanası-1

Parst Eduton, 1966 Price Rupees Ten

Publshed by Printed by O SUNDARLAL JAIN LAKSIMIDAS Motilel Banarsdass Banaras Hindu University Press, Bangalow Road, Delhi-7 (India) Varanası-5 (India)

To My Teacher

Professor T. R. V. Murti

ARDENTIA VERBA Unity is the test of truth. Everything that makes for Oneness is truth. Love is truth, and hatred is false, because hatred makes for multiplicity. It is a disintegrating power. -Srami Vivckananda We are all sparks of Truth. The sum total of these sparks is indescribable, as-yet-Unknown-Truth, which is God. .. To be true to such religion one has to lose oneself in continnous and continuing service of all life. .For me there is no escape from social service, there is no happiness on earth beyond or apart from it. In this scheme there is nothing low, nothing high. For all is one, though tre seem to be many. -Mahatma Gandhi

Our final aim can only be classless society with cqual economic justice and opportunity for all, a society organized on a planned basis for the raising of mankind to higher material and cultural level, to a cultivation of spiritual values, the desire to do right, goodwill and love-ultimately a world order. -Jawaharlal Nehru True religion is born of spirit, not of flesh and blood, not of codes and customs, not of races and nations. The life of spirit consists precisely in being frec from these things and in 'penetrating into true being. -- S. Radhakrishnan ...... what is indeterminately either truth or free- dom is absolute value. -K. C. Bhattacharya

PREFACE

The present book owes its origin to my deputa tion to the Republic of Vietnam as Visiting Profes- sor of Eastern Philosophy by the Government of India. I was required to deliver a series of lectures introducing Indian philosophy and religion mainly to the students and teachers of the University of Saigon. On my arrival there in January, 1965, I disoovered that spoken English was understood there only with difficulty and there was no good book, written cither in English or in French, (the latter being understood better in Vietnam) which could be safely recommended to those who know practically little about Indian thought. I had therefore to write down my lectures and these were later on distributed among my audients. I delivered eleven lecture (corresponding to first eleven chapters of the present- book) in writing and contents of last four chapters of the present book formed the subject-matter of my two public lectures that I delivered extempore. First eleven chapters of this book present my lectures as they were delivered in Saigon, except with a few changes here and there to suit the form of a book. Last four chapters are written, on the basis of my notes, only after I came back to India. Two appendices at the end of this book incorporate two of my papers read in seminars organised by the Universities of Luck- now and Madras. In the following pages my aim has been to present a sketch of Indian philosophy for those who know

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but a little about philosophy in general and Indian philosophy in particular. I have therefore tried my best to keep away from technical discussions, but at places readers may discover me sneaking into the fringe of serious discussion. This lapse may be owing to unavoidability of such discussions or else these discussions might have furtively overtaken me But there is no secret about the fact that during the course of the treatment of the subject I have expressed my own views about some important problems, though without offering much explanation and argument. In n way this book may be regarded as an outline of my approach to Indian philosophy and religion. A careful reader may find that throughout this book there runs a thread, a central idea that Indian philosophy on the whole is an investigation into the nature and possibility of freedom and peace Similarly Indian religious ideas are viewed hore as leading toward secularism and democratic ideals. In my opinion India does not believe in a religion as the religion; rather her cherished goal lies in the Republic of Religions. But I crave indulgence of readers for not being able to elaborate my ideas and for miserliness with words. I know this may invite indignant re- actions, but they are bound to stimulate me to write more about the subject. The book is not meant for those who search for a scholarly work on Indian philosophy, nor will it be valuable to those who stand in need of a certificate for having mastered Indian philosophy. But those who merely want to know what Indian philosophy

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is all about or those who hke to see some fresh approach made to it may find it of some use I am grateful to the Government of Indra, to the University of Delhi and to the Government of Republc of Vietnam for the opportumty they provided wlneh finally give birth to this book I am thanktul to all those who helped me during my stay in Victnam A special mention may be made of Mi Khot Director General of Education, Governmnt of Vietnam Republc and of Mr J K Ganju, India's Consul General m South Vietnim In additon I have to thank Dr H C Ganguli, Professor and Head of the Department of Psy chology (previously of the Depart ment of Philosophy also), Dr S S Barlingey ind my friend Dr. R C Dwivedi, who is the auther of the title of this book, (all fiom the Unversity of Delln) for their kind help I cannot appropriately express my gratitude to Dr V V Gokhale, Professor and Head of the Depart- ment of Buddhist Studies, University of Delh, for his fatherly affection and care that he bestowed upon myself and my family during my sojourn m Saigon and other parts of South-East Asia

Untersity of Delhi, R C PANDEYA Christmas Day, 1965

CONTENTS

CHAPTER I The Origin of Indian Philosophy ... ... 1

CHAPTER II The Beginning of Buddhism ... ... 12

CHAPTER III Materialistic Philosophy ... ... 24 CHAPTER IV Philosophy of Relativism ... ... 34

CHAPTER V Structure of The Universe ... ... 45

CHAPTER VI The Problem of Knowledge ... 04

CHAFTER VII The Nature of Perception ... ... 75 CHAPTER VIII Authority of Scripture And Persons ... 88

CHAPTER IX Validity of Knowledge ... ... 102

CHAPTER X The Man And The Nature . ... 114

CHAPTER XI The Value of Nature And Freedom ... 126

CHAPTER XII Language, Meaning And Logic ... ... 139

CHAPTER XIII Beyond Duality ... ... 153

xiv CHAPTER XIV ... 169 Science And Neseience ..

CHAPTER XV Secularism And Democracy ... ... 181

APPENDIX A Karma And Rebirth .. ... 199

APPENDIX B Extra-Sensory Perception And Yoga ... 207 Books Suggested For Further Reading ... 219 Index 221

CHAPTER I

THE ORIGIN OF INDIAN PHILOSOPHY Indtan culture is the oldest living culture m the world According to lustorians it started some 2000 years before the birth of Christ There was an Aryan race which was hving somowhere m the Central Asia It started migrating in search of better hving conditions One of its branches reached that part of ancient India which is now called Afgh mstan and West Pakistan The Aryans settled there and consolidated therr position In the process of consolidation they had to fight with the origmal mhabitants of this land They ultimately conquered these people and made them parts of the Aryan social orgamsation But some Indan scholars boleve that the Aryans did not come from outside They origmally belonged to India But we do not have any trustworthy record to conclusively prove whether the Aryans came fiom out- side or whethei they were origmally hving in India These Aryans were gifted people Their social structure was well founded They beleved in the theory of the division of labour There were people who were responsible for the moral, rebgious and intellectual progress of the society They were called seers or Rsis They used to live a hfe of meditation and their main duty was to educate the people They were the masters of vinous arts and crafts They also knew the science of war ind some of them were original thinkers There was another class of people

2 A PANORAMA OF INDIAN PHILOSOPHY

who were responsible for the security and prospenty of the society These people used to fight in defence and for new conquests They were the warmiors A third group was responsible for trade, commerce and mdustry and the fourth group mamly consisted of those who were responsible for the comfort of the society as a whole These tour groups made one unified whole The unty of the society was mamly due to the powerful leadership of a prest belonging to the first group He gave a code of conduct and every one in the society was obliged to follow it We shall be con- cerned more with this class of priests or the Rsis because it were they who formulated a philosophy which is now known as the Vedic Pllosophy These priests used to lve on the banks of rIvers and in forests They were intellectually gifted and were of Inghly refined spirtual taste They observed nture minutely They saw that the sun rises every day ind before the sun rise the colourful davn engulfs the whole world They found that water, fire, ar, thunder, ram, the sun and so on are very essential for life Without them men cannot lve confortably on the earth They persomfied these natural elements and prused them for providing comforts to men Bnt these Rsis also saw that if there was too much of ramn or too much of hent and so on then the people suffer So they were at the same time ifraid of these natural forces Thus these natural forces came to be regar- ded as gods and they were praised in order that the society does not suffer due to the wrath of these gods

THE ORIGIN OF INDIAN PHILOSOPHY 3

These praises and prayers of gods are collected in a book called the Rgveda. The Rgveda contains some of the finest and the loftiest poetic creations that the world-literature has ever produced. The word "Rk" means the songs sung in praise of gods and the word "Veda" means knowledge. We find that the Vedas are regarded as the books of supreme knowledge and wisdom. Later on it was claimed that there was no knowledge which was not to be found in the Vedas.

However, the Rgveda is the oldest literary record available to us. It contains, as we have seen, poems sung by the Rsis in praise of various gods. Thus the central philosophical idea of this Veda can be called as polythiesm. But there are two important points to be noted here. The observation of these Vedic Rsis was very keen and they soon discovered that there was some law and order which was followed even by these gods. For example, the sun rises in the east at a particular time every day without fail. Rains come at a particular time every year. Water has its law of flowing down and fire has its own law of burning and so on. Although these natural gods are very powerful in their respec- tive spheres but they are not free to act as they wished. They are bound by a law. The Rsis argued that just as gods are bound by certain laws similarly human beings also must be bound by certain laws. As long as people obey these laws they will have happiness and piosperity and they will carn the pleasure of gods. But when they go

4 A PANORAMA OP INDIAN PHILOSOPHY

beyond the limt of laws, m other words, when they disobey the laws, they will be punished by gods They also discovered that the law that governs the nature is the same as the law that governs the conduct of beings In nature we find that every action hits certain reaction If you put your finger in the firc, It will burn, if you place something heavy on the surface of water it will be drowned Simiarly, they thought, if a person does something whtch 18 good, he is bound to get reward for it But if he does something which is wrong, he is bound to get punish ment for his bad deeds Tls reward or punishment comes automatically ind the god of water, Varuna. is regarded as the custodian of both the laws of nature as well as the laws of human conduct, known as the Rta

The second point is about the umty of nature If all the natural forces obey certam laws, are they governed by any supreme God ? This question naturally arises in our mind when we find that these gods themselves are bound by some imperceptable forces The answer that the Rsis of the Rgveda found to this question has two aspects Tirst, are these gods eternally present or did they come to exist in time ? They cmnot be eternally present because the Rsis perhaps had witnessed the great deluge or flood when everything was lost Thus they concluded that even these gods were creited But what was the stuff out of whch these gods were created ? Who was their creator ? Did thev come out of existence or non-existence ? The Ras could not give defimte

THE ORIGIN OF INDIAN PHILOSOPIY 5

answer to these questions in the beginning. They simply said that nobody knew whence these gods came. Their origin, according to them. is shrouded in mystery. But soon the Rsis found answer to these questions. And this is what I call the second aspect of the answer. They said that the whole universe came out of one supreme Being. That Being was ever present in the past, that is what we find in the present and verily that alone will exist in the future. They said that this one Being assumes varions forms because he is endowed with unlimited creative power. We shall sce that the idea of a law, conceived as Rta, was developed later on as the law of action (Karma) and became the distinguishing feature of Indian thought as a whole. The second idea that everything, including gods, springs out of Being was the distinguishing mark of those systems of Indian philosophy that are based upon the Vedas. Man lives with nature and therefore he comes in direet contact with natural forces which are personified in the Veda as gods. Therefore he has to seek the favours of gods and avoid their displeasure. How is this to be done? How are these gods pleased ? The Rsis thought that they are pleased when songs of their glory are sung and when some act expressing reverence towards them is done. They found that these gods are imperceptible realities and therefore symbolic worship alone can reach them. In fire they discovered such a god who had somewhat conerete form and was easily available. They made fire their messenger and through fire they decided to approach

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other gods with their offerings Thus fire-worship became an essential feature of Vedic religion Every- thing that was source of joy to Vedic people naturally was thought to be pleasant to gods Thus clarified butter, barley, honey, meat and other eatable things were poured in fire along with the chanting of hymns mn praise of gods Ths idea gave birth to the ela- borate institution of sacrifices Sacrifice means aban donment of something very dear for the sake of some chershed goal It does not mean a simple act of giving This idea of sacrifice is another mark of Indian philosophy It may not be accepted in the form in which it is propounded m the Veda but the spirt of renunciation associated with it was mvariably accepted by all the schools of Indian philosophy. The text dealing with the method of offering sacrifices Is called the Yajurveda. Songs in the praise of gods must be sung properly , it should express proper moods of the smger and should be able to express lns emotional state It should, in other words, express the true nature of the heart of the singer Thus the Samaveda contams the methods appropriate for singing A fourth Veda, called the Atharva Veda, is concerned with mundane matters and magical formulas The four Vedas described above are cliefly con- cerned with sacrifices performed to please gods Vedic religion is thercfore very often called as a ritualstic relgion But as pomted out above, In connection with the deseription of the Rgveda, the ideas of a moral law that binds human beigs and also

THE ORIGIN OF INDIAN PHILOSOPHY 7

of a supreme power or Being who is the cause of all that exists were always present in the mind of these Rsis Therefore these seers thought to develop these ideas more elaborately in the form of separate books As a result each one of the four Vedas has Its own purely philosophical works mn which these two ideas along with other connected subjects are independently discussed These bools aie known as the Unpamsads The Upansads are known as concluding portions of the Vedas and they contam the essence of Vedic teachings They are therefore called as Vedanta or the end of the Vedas The importance attached to these Upamsads can be judged from the fact that every system of Indian philosophy based on the Vedas tries to connect its ideas and theories with these A western scholar, Professor Bloomfield, goes to the extent of saying that "there is no important form of Hindu thought, heterodox BuddIsm icluded, which is not rooted in the Upanisads" We shall see later on that the Buddha also accepted certain ideas of the Upanisads while formulating his own plnlosophy. There are many Upanisads and the date of their composttion also varies All of them cannot be said to belong to the Vedic period of Indian history But some of them really belong to that period and therefore they are defimtely pre Buddhist compositions We cannot say that each one of these older Upamsads eapresses identical views about identical problems They express different views and verv often their subject-matter also differs We cannot discuss these

8 A PANORANA OF INDIAN PHILOSOPHY

tlngs here m detail but I shall try to present in outhnes the views of some of them regarding the world, the indrdual and the supreme Realty

The mam pomt of diseussion in these Upamsads concerns the nature of person Who is the real person ? Is it the body ? the sense organs ? the mind ? the vital spint ? or something dse ? Body, senses, mind and spint cannot be the true person because they aie not essentially indispensable For example a person ean have some experience although the body is at rest on the bed and sense organs are not active A person still has an awareness although lns mnd is not active In deep sleep, for example, a person has some awareness of his own self, because when he wakes, he remembers that he had undisturbed sleep Therefore essentially a person should be identi- fied with that which has awareness or consciousness We cannot concerve of a person who has no conscious- ness, because m the absence of consciousness body is called dend Consciousness or soul (called as atman) is the real peison It is due to this consciousness that the world gets meining The knower consciousness knows an object Will ths world have any meaning if there is no knower? We cannot even say that the woild wol exist at tht time Because to say that the world will exist without there being any knower is to suppose that there will be at least one knower who will know the woild as exsting Moreover you can go on doubting everything of tluis world and even doubt the existence of this world itself Lnke Descartes, a modern western

THE ORIGIN OT INDIAN PHILOSOPIY 9

philosopher, the Upamsads say that doubt is legitimate s long as it does not mvolve self-contradiction Tlns self contradiction mises only when a person begins to doubt his own self The doubter cannot be doubted and if doubted the existence of the doubter is affrmed Thus for the Upamsads the most funda- mentil and foundational reality is the soul There ire different views about the soul Acco ding to some Upamisads it is one without a second and appers to be many because of illusion Thus every living beig, every atom of this universe, 1s nothng but tlus Universal Soul which is called as the Brahman According to some other Upamsads there are two realtics, the mdividual souls on the one hand and the Brahman who is the causc of the Umverso on the other Here we do not have sufficient time to disouss these vews We shall diseuss them when we come to survey the Vedantic Philosophy Those who believe that there is only one icahty tinnk that the world is only a creition of illusion Umty is knowledge, plurabty is ignorance But those who regard two reahties or more think that the world is real and individuals are also real There is some relationslup between the Braluman on the one hand and the world and the mdnidunl on the other But all these Upamsads agree that there is a supreme ieahty or the Brahman belund ths world and he 18 consciousness par ezcellence Whtever be the view about the status of the individual, he bemg the centre of this umverse shoul- ders responsibilty It is he who acts because dead

10 A PANORAMA OF INDIAN PHILOSOPHY

matter cannot act He has the power to diserimmate rght from wrong Only he can take decisions and make choice He who choses to follow a path 18 responsible for the consequences of lis choice Thus f a person does something which is bad or something which is good, he stands open for the consequences Ordmnarily we think that a person exists no more after his death But suppose a person does some act and dies before the result of his action tahes concerete form In that case we shall have to say that a person does not get the result of what he has done But ths position goes agamst the law of causation which says that every action has its reaction. In order to mamtam harmony mn nature the Upamsads unanmously declare that death is not the end of man The soul is eternal and contmues to exist even after death The Bhagavadgita, a famons manual of Indan philosophy and rehgion, says that a body is hke a garment When a garment becomes old and wom out it is replaced by another new garment Similarly the soul takes on a new body and discards old body The taking up a new body is called birth, therefore birth and death belong to a body and not to the soul

The status that a man gets after birth, the kind of life that he has to lead, is determined partly by the deeds done by a soul m the past life The present life is determined by the past life, and in its turn it determines the future hfe Good deeds lead to better life and bad deeds to the life of animals and so on

THE ORIGIN OF INDIAN PHILOSOPHY 11

The soul is subjected to this cycle of birth and death, because of his actions. But if he ceases to. perform any action, the result will be that he will become free from the painful cycle of birth and death. This ultimate freedom should be the goal of every human being. But how to achieve this goal ? It can be achieved by knowing the true nature of one's own soul and also by knowing the Brahman. Knowledge is the most effective instrument for achieving the release from birth and death. Here we can very well see that the idea of Rta has assumed a concrete shape in the form of the law of action. The concept of Being found only in a germinal form is developed into the theory according to which Brahman is the supreme reality. The spirit of sacrifice culminates in the theory of inaction which is possible only when a person renounces the world and retires to forest. The goal of man propoun- ded in the Upanisads is complete freedom from the cycle of birth and death. This is called liberation.

CHAPTER II

THE BEGINNING OF BUDDHISM Before Gotama the Buddha came on the Indian scene much of the original spirit of the Vedic Philoso- phy was lost and some very powerful thinkers were ac- tive in propounding their own philosophical views which were not in conformity with the Vedas and the Upa- nişads. Some of these thinkers were materialists and tried to deny the law of action and the existence of a permanent reality. Some of them went to the extent of saying that any sort of action was not possible. Therefore there is no result which ean bind a person. There were views according to which the world was considered to be utterly void, having no existence of its own. On the other hand those who followed the Vedic philosophy were concerned more with ritualism and sacrifices became for them a sort of excuse for satisfying their own desires. They did not pay much attention

THE BEGINNING OF BUDDHISM 13

The propounder of the Jaina philosophy, Mahavira, however tried to give new orientation to the trond of thinking of that time. His stress was more on renunciation and he advocated asceticism with full force. For him the real means of getting out of this world of birth and death was to renounce every kind of action. But in the field of philosophy he advocated a synthetic approach by saying that every view has a grain of truth from a certain standpoint. The Buddha's penetiating vision led him to proclaim that the truth lies in the middle path. Any kind of extreme view was likely to give rise to onesided opinion, which by creating obsession may obscure our vision. He found that the people of his time were broadly divided into two camps. Some people believed that there being no reality behind this changing world, the world was without any root. There were others who thought that there being one changeless Brahman, the changing world itself was illusory. Some denied the operation of moral law while others went to the other extreme of saying that the law of action being the sole determining factor a man can never become frec. Gotama, before becoming the Buddha, the Enlightened one, had undergone spiritual discipline under the guidance of many spiritual leaders and philosophers of the time. He knew cach one of them perfeotly. His own experience led him to the conchision that evon in spiritual dis- ciplines extreme asceticism of the type advocated by Mahavira, the propounder of Jainism, makes a person very weak and thus he cannot keep up good physical

CHAPTER II

THE BEGINNING OF BUDDHISM Before Gotama the Buddha came on the Indian scene much of the onginl spirit of the Vedie Philoso- phy was lost and some very powerful thinkers were ac tive in propounding their own pllosopincal views which were not in conformty with the Vedas and the Upa msads Some of these tlnkers were matemalists and tried to deny the law of iction and the evistence of a permanent realty Some of them went to the extent of saying that anv soit of action was not possible Therefore there is no result which can bind t person There were views according to which the world was considcred to be utterly void, having no existence of its own On the other hand those who followed the Vedic plnlosophy were concerned more with ritualsm and serifices became for them a sort of excuse for satisfying their own desires They did not pay much attention to the Upamsadic Pllosophy which clearly sud that the real spint of scrfice hes m renunciation Some of the followers of the Vedas however subseribed to the Upanisadic view of one abiding Brahman but they too had forgotten the original spint of the theorv of Brahman For them if Brahman was eternal and bey ond change, there could not be any change m the world either Causal relationshp thus was concered to be impossible This mterpretation of the theory of Brahman had obviously the dangerous consequence of denying the lan govermng human conduct

THE BEGINNIAG OF BUDDHISM 13

The propounder of the Jama philosophy, Mahavira, however tried to give new orientation to the trend of thinking of that time His stress was more on renunciation and he advocated asceticism with full force For him the real means of getting out of this world of birth and death was to renounce every kind of action But m the field of phuilosophy he advocated a synthetic approach by saying that every view has a grain of truth from a certam standpomt The Buddha's penctiating vision led him to proclaim that the truth lies in the middle path Any kind of extreme view was hkely to give rise to onesided opmmon, which by crerting obsesston may obscure ot vision He found that the people of his time were broadly divided into two camps Some people beheved that there being no reality belund this changmg world, the world was without any root 'Theie were others who thought that there being onc changeless Brahman, the changing world itself was illusory Some demed the operation of moral law wlnle others went to the other extreme of saying that the law of action being the sole determining factol a man can never become free Gotama, before becoming the Buddha, the Enhghtened one, hid undergone spiritut disciphne under the guidance of many spiritual leaders and philosophers of the time He knew cach one of them perfectly His own experience led him to the conclusion that even mn spiritual dis- caplines extreme asceticism of the ty pe advocated by Mahavira, the propounder of Jamism, makes a person very weak and thus he cannot keep up good phy sical

14 A PANOPAMA OF INDIAN PHILOSOPHY

and mental health Thus he found that a person with a weak mind andbody cannot lead proper spiritual life He himself being the only son of a king (Suddho- dana) knew the life of luxury and was convinced that too much of comfort was detrimental to spiritual life Thus both in the field of philosophy and that of spiritual disciplme the Buddha found no scope for extremism and thus he decided to follow the golden middle path which embodied what was good mn the extreme view and diseurded what was detrimental to healthy and balmneed life We may call this as the heart of Buddhism becuse we shall see that every aspect of Buddhism is saturated with the idea of the middle path which meins avoidance of extremes of any kınd We know from vaimous iccounts of the lfe -- history of the Buddha that he possessed a very keen mind and wanted to know the reason for any thiug that he came across When he had four famous visions of a sick man, an old man, dead person and a monh, he enqured rbout the cause of sickness, old age, death and renunciation He was convinced that every one without exception hs to suffer because of disenses, old ige and death But he also was convmced that there may be i way ont of this suffering otherwise why would people court the life of a monk His compas sion for all the living beings is evident from a small mncident of lus life When a bird was shot by his step brother Gotama nursed the bird and refused to part with it saying that nobody has any night to take the life of mother being This universal com

THE BEGINNING OF BUDDHISM 15

passion together with his conviction that the life here i8 full of sorrow and misery led him to the life of wandering monk in search of a solution of sorrowful existence

When he gave his first sermon m Sarnath, a place near Varanasi, he put forth his solution whtch he had discovered after long pamful searches His teachings are summed up under four heads called Four Noble Truths These teachings show his un versal compassion and love and stand witness to the fact that he did never dissocrate himself from the spirit of the Vedas, particularlv the Upamsds The first Noble Truth says that the existence of a being in this universe is full of sorrow and misery This assertion does not require any logic to be proved Any person who has a keen sense of observation and a heart large enough to feel with suffering beings will inevitably arrive at this conclusion After all birth mevitably leads to death and possession of a body means disenses that go along with it There can be nothng more pamful than death and every thing ends in it Pleasant experences are not wanting in life but they are transitory because even a man born with a silver spoon in Ins mouth, as they say, 1s doomed to die How can then one say that to exist is plesnt in the face of imminent death ? The Buddha's cmphasis upon sorrow closely follows similar expressions found in the Upamsads The Upamsds too, before him, have said that things of this world cannot make one perfect because they cannot give immortalty "What shall I do with that", says one

16 A PANORAMA OF INDIAN PHILOSOPHY

wise woman of the Upanisad, "which cannot make me immortal ?" meaning thereby that things of this world are subject to decay and death. A learned boy visits the abode of the God of Death, so relates one of the Upanisads, who, very pleased with the daring youth, offers wealth to him. Thereupon, the boy replies to Death : "Keep thou thy houses, keep dance. and song for theyself. Shall we be happy with these things, seeing thee ?" A Buddhist will also say - "This body is wasted, full of sickness and frails ; this heap of corruption breaks to pieces. Life indeed ends in death". The reason for this gloomy picture of worldly existence is obviously to be found in death which is another name for impermanence. It is in the very nature of things that they cannot exist eternally. There may be relative difference between two things with regard to the duration of their existence. A thing may cxist for one hundred years while another object may exist only for a few moments. But die they must. Thus inorder to substantiate his assertion of sorrowful existence the Buddha embarked upon an elaborate analysis of existence. The second Noble Truth is an explanation of the cy- cle of birth and death from the point of view of causal relationship. Granting that existence is sorrowful, we may legitimately ask whether there is any cause for this state of affairs or whether it is rooted in the very nature of things. If things by their nature are subjeot to birth and death, if their emergence and disappearance are not governed by any law, there will be chaos in the

THE BEGINNING OF BUDDHISM 17

universe Anything could be born out of anything and may disappear anyt'me The most dangerous consequence of tluis view, which was held by some non-Vedic thinhers of that time as mentioned before, would follow in the sphere of morahty Moral law 18 based upon the assumption that every action without fail brings an oppropriate result, this is nothing but the law of causation which says that there being a cause, the effect will invariably follow Thus the demial of causation by accepting that birth and death are natural to things would lead to anarchy both mn the realm of nature and that of morals Thus the Buddha did not subscribe to this view He closely followed the view as was already propounded in the Upanisads He sud that every thing that happened was due cer tainly to some cause Nothing exists without a cause The second Noble Truth has very important implications First, it asserts the operation of law and, along with it, the theory of Larma A person I8 responsible for his action and he will have to bear the consequences of his action There cannot be any exception to this rule Thus he agreed with the views of the Upamsads according to which a person has to take birth in order to bear the consequences of deeds done by him in the past hfe The theory of rebirth, as we shall se later on, was accepted invariably by all the philosophicl and relgious schools of Indis and Buddhism is no exception to this But a belief in the permanent soul goes along with the theory of rebirth The Upmsads declared that although the body dies but the bearer of the body, the soul, 2

18 A PANORAMA OF INDIAN PHILOSOPHY

never dies But the Buddha could not beleve in the existence of a permanent soul He argued that if the law of causation is universal, it must apply to the so called soul also He therefore concluded that even the soul is not permanent , it is also born and it will also disappear as other things do But there 18 one difference between the soul on the one hand and the things of the world on the other For example, the duration for which a body exists is shorter than the duration of the existence of a soul A soul may take up thousands of bodies but it will also have to die as and when the cause of its disappearance arises Here is a very important pomt where the Buddha completely disagreed with the Upanisads For the Buddha, therefore, nothing was permanent and therefore he did not belteve in a soul or mn the Brahman of the Upimisads If impermanence is the character of everything, it follows that there is nothing in this universe which endures amidst change In other words, he demed the existence of any substance in the sense of a permanent substratum of the changing world Change, according to the law of causation, was the real nature of the umverse This is the famotis no soul theory of Buddhism which distmgushes it from the schools of Indian philosophy based upon the Vedas and the Upamsds This brought revolution m the lustory of Indian philosophy Before the Buddha causation was con- ceived in three ways Those who beleved that the Brahman is free from change, said that the Brahman only appears as this umverse without undergoing any

THE BEGINNING OF BUDDHISM 19

change. Others advocated that the Brahman trans- forms himself and becomes this universe. Some other thinkers believed that the Brahman created the universe out of some material which exists eternally. All these three views are based upon the assumption that there is something permanent and eternal bebind this phenomenal universe. The Buddha could not agree with any one of these views. Therefore in conformity with his conception of no-soul he formulated a new theory of causation which is popularly known as the theory of Dependent Origination. According to this theory an effect depends for its origination upon certain cause and condition. Thus A may be the cause of B and B may be the cause of C and so on, but it docs not necessarily mean that in order to be a cause A must be permanent. In fact we are aware of the existence of A when it is effective. Causality therefore is explained as a series of dependence. But the Buddha preferred to explain this series not as a linear but as a cyclic series. If the series of causation be conceived as linear, it would mean that there is some starting point which causes the whole thing but it itself is not caused. This would mean the acceptance of an uncaused cause like the Brahman of the Upanisads. In order to avoid this difficulty he accept that points in the series are limited in number and at the completion of one full cycle we have to repeat the series again. The full idea of this series of causal dependence was suggested to him by the keen analysis of man's exis- tence. He thought that a man suffers in this world

20 A PANORAMA OF INDIAN PHILOSOPHY

not actually because of death The fear of death 1s actually due to our attachment with things of the world We begin to think that if we die who would look after the family ? What will happen to our homes, wealth and articles that we love so much But this attachment is based upon our ignorance of the fact that every thing is impermanent Ignorance creates wrong impressions upon our mind Due to wrong impressions our conscious life is moulded accordingly Mmnd and body are guded, senses function and our contact with the world developes-all in the hght of ignorance Our emotions, cravings and attachment with the world also grow in the same direction We come to be in the lght of our past history and are born accordingly Birth is finally the sign of impending old age and death With death we carry the ignorance that we have developed and agam pass though the same cycle Thus for the Buddha the cyclc series of causal chain has twelve links (ignorance, impressions or tendencies, consciousness, mind and body, sense organs, contact with objects, emotions, cravig, attach- ment, coming to be, rebirth and old age and death) The Buddha was not dogmatic He believed in observation and experiments He repeatedly asked his followers not to take his teachings for granted He commanded them to analyse and rationally examine his views and only If found perfect on the touch stone of reasoning, it could be accepted Thus he rejected the authority of any person or tradition and recommended only such views as are found rationally and empirically valid In this respect also he differed

THE BEGINNING OF BUDDHISM 21

from the Vedic tradition which laid too much emphasis upon authonty The Buddha followed the method of experiment in his teachings But experiment should not be confined only to the observations of ordmary type There is another type of experience which 18 qute different from ordmary experience This ex- perience is born after one has achieved mastery mn the art of concentration We may call this as the super- normal experience The description of causal chain given above is based not upon any authority, nor upon any experiments done in the world of ordmary experience but it is the result of intuitive vision that Gotama obtained mn meditation which made him the Buddha-The Enlghtened One

Having shown that sorrowful existence has a series of causes which though not permanent are capable of producing effects, the Buddha mntroduces us to the third Noble Truth Observations confirm that a thing exists as long as causes responsible for its existence persist But if a cause is removed the effect will automatically cease to be Thus the theory of causation promises that if somehow the causal series is made moperative the resultant sorrowful exstence will not bother us The Fourth Noble Truth states the way in which this cham can be broken Following the eight-fold path is the prescription of the master for the remedy of our miseries The important thing to be noted here is that all the erght paths are to be followed in the right way We have seen that for the Buddha everything that reaches

22 A PANORAMA OF INDIAN PHILOSOPHY

extremes is to be avoided Hence a person must hold right views, should aspire in the right direction, indulge in right actions, use right speech, lead a right lfe, make right efforts, cultivate right thought and finally must have right tranquilty A person who follows these right paths m the right way ceases to suffer For such a person the causal cycle becomes mnoperative He becomes free from the tortures of birth and death

But we may ask about the fate of a person Since for the Buddha there is no permanent entity, the impermanent soul itself is forced to take up births When the causes that used to sustam and nourish this impermanent soul vansh, the soul would also cease to exist But the Buddha was silent about the ultimate position of the soul He said, of course, that a person becomes completely free if he follows the eight-fold path but he did not elaborate his view about the state of freedom which he called Nirvana His followers were divided on ths issue Some said that even the soul ceases to be and nothing remains Others thought that that which remains being completely free from the reach of speech and thought is indescribable

But whatever be the ultumate nature of Nirvana, it is a question which will be of mnterest to those who actually follow the teachings of the Buddha For the students of the history of ideas it 18 sufficient to note that there were two mnterpretations of the silence of the Buddha

THE BEGINNING OF BUDDHISM 23

The ideal of Buddhsm is a hfe which is pure, morally good, compassionate towards all non violent and full of the spirit of sactifice in the Upanisadic sense of the term The attunment of Nirvana should not be viewed as a personal gun It should be such that all the humamty benefits from it The Bodhisattva ideal of later Buddhism is the logical oulmination of the virtuous and compassionate hfe taught by the Buddha A Badluisattva would resolve not to enter into personal Nirvana until every living beig on this earth gets salvation The Upamsads said that the ultimate aim of a person should be liberation The Buddha said the same thing The only difference being that the Buddhist ideal of Nirvana may be different from the Upamsadic ideal of lberation For the Buddhists Nirvana means the negation of one's egoistie self Tor the followers of the Upamsids liberation means merging of the indvidual soul into the universal soul This only means that both these systems believe mn the destruc tion of egoism selfishness and narrow vens and both these systems commend a life which is for the benefit of entire humanty

CHAPTER III

MATERIALISTIC PHILOSOPHY

The Upamisads and Buddhism along with Jamism gave us an idea about the end of life We find that these philosophies did not approve of worldly life as people lead They were against attachment with the objects of the world In their opinion, therefore, the ultimate aim of man should be complete sacrifice of personal comforts so that salvation from the cycle of birth and death can be achieved Of course we cannot say that these philosophies were completely mdifferent to social life They in fact emphasised that a harmonious social life was possible when people followed the ideals set forth in the Upamisads and in the teachings of the Buddha and Mahavira A person who has reahsed that every thing is Brahman cannot make discrimmations between man and man All are equal in his eye and he is completely free from hatred, desire, greed and partiality Similarly when a person, according to Buddhism, has known that nothing mn the world is permanent and that every one has to die and sorrowful existence depends upon ignorance, he proceeds full of compassion, to show the right path, as propounded by the Buddha, to all the human beings Such ideal persons are far above normal persons of the world We cannot expect that every one will become perfect but we can say that those who have become spiritually perfect can serve humamty and can show the rght path But

MATERIALISTIO PHILOSOPHY 25

such approach inevitably ends mn the condemnation of worldly life We have seen that before the Buddha there were some teachers who demed moral law They thought that nothing is binding upon men and they are com pletely free to do whatever they liked They demed any life hereafter and asked people to make the present life as much comfortable as possibly it can be made We cannot say that this second view about life was totally neglected in India In the present Chapter my concern will be to show that India has not only cared for emancipation from the world, Indians have paid equal attention to the worldly lıfe If we try to analyse worldly life, we shall find that its aim and aspirations can be summarisedin two words socil welfare and satisfaction of desires The word "social welfare" includes in its meaning all that is needed for a healthy social life In order to have a good society we reqwre that there should be law and order Indian people always beheve in law because they are convinced that in the absence of a law there will be complete anarchy and any one who happens to possess might will dictate his terms The result would be a complete chaos and thus weak people will suffer Therefore there should be a law governing the conduct of man so that nobody is placed at a disad vantage and every one gets his due In order to achieve this end a good government is needed to admimster the law and to see that nobody disobcys the law Economic prosperity depends upon a

26 A PANORAMA OF INDIAN PHIT OSOPHY

disciplined society Thinkers in ancient India paid attention to this aspect of life and wrote books The second aspect of worldly hfe is more personal than social Desires of a society as a whole fall within the province of social welfare but personal desires cannot be exhausted by social legislation In ancient India due respect was shown to the mn- dividual Indians never believed that an individual has no existence of his own before the community After all the community is made up of different mn- dividuals Thus individual freedom occupies a very high place in Indian system of thinking An indı- vidual has his emotions He takes pleasue in things of beauty He may love to amg, he may take delight in poetry, drama, painting and sculpture He may reqmre the company of women All these aspects of hfe cannot be properly looked after by the govern- ment becuse the govrnment may, at its best, give general laws but it cannot cater for individuals But we know well that in matters of taste every individual has his own preference If a government begins to dictate that only a particular type of hterature should be written and read, only a particular type of music should be sung, then the creativity of the mdividual mind will die and a stereotyped mechancal culture will emerge Indians wanted that there should be an open field for the expression of human mind Poets produced all the conceivable types of lterature Valmiki wrote an epic which can easily be compared with any great hterary production of any time and place Kaldasa excelled in depiction of

MATFRIALISTIC PHILOSOPHY 27

human emotions, specially the emotion of love His drama, Sakuntala, has won universal appreciation Bhavabhuti was the master of pathos. Dandin and Bana are famous for unparalleled prose and their romantic compositions In pamting and sculpture credit goes to Buddhist and non-Buddhist monks and devotees Famous cave-paintings of Ajanta and numerous arcltectural monuments testify that mn India man's innate tendency of artistic expression was never looked over India is the home-land of music In fact the tradition of Indian musie dates back to the Vedic age The art of dancmg goes with music and drama The art of love-making forms an independent subiect-matter of study mn India The Kama-Sūtra of Vatsyayana is a world-famous manual and even modern authoritics on the subject derve ther materil from this ancient work This book teaches eveything that concerns the sex and gives classification of the types of men and women from the point of view of sex This classification became of a favourite subject of description with later Indian poets In the face of this abundant matertal, testifying the love for worldly life of the Indian people, how can anybody dare say that Indian plilosophers and thinkers were other-worldly ? But we must be on our guards When we talk of personal freedom we must always remember that personal freedom is never to be allowed to interfere with the social standard We may write poems, compose music, stage dramas and investigate the mystery of

28 A PANORAMA OF INDIAN PHILOSOPHY

sex But when our freedom comes in conflict with our social norms, the latter should always be given pre ference over the former Personal freedom is not absolute, it has a limt A man should be free within the society Stmilar is the case with the society We have said that a society is governed by certain laws According to Indian thinkers law is another name for moral good It is difficult, if not impossible, to determine the nature of moral good But there are various sources which cn help us in determining the nature of law that a society may like to impose upon itself Renson and conscience will always be our guide But Indian thinkers also recogmsed the tradition, as pre served in ancient texts, to be a source of law A society, after all, is a natural growth from its past, only on the basis of its past it can aspire for further progress This emphasis upon tradition should not led us to believe that India is a land of tradition It is never like that, otherwise how can we explain the remarkable progress that India has made in course of her history of at least 4000 years ? The fact is that Indian thinkers have always kept their eyes upon the future for which they ask us not to forget the lessons of our past history If anybody prefers to call this traditionalism, he ts free to do so Thus far we have seen that social welfare and satisfaction of desires are the two ends of hfe and they are to be pursned in such a way that one does not come in conflict with the other We have also dis cussed that social welfare and satisfaction of desire are

MATERIALISTIO PHILOSOPHY 29

governed by law which is based upon reason, conscience and tradition. We shall now see in what sense the thinkers of ancient India used the word law. Broadly speaking law is defined as the rule of conduct that sustains a person or a society and makes progress possible. This has a broader application as well as a narrow interpretation. In the broad sense natural acts like eating, drinking, sleeping, making love and so on fall within the purview of law. Thus social and personal etiquettes, behaviours in private as well as in public and so on should be in conformity with the broader sense of the term law. If, for example, person does not follow a time-honoured custom in eating or drinking, he will be regarded as uncultured. Here law should be taken to mean that it sustains culture of a man or of a society. In a narrower sense law is used as an authority by which civil and criminal disputes are decided, the government is run, peace is maintained and the society marches ahead on the road to prosperity. Thus Indian thinkers included every aspect of life under the law. Nothing should happen, they said, which is against the law. Violation of law brings bad name to a person and disruption to the society. No exception was allowed to the rule of law. But it must be remembered that law will be necessary for those who want to live in a society or want to lead a life of this world. Thus if any one renounces the society in which he lives and developes an attitude of complete apathy for the objects of the world, for him this law will cease to have any meaning. Such a person

30 A PANORAMA OF INDIAN PHILOSOPHY

is deemed to have crossed the limit of the world of law He is beyond law and nothing is binding upon him Those who have known the Brahman or those who have achieved the state of Nirvana being comple- tely free and well-grounded m reahty do not need the help of law to sustam themselves Rather, these people are in a position to sustain the world A Rsi or a Buddha can make laws for others to follow, because he is m a position to see what is required for sustenance and progress of a society or of mankind as a whole Really speaking such persons are regarded in Indra as the true sources of law This should be the highest ideal of every person but everyone cannot become a Buddha Thus social welfare, satisfaction of destres, lawful hfe and the lfe of complete emancipation are the four goals or ends which the Indian thinkers have taught A person is fiee to choose any one of these and may aspire to achieve it It has been shown above that the first three ends are mterlnked We cannot aspire for a lawless society or for a lawless personal life We cannot also follow the law and ignore the society and the personal hfe because law can be followed only at a partienlar station m hife Thus if a person tries to follow a life ignoring the moral aspect of it, he 18 invariably condemned The Buddha vehemently cri- ticised those who showed disrespect to the law of karma There was a school of Indian plnlosophy (called the Carvaka school) which believed only in prceptual knowledge The followers of this school said that

MATERIALISTIO PHILOSOPHY 31

there was no guarantee for the reality of a thing which can be known by inference or on the basis of the testimony of others Inference gives us only general knowledge about of a thing Moreover, the basis of this view is not reasonable When, for example, we repeatedly see two things together, we form a notion that wherever one thing is present the other thing should also be present On the basis of this generalsed notion we infer the presence of one thing when only one of the two things known to be associated is perceived The Carvaka says that the generalised notion, on which the whole inference 1s based, may turn out to be faulty We might have, it i8 possible, overlooked such cases where the two things are not present together There are certam other cases of mference where we simply desire a particular conclusion from given premises Ths deductive reasoning, the Carvaka says, does rot rrove any thing new because what we deduce is already assumed in the premises Verbal testimony is not a vald means of knowledge because the chances of wrong judgement, bias and conceit in the speaker cannot be ruled out Taking their stand upon the mnfallibilty oi per- ception the Carvakas show that there can be no hfe hereafter because no body has ever seen a person who clanns to know his past life Even if there be a person to claim that way, there is no means to verify his claim We can therefore be sure only about our present exis- tence A crude version of this philosophy says that smnce there is no lfe hereafter, there can be no force in our deeds We may do whatever we like because

32 A PANORAMA OF INDIAN PHILOSOPHY

there is no result binding upon us But a refined statement of this philosophy, to be found in the Kama- sūtra of Vātsyāyana referred to above, says that so far as moral law is concerned, it should be obeyed, if not for the sake of good life hereafter, at least for the sake of making the present life easy and respectable So far as the first version is concerned it was never accepted seriously in India That is the reason that this school never gathered followers as was the case with other schools of Indian philosophy Connected with the demal of a life hereafter 18 also the theory which rejects the claim of the soul being an eternal entity Nobody has experienced the soul as different from a body or a mind It is invariably found with the body, so why not assert that the body itself is conscious ? As long as a body is in perfect order, it bears the property of consciousness, when disorder in the elements of a body takes place, the property of consciousness disappears Conscious- ness or soul should therefore be regarded, according to tls school, as a by product of the elements consti- tuting a body This theory very well supports the view that there is no life hereafter because death will be the end of existence We have seen that the Buddha also demed the existence of an eternal soul but fus demal did not imply the denial of life hereafter, nor the rejection of moral law of Karma The Carvaka system stands alone in the lustory of Indian philosophy in so far as it denies rebirth But it is not so much because of this demial of rebirth as because of its rejection of moral law

NATERIALISTIO PHIZOSOPHY 33

and because of its special hedonistic attitude towarda life that this school was condemned. Thus the school said that social welfare and satisfaction of desire, these two ends alone are to be pursued; the remaining two are to be rejected. Its rejection of inference shows that while rejecting inference the school was taking the help of an inference. Similarly body cannot be said to have consciousness as its property merely because any change in the body does not lead to any corresponding change in consciousness. To say that since consciousness is invariably associated with a body therefore it cannot be separated from the body, clearly shows that the Carvaka is using here the type of inference which he rejects. We can say that he has not cared to take into account such cases where body and consciousness may remain unrelated. Thus no such system of philosophy could survive in India which did not pay attention to all the four or at least the first three ends of life.

3

OHAPTER IV

PHILOSOPHY OF RELATIVISM In the first chapter we have discussed the origmn of Imian philosophy and the second chapter was con- cerned with the contributions of the Buddha to Indian culture and philosophy The third chapter deals more or less with the materialistic aspect of Indian culture These three chapters were mn a way mntroductory m nature, giving a general idea about the basie ingredi- ents that go to make the monolthie structure of Indian culture Now I shall be concerned mn the following chapters with specific problems discussed in Indian Philosoplucal systems The treatment is bound to become more critical and technical as we advance But I shall try to disouss the problems in a way which does not reqmire prior acquamtance with Indian tradition on the part of my readers With tls end m view I shall confine my discussions to general problems alone and avoid to go into details For the present chapter I have selected a topie whch shows how Indian thmkers were aware of di- fferences of opmion and at the same time were eager to give every opinion a place which it deserves The Jama school of Indian philosophy played a pro- minent role mn this respect Mahavira, a sentor contemporary of the Buddha, is the chief propounder of Jamsm The Jama tradi- tion claims that basic tenets of its philosophy were prevalent even before Mahaviral, he simply gave a new

PHILOSOPHY OF PELATIVISM 35

orientation to this plnlosophy Twenty three Jama teachers are said to have preceded Mahavira although the evistence of some of them may not be proved on the basis of historical material available to-day We have seen that the Buddha, before he received Enligh tenment, followed Jama practices for some time But he was not satisfied with its too much emphasis upon hard asceticism

Before we proceed to tiscuss the views of Jaimsm, T would hke to pomt out that Jamism and Buddhism belong to one gioup whereas other systems of Indian philosophy belong to the other goup The traditional distinction between these two gioups is made on the basis of the nature of authorty Those who followed the Vedas and the Upamsads were called as Brahmanas because they accepted the existence of Brahman and also because for them the Vedas, which are very often called Brahman, were the supreme authonty On the other hand some people did not accept the overill authorty of the Vedas and beleved that real knowledge could be obtained through one's self-efforts The Buddha and Mahavira subsoribed to the latter view Similar is the case with the materialstic school of Jndian pllosophy These schools were known as Srimin schools But we cannot say that the Brah- mans and the Sramanas completely differred from each other because there were many things in common Ths division was known later on as the one between orthodox and heterodov systems Buddhism, Jai- nism and Materihsm are called heterodox systems whereas others are known as orthodox systems But

36 A PANORAMA OF INDIAN PHILOSOPHY

ths is rather unfortunate because the Buddhists or the Jamas may be as much orthodox with regard to their views as, say, a Vedantm The words orthodox and heterodox are relative terms Therefore we may preferably follow the origmal divisions of the Brahmanas and the Sramanas I have said mn the begmning that the Vedas were the compositions of the Aryan people We can very well imgine that all the people of a commumty cannot possibly subsenbe to one and only one view, unless there is a strict regimentation and mdoctrmation But even in a regimented society we cannot rule out the possibility of some one's holding his own views in the private while subscribing to the views of the commu mty in the public in order to avoid persecution But in India we can never find an mstance where a parti cular view was imposed upon unwilling mdividuals Individual freedom is the basis of Indian culture Thus in Vedic times there were some Aryans who might have dissented from the ntualstic plnlosophy and the authority of the scriptures Although we do not have any direct record of these dissenting Aryans yet the Vedas themselves refer to them occasionally They came into prommnence when the powerful sway of Vedicism was at the ebbing low Thus sudden and smultaneous emergence of Buddhsm, Jamism and Materiahsm at a particular period of Indian Instory stands witness to the fact that there was some Aryan tradition in the making long before the gret propounders of Sramanism gave defimte shape to the tradition The Buddha feels proud of calling

PHILOSOPHY OT RELATIVISM 37

himself and his teachings as Arya. For him the word Arya stands for everything that is noble. Therefore Sramana tradition was as much Aryan as the Bral- mana tradition. For a considerable period these two traditions continued to grow side by side influencing each other. But a time came when these traditions merged themselves together and their rich synthesis tinged with certain non-Aryan traits later on became known as Hinduism. Thus the transition from Aryanism to Hinduism is a very interesting topic of Indian history. We shall have some occasion towards the end of the book to say more about the emergence of Hinduism.

We have said that Jainism tries to show that every opinion is valid. This needs elucidation. We cannot say that the sun is hot and that the sun is not hot in the same breath, because to say that would involve clear contradiction. The Jainas are aware of this. What they have in mind is the complexity of reality. It is just possible that a thing may appear to be red to one person and gray to another. The thing being the same, it may give rise to different cognitions in different people. While dealing with knowledge we must not forget that knowledge is never completely dependent upon the objective reality. It contains a contribution of the mind of the knower also. Thus if a person's mind is biased, he may know things in his own way. Very often the mind of a whole society may unconsciously be biased. This is what happens, for example, in the case of patriotic feelings. But this need not necessarily be taken to

38 A PANORAMA OF IVDIAN PHILOSOPHY

mean that the biased mind cannot know realty Who knows that the person who pomts to a knowledge as biased may himself be biased ? Diversitv of opinions may therefore be due to diverse standpoits adopted by the people Differences may also arise because of the discovery of only some of the aspects of a thu g A person, ignorant of the principles of astronomy, may say that the sun moves around the cirth while an astronomer my declare this to be wrong This difference is therefore due to a person's not known g an aspect of realty In the Instory of sciences we find numerous instances where old theories arc dis carded and new theories are estabhshed But hkewise we can say that even current theories in science m iy be proved to be wrong in due course of time when certam unknown aspects of reality aie discovered Therefore the Jamas are of the opmion that there cin never be an absolute claim about the truth of my expression But every one knows that Ins knowledge 1s not perfect and any kind of insistence or obstmnact should be discouraged Thus it can be said that both the statements that the sun is hot and the sun is not hot may acquire truth-value with reference to stand- points of the persons making these statements If one and the same person at one and the same time makes both these assertions, he is committing the fallacy of contradiction

But, take another case I am seemg someone from a distance I find that his features resemble to a friend of mine I can say that he is my friend. But I find that the way in which he walks is peculir

PHILOSOPHY OT 'RELATIVISM 39

to himself and my friend does not walk in that way. I can therefore say that he is not my friend. I further examine him and find that nothing can be said definite about that person : Whether he is my friend or not. In this case there is no harm in saying that he is my friend, that he is not my friend and I don't know whether he is my friend. In this case I stand in such a position that all these assertions can be made simultaneously with regard to one and the same person. The Jainas are fond of citing the famous story of six blind persons and an clephant. Each one touching a part of the elephant declared the elephant to be like the part that he touched. Now the Jainas derive a moral from this story and say that each one is right in his own sphere yet each one is wrong fiom the point of view of the person who has the full view of the elephant. Knowledge thercfore is declared to be valid only in relation to the standpoint of the knower. But shall we, it may be asked, regard the knowledge of a person who has illusion or who is having some hallucination also to be valid ? Such know- ledge is valid for the person and invalid for those who know that the person is having illusions. One has no right to impose one's own views upon others: What we call illusion may be knowledge for others and our knowledge may be illusions for someone else. There is therefore nothing like universally valid know- ledge or universal illusion. Therefore the right appro- ach should be to accept the relative validity of know- ledge. This attitude will lead to a state where there

40 A PANORAMA OF INDIAN PHILOSOPHY

will be no quarrels about the valdity of this or that theory In order to give a logical shape to this view the Jamashave formulated a theory of relative standpoits There may be seven standpomts with regard to our knowledge of an object Thus, a thing may bu known as (I) existing, (2) not existing (3) indescribable, (4) evisting and mdescribable, (5) not existing and indescribable (6) existing and not existing and lastly as (7) evisting, not evisting and indescnbable Any view, knowledge, opmion or theory may be fitted mto one or the other of these seven Any one who claims that his own standpomt and the consequent knowledge alone is truc, others are false, commts the mistake of taking a partial vien to be complete knowledge But even if we accept the Jama position, grave doubts may arise If we cannot say anyone to be on the wrong, how are we going to mstitute law and order in the society ? Any law, be it moral or social, works with the issumption that anyone who goes agaist it is in the wrong The Jamas have offered therr solution of this problem by accepting the possibilty of such a person who knows everything That there can be an omniscient person is based upon the fact of relativity of the range of our knowledge A person is considered to be more wise than the other. I know nothing about the behaviour of molecules but a physicist knows a lot about it Although the knowle- dge of a physicist may be very wide but his is not the absolute hnowledge merely because the theones of Newton were dscarded by Einstem and now his theories

PHILOSOPHY OF RELATIVISM 41

are being pioved to be misconceived by Hoyley and Narhkar r We can therefore arrange knowledges according to then range If we put an arbitrary end to a series we can be accused of being unreasonable Therefore we cannot prescribe any limit to knowledge Hence the Jamas say that knowledge is without hmm- tation, the senes of knowledge is an infinite series An omniscient being therefore, for the Jainas, must possess infimte knowledge, otherwise he may not be better than ordmary persons We can go on arrang ing persons on the scale of knowledge, the omni- scient must be beyond that person up to whom we have reached m that scale Only such an omniscient person can, in the proper sense, give a law to be followed and that will be the law which can lead always to the good Such omniscient beigs know all the aspects of all things and thereby they are never subject to bias Such a state is the ultimate goal according to Jammsm and everyone should aspire to achieve it Twenty-four patl makers of Jamism, of whom Mahavira is the last, have all acquired this state and therefore their sayings embody the absolute truth, which is not vailale to ordmary mortals Omniscience comes after i very hard spmitual disciplne Potentially every living creature has infimte knowledge but tis hnowledge is obscured by defiling elements The natural brillance of knowledge in a soul is obscured by fine material particles Owing to indul- gence of a soul m worldly things, these particles, wluch abound in space, are attracted towards the soul

42 A PANORAMA OF INDIAN PHILOSOPHY

and get themselves ittached to it As i result the mirror of a soul becomes incapable to iefect The more a soul indulges the more dull it becomes The Junas siy that even orgune things like plants and trees lso possess sonls but these souls have become so much obscured by thes> particles that thev have almost lost the capicity of knowing The process of reguning the soul s mitural ommscience starts therefore with the first step towairds renuncmtion When soul severs relations with the world the pairtichs surrounding it begm to drop out At the end when no more particles ire about to obstruct the vision of the soul, it regams onmiscience Thus in order to get omniscience one has to control ones mind to the extent that it ceases to attract the soul to worldly objects Disciplme of mind depends upon the control of body and senses Tlus preparation takes a consi derable time very often it takes many births One should not form the opimon that Jamism preaches i negative wiy of lfe On the contrary it asks to revive positive virtues inherent in the soul These virtues also along with knowledge are obscured Thus ordinary life abounds in fact in negative itti tudes Tor example a worldly man has the inherent tendency of asserting lumself at the cost of others He indulges mn kiffing others in order to satisfy his needs To eat meat or to enter into waris in fact a negative tendency based upon greed or hatred This should be stopped forthwith because no one has any right to take the life of others for his own sike Non violence or himsi is one of the most important

PHILOSOPHY OF RELATIVISM 43

contributions that Jainism has made to Indian culture. Perhaps the Buddha was unconsciously making the use of this concept under the Jaina influence. In modern times Gandhi, the founder of modern inde- pendent India, also laid great emphasis upon this. To respect the life, property, wife etc. of others and to avoid any injury, through mind, speech or action is therefore the heart of Jaina discipline. These are positive virtues which are to be revived if a man wants perfection. There are innumerable souls in innumerable forms. These souls exist all along the body, no part of a body being devoid of it. A soul along with its obscuring particles transmigrates to a new body after the death of the previous body. The law of Karma therefore is accepted in this system also. When the soul becomes completely free it gets- unlimited knowledge, unlimited perception, unlimited power and unlimited bliss. This is called the state of liberation. The soul which was suppressed under the heavy burden of karmic particles now moves upward, goes beyond the space of this universe. He is liberated. He is without any describable form but he perceives and knows. His knowledge being in- finite cannot be compared with any other knowledge. This unconditioned state is the ideal for which the Jainas strive. Thus, as long as a person does not attain the un- conditioned state, his knowledge will always remain partial, relative to a particular standpoint. Therefore nobody has any right to comdemn others' views. This

44 A PANORAMA OT IDIAN PHILOSOPHY

spirit of tolerance is given to India by Jamsm wluch has always guided her people Thus we find that there w as no occasion when India entered into war with any other country nor were there religious wars India has of conrse made a different type of conquest, a non violent conquest at that Long before the beginning of the Christian er Emperor Asoka had sent messengers of pece to distant countries of his time Preachers of love to all and hatred to none have gone out to many countries of the world in the past Inda of to day is not lagging belund in that reapect This (catholcity i outlook and love for every hving creature, even for trees, flowers and plants, is the gift to Indm given br Buddhism and Jainiem

CHAPTER V

STRUCTURE OF IHL UNIVERSE Having discussed the possibihty of coexistence of divergent views which may not com in conflict with each other, we now proceed to discuss different views abont many problems expressed by varous ancient Indian thinkers We may start with a problem which ensily attracts our attention Since the days when man became conscions of himself and his surroundings for the first time, he was wonder struck by the com- plicate yet fascinating universe in which he found himself It is a psychologieal fact that a man is more eastly and readily attracted towards what he sees placed against himself than towards his own mner self When he saw galaxies of stars in heaven and 4 vast multitude of objects on carth, he began to wonder about their origin Wonder is the begmning of any scientafic enquiry Indian thinkers of the yore were not exceptions to this They proceeded with their enquiry, questioned the nature, carried out therr experiments, argued out the problems and came with answers of their own Their answeis combine scientific investigations (here the word 'science' should be understood in a primitive sense, not in the sense in which we use it to day) with metaphysical specu- lations As a result we get a glimpe of ancient Indian science which was not yet separated from metaphysics It Is a well known fact that the nature of the result that we get after our mvestigations is more or

46 A PANOPAMA OF INDIAN PHILOSOPIY

less determined by the nature of the question that we ask before embarking upon our investigations If you ask "how was the umverse made ?" you will get answers that are dealt with, for evample, in geology, physies or astronomy But if you happen to word your question as "how did the umverse grow", having the analogy of the growth of a cluild or a plant mn mind, you will get such answers as are discussed in biological sciences Difference in inswer here is based upon the use of words like "mide" or "grow" The use of these words indicates that the person using them has certam corresponding concepts already in luis mind These concepts result from the type of experiences that we hve and also fiom the pecular psychological frame This is the only explanat on that we can offer for differences in human preference A persou prefers to speerhse in physics and another in biology A tlurd one regards both those as futile and goes to metaphysics or relgion Within the field of philosophy also the same differences in idividual preference is working which alone can explam divergent plnlosophical systems Thus our concepts with which we start are like hypotheses that we form in sciences and test them One cannot say that a hypothesis that we form mn biology is wrong and that a hypothesis in physics alone is correct It is because the basis on which each hypothesis 18 formed is different in different cases In the present chapter I shall confine my attention to the basic question which asks as to how the universe was made and try to explam various answers given

STRUCTURE OF THE UNIVERSE 47

to it by various Indian thinkers of the past I shall have another oceasion to explun the answers given ,to the question "How did the untverse grow ?" For this purpose I shill select only three promment systems of Indian pllosophy, viz , Jaimsm, Buddhism and Vaisesika The J unas have paid good attention to the analysis of the structure of the universe They thought that the process mvolved m the structure of the umverse cin very well be discovered by analysing the given universe itself A th'ng which we cill as ieal is seen to pass through three stages It is produced, after bemg produced it continues and finally it is destroyed. Thus production, endurance and destruction can be sifely regirded as the characterstie of any real thung Its reahty is made known to us by its capacity to perform some functions Thus everything in the universe undeigoes change and mn the process of change it guns new qualties and loses some of its old quahties But it will be contrary to oui experience to hold that change mvolves complete replacement of a thing by another tling Change always imphes some continity and it is because of this that we are able to recogmse that a thing has changed mto another thing Thus a thing as a whole embodies identity in difference That aspect of a thing wlch remumns constint is called substance A substance without qualties will be an abstraction No one ever has any experience of a quahtyless substance Thus it possesses quilties, some of them are constant while others are subject to

48 A PANORAMA OT INDIAN PHILOSOPHY

change These constant qualties are qualties proper while those that are subject to change are called modes To illustrate the point, a flower is a substance, its colour as such is its enduring quahty, while its specific colour (e g red) beig subject to change is the mode There can be no flower without any colour but a red flower can, by some chemical process, be chinged into a green one The whole universe may be divided into two broad categories of conscious and unconscious subs- tances That which is devoid of conscionsness, which can be touched, tasted, seen or smelt by a conscious substance is called inanimate substance in contrast to the animate substance which knows or feels the inanimate substance Jamsm does not believe that inanimate substance should always have form Accordmngly mnammate substances are divided into two classes There are such inammate substances that have form These substances having form are called matter There are formless substances also and the Jamas regard that there are four such formless substances space, time, the principle of motion and the principle of rest Matter is invariably associated with form and is defined as that which can be perceived by the senses It is an eternal substance, undetermmed with regard to quality and quantity It can assume any form and develop various qualities It is the vehicle of motion The Jamas regard that motion beig mnherent in the matter itself, the material universe is self active and hence no creator is necessary to make the universe

STRUCTORE OF THE UNIVERSE 49

What we percerve is only a gross form of matter which can further be analysed into ultimate components Thus the real matter, m fact, are these components which are called atoms The gross universe is a structure made up of atoms These atoms have no pomts, beginning, middle or end Int other words, they are the ultimate poits which cannot be divided further They are cternal, not visible to ordmary beings But they ean be grasped by the omniscient bemgs whose mention was made in the last chapter Each atom possesses weight, taste, colour, smell and contact The Jaias do not beheve that there are different kinds of atoms having specific qualities of their own Each atom occupies one pomt of space and is endowed with motion Atoms vary according to the variance in the amount of qnality. Thus one itom may be predommnantly viscous and the other may be dry These quahties of atoms are subject to change One atom attracts another atom and through this process of attraction an aggregate comes into existence We have seen in the last chapter that karma attracts fine material particles that abound in space These particles also are material The changes in the physical umverse are due to atomie aggregation and disintegration

When atoms are regarded as endowed with motion, space becomes necessary Thus space is another substance having two types Atmospheric space 18 meant for the movement of atoms found in this universe and there is a space beyond which is the abode of those hberated souls who are released fromt. 4

50 A PANORAMA OF INDIAN PHILOSOPHY

suppressing karmic particles Space 1s defined as that which is obstructed by one indivisible atom Space by itself is not a condition of motion and rest therefore 2 third substance is assumed to be coextensive with space wlnch makes movement possible This principle of motion pervades the whole universe and is regarded as continuons and extended Itself bemg unaffected by movement, it conditions the movement of things that can move It is regarded as the neutral condition of motion, so that various atoms combine together and an order is mamtaied It is thus the medium through wluch things move but mn itself it does not move nor does it force other things to move, because things have their own motion within themselves Space therefore is not the cause of motion The principle of rest likewise is the medrum through which things capable of moving come to rest It is also a neutral condition of rest and not a cause of it These two principles of motion and rest are the connecting media binding together "the chaotic crowd of isolated fragments" into an ordered whole Time is another substance which pervades the universe Successive movements are umfied in time and changes are the effects of it Time is the only substance which Is devoid of magmtude Thus matter, space, principles of motion and rest and time these five substances, according to Jammsm, constitute the mnanimate universe

The animate substance, the soul, 1s different from five manimate substances described above There are mfinte souls possessing knowledge, perception,

STRUCTURE OF THE UMIVERSEL, '13 ¥51 power and bliss. Except in final liberation from the bondage of matter, a soul is always in contact with matter. It is distinct from body and persists through- out all changes. We have already discussed the nature of soul according to Jainism in the last chapter. It is very difficult to explain the views of the Buddhists on the structure of the universe because they are intricate and very elaborate. However, here I shall try to give a simplified version of the view of one of the Buddhist schools. We have seen that the Buddha was against any such view that propounded the existence of some eternal thing. This has been disenssed at length while explaining the theory of Dependent Origination. When we make a distinction between a cause and an effect, we ordinarily believe that to a certain extent both are identical. But this assertion of identity between a cause and an effect leads to the absurd position that although the matter remains the same yet it undergoes change. How can we say that change is possible without accepting that there is some actual thing to change ? Likewise, there may be another view which may totally reject the identity between the cause and the effect and maintain instead that the effect is entirely a new creation whichdid not exist before. This view could lead to a chaotic picture of the uni- verse since in that case anything could be the cause of anything else. Hence the Buddhists,following the logical implications of the theory of Dependent Origination, came to the conclusion that so far as the change in the universe is concerned it can never be

52 A PANORAMA OF INDIAN PHILOSOPIY

denied There is real change but at the same time this change follows a law, it is not haphazard Thus the effect was regarded as that which is conditioned, for its existence, by the preceding thing, which can be called its cause Effect is not a continuation of its cause nor is it totally dissociated from its cause Having ths cansal theory in mind the Buddhists tried to examine the nature of reahty Let us first of all start with the Buddhist conception of reahty In our experience we find that water is real when it quenches our thirst Bnt if some thirsty man drinks water in a dream his thirst is not quenched This instance provides us with a elue to the definition of reahty A real thing in oppostion to something unreal, would be that which is capable of yieldmng some meamngful result This should be the test of realty But mn order to produce some effect, a thing has to change We cannot conceive of any mstance where i thing does not change and yet some result is produced This imphes that the capacity to change imparts realty to an object But what is it that makes change possible ? Some one may come forward with in easy solution and say that a person or anything endowed with the capacity to affect change may do the job as we find in everyday hfe But this would be gomg agamst logic This view presupposes that change m a thing is not mherent in it , it is imparted to it But if a thing by its own nature is static, it cannot be forced to change its own nature That which goes on changing its essential nature can never be regarded as real No one can

STRUOTURE OF THE UNIVERSE 53

change a flower into a pot You can talk about a child, who is not yet born and hence unreal, some- time as being black and sometime as white m colour But you cannot have two opinions about the colour of a real child, because in imaginary object may change its colour as many times as you lke but not a real object Thus change in a real object means that the object itself is endowed with change No external agency imparts change to it Therefore m Buddhism reality is always said to be a changing realty There cannot be a break in the continuous change because that would again mean that a thing which is by nature changing ceases to be so at times If change is the nature of a thing, it continues uninterrupted as long as the thing lasts But here a crucial pomt arses There cannot be any change unless there is something that changes Hence change being the property of a thing would be different from the thing itself, as colour of a flower 1s different from the flower The Buddhists repudiate this view by mantaining that there is no difference between a substance and its attributes Pecuhar though this vien may seem to be yet this is the logical outcome of the Buddha's demal of any permanent subs tance If there be a substance, distinct from qualities, then we should find at least one such qualityless substance But we cannot even conceive of a substance which has no colour, taste, smell or sound yet whch can be regarded as real Afterall what 1s a thing ? It is nothing but the sum total of its qualities Thus if no substance is to be found apart from its qualities

54 A PANORAMA OF INDIAN PIDILOSOPHY

better say that quahties themselves are real and. substance is only an abstraction Combined with the theory of universal change, this view yields the famous theory of momentariness propounded in later Buddhist schools A change without any changing substance is there fore the mark of reality Accordingly everything that we experience or we can conceive of as real is changing every moment Moment is the least part of time that is reqmired for this change to take place Everything therefore undergoes constant internal change but the change is so swift that it cannot be grasped by our senses Thus what we actually perceive 18 a static thing but its internal change can be mferred when the effect of it is accumulated and mantfest enough to attract our ittention We see that a plant grows up or a table begis to show the sign of age It is because it was constantly undergomg change Thus reality has two facets in itself it is constantly changing but it appears to be static But if there 18 no permanent thing persisting amidst change, how do we find identity in the thing ? If, in other words a thing changes every moment, it is something new which has nothing to do with its preceding moments In that case we cannot recogmse the thing as the same The Buddhiats give an answer to this question in the light of the theory of Dependent Ongination as outlined above It is wrong they say to assume that a change is disconnected The fact is that according to the theory of Dependent Origination every succeeding moment Is

STRUCTURE OF THE UNIVERSE 55

conditioned by its preceding moment In this way although every succeeding moment is different from its preceding moment yet it is similar to its condi- tioning preceding moment Similarity is not the same as identity and the Buddhists deny identity m any form Such a momentary, chang'ng, discrete, parti- cular entity being beyond our comprehension is called simply as the thing m-itself or the pomt-instant, in contrast to that which appears to be static which is called thing-m-general

There may, therefore, be innumerable series of things-in themselves, as many as there are individual objects The unverse therefore is really in constant flux Here no relation is possible because to have any relation we require two things that remam constant at least one moment prior to any relation is mstituted But no such constant things are available Thus ths view of umiverse reduces the universe to discrete, changing particulars Body and mind, soul and matter, all things that are available m this universe without exception, are momentary But owing to our incapacity to visualse the umverse in flux we see static things in place of dynamic realty, we find a creator where the change is inherent in the thing itself and so on In short, the universe as we see it is a product of ignorance Thus, according to the short account of the Buddhist view on the nature of the universe given above, it ean very well be imgined that the ultimate constituents of the universe are these things-m- themselves There may be subjective pomt-mstants

56 A PANORANA OF INDIAN PHILOSOPHY

or there may also be objective ones. When due to conditions a particular series comes into existence we say that a thing is born and when owing to the ex- haustion of those conditions a series dries up, we say that a thing is destroyed.

This dynamc vew of the universe has been challenged by many schools of Indian philosophy but the school which came forward with an elaborate theory of its own on the point, needs special mention. The Vaisesika school claimed that its account of the structure of the universe is a better explanation. Let ns now briefly survey the theory of this school. There are two ways in which we can proceed with the analysis of the universe. We may start witl analysing our knowledge of the univeree and show that since in knowledge substance and quality are given simultaneously, substance may either be an aggregate of its qualities, as the Buddhists say, or qualities may be appearances of the substance, as the Vedantins say. But if we start, not with the analysis of knowledge, as knowledge may be found to be too abstract, but with the analysis of language, wherc our knowledge gets a conciete form, we may approach very near to the position that the Vaisesikas have adopted. Thus taking the language as the mirror of reality, we can say that in language we make a fundamental distinction between a subject and a predicate. The subject in a sentence stands for that about which something is said by the predicate. Thus when we say "The flower is red" we have made a distinction

STRUCTURE OF THE UNIVERSE 57

between the flower and the red colour that it has Similarly, we can sav that "The train is moving" where we have made a distmction between the tram and its movement We cinnot use the word "fower" or the word "tram" without saying something about them Similarly we cannot use words like "red" or "moving" without any subject Thus, our language makes a distmction between a subject and its predicate On the model of langnage we use for the purpose of communication, we can safely conclude that there must be corresponding distincttons m the universe Suppose there is nothing corresponding to a sentence in the universe In that case the sentence is regarded as conveying a filse idea But every sentence that we use cannot be false Therefore that unversal structure of the language used by us will be an index to the objects of the corresponding world

Categories introduced by the Vaisesika system are therefore called as "the sott of things referred to by words" Thus, to begu with, this sy stem, against the Buddhists, mamtams a distmction between a substance and its quahties Substance is always denoted by the subject of any sentence and therefore is the foremost category Qualities are indicated m two ways m a language Certom qualities are statio whereas others indicate the change of position of the substance The former is referred by words like "red", "smell" and so on while the latter is always indicated by a specml part of speech called verb Static qualities may be called simple qualities while dynamic qualities may be called iction

58 A PANORAMA OF INDIAN PHILOSOPHY

We may use general words hke dog, man, colour, moving and so on to mean universal objects or we may use particular words to mean, say, 1 particular man or a particular colour or a particular mode of moving Thus, again, we may have universal substances, quahties or actions as well as particular substances, quahties or actions Again, in language itself we use certam symbolie devices to indicate the reltion that the subject has with other parts of speech in a given sentence Thus when we say "a man is bald" or "a man is moving", we are indicating some relation by the word "1s" that exists between balduess or movement and the man Similarly, when we say "Jeff is a dog", we are assuming a simlar relation holding between the particular object called Jeff and a class mndicated by the word dog Thus there must be a separate category of this type of relation that relates a substance with a qualty or with action , that relates a particular with the umversal

Thus, after the language we use, the Vaisesikas proposed an inventory of six categories, viz substance, quality, action, universal, particular and the specral relation called mherence Later on a necessity was felt to include a seventh category called non-existence in accordance with the use of language having words that mean absence of something Substance is defined as the one wlich contams qualty, motion, universahty and partioul=ty. It

STRUCTURE OF THE UNIVERSE 59

some of them exist mn the form of aggregates as well as parts, others are unanalysable Thus earth, water, fire and air, as they are perceived by us, are analysable into finest atoms The ultimate component of a whole which ex hypothest cannot be further analysed is the basic component The whole is a combination of these atoms Atoms of carth have the specific qualty of smell, those of water have the taste, thosc of fire have form and those of an have touch Thus unlike the atoms accepted in Jainism these atoms are qualitatively different Agam, these atoms do not possess inherent motion, therefore they cannot move of their own accord Thus in order to be combmned they stand in need of a mover Therefore in Vaisesika a prime mover or God is necessary who can set them into motion at the time of creation Similarly sucli an active agent would be necessary for their dissolution No such mover or destroyer is necessary in Jainism or Buddhism because for both these schools the principle of movement is inherent in atoms or pomt- instants. These atoms are regarded as eternal They are never created They exist in space and are invisible to ordmary beings They have no magnitude in the state in which they exist in isolation from each other. But when they begin to combmne, they become visible The process of atomic combination is very mteresting. First two atoms combine At that stage these combinations of two atoms are not visible When three such combined atoms unite together then they get a form which is the mimimum required for the perception of an atomic combination

60 A PANORAMA OF INDIAN PHILOSOPHY

It is not necessary that atoms of water may, for example, combine only with those of water A cross combination of atoms is possible A whole is desig- nated as belonging to earth or water or fire or atr according to the predomnance of the atoms of a particular kind Thus muddy water is water as long as it retains watery appearance, but it becomes earth when atoms of earth form a major part of the substance The fifth substance which is non atomic in nature is the ether which is supposed to contain sound as its qualty Ether is one, indivisible and all pervading substance and it should not confused with another substance called space It is also all pervasive and one though appear to have divisions like east, west and so on The space along with time is the instru mental cauce of all produced things Time also like space and ether is one although appears to admit of divisions into hour, day, year, etc Space deals with coexistence and time with successions Mind and soul are the two other substances The existence of a soul is inferred from the fact that consciousness cannot be the qualty of a body, sense organs or mind Consciousness therefore is the quality of soul which also has pleasure, pam, desire, aversion, vohtion and knowledge It is said that as long as a soul is associated with these qualities, it is in bondage When it gets liberation it becomes entirely free from any qualty Even knowledge, pleasure, consciousness, etc do not euist in a free soul There are infimte number of souls and are associated in the state of bondage with bodies A soul comes in-

STRUOTURE OF THE UNIVERSE 61

contact with the external world through mind which i8 atomic in nature Thus mind can attend to only one thing at a time Therefore a soul becomes aware of something one at a time Mind is not conscious but it comes in contact with senses and reports a pariteular sensation to the soul When mind is not in direct contact with a soul, the soul is not aware of anything The contact of mind with soul is the primary con- dition for any awareness to arise in that soul One soul has one mind and this combination continues as long as that soul is m bondage Soul and mind both are eternal Thus, in Vaisestka we hive earth, water, fue, ur, ether, time, space soul and mind these nine substances There are twenty four qualities, which abide in substances and themselves do not possess any quality Those qualities that belong to two or more substances are general while those residing only m one are specific Lnke qualtics movement also abides in substances and is transitory We group together things that exhibit common features, classifications of objects are done on the basis of class characteristics Thus every individual human being is called man This system bebeves that cach individual carries with it its class charac- teristic as well Thus every mdividual man is both in individual and has the general humamty mn him Individuals may come and go but this generahty or the universal remuns unaffected It is one for one group but is regarded as present in many One and the same humamty is present in every human being

62 A PANORAMA OF INDIAN PHILOSOPHY

and when a man is born or when some individual dies the universal humaity remains unaffected It has as much objective realty as the individual has The Buddhists who believe in the reality of discrete changing particulars alone will reject unversals

In contrast to universals particulars are many, as many as individuals Each mdividual is distmnct from other mdividuals of his own class, by virtue of particularty in him which separates him from anything other than himself But mn the Vaisesika system it has an additional sigmficince far as visible bodies are concerned we can make a distinetion between one body and another by other means But atoms are not visible and we have seen that the atoms of earth, for evample, have all the quality of smell in common How will then one atom of earth be different from another atom of earth ? In order to maintain that every atom is distinet from very other atom, the Vaisesikas introduced the category of particularity

Relations may be temporary or permanent Temporary relations are mcluded in the category of quahty But a special kind of mseparable relation, called mherence, is given an independent place in the schema of categories This relation holds between a substance and its qualty, between a substance and movement, between i part and a whole, between a universal and an individual belonging to that universal and between an atom and its particularity This relation also has an objective reality

STRUCTURE OF THE UNIVERSE 63

Thus we have surveyed a very wide field of Indian philosophy rather hurriedly. Of course much of the problems discussed here are out of date now. Modern science is far advanced and nobody can go against the findings of the sciences. But one should not forget that all the sciences in the west also had their beginnings somewhat like those views that we have discussed in the present chapter. There are certain historical reasons that retarded the growth of scientific investigations in India. Otherwise every one acknowledges that ancient India had made valuable contributions in the fields of mathematics, astronomy and chemistry. Decimal system and the introduction of zero, for example, are beyond doubt Indian inventions.

CHAPTER V]

THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE The analysis of the universe as presented in the last chapter may be regirded by the people brought up in modern scientific tradition as mere speculation We are taught that any thing which is said with regard to the nature should have the support of observation and experiment Sciences are based upon perception and deductive or mnductive reasoning There is no scope in science for such assertions as are supported only by some authonty, seriptural or personal We have noted m the case of the Buddha that he cham- pioned the cause of the scientific method of mvestigation in unmistakable terms We also know that in those days laboratories were not known and laboratory- techniques were not evolyed and perfected Thus even if a person wanted to test the vahdity of any hypothesis he had only to go to the laboratory of nature Thercfore what has been said mn the last chapter is based not merely upon the imagination of vanous authors but has also a support in the nature as observed by the people of old days Thus to show that i puticular theory is based upon volul proot, it besame necessazy to fnd ozt the conditions under which our knowledge becomes valid In this way a separate branch of Indian philosophy developed and we shall see that under this branch epistemology and logic are mncludcd and developed to a very high perfection Indian logic, as 18

THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE 65

wellknown, can be compared with my other system of logic developed anywhere in the world No body can deny the possibility of knowledge Let us take it for granted that knowledge is a given fact It is now open for us to ivestigate mto the fictors tht go to make knowledge and condtions that are favourable or otherwise for knowledge In this chapter I shall confine myself to the problems that concern knowledge m general I will deal with some important types of Lnowledge m three following chapters When 2 person is sud to know it is assumed that what he knows is vald Let us say that validity goes along with knowledse There can, therefore, be notlng which is mvald knowledge On thus basts a distinction may be drawn between knowledge and such mental states which do not amount to know ledge For example when a person is having sensations but is not sure of the nature of the source of ths sen sation he may be said to hive sensations alone When a person is having some ilusion, he may be said to have only some cognition and not knowledge Bucruse to say that a knowledge may become invald later on ivolves contmidiction In other words,

tion what we call as knowledge is free from any contrade Thus we have two broad drvisions of menta' states that which is open to correction and that which remans v ild for all time to come It is only the second one that can be called knowledge But it 1s extremely difhcult at times to judge whether a particular mental state is knowledge or

66 A PANORAMA OF INDIAN PHILOSOPHY

not. How am I going to say that my awareness of a person sitting over there is knowledge or not ? Ordinarily we could have said that if the person res- ponds to my calling, he is a real person and hence my a wareness of him amounts to knowledge. But exactly this is what forms the subject matter of epistemology and logic. What procedure should we adopt to see whether a piece of information is kowledge or not ? Verification is one such method bnt there may be many more. Now, leaving aside the complicated question of the validity of knowledge for the present, we may start with the assumption that knowledge is valid and see what Indian philosophers have to say about the con- ditions under which knowledge arises. In every knowledge a duality of subject and ob- ject is involved. There must be a knower who knows and there must be some object which is known. In the absence of any one of the two we cannot have knowledge. But it is not a question of duality alone but something more than mere duality is wanted. There must be a relation, a sort of contact between the two. Thus the minimum requirement for knowledge is that a knower must come in contact with the ob- ject. Thus while discussing knowledge we have to discuss the nature of the knower, the nature of the object and the nature of the contact between the two. All the Indian thinkers believe that knowledge being a conscious process must belong to a knower who is conscious. But the problem of consciousness

THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE 67

is an intricate problem All of them agree (with the only exception of the Carvaka school, whose views are given above) that body is an abode of con- sciousness and cannot be said to be endowed with it This fact is proved by observation Suppose, some part of a body becomes a defective, will thereby con- sciousness also become defective correspondingly ? The answer is in the negative Similarly a body may evist but there may be no consciousness as in the case of a person who funts This very reason rejects the claim of sense organs also to be called as conscious Now let us examme whether mind can be regarded as conscious There are difterent views about the nature of mind According to the views of the Vaisesika plulosophy, as previously mentioned, mind is atomic in nature It is a material substance which means that m itself it is unconscious Its atomic nature is inferred from the fact that it cannot attend to more than one object at a time Moreover, it remams intact when a person is mn deep sleep, but no con- sciousness arises even if something comes mn contact with our body Thus mind may be a condition for the manifestation of consciousness but in itself it can- not be conscious The Buddists have thei own views about con- sciousness and mind For them consciousness is not a separate entity from mind But the Buddhist concept of mind is more complex than the Vaisesika concept of it Mind is not an mndrvisible entity If we analyse our mental acts we find that it has a tinge of materiahty. It has fechng, perception, mental

68 A PANORAMA OF INDIAN PHILOSOPHY

dispositions and will, and lastly the reason A group of these five is designated as mind These are more or less functions and as mental activities they do not have isolated existence Feeling is a mental awareness and has the three qualties of being pleasant, pamful and neutral resulting from the contact with the objects of senses Perception is the faculty that recogmses general relations This is responsible for distmct cognition Mental dispositions include a host of in- tellectual, affectional and vohtional tendencies and affect synthesis and induce a person to act Reason comprehends abstract contents of a given cogmtion It comprises the distinct consciousness of what 18 transmitted through various sense organs and dis- crimmnates between good, bad and indifferent All these together go to make one whole consciousness and it cinnot be sud that among these which comes first and which next This group of five functions, which are held together and are changing constantly, is the consciousness proper mn Buddlusm Whenever there is a knowledge, all these functions come into oper- ation The school does not accept any permanent mind or soul as a discinct conscious entity. This view, as is evident, follows the Buddha's demal of a permanent soul But with the exception of Buddhism and the Carvaks all the other schools of Indian philosophy unammously regard that mind beig only an instru- ment of knowledge cannot be sud to possess cons- ciousness Mmd is more or less a specril kind of sense organ which acts as an intermediary between the

THE PROBLEH OF KNOWLEDGE 69

conscious soul and sense organs Thus, according to them, it is the soul, a distmnct entity from mind, that has consciousness and it is the soul which is the real knower There are two views about the relationship be- tween the soul and its consctousness The schools like the Vaisesika which msist upon mamtaining a distinction between a substance and its qualities, assert that consciousness is only a qualty that must reside mn a substance and therefore for them knowledge 15 the special property of the soul, just as colour is the property of an objective body But schools like Samkhya and Advarts Vedanta do not agree with the view that consciousness is a quality or property of anytlung It is a substintil entity itself and soul is another name for consciousness Thus m Indian philosophy we have the following four prominent views wbout the real knower viz (1) Bodv or the senses are the real knowei, (2) a conglomeration of five func tions is the knower, (3) the soul as a substance is the knower, where knowledge is its qualty and (4) the soul being the sime as consciousness is the knower With regard to the nature of objects of knowledge much has been sud in the chapter V Objects of knowledge can be placed under two broad groups objects that exist outside and the objects that exist in the mind But there has been a controversy re- garding the nature of objects themselves To a man unmnitnted m philosophy objects will appear to exist independent of the knower A man in the strcet will regard an approaching car as something which exists

70 A PANORAMA OF INDIAN PHILOSOPHY

i space and time But philosophers are experts in creating difficulties It may be pomted out that the evidence for an independently existing object is furmshed only by our mind If I do not see that there is a car approaching or for that matter if no body has any knowledge of the car will that car be regarded as existing ? The only evidence for the existence of a thing is that it is known to someone But, agam, what does someone know about an object ? Evi dently he knows about it as reported to him by lus sense organs or by his mind As illusions, hallucma tions and dreams are well known phenomena of life, we can say that our senses or mind may report falsely What is the criterion that distinguishes an objct ex perienced m a dream from another experienced mn waking lfe ? Someone may come forward and say that the objects in a dream are unreal because one does not find them when one is awakened, whereas mn waking experience it is not like that But it mry be rephed that as long as a dream lasts whatever is experienced m a dream remains real and the dreamer has not even a shadow of doubt about its realty Similar may be the case with objects that we experience in waking life Who knows what we call as waking life is another long dream ? Thus it is concluded that since we cannot go beyond what our mind reports to us and smnce we are well aware of the fact that mind is capable of crenting tlings where they do not exist, objects cannot be said to possess their own reality apart from the mind perceiving them But, as we have observed m the beginmng that dualty of subject and object is essen-

THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE '

tial for any knowledge, according to this view also although the mind creates an object yet it makes a distinction between the knower and the mind which appears in the form of objects. The champion of this view is called as subjective idealist and we have Vijnanavada school of Mahayana Buddhism, which supports this. There may be a controversy with regard to the nature of a really existing object also. Let us agree with the commonsense realistic view that the objects we experience have a reality of their own. But we are justified in asking whether we know the objects as they are in themselves or whether we know them as we are. The answer to this question will lead us to en- quire into the conditions that are necessary for know- ledge. If we refer back to the Buddhist view of reality as point-instant (see Chapter V), we are apt to con- clude that for these Buddhists the real object of know- ledge would be a changing, discrete particular. But the question is: do we really know such an object when we are said to know an object belonging to the universe ? Really speaking our usual knowledge of an object presents a coherent picture; we know that object as a mass, not as a heap of particulars. In other words, we know it as a unity. Similarly we know it to be stable and not in the state of flux. We know, again, that it is an individual having cer- tain qualities and belonging to a class. Very often we also know the name of that object. Now these Buddhists will say that stability, unity, associntion with qualities, class-characters and names

72 A PANORAMA OF INDIAN PHILOSOPHY

are all created by our mind They do not actually belong to the object itself As our mind is mncapable of knowing a bare particular devoid of all relations, it ascribes its own imagmation to that particular and knows it in its own way This would mean that the object of knowledge is not the same as it is known to us But if we change our concept of knowledge and try to assert that Anowledge should be mn conformty with its object, we get two views about knowledge itself. The real knowledge would be that where there is a pure sensation of momentary, discrete particulars unalloyed with the crentions of mtervening mmd But in a secondary sense we may call that state also as knowledge which knows an objeot as havmg class- characteristic etc Thus these Buddhists would accept- two kinds of knowledge although the object is only one The Vaisesikas and the Jaias have accepted the reality of an object as it is known to us Thus according to them an object possesses real qualties, class-charao- teristics, real relations and so on Hence our knowledge of objects as they appear to us is a real knowledge But they do not deny the contributions of our mind in knowledge For example, the Vaisesikas would say that we know an object as possessing certamn characteristics but to recognise these characteristics as belonging to our past experience the function of the synthetic faculty of our mind is also required Similarly, when a person knows something, he asserts that he knows it Knowledge and assertion of know- ledge although go hand in hand but they are two dis-

THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE 73

tinct things Mind is the factor which joms them to- gether Thus for the Vaisesikas also the mid plays an important role in knowledge bnt it does not inter fere with the objectrve content of knowledge The followers of the Advaita Vedantr school have a special view about the knowledge situation We shall see later on that for thie school the universal, distinctionless, non dual consciousness alone is real They deny the fact of dualty in real knowledge They say that a person in deep sleep, for example, remains undisturbed by the impact of objects It appears that at that time there is no awareness But when a person arises from his slumber and says mn a reflective mood that he slept undisturbed, he thereby imphes that he had the awareness of his peaceful, undisturbed consciousness during the period of deep sleep Thus to be aware does not always mean to be aware of something Therefore, according to their stand point about reality they proclaim that real knowledge consists in beig aware of one's own self m such a way that the trace of dualty vamshes This is possible according to them by becoming one with one's own soul which is nothing but the unversal consciousness called Brahman But when we have awareness of the sulject-object duality we are not ac tually knowing the reahty re Brahman, but some thing other than Brihman wlich possesses dualty This durhstie knowledge would, for them, be a know- ledge by courtesy The Mahtyana schools of Buddlusm would also subscribe to such a transcendental view of knowledge where all the traces of duahty vamsh

CHAPTER VII

THE NATURE OF PERCEPTION Perception in ordinary language means the direct kowledge of the objective world It is direct in the sense that of all the modes of knowledge here alone reality is given to us with the least interference of mind and mental creations But, as we have seen, even ths knowledge cannot be the knowledge of reality as it is in itself bechuse it will involve some functions of mind But there are two schools whuich propose some exception to this rule The Jamas, thinking that mn terference of mind is mevitable mn any perception, regard perception as an indirect or mediate mode of knowledge They say that even in perception proper realty is known through the medium of mind and sense organs, therefore it is not immediate knowledge of realıty We shall see towards the end of ths chapter that for them immednte knowledge of realty is possible in a different way wluch is called by a different name The Buddhists, whose views we have outhned pre viously, propose that since perception means the direct knowledge of reality, it should be the parest knowledge where realty is known as it is in itself Hence perception for them would be a knowledge which is devoid of all the interference of mind All the other schools of Indian philosophy think that media tion of mind and sense organs which is mevitable and hence common to all forms of knowledge, must also be present mn perception Therefore for them ordinary nsage about perception is a correct statement

76 A PANORAMA OF INDIAN PHILOSOPHY

The Nyaya school of Indian philosophy accepts more or less the Vaisesika conception of reality but its important contribution hes in its huighly elaborate and logical formulations of the theory of knowledge The other school, Purva Mimamsa, is also concerned with the theory of knowledge I shall discuss here the Nyaya Buddhist and Samkhya theories of per- ception The minimum requirement for perception to arise is tht the object should come in contact with sense- organs No perception can take place in the absence of sense object contact The Buddhists therefore think that perception should contam only an awareness of realty as it is in itself What is not given by the sense object contact is external to it Thus, for example, ordmarily we see an object as belonging to a class An object, say a pen, is known not only as a particular object but it is also known as belonging to a class of objects which has innumerable particulars m it, having sımilar characteristics These particular objects belonging to a class have also a common name Now let us see whether the common characteristie of particular objects said to belong to a class is really the same in all the par ticulars of a class What we find in our experience 18 only a particular because our dealings cannot go with universal things, even if there be any I can write with a paiticular pen and can talk to only particular individuals I cannot write with a universal pen nor can the universal man hear me talk We do not come acorss universal objets But it is a fact that various individuals hive some property m common'

THE NATURE OF PERCEPTION 77

( is it that only a particular object is called as pen and not any other ? The reason for this is that each par- ticular has a property which is simtar, though not identical, with the property of other particulars We wrongly assume that all these particulars have one common class characteristic which we cill as un- versal The red colour of tlus flower is not identical with redness of other flower, but we mistakenly tlunk that the same redness is present mn all red tlungs And because of this wrong approach to objects we give one name to all these objects that exhibit smilar properties The use of one word for mnumerable different prticulars may be helpful for commumca- tion but this should never lerd us to suppose that since one word is used for all these mdividuals, there- fore all these must have one thing mn common The Vaisesikas, as pointed out above, committed tlis mis- take when they started with the analysis of lnguage and wrongly assumed that the langunge beig the mirror of renlity the analysis of language would give us a correct analysis of objects meant by it Therefore class characteristic, use of common words and so on are creations of our mind and thev being imnginary should not be supposed to belong to objeets Hence when we perceive an object for the first time, before the mtervention of mind, that should be the correet perception Thus real perception for these Buddhists would be a bare awareness of exteinal reahty Such awareness cannot be expressed in words and also cannot be fully apprecmated but at the same time it cannot also be

78 A PANORAMA OF INDIAN PHILOSOPHY

demed Suppose we deny such a perception of reahty as it is in itself, the result wonld be that perception would be without iny object We have previously referred to a school of Mahayana Buddhism which demes the existence of any objective realtty If we accept the view of this Yogacara Vinanavada school we shall not be able to account for variations in per- ception owing to vriations in mture When a blue object is presented then alone I get the perception of a blue colour, when it is removed I cease to have that perception In the absence of any real object, mdependent of the perceiving mind, I should have the perception of a blue object at random But it is not so Therefore objective reference which 18 essential according to the school of Buddhism, wlnch we are discussing here, is provided in the form of pomt instant Thus perception in this case will mean an awareness of renhty as it is in itself and there is no other means available to us to know that realty On the other hand when we have an aware- ness of an object which ein be expressed in langugage and the object is presented as having class charac teristics, in other words, when we have articulate knowledge having full contributions of mind, we should not be said to have perception That know ledge being indirect knowledge of realty may be called inference Thus this school uses the word perception for mere awareness and inference for any other mode of knowledge The Nytya school is opposed to the Buddhist view of perception as outlined above This difference

THE NATURE OF PERCEPTION 79

is due mainly to the differences with regard to the nature of reality accepted in these two schools. We have said that the Nyaya school agrees with the Vaiseșika so far as the theory of reality is concerned and we have outlined the Vaisesika view of reality. A reality is a substance or a quality or movement and all these are composite entities having both universal and particular elements in themselves. Thus a pen, for them. is a particular pen having a parti- cular colour and it also contains the universal penness and the universal colour in it. Thus when there is & perception of a pen it will be perceived as a parti- cular pen having universal penness etc. Since un- iversals are as much real as particulars for this school, our frll-fledged perception of reality presents the true picture of reality. With regard to the question about the reality of universals this school argues at length against the Buddhist view that universals are constructions of our mind. Had the universal been only a creation of mind, without any objective reality, how could we, they argue, invariably point to an object as a pen and not something else ? How could all the people call that particular object by the same name and understand the same object when the word 'pen' is uttered ? To say that this can be explained by maintaining that this empirical faot is due to simi- larity of characteristics rather than due to any common factor, is to beg the question. The basis of similarity is identity. Two things are said to be similar because they have some one thing at least in common, while

80 A PANORAMA OF INDIAN PHILOSOPHY

otber thngs in them may be different This flower is different from that flower not only because they both occupy different epaces but also because each one of them may have its own pecuhar frangrance or colour and so on But still there is something which compels us to call them both as flower Thus m spite of differences they are said to be sımılar because there is one fact present in common Simı larity means identity m spite of differences Thus the element identical in all the individuals belonging to a class and thereby distingutshing the mndividuals of a class from those of other classes, must have the same status as the particulars have

It is already pomted out that according to Nyaya Vaisesika an object is 1 complex entity, It is a sub stance having attributes movements universal, parhcnlar and relations Thus when we have its perception all these are perceived In a fully deve loped perception we shall know a substance, which is the primary category, as possessing all the other categories But there is a common rule that governs all our knowledge of an object which is qualified by something The rule is that mn the case of a know ledge of an object quahfied by some characteristics, prior knowledge of both the object as well as the qualifications that it possesses is necessary Thus to know a red pen we must first of all know the red colour and the pen separately If any one of the two is not known previously, we cannot have the knowledge of red pen as one unt This rule apphes to our perception of objects also Hence when we

THE NATURE OF PERCEPTION 81

see a pen, we see at least that particular pen as quali- fied by the universal pen ness Hence to perceive a pen we must perceive fust the particular pen and the umversal penness separately and only subsequently we must observe them as connected together Ac- cordingly the Nyaya school says that full perception is complete in two stages At the first stage all the clements of an object are viewed separately and at the next stage only we view them as related Per- ception therefore is complete at the second stage The perception at the first stage is called mn- determmnate because it is the outcome of the direct impict of an object upon our mind and soul Smnce relations among vmious elements percerved in an object have not yet been discovered, this perception cannot be expressed in words It will be like the perception of a chld who has not yet leaint to express his ideas in words At the next stage when the inherent relation among various elements of an object is also discovered, we have the determmnte perception The determinate perception is no less a case of proper perception than that of the indeter minate one It may be of historical mterest to note that the Nyaya conception of indetermmnate percep- tion is an outcome of the Buddhist conception of perception as given above The most important point which draws a clear line of demarcation between the indeterminate and the determinate perception is the role of past experi- ence in the determinate perception which is laclung mn the former In the case of the mdeterminate per-

82 & PANORAMA OF INDIAN PHILOSOPHY

ception one sees an object and also its universal, both as disconnected After that the past experience is revived A person remembers that when this object with tis universal is given, the word "flower" 18 used and as soon as he says, even in his mind, "This is a flower", lns perception has taken a determinate shape The role of sense organs is the essential feature of all perceptions Accordmg to Nyaya, an object being a complex entity its contact with senses also is a complicated affair Thus we sec a particular substance, then the universal class to wlnch that particnlar substance belongs Simuarly we see the qulity of that substance and then the special feature of that qualty may also be percerved To illustrate the pomt, I see a tling moving on the road, and also I see that it belongs to the class of things called. 'motor-car' I may also see that the car has a colour and I also may find that the colour is crimson Sımilar may be the case with movement Thus there may be various kinds of contact between a sense organ and an object depending upon the nature of the tlng that comes mn contact with a sense organ There are six such contacts described by this school It is clear now that for the Nyaya school per- neption is always m the form of a judgment wluch asserts the existence of a thing, whereas for the Bud- dhists such in assertion does not constitute the nature of perception But both these schools agree that perception winch amounts to a kind of knowledge should be free from illusions, in other words, what

THE NATURE OF PERCEPTION 83

we know in the form of perceptual knowledge should not be at varance with the object This is necessary because perception being a kind of knowledge must have essential validity The Samkhya school about which we have not yet said anything so far, occupies a promment place among the systems of Indian plulosophy In view of its importance from the pomt of view of its meta- physics and also from the pomt of view of its very valuable contributions in the form of the analysis of man, I shall devote two chapters (X and XI) to this school But as we are concerned here with the problem of knowledge, it would be proper to present the views of this school also, wluich we shall find, are Inghly interesting But before we proceed with the subject, let me give a very brief account of its plnlosophical position by way of background for ou discussion that will follow This school beheves that the whole umverse is divided mto two groups , viz, the group of conscious beigs and the group of unconscious objects Every conscious bang is essentially a knower but bemg a spiritual entity devoid of any form, it cannot move or act On the contrary, unconscious matter has the power to move because movement is mherent in it but is not at all conscious Both these come together somehow but one can never actually mnfluence the other Every hving being has a body, external sense- organs, consciousness ealled Purusa and the internal

VI A FANURANA UF INDIAN PHILSUrY

organ which has three states, namely reflection, identi- fication and determmation When an object eveites a sense, the faculty of reflection arranges sense impres- sions into a percept The percept then is identified as belonging to one's own self by the faculty of identi- fication Finally, the faculty of determmnation, also called intellect, forms a concept Intellect contams the impressions of the pist expenences and it takes the help of these impressions whle umting a percept with a concept But it should be remembered that all these three faculties do not possess consciousness, therefore although they can function yet they cannot know Final knowledge arises only in consciousness Since consciousness cannot come in direct contact with object, the Samkhya school proposes a peenhar theory of modification and reflection The intelleet while forming the concept out of sense-impres- sions gets itself modified according to the nature of the object The modificition of the intellect is always of the form of the object This modified intellect is reflected mn consciousness ie Purusa Purusa knows, thus, the object through this modi- fication Thus for the Samkhya, perceptual know- ledge cannot be the direct knowledge of an object as is the case with the Buddhists Thus far I have tried to explun three prommnent vews with regard to the nature of perception AlL the other schools more or less accept one of these views with some modifications Owing to paucity of space, it is not possible for me to discuss other views here But I propose to say a few woids about

THE NATURE OF PERCEPTION 85

a special type of perception wluch is not ordmarily regarded as perception In the absence of a better word I shall call this as the yogic perception We have seen that for pereeption to arse, contact with an object is essential But some Indian pinlo- soplcal schools recogmse that those persons who have attamned some spintual power due to yogic practices are capable of knowing tlings that are far removed from them m space or time Jamism recognises that a person possessing some spiritual power can know directly the things that are even at a distance of time or space Although this knowledge is mcluded among those types that aie called yogic knowledge, yet it bemg of an mferior type is lable to error But it should be iemembered that a person possessing tlus knowledge perceives things drectly A more advanced yogin gets the power to know the thoughts of others directly A yogin who has attamed emancipation and possesses infinite knowledge and perception knows anything ind every tling without any sense-contact In the Nyaya school also we have a place for yogic perception which may occur without any contact with object Here a distinction is drawn between the perception of a yogmn who is on the path to perfection and that of a yogin who has achieved yogic perfection To the former, perception occurs when he concentrates and to the latter it occurs automatically The Buddha was agamst the display of mraculous powers but from the records of his life we can say that he did certamly possess this power of yogic perception The

86 A PANORAMA OF INDIAN PHILOSOPHY

later Buddhists howaver formulated the theory that the Buddha was an omniscient person. Therefore Buddhism as a whole can be said to accept the possi- bility of perception without a contact with the object. The Samkhya system said that the mind of the yogin can come in contact with the past and the future objects. It may be noted that in yogic perception the objects do not come in contact with sense-organs but the mind of the yogin remains active and due to various disciplines it acquires the power of coming in direct contact even with those objects that have been destroyed or those that are not yet born. Simi- larly it can come in contact with such objects as exist now but at a distant or invisible place. Such objects as are not casily visible to our senses, like the atoms, the thoughts of others and so on, also can be perceived by these yogins. Although these yogic perceptions are in a sense mental perceptions yet they are unlike ordinary mental perceptions very clear and vivid. Sometimes, it is said, yogic perceptions may attain such a high degree of clarity that our ordinary perceptions cannot possess. To a person educated in the tradition of modern materialistic science the conception of yogic percep- tion would appear preposterous; but it should be remembered that the psychic phenomena are now-a+ days being gradually recognised and we hear even some scientists uttering the words telepathy, clair- voyance and so on, although in a subdued voice. Ancient India was well-advanced in the field of

THE NATURE OF PERCEPTION 87

`psychical researches and it can even to-day contribute its mite to that field We have only to investigate into the mysteries of mind with the help of Indian yogins and the books on yoga and try to find out ourselves whether such facts are possible If a person without having any experience of yoga tries to condemn the claims of yoga, he is the most un- .scientific man

CHAPTER VIII

AUTHORITY OF SCRIPTURES AND PERSONS I ought to say something about inference, one of the most important topics discussed m Indian epistemology and logic But I shall excuse myself for this omission on the ground that this being too techmcal a subject requires elucidation and brief statements about inference may create more con- fusion than enlghtenment However, I had an occa sion to say something about it while discussing the views of the Carvaka school and I can only point out that except the Carvaka school no other system of Indian philosophy denies the efficacy of inference as a means of knowledge But it is evident that mference cannot give us the direct knowledge of realty because of its very nature In mnference we pass on from sometlung percerved to something not directly presented to us on the strength of the mvari- able connection between the perceived and the m- ferred This connection should be such that the resultant knowledge that we get remams infallible Thus any sort of connection between two things will not give us vahd mference, when two things are re- lated as cause and effect or when one is mncluded mn the other then alone the mnference of one from the other is possible Inference is to be taken as a combination of psychological process with the reasoning faculty of mind How we mnfer depends upon the kind of

AUTHORITY OF SCRIPTURES AND PERSONS 89

mind that we possess. First we make ourselves sure about the workability of the inference and then, if there be any nced, we use the inference arrived at by ourselves to convince others. The forms in which we arrive at an inference need not be the same as the form in which we use it for others. Thus we have two sides of inference: inference as we arrive at for ourselves and inference that we express in a formal language. Almost all the schools of Indian philosophy accept these points. Just as inference is a knowledge of reality not given directly, similarly words also give us indirect knowledge. But the verbal knowledge as an inde- pendent form of knowledge is a topie of great con- troversy among Indian philosophers. Many schools deny to words the status of being an independent source of knowledge. Those who do not accept words as the source of knowledge try to show that verbal knowledge is a kind of inference. Others who. contest it try to show that this cannot be included under inference. No body can deny that words do convey some information. But whether the information conveyed by them amounts to knowledge invariably is a matter of dispute. We are familar with instances where words are used to mislead people. No person can verify whether the information conveyed by a parti- culai set of words is correct with the help of words themselves. Some other proof is necessary for this purpose. For example, we ean ourselves go and check the facts referred to by words or can examine the

:90 A PANORAMA OF INDIAN PHILOSOPHY

trustworthiness of the person who uses words. But very often both these methods become ineffective. The nature of information conveyed to us may be such that it may not easily lend itself to verification. Suppose a statement says that a person doing good deeds goes to heaven after death. We cannot verify this statement because this will be possible only when a person dies after doing good deeds and comes back from hcaven to report. But nobody comes back from heaven to report the authenticity of the above statement. Secondly, the source from which a statement originates also may not be open for being scrutinised as trustworthy. Thus if there is a statement recorded in old books without mentioning the name of the person who made that statement, we cannot say that the statement in question has come from a trustworthy person and thus its authenticity remains undecided. Moreover, if I make a statement, how will you decide whether it is trustworthy ? You will think that I have no intention of misleading you, that I am in the habit of speaking truth, that I know my subject and so on. On the basis of these assump- tions you will conclude that my statement is trust- worthy. But such a kind of decision is not easy to arrive at. How will you decide that a merchant in the shop quoting the price of a piece of cloth is trustworthy, unless you are familiar with his private life ? Thus the question about the trustworthiness of a person making a statement is also not easy to decide. Beset with all these difficulties, some schools of Indian philosophy, notably Buddhism and Vai-

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Sesika, have rejected the clamm of words beig in- dependent sources of knowledge But nevertheless they think that very often the authenticity of a state- ment can be inferred from the knowledge of the character of the source from which a statement issues

The school of Nvaya tries to controvert the views of the Buddhists Their main contention against that view is that the nature of knowledge derived from words is different from mferential knowledge When, for example, we mfer the existence of fire from the perception of smoke, the inferential know- ledge depends upon the natural relation that evists betweon smoke and fire In the case of verbal know- ledge the relation between a word and the object for whch it stands bemg dependent upon convention is artificial Thus the Nyaya school thinks that words are mdependent sources of knowledge The sense m which this is an independent means of knowledge is that it derives its authenticity from the trustworth- ness of the speaker A rehable person is he who, "having had direct proof of a certain matter, desires to commumicate it to others who thereby understand it" He is regarded as a specialst in his field One goes to a doctor and believes his words because one is convinced that the doctor has special knowledge of the subject Thus from this pomt of view verbal knowledge ultimately depends upon the drect experi- ence of realty, but since everyone cannot have the drect experience of certai facts easily the state- ment of those who have that expenence is as good as the direct experience itself

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So far as the statements about the visible world are concerned we can rely upon them and proceed in practical life accordingh But there is a body of such statements that are about the mvisible world In this case we do not have easy access to tlus fact referred to by them If a statement says that a man gams heaven by vntues, how are we gomg to beheve in this ? The Nyaya however says that such state- ments about the mvisible world should also be under- stood in the same way as we take the words of a doctor The only condition is that the person making such statements is known to have the experience of the invisible world Thus the statements collected mn the Vedas are reliable because they are made by such a person whose autlority it would be impossible to challenge The Vedas have been composed by God, and. God by definition knows everthing under the sun It can easily be seen that the existence of God becomes imperative for this school to impart authen- ticity to the statements of the Vedas And it is interesting to see that the emstence of God can be known better from these texts God is a member of the mvisible world and in order to show that the Vedas are true, we have to accept that there is an author of these Vedas, called God, who is also mvisi- ble But how to prove the evstence of God Imsell T The school says that the existence of God can be proved by infcience and verbal testimony may not be re- quired to prove lus existence There must be a creator of this universe, otherwise mactive atoms cannot combine to make the visible world Thus first of all

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we have to prove the existence of a creator God and then we may regird that God is the creator or the author of the Vedas also There is no scope for doubting the words of one who having created every- thing of the world knows its visible and mvisible aspects and thus he is the highest authority on all the subjects For tlis school therefore the statements made by ordmary persons may be trustworthy be cause of their special knowledge and statements about invisible matters may be trustworthy because God, the ommiscient, has made them But when there is a conflict between the statement made by a human being and that made by God in the Vedas, naturally the statement of the scripture will be more relble than that of a man This view is based uponthe simple faith aided by reasoning If somehow we can prove against the existence of God or if we have no faith mn God, the Vedas will have no authorty for us The Buddlusts or the Jamas do not beheve mn God, therefore they also cannot beleve in the supposed words of God, ie, the Vedas God as the author of the Vedas is necessary from the pomt of view of the origm of language Words are symbols and the things for which they stand are associated with them by convention How is the word 'cow' associated with that particular object ? Certamly some person in the beginning must have comed that word and have sud sometlung hke "let now onwards the word 'cow' stand for tlis parti- cular animal". People following him must have

94 A PANORAMA OF INDIAN PHILOSOPHY

imitated him and in this way the convention started. The Vedas give us a description of the beginning of the world. When men were not created, who wit- nessed all that went on before the universe was made ? Even when the universe was made who gave the speech to all those beings who were created for the first time ? Verily that must be only the creator and the conven- tion about language was started by him and preserved in the form of the Vedas. This implies that the Vedic language was the language made by God and was used by the group of persons created for the first time on the earth and finally, the knowledge contained in these books is the divine knowledge. The Purva Mimamsa school of Indian philosophy is the chief exponent of the authoritative character of the Vedas. It does not believe in the existence of any supreme God as the author of the universe or as that of the Vedas. But it advances arguments in support of its theory that the Vedas are cternal and supreme sources of knowledge. Curious though this theory may sound to us who are brought up in the tradition which sees the hand of an author every- where. But millions of Indians even to-day believe that the Vedas are eternal and no author has composed them. The Vedanta school also agrees with this view. Therefore from the point of view of the im- portance that this theory carries in the Indian tradi- tion, it becomes necessary for us to cxamine this view in a somewhat detailed fashion. Words are the units of language. Sentences are made of various words combined in different ways.

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Meaning is also primarily found in words When a person uses a word, he does it effectively because words are inherently powerful to mean A word is capable of meaning anything but in usage it meins some one thing because its potential unhmited power is confined by convention The very existence of convention with regard to the use of language suggests that convention about the meaning of a word can start only when words themselves are eternally endow- ed with the power to mean Words are made out of letters and these letters represent sounds We cin very well see that sounds are subject to produc- tion and destruction but they all ean be represented by letters One and the same letter or one and the same combmation of letters (word) can be uttered at different times or by different persons at the same time. This means the real word or letter is one while it my have infinite manfestations Thus, words that we write or hear are only mamfestations of one single word Thus, words are eternal and have eternal capacity to mean Let us see what this school has to say about the nature of mening We have seen that a word has the unlmited power to mean but tlus power has any signficince only when it is specified and confined to some one object The position of the Pürva Mimamsa school on this subject is very clear When- ever a word is used it means the uuiversal and not particulrs When we sy "Bring a man", we do not mein a particular being but a bemg who possesses the features of man If particulars are denoted by

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words, the generic ideas like "man" wonld be im- possible We have seen that universals are bound to be eternal therefore the meaning of a word as well as its denotation both are eternal Now, having this general theory ibout words and their meanmg in mmnd, we may consider the view about the Vedas We have seen that the convention is needed to particularise the potentially evisting universal power of meaning in words Such words as ire meaningful because some human convention is known to have restricted their meaning may refer to things by the force of convention associated with those words But what about such words mn the case of which no origin of convention is known to us from any source ? The question assumes added signifi cance when we find that a host of words are used m such a text which talks of things which by the nature of situation cinnot be conceived to have been associ ated with those words by any convention The Vedas tell us about the result of actions that we per- form Who can see that the actions do actually produce the promised result ? The result which is said to follow the performance of an action is not yet in evistence It comes into existence only when the action in question is performed At the time when words are uttered, there is no object to which it refers , therefore convention it that time is ineffective Tike a concrete evample The Veds sys, "Speak the truth, vou will get a place in heaven" Tirst of all this sentence does not describe aything It being an imperative sentence simply asks to perform

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an act to get a particular result Convention is ne- cessary to connect a word with an object so that when that word is uttered the object associated with it is understood Here there is no object when the word is uttered, so that meaning here will be only a universal meaning which does not refer to any- tluing and therefore non-conventional Some persons may say that although the meanmg of the sentence as a whole may not be found and for that convention may not be necessary, yet individual words in that sentence do have therr meanings and those meanings certamly depend upon convention Thus the word 'truth' in the sentence means some specific thing, it 18 not any thing that can be called truth It has a fixed connotation The reply that the Mimamsakas give to this question is that there is no historical evidence to show that the Veda as a whole, out of which the above sentence is quoted, was composed by any bemg, human or divine Had it been concervable that some person composed the Veda, the question of convention would have been relevant But why is the Veda not a creation of any person ? First, the Mimamsa system mamtais, there 18 no record to show that any person wrote the Veda. The person mentioned in the Vedas have been called only as "seers" and not as authors God as a person, as accepted in the Nyaya system, cannot be its author because beig a person he will be linted m bis capa- cities as other persons are handicaped by their per- sonal limitations If we accept God as the author, the Veda cannot be the mfallible source of our know- ledge Human beings also cinnot compose this text

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because they are far more handicaped than God would have been So there is no author and no con- vention associated with the words used mn the Vedas Then, it may be asked, how the words in the Veda mean a particular thing and not anything, as they are said to have unlimited capacity to mean ? The answer which this school gives is not very convincing It is asserted that the words in the Veda have natural power to signify one and only one thing, in other words, their meaning-power is confined to one particular thing not by any convention but by the mherent nature of these words This amounts to saying that the words found mn the Veda have natural association with specific objects whereas words used and comed by human beings have no such inherent power, they mean a particular thing because of convention This is an arbitrary decision which shows the bias for the scripture which does not derive its authorty from some person or convention but its authorty Is natural If we care to study the texts compiled under the name of the Veda, we shall find beautiful descriptions of nature, histonical events, anmals, persons and so on But this school, in order to prove its point of impersonal nature of the Veda, says that descriptive part of the text is secondary , the primary part being that which is in the form of injunctions or prohbitions The reason for this approach is mentioned above A factual descriptive statement is meaningful only when corresponding to such a statement there is a fact and the statement presents it faithfully This will

AUTHORITY OF SCRIPTURES AND PERSONS 99

require a person who has seen the fact in question and thus he must be a person existing in history Therefore the admission of factual statement will make the Veda non eternal and man made So the Veda 1s supposed to contam only such sentences as by their nature do not require any verification Injunctive statements alone are capable of doig the intended job They are primarily meanmgful but their mean ing does not depend upon any person as shown above , it is natural It seems more plausible to hold that the Vedas are impersonal because they state eternal truth, as the Advaita Vedanta school accepts This school does not beleve in the theory that the Veda contains only mnjunctive statements as primary Its view Is that the knowledge of the Supreme Reality, Brahman, is the primary purpose of the Veda Action and the result thereof are transitory because action mvolves time and whatever originates mn time is bound to be transitory But the Veda itself tells us about the basic identity between the mdividual and the Brahman, therefore its mam purpose is to make an individual realse this identity Knowledge is not action, it is revelation Thus the Vedas basically describe Brahman and its mtegral identity with the individual An individual does not know this m- herent identity, the Veda helps him in knowing it Its mam purpose is therefore the removal of ignorance with regard to the identity Being the repository of this eternal truth, it is a text which cannot be composed by any person

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Our survey of various views about the nature of the authority of a person or a scripture as propounded by various schools of Indian philosophy has shown that so far as the visible world is concerned, every- one regards words as the source of knowledge, Some schools like Buddhism and Vaisesika think that words are the sources of knowledge because they give us a clue to infer about the nature of reality. Other schoola recognise words as independent sources of knowledge. Some of these people regard that the Veda is the final and independent authority in the case of things invisible. On this point also there are two opinions as mentioned above. The Nyaya school thinks that the authority of the Veda depends upon its omniscient author, God, while Mimamsa upholds the view that the Veda by its nature is the supreme authority so far as religious matters con- cerning the other world are concerned. But one fact is to be noticed here. Buddhism does not believe in any scripture or God. The Buddha himself was against the acceptance of any authority. Similar was the case with Jainism. These schools arose, as some scholars believe, to controvert the supreme authority of the Veda. But when the founders of these schools died and their followers began to pro- pagate the views of their masters, they found that in matters of dispute or doubt the final authority of appeal was the words of their masters. We find great Buddhist scholars quoting the words of the Buddha as authority when some opponent has raised doubt about their interpretations. Later on in order to show that Buddhist or Jaina ideals of life or their

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.conceptions about the final release are the only true ideals and other views are perversions, they felt it necessary to designate the Buddha or Mahāvira as omniscient persons. This shows that even these schools could not remain aloof from the influence of the craze for an authority. Whether a school accepts a scripture as an authority or whether it accepts the words of a person, who is regarded as an ominiscient being, as final authority in matters that concern invisible world, does not make much difference. It simply shows that no philosophy which goes along with any religion can stand without the support of an authority either in the form of a scripture or in the form of a person.

CHAPTER IX

VALIDITY OF KNOWLEDGE

In the VI Chapter I had mentioned that knowledge is distinguished from other states of mind because it is valid and certain. But I did not elaborate this point there because to say something about the validity of knowledge first requires understanding of the nature of knowledge. Therefore I first considered the general characteristic and conditions for knowledge and then discussed some of the modes in which knowledge is acquired. We have considered perception and in- ference. In both these cases we have seen that Indian thinkers were always trying to avoid the possibility of any error or doubt that may creep into knowledge ..

Error in perception is possible because of many factors. It may be due to some defect in one of the sense organs. This defect is casy to discover and to avoid. Error may also be possible due to bad ex- ternal conditions like the absence of sufficient light in the case of visual perception. If a person overlooks this deficiency and makes judgments, he is liable to be mistaken in his perception. One should avoid hasty conclusions and be careful enough before taking any step. But the type of error which results due to some defect in our capacity to judge is the most di- fficult one to be discovered. But this also should be avoided in order to have clear perceptual know- ledge.

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The common feature of all erroneous perception is to mistake a thing for something else When, for example, 1 person happens to see a snake where there is actually a piece of rope, he simply overlooks the features of rope and in haste does not bother to pay enough ittention to the object present before hm Thus m error, similarity between the object actually present and the object erroneously seen mn its place plays a very important role A piece of rope cmn be mistaken for a snake and not for an clephant because the piece of rope resembles more to a snahe than to an elephant But when we come to the question of examining the nature of thing that appcars mn erro neous cognition we find different schools giving di fferent explanations These explanations are more or less in conformity with their respective metaphy sical stand pomts Some Buddhists, who thuink that everything found in this universe is non existent, think that the snake also is non existent but appears to have existence because of our ignorance Another school of Buddlsm recognises that the external reahty is only an appea- rance of consciousness and therefore holds that the snake of the example is only our consciousness One of the two promment sub schools of the Purva Mimam sa system holds that in cvery erroneous cogmtion we have two things one 1s given, eg a piece of rope and another is imigined by mind, eg snake When error due to similanty between the two arises we fail to notice the difference between the two and tluink that the imagmed thing itself is present before our

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eyes Thus the thing which is imagined is real in another place and at other time but its reference to its actual space and time is overlooked ind recogmsed as being present in the present place and time The actual object, namely the piece of rope, is of course present here and now Although both of them are real, yet in the case of error we fail to recogmse the distinction between the two This view therefore says that error les m non diserimmation and both the things involved in error are real The Nyāya school holds that all error is subjective When error is sublated, what is set aside by knowledge 18 our wrong apprehension and not the object In error our cogmtion fails us Instead of appearing as a piece of rope, our cogmtion appears as that of a snake, The actual object present before us remains the same one object but our cogmtion mislends us It is true that snake is real but it is not present at the same place or time when a person has erroneous cog mtion Thus fer this school error is the apprehension of an object as other than what it is The Advaita Vedanta school basically agrees with the view of Nyaya but proposes some modifications about the nature of the thing cognised m erroneous cogmtion The snake is not absolutely unreal because it has its realty in some place and at some time It is also not real with reference to the place and time when erroneous cogmtion arises Being something which is neither absolutely real nor unreal, it cannot be described m definite terms Hence although error consists in apprehending an object as other than what it is, yet

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the object thus apprebended is indescribable from the point of view of its reality. We shall have an occasion to consider the view of this school in details. Thus all the schools of Indian philosophy arc unanimous on the point of the elimination of error from perceptual cognition. They all think that in perception, reality should be known to us as it is, in itself and not as something other than what it is. Every definition of perception takes this fact into con- sideration. But now the question is that error being a product of our conscious mind cannot be easily detected, what procedure then should be adopted to weed out or detect the possibility of error ? Here, again, we have different views. To start with the Buddhists, who regard reality as point-instant, consider that reality of objects as they appear to us is an imagination of mind. According to this view, every cognition of the objects of the world would be invalid in so far as there are actually no such objects over and above momentary point-instants. Real perception, as we have seen, being mere aware- ness cannot assume definite expression and definite cognition cannot represent a true picture of reality. Hence left to itself, all cognition is invalid except the awareness of bare reality. But there is a way in which even this invalid cognition of objects may be turned into a valid knowledge. That cognition which enables us to attain the object cognised amounts to uncon- tradicted knowledge. Here it is assumed that the cognition which leads us to successful action becomes valid knowledge. Validity therefore is workability

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of a cognition. According to this vicw cognitions in a dream also should be valid because a person taking water in a dream or making love with a lady accom- plishes some result in the form of satisfaction in that dream. But it should be remembered that cognitions oan be valid not merely because they lead to some result but they arise because of our contact with reality. In a dream we do not have this contact ; hence inspite of successful action cognitions of dreams do not turn out to be knowledge. Thus according to this view, that cognition is knowledge which possesses practical efficiency. The view of Nyaya on this point is very important. There must be a relation between our cognition and the reality of which we have cognition. Cognition is a quality of soul while reality exists in the external world. The relation that holds between the two is a sort of natural relation. The object of cognition is not something physical nor is it something mental. It is the character of the object which is known to be real. But in this case we shall also have to say that this object thus known also must have attribu- tion of existence so that a distinction can be drawn between an object experienced in a dream or illusion and a real object. But we may not easily distinguish the character of an object which really exists from that of an object which may display some character which really does not exist. Unless this question is solved, our cognition will not amount to kncwledge. Vali- dity of a cognition therefore can be discovered sub- sequently by testing it with the help of certain practi-

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cal procedures Therefore a cognition, as soon as it arises, is known nether to be valid not to be invalid If it were valid by itself, there would have been no possibility of doubt Thus validity of a cognition 18 known by making an appeal to facts

Practical efficiency is accepted by the Nyāya school also but there is a difference between the Nyaya and Buddhism about the role of this efficiency We have seen that in Buddhism practical efficiency makes a cogmtion true But the Nyayr holds that this is only a test which can make the validity already in- herent in the cognition, known There should be q distinction between a valid cognition and the cogmtion the validity of which is kncwn Unless the validity of a cogmtion is known by means of practical effi- ciency the person having it will regard it merely a hypothesis whose valdity or invalidity he does not know This knowledge of the vahdity of a cogmtion comes from an mnference that we make after the cog- mtion has been verified Thus, when I see a glass of water placed on the table I am not sure whether my cognition of the glass of water is valid I just approach that table, lift up the glass and drink water contamed in it My thirst is satisfied From this I mfer that the cognition of the glass of water that I have is vald As soon as this inference is made the cognition becomes knowledge Cognitions may be vald or mvald in themselves but their validity or mvalidity will have to be discovered from some other source This source, in the form of practical efficacy, does not impart validity or mvalidty to our cognition, as the Buddhists

108 A PANORANA OF INDIAN PHILOSOPHY

hold, it only makes validity or mvalidity, as the case may be, already present in the cognition explicit When knowledge is said to be valid on account of practical efficiency we presume that valdity of know ledge depends upon its correspondence with the real world and its knowledge depends upon its practicality In this way this school beleves mn correspondence theory of truth The truth of our statements depends upon thenr relations to facts and the relation is held to be one of agreement or correspondence which we infer from the working of our ideas The system of Purva Mimamsa holds a different view about the problem of valdity Unlike the Nyaya, this school believes that every cogmtion, as soon as it arises, is known to be valid Cogmition and validity go together This is true even in cases where cogn tion turns out to be erroneous When a person has the illusion of a snake, lns reaction is to fly away from the scene This shows that the person took for granted the validity of his cogmition Thus a cogm tion may be either valid or invahd in itself but it is always known to be vald Still, mn order to avoid the confusion between illusory cogmtion ind veridical cognition the school upholds that although a cogmtion is invariably known to be vald yet in order to make it knowledge, its valdity should be confirmed Practical efficiency serves the purpose of confirming the validity or rejecting it as the case may be Thus any cogni tion is imtially known to be vald but may turn out to be invald on account of its practical inefficiency Every cogmtion due to one of the recogmised modes of

VALIDITY OF KNOWLEDGE 109

knowledge is to be regarded as valid so long as there are no special reasons for doubt. Practical efficiency in this school serves only as an external test of validity; it does not give us the inner nature of cognition. The very conditions under which a cognition arises will prevent the birth of a cognition if there is doubt or uncertainty. For example, when we see something which is quite unexpected, which does not conform to the knowledge that we already possess, we shall not allow our percept to get the status of a definite cognition. Thus in this sense when a cognition (along with its validity) arises, we presume that it coheres with what we already know. Truth, in this theory, assumes the form of coherence and not correspondence with reality as the Nyaya school believed. The main idea underlying this theory is that the act of cognition itself brings its validity and hence resultant cognition is known to be valid. But the relation of cognition with the objective reality is some- thing different from cognition itself. On the one hand we have the contact of senses with objects, on the other hand we have the mental act of producing cogni- tions out of sense-impressions. Now the question may arise with regard to the relation between a cognition and the object of which it is a cognition. On this point we have different opi- nions represented by two masters of this school. Historically the system is divided into two sub-systems or sub-schools. According to one of the two sub- systems, led by Prabhakara, knowledge reveals itself

110 A PANORAMA OP INDIAN PHILOSOPHY

as well as the Anower and the object known There is a direct knowledge of the knower soul m every cog mtion but the object may not be directly known But when an object is known directly by means of sen ses, the form of the object is mamfested Therefore when we have a knowledge of an object, we also know the object as having a form, this form itself cannot be the fabrication of mind, it is the contrbution of the object to our knowledge and it is known in the same way as knowledge is known The other sub systems has Kumanla as its champ ion He does not agree with the view of Prabhakara who says, as pomted out before, that knowledge 15 self-luminous His contention is that every act of cogmtion imples a certain relationship between the perceiver and the object perceived by him This relation is known to us by mental perception, as one knows pleasant or unpleasant state of his mind Consciousness relates the soul with object, and then there is a relation between the cogmition and the object of cognition Since relation between the soul and object can be known by mental perception, the same perception cannot make us know the presence of cog nition as well Kumanla does not bcheve m the theory of self luminous nature of consciousness or cognition as Prabhakara does, one cannot prove the presence of cogmtion on the ground of the manifestation of cogni- tion Therefore, he proposes that in every case of cognition an object is involved and when that object assumes the character of bemg the object of cogni- tion, we infer that there must be a cognition of this

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cognised object in mind. Thus, objects are known through their cognition but the cognition itself is in- ferred. The very fact that an object is always known as cognised is sufficient to prove that the object is indispensable for any cognition. The difference bet- ween his view and that of Prabhakara is that for Pra- bhakara the proof for an existing relation between a cognition and its object is basically provided by cog- nition itself whereas for Kumarila that proof comes from the cognised object.

Here incidentally we may also mention a point which is directly concerned with the problem under discussion. When we say that cognition is self- valid, the verbal form of a cognition will be, "I know a flower for certain". But this will be the form accord- ing to Kumarila. Prabhakara would say, "I know that my knowledge of flower is certain". This difference is due to the fact that Prabhakara thinks that in the very act of cognising the cognition itself also is cognised ; in other words, cognition becomes an object of itself. For Kumarila this is not so because he thinks that some other mental act like inference is necessary to cognise a cognition. For Nyaya the form of a cognition would be: "I am aware of a flower" without men- tioning anything about its validity because in order to know validity of it we have to test it and infer its validity from successful activity. So awareness of the validity of a cognition comes at the second stage, whereas it comes at the first stage with the Mimamsu. Kumarila and the followers of Nyaya agree that our cognition of a cognition is the result of a further

112 A PANORAMA OF INDIAN PHILOSOPHY

mental act "I know' ind "I know that I know"-these are the two different states of mind according to both Nyaya and Kumarilr but they are one aecording to Prabhākar? Thus om discussion of the theories of knowledge as propounded m vanous systems of Indian philo sophy has revealed i fact that any cogmtion cannot amount to knowledge unless it is valid Validity may depend upon practical efficacy as the Buddhists think Validity may be in the cognition but it is known only when it is tested with reference to fact as the Nyay t says Valdity is known mn every cogmtion from the very beginning but it should be for practical purposes, cheched by reference to reality -is the view of the Mimamsa system These general observations hold good for any land of cogmtion that we may have The result of these views is very obvious in the case of knowledge derived from words The Buddhists reject verbal knowledge, because for them tht will be only of practical value, ultimately every tling that we Anow being a creation of mind is invahd The Nyi4 school will regard verbal knowledge is depending upon „its correspondence with realty The Mimamsa school will regard every verbal knowledge to be vilid with out any correspondence with fact There may be possibility of doubt with regard to such cogmtions whch can be referred to the sphere of renlity But the Veda, as we have seen in the last lecture, is prima rily concerned with mjunctions therefore it does not at all deal with realty Hence cogmtions that are produced from Vedic statements are always vald md cinnot grve rise to doubt

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All these discussions about the nature of know- ledge, means through whch knowledge is produced and the vahdity of knowledge belong to that depart- ment of philosophy which is very dry and dull But we have tried at length to have some glimpses of that branch, epistemology, merely to convmnce ourselves that Indan philosophy cannot be said to lack in subtle logical discussions and depth But it should not be forgotten that Indian philosophy does not recognise mental satisfaction alone as the end of philosophsing It is only one of the functions of philosophy The main task of philosophy is to have the realisation of reality, not to know the real but to be real This cannot be done by means of the analysis of knowledge or matter This can be achieved by cultivating that supreme knowledge where the duahty of subject and object is lost The forms of knowledge we have dis- cussed thus far are those where this dualty is inva- nably presupposed When this dualty vanishes and all become one, the analyss of that knowledge cannot be possible nor can that knowledge be doubted by the person possessing it It may be pointed out at the end that while dis- cussing the nature of knowledge we take into account the external world but we completely forget the poor man who possesses that knowledge The knower is more bastc and important factor than the knowledge of the object of knowledge Let us not forget our- selves, who are at the root of everything that goes on under the sun So before we come to the knowledge of the supreme real we should know ourselves and who knows that baving known ourselves nothing may remam to be known ?

8

CHAPTER X THE MAN AND THE NATURE Knowledge and reasoning are but only two aspects of the person He possesses much more than these He feels, he has desires, he acts to attain some goal, he is an enjoyer as well as a sufferer He is at the centre of everything that goes on in this vast unrverse His capacities are so unlmited ind so unpredict- able that no one can form a correct opinion about the potentialty of him It is the person who has discovered the nature and has given meaning to it Progress in the fields of sciences and technologies would never have been possible with- out him Philosophies, religions, theologies, literature, art, in short anything that has been achieved and that will be achieved are all because of this person But it is a pity that we know more about the external world, we know how to break atoms, how to reach the moon and so on but we know little about him who has made all these possible Here we find a clear cut demarca- tion between Indian and Western philosophical systems Plulosophy mn the West has, from the very beginning, been concerned with the knowledge of nature The students of Western philosophy know very well that all the sciences in the West have come out from phi- losophy This shows that their philosophy embodies such elements as are capable of explaming the exter- nal world Even the latest product of philosophy mn the West, what we call psychology, has turned out to

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be more or less an objective science There was some hope in the beginning that psychology will be different from other sciences and it will be concerned with the inner realty of the man, the psyche, as its name su- ggests But the dominating trait of the Western way of thinking prevented it from developing in that direction and made it a science which confined itself to investigations of behaviour of the body Now psychologists in the West ridicule a man who talks of the psyche as a mystic Thus the credit for excessive preoccupation with the external rather than the inter- nal world goes to the matnx of all knowledge-the philosophy In the Orient, particularly m India, we find a di- fferent story told Here plnlosophy has not produced sciences and technologies But philosophy has defi mtely produced real men This has taught us a good deal about the nature and characters of men rather than about the behaviour of atoms Psychology, in its real and origmal sense of a science of the psyche, has developed only in the Orient While the West tells us to know the nature and derive the maximum benefit from this nowledge, the East tells us, in the words of the Upanisads, "Know thyself", and thus derive the maximum henefit out of tlus knowledge of one's self But tis comparison should not make us think that the West has to offer no seope for the "the knowledge of one's self" and the East offers no scope for sciences No such exclusive ideas can be formed The only thing that we can say legitimately on this point is that the Western philosophy is predommnantly

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nature-centred and the Oriental philosophy is primarily man-centred We shall, now onwards, be concerned with the description of man as given mn various systems of Indian philosophy We had occasions to mention the philosophy of the Vedas and the Upamsads and also the plulosophy as taught by the Buddha Now we shall see how these philosophies developed and took shapes of systems One of the systems of Indian phi- losophy, the Samkhya, is primarily concerned with the nature of man and his relation with universe 1t is convement to begin with the system because mn the history of Indian philosophy, this was the first system to come into existence We have Iistorical evidence to show that the Samkhya system was in vogue even before the advent of the Buddha Why does a man want to know about himself and about the nature around him ? In other words, how does a man come to philosophise ? The answer to this question can well be discovered when we try to look deep into the situation of the person A person is placed against nature The person had desires and wants He feels the necessity of satisfying the needs of lus body and mind He is compelled to provide for the needs of those who depend upon him He has social needs A person is born with meeds and throughout his life he goes on working for the satis- faction of huis needs New needs arse and older needs are renewed He does not get time to rest Thus he arrives in this world with needs and finds that the world itself can satisfy his cravings

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He begins to discover from his repeated experiences of the world that certain things of the world do not serve his purpose; they rather cause frustrations and consequently lead to suffering. He calls these things as sources of pain and suffering. He discovers that some other things help him in his mission and give pleasure. He calls them good and desirable. But it is rather difficult to find out what is ultimately good and what is ultimately painful and bad. The diffi- culty is created because of deceptive appearances of things. Eating or drinking or the satisfaction of seve- ral urges is good to begin with. But when it begins to tell on the health of a person he begins to realise that these may not be ultimately good. Thus what is ulti- mately good is not easy to find. But the charm of a thing which appears good to begin with is so great that the man takes them to be good. He is therefore not capable of deciding about the ultimate good nature of any object but he desires in his heart that he should need and try to possess that thing which is ultimately good. The Upanisads say that a person is bound up and being tossed in-between what is ultimately good and what is apparently good.

But a time comes in the life of a person when he correctly begins to seek out that which is ultimately good ; which is not mixed with pain and sorrow. This desire springs up from the shock that a man gets in his life. When a person suffers from diseases and old age, when he has to spend restless days and nights because of mental worries, when he has to face natural calamities, he begins to wonder as to what can be the

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ultimate source of all these sufferings He can find some solace from medical treatments, mental diver- sions and artificial aids invented by scientists and technologists to help a person combat the nature But he soon discovers that these can give only tem- porary relief to him Inspite of the best medicmes persons do suffer, mnspite of beautiful and attractive places of entertainment people contmue to suffer from mental agony and inspite of all possible amen- ties provided by technologists, calamities like earth- quakes and floods do occur All these aids therefore do not provide permanent cure to suffering humanity. Performances of religious rites and prayers also do not lead us very far because religious persons are not exempted from suffering Suffering is universally attached with the existence of man and therefore, mn order to find a permanent cure to this, we have ulti- mately to look deep into the nature of man hımself. Ths alone will provide us a clue through which we can get rid of suffering

But even this basic approach to the problem of suffering is not known to all If everyone was capable of realising that pain and misery could be eliminated by knowing the conditions that support the existence of man, everyone could have become the Buddha .. This approach itself requires an insight, a very keen and sensitive mind The history of mankmnd shows that the world has seen only a few such persons who' really cared to look into the basic problem of suffering- These persons came to realise that the cause of suff ering should be sought not ontside the person , it 18

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infact within the person bimself., They diagnosed the real ailment and then prescribed remedies accordingly.

I have already said about the teachings of the Buddha. The teachings of the founder of the Samkhya philosophy, Kapila, are no less important. He starts with the basic assumption that in this universe there are two basic realties. One cannot be reduced to the other They are by their very nature opposed to each other. Consciousness and matter aie the two reah- ties which are umque in this respect that conscious- ness knows the matter but it never becomes matter itself and matter is known by consciousness but it never becomes consciousness. So, matter can never know and consciousness can never become an object of knowledge. They are placed against each other

But inspite of their intrinsic differences the two are found to exst together In a living body, for exam- ple, consciousness strives to realise its ends through the material body. Body obeys the dictates of con- sciousness But this harmony should not be taken to mean their basic umty. Tlis umty is purposive. Consciousness alone can be the seat of purpose because matter being unconscious cannot be said to possess any purpose in itself. We have seen that man is prompted by his needs and desires and wants to satisfy them. Thus consciousness mn itself cannot satisfy its desires unless it is associated with matter m the form of his body and through this body with other material things. But the laws of material body are different from those of consciousness. A body can move and

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create or destroy another body but consciousness it- self beig spiritual entity cannot move, for any kind of movement requires a material base Thus it is actu ally the body that moves There are clear instances when inspite of best desires a body cannot function according to the desire Its incapacity in that res pect may be owing to its own limitations or certam other conditions beyond its control Whatever be the case, consciousness cannot compel to act because compulsion very often requires the use of force which consciousness does not possess Similarly matter cannot force consciousness to change its basic character of knowing Because the use of force can be exerted by a material thing on some other materal thing, whereas in the present case consciousness is imma- terial As long as there is a harmony between con- scousness and body, between consciousness and the world of matter as a whole, everything goes on smoothly But when there is a conflict between the desire of con- sciousness and the world of matter, it is consciousness that suffers

It will be interesting to have a picture of the conflict that may ensue between consciousness and body I am sitting mn my room and looking at the beautiful moon in the sky Suddenly a patch of cloud comes and obstructs the moon from my view and I feel unhappy about it because I have no control ever the movement of the patch of cloud Take another example, a child wants to have a flower from a tree but it is beyond his reach He jumps up but cannot reach upto that flower He begins to weep, his

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weepmg is due to the fact that his body is not capable of obeying the desire of the child Man has unlimited desires but cannot fulfil all because Ins body or any other material body in the world may not come upto his expectations In short, when a desire crops up in consciousness, it is not necessary that it can be fulfilled because it always depends upon the matter whch may or may not serve the purpose Therefore desire creates tension, worry and unpleasant dissa- tisfaction in consciousness

It is obvious from the analysis given here that the root of all suffering is the contact of consciousness with matter Imagine a person who has seen nothing and knows nothing about the objects of this world, will he still desire to have something of this world ? Such a person cannot desire to have a thig which he has never known before Only if you know a thing, you can desire to have it and knowledge arises from the contact with a thing Knowledge leads us to de- sire and once we have tasted the frut of the world, desire for it goes on multiplying One thing by its association brings another thing within the pale of knowledge and in this way not only desire grows in intensity, it also grows in its volume One ancient Indian sage has said that desire is never satisfied by its fulfilment, it goes on increasing like the fire which is fed by fuel Therefore once a contact with any object in the world has developed in consciousness, it becomes a constant source of desire and worry even if the thing has disppeared Suppose some person loves another person If the person so loved is separa-

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ted from him, the desire for the person does not vanish with separition It becomes a greater source of worry Therefore once a contact with something has developed, there is no end to worries that are generated by this contact

Matter may not obey the dictates of conscious- ness but consciousness often runs after it Cons ciousness expects that matter will respond to lus desire but matter bemg unconscious cannot respond to the call of consciousness This obvious, though lughly sigm- ficant, fact of difference between consciousness and matter, is forgotten by consciousness As a result of this forgetting on the part of consciousness, cons- ciousness, so to say, projects his own characteristic of bemg conscious upon matter and thus expects that as he can respond to nature, the material nature also should respond to his call But in realty this can never happen But as a matter of fact it does happen and the world of sorrow and misery goes on moving because of the wrong identification of cons- ciousness with matter

Just as consciousness projects itself upon matter, simtlarly it also assumes some of the characters of matter I have said that matter alone can move and consciousness itself is inactive But a man of the world will always think that he imparts move- ment to matter Consciousness may have the will to do but itself it cannot act because any act can be performed only by the material body But the will itself like desire is a product of the contact between

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consciousness and matter The history of any scienti- fic or technical mvention can illustrate this pomt. When a desire by chance synchronises with any relevant movement in the matter, the man begms to think that he can make the matter act at his com- mand Newton, the great physicist, wanted to know about the force that attracts a body towards the centre of the earth By chance he saw in his garden an apple falling from a tree This set his imagination working and he discovered the secret of gravitation But when people came to apply his discovery to various practical purposes they began to tlnk that nature can be made to obey their dictates They completely forgot the fact that it is the man who is obeying the nature and not the otherway round Our modern civilisation is called materialistic because we have made our consciousness slave to nature It is not at our command that electricity gives us light but it is at the command of electricity that we have begun to desire its hght When electricity was not discovered nobody wanted to have the electric hght But forget- ting the fact that the electricity is working accordmg to its own law, we begm to think that electricity is made to work or rather it is harnessed to follow the needs of man Therefore the will to do arises in cons- ciousness because of its contact with nature and when some act of nature by chance corresponds to the will, consciousness begins to think that it is he who is making the nature work to his order Thus action of matter is falsely taken over by consciousness This gives birth to egoism in consciousness

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Thus desire imposes consciousness upon nature and will makes consciousness appear as active. But in reality nature has no consciousness and conscious- ness does not possess capacity to act. This distortion of fact, this perversion on the part of consciousness, has only one basic cause, that is, the contact between consciousness and matter. But it is not easy to remove this contact because this contact has burrowed deep into the nature of man. Suppose a person re- tires from the contact with the world and settles in a forest. He may be said to have no contact with matter. But this would be wrong. He is having his body. He cannot get rid of his contact with his body. Moreover, the impressions that he has formed of the things of the world will still haunt him. He will be compelled to remember his past contacts. As long as he is with a body and a mind he is in deep communion with matter. As the Samkhya believes in the theory of Karma and rebirth, it says that even when a man dies, his mind accompanies him to the next birth. Therefore matter in the form of mind is always in contact with consciousness and accord- ing to the analysis given by Samkhya, as outlined above, desires and will will inevitably arise and con- sequent sufferings will not let consciousness to have rest. Therefore a way is to be found out which can remove this contact for ever and there does not remain any possibility of its recurrence.

The prescription given by the Samkhya for its remedy is that consciousness should be convinced that in itself it is entirely different from matter.

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The knowledge of irreducible and uncompromising separation and dualty of consciousness and matter should arise This alone can convince a consciousness that matter can never obey his desires and that in itself consciousness can never act to change the matter accordingly Once this is realsed, consciousness may see the matter but knowing that matter really cannot do any tuing for hum, he ceases to have any desire Thus, desire can be removed not by physical separation of matter from consciousness but by the true knowledge of consciousness and matter This state of desirelessness comes therefore from knowledge and this alone sets consciousness free The Buddha, Mahavira, Kapila the founder of Samkhya and Ve- danta all have mvariably taught us that contact with material world is the perpetual source of misery and the knowledge of one's true self is the source of freedom They differ only with regard to the nature of consciousness and freedom

CHAPTER XI

THE VALUES OF NATURD AND TREDOM

Man's entanglement with nature is a fact which needs no evidence What the Samkhya system has to say about it is the way this entanglement takes place and the way in which this can be removed We have seen that the real thing which distingmisles the material world as a foreign element is the cons- ciousness within man Various mental activities are also regarded as refinements of matter They are matemal in the sense that they are active In the VII chapter I gave in outhnes the Samkhya theory of perception There we have seen that apart from consciousness, which is called Purusa, tlus school recognises three faculties of mind, viz, faculties of reflection, identification and determmnation Purusa bemg the knower knows the objects found in the world through these faculties These faculties are in a way the screens or the glasses through which he sees around His knowledge therefore depends upon the nature of this group of faculties But it should be remembered that everyone has a different set of faculties wlch are distinct in each case My way of knowing 1s different from your way of knowing But inspite of these individual differences there is some common pomt which can be found present everywhere Thus everyone, while knowing something, has the feeling of pleasure or of pamn There are occasions when the

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creates longing for his beloved This illustration helps us to understand that a person is not always constant in his moods These moods cannot belong to cons ciousness because consciousness is present alike mn every experience They must therefore either belong to the object or to the mind The two examples given above show that vanations in our moods are either due to the object or due to the mind It is therefore concluded that the objective world, composed of matter as it is, is the source of these changes m the mood and the mind which is subject to change accord ing to these moods must belong to matter rather than to consciousness Thus consciousness or Purusa is like the lght of the sun which appears as dum, or bright or normal but actually dimness or brightness of the light is not due to the mherent nature of the light itself but it is due to something with which the light comes mn contact The matter which is m immediate contact with Purusa in the form of mind therefore accounts for changes m the light of consciousness

Corresponding to three basic moods of clarity of knowledge, action and dullness, the Samkhya says that the material nature itself possesses three strands of whuich it is composed It is said that matter or nature or Pralrti (these different nmes are used for the sime thing) is composed of these three strands whch are responsible for the apparent changes going on in the universe One of these strands is of the nature of light , it is transparent and therefore is very helpful for knowledge to arise The second strand

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is in the form of a driving force, a power which can move any body The third strand is opaque and is capable of checking the movement and transparency. The third one is in a way meant to arrest the functions of the first and the second Every materal particle contains within itself all the three But there may be dominance of one of these three over others. Now one can very well explam the differences m the personality One who is by nature devoted to studies and intelligent has the element of the first strand mn preponderance One who is by nature active has the abundance of the second and the one who is dullard has too much of the third strand But because these strands are present in every object, one and the same object also may be viewed mn three different lights. The nature, as it is composed of three strands, assumes infimte forms Mental faculties and phystcal objects are all the products of one and the same nature and they all possess these three strands This assertion presupposes a defimte view of causation. The characteristics of a cause, according to this view, are transferred to its effect Whatever significant thing we find m an effect is nothing but a gift to it from its cause In essence, therefore, the effect Is pre exsting in its cause although m an unmamfest form We cannot say that the cause and its effects are identical because that will amount to the demal of the distmct existence of an effect But we have at the same time to assert that the difference between a cause and its effect is only that of form Thus so far as the form is concerned an effect differs from its.

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cause but from the pomt of view of the essence they are one Hence the relationship between a cause and its effect is that of transformation and not that of creation or production As a matter of fact, the Samkhya philosophy does not require any creator to produce objects because, as we have already said, the second strand in the matter is endowed with the principle of action or movement Thus the nature is self moving and it is capable of unfolding itself without the help of any external agency This view is entirely different from the Vaisesika view which, as we have observed, requires movement from outside So according to the Vaisesika system, a creator creates something out of the matter and the thing which he creates is entirely new It did not exist before the creator created it According to Samkhya, on the contrary, mn essence nothing new is created, what appears to be new is the same old stuff m a new form The nature therefore is self evolving and self active It changes its forms according to its own law The universe has evolved from nature and is not essen- tally different from nature With the help of the special theory of causation, explamed above, it 1s concluded that as an effect is present in unmanifest form in its cause, this entire universe being the effect must also have been present m an umsmifest form The real nature or Prakrti therefore should be the ultimate cause of the whole universe and it should be m the unmanfest form According to the theory that the mamfest nature consists of three strands, the unmanifest cause of the manfest nature should also

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have these three strands. But since in the manifest nature we find that one strand dominates over others in the case of a given thing, in the unmanifest nature these strands should have been existing in the state of perfect equilibrium. Thus the original nature, according to this school, is the potential unmanifest mother of the actual manifest universe. The nature is subject to change according to its own laws but consciousness or Purusa is changeless. The nature assumes various forms but consciousness being a spiritual entity is formless. The original nature is one whereas Purusas are innumerable. The nature possesses three strands, the Purusas are free from these strands. The nature is active but uncons- cious, Purusa is inactive but conscious. The two are opposed to each other. Then, how do the two come to exist together and are very often found to exist in harmony? In order to answer this question we have to begin with the account of the evolution of nature from the unmanifest state to the manifest form given by the Samkhya system of Indian Philosophy. The Samkhya account of the evolution of nature from unmanifest to manifest form appears to be the product of the speculative imagination of the founders of this system. But I am of the opinion that this account needs a new interpretation so that it can become intelligible to a modern man. But first I shall give the traditional account of it and then briefly I shall explain how I want to interpret this account. The traditional account of the process of evolu- tion begins by saying that in the beginning Prakrti

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was existing in its unmamfest form where the three strands of it were existing in the state of perfect equlbrum Some Purusa happened to come by its side and the presence of the Purusa, without any effort on the part of him, disturbed the state of equi- hbrium of the strands and the second strand, which is said to be responsible for movement, got upper hand and induced the first strand of mtelligence to come up As a result of this the first manifestation of the unmanfest Prakrti came mto existence Ths first evolute is named as mtellect or the faculty of determination because in it the first strand is domina- ting Once the process of evolution got started, the Prakrti went on evolving according to her own law Thus from intellect there issued the faculty of self assertion or identification and this had all the three strands in it From that aspect of it which has the first strand in abundance, five sense organs, five motor organs and the faculty of reflection come to exist From the aspect dommnated by the third strand five subtle and five material elements came into bemg These subtle elements produced in their turn five corresponding gross elements of earth, water, fire, air and ether Hereafter Prakrti ceases to produce new things because once these elements came into existence, they go on producing things of their own type At this stage Prakrti assumes stereotyped forms and therefore these five elements recreate them- selves in different forms When this process of evolu- tion is completed, the Purus begins to admire the wonderful capacity of Prakrti He now knows,

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-through the mirror of intellect, the entire wealth that Prakrti has to display. Purusa is so charmed by the colourful pageant that he forgets his own true nature and begins to desire to know more and more about Prakrti, wrongly thinking that Prakrti can obey him and also thinking as if it is he who is acting in Prakrti. We have seen that both these ideas en- tangle Purusa in the net of Prakrti, As a result Puruşa begins to have enjoyment and also disappoint- ments. We have already explained (in the VII chapter) how Purusa knows about Prakrti through the mirror of intellect provided by Prakrti. Thus Purusa cannot have the direct knowledge of Prakrti; he knows it only through the intellect and its reflections. His knowledge is always indirect so far as Prakrti is concerned. Thus if the mirror of intellect is clear enough, owing to preponderance of the first strand in it, the vision of Purusa is clear enough. The clarity of Purusa's knowledge will therefoie depend upon the clanty of the intellect. If the intellect, due to excessive activation of the dominating second strand is shaking or moving fast, the vision of the Purusa will also have a panoramic view of the fast -- moving and active Prakrti. This gives him an idea that he himself is moving and doing actions. But really it is a sort of illusion created by the moving reflection in the intellect. If the third strand has the upper hand in the intellect, the vision of Puruga gets blurred and he being unable to see things clearly becomes ignorant and dull. In this way, according to the Samkhya system of thought, Purusa gets

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himself attached to the mtellect and through mtellect he holds fast all that has evolved after the mtellect. When therefore, Purusa the conscionsness, comes to exist with the three faculties of reflection, identifica- tion, and determmnation with sense organs and motor organs and with a body which is composed of five gross elements, he assumes a personality When a body is worn out, the Purusa is taken to another body but death does not separate the three faculties from the Purusa Hence death comes only to a body and not to the accompanying mental faculties,- Therefore the transmigration of Purusa is agam an affair of Prakrti

Actually Purusa does not act, therefore the res- ponsibility for action should not go to him But being the witness of the whole show of Prakrti, he identifies himself with Prakrti and owns the responsi- bility of all actions actually done by Prakrti He is like the general in a military orgamsation who him- self does not go to the battle field but if hs army wins or is defeated, he wins or gets defeated as the case may be This shows that Purusa is not actually bound by Prakrti but due to his wrong mvolvement he feels as if he is bound Thus bondage and its results bemg a matter of illusion for Purusa persist as long as he does not get true knowledge of mmnself and does not recognise the independent existence of Prakrti with wluch he has nothing to do He becomes free from the mfluence of Prakrti by means of the knowledge of his own self Knowledge alone is capable of clear- ing Purusa's vision and making him exist all by him-

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self The ideal of Samkhya is therefore to provide true knowledge of the complete isolation of Purusa from his mental faculties, sense organs, body and the universe Ths ideal is called "the ideal of isola- tion "

I would like to draw the attention of my readers to one or two important pomts The first pomt to be considered is the first contact of Purusa with Prakrti. Purusa is eternal, and being motionless always exists along with Prakrti Therefore ex hypothest there cannot be the begmning of the process of evolution in time. We have to accept the evolved universe as beginning- less Moreover, even if it is granted that in the begin- ning there was a Purusa who came in contact, with Prakrti, we cannot say about the special characteristic that distingmshes that Purusa who came in contact with the unevolved Prakrti There are mnumerable Purusas Why any one particular Purusa may be supposed to have come mn that contact ? Why not any other 2 Let us agree for the sake of argu- ment that some one Purusa came mn that contact, then also we are not out of the difficulty If some one Purusa came in contact with Prakrti, why should other Purusas be affected by that contact ? One Purusa should not be expected to suffer for the fault of the other These difficulties can be overcome to some extent by maintaming that there are as mary Prakrtıs as there are Purusas and one Purusa gets entangled with one Prakrti But in that case the Samkhya system will be deprived of its fundamental position, re the strict view of unity of Prakrti.

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After all we cannot say that the founder and the pro- pagators of the Samkhya philosophy were not serious or consistent thinkers Therefore I venture to suggest that the whole description of the process of evolution may be taken mn a figurative and not in the real sense

Let us take it for granted that there was no time when a Purusa, who is found to be entangled with Prakrti at present, was free from the mnfluence of Prakrtı In fact Prakrtr being eternal and governed by its own laws cannot require anyone to arouse her to function It is ever active and ever evolving The universe is a purely mechanical product But the Samkhya teachers themselves have said that every- thing in this universe is meant for someone other than Prakrti and that someone must be conscious This clearly shows that Purusa is required in this system not as, in any way, a participant or a witness in the actual process of evolution but as a conscious entity who having recogmised the valtte of a product of Prakrti gives meanmng to it A thing possessss itB own intrinsic value, no person is reqiured to impart values to it But there should be the recognition of the value of a thing and I would call this recogni- tion as giving meaning to the values of things mn nature Thus, for me the account of evolution given m the system appears to be an account of the process involved in giving meaning to these values present in nature

The three strands of Prakrti appear to be three broad divisions under which we can place the values found in things of the world Those values that can

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be given meaning only when known or appreciated may be called as intellectual values and belong to the first strand The second group of values come to be recognised only while m action, hence they may be called activitic values But certam values are mean- ingful only when a person, like an opium eater, indulges m it, completely forgettirg lumself, not allowing m telligence or action to mterfere with it Such values may be placed under a separate heading and can be called as values rooted in mertia of mind and body The way in which a Purusa pays attention to these values is related by describing the functions of various faculties of mind Any Purusa before giving meanmng to any value will have to decide the nature of the value that he has come across in nature The three faculttes of reflection, identification and determmation there fore become indispensable in any experience that a Purusa has These faculties become aids for a Purusa in lus understandmng and recogmition of values, but when a Purusa begins to reflect uron reflection, or to identify his faculty of identification or to determine lus sense of determmation, these faculties themselves become his objects We have therefore to make a distmnction between faculties as objects offering values to Purus and faculties as instruments aiding Purusa in lus recognition of values of other things If a Purusa uses these faculties as aids they assume universal sigmficance but when they are presented to him as valuable objects they have sigmficance for a pirticular Purusa Thus we can say that although the nature is one having three sets of valucs, yet

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each Purusa recogmses these values and gets himself in- volved in his own way The way m which he is involved is described as the process of evolution But when a Purusa begins to disown these values, having real- sed their ultimate uselessness, he advances on the path of emancipation Tmally having disowned the values of objects mn nature, he is left with his three faculties of mind As long as these mental faculties are being recogmsed by a Purusa to be valuable, Ins final hbera- tion is not achieved Thus the process of isolation, what is also called involution, becomes complete only when these faculties are also recognised as useless and disowned Thus involvement in and dissociation from Prakrti is nothing but the creation of conscious Purusa I therefore would lke to suggest that the Samkhya philosophy of evolution is only a presen- tation of the way in which consciousness recognises the values of Prakrti and has nothing to do with actual evolution Of course the analysis of nature into three basic strands is a unque contribution of this system in as much as it reduces the whole umverse to be valuable in itself The soul is therefore free when it does not find any value in nature to be recogmsed It is therefore a state of complete withdrawal from the values of nature but may not mean withdrawal from the world itself

CHAPTER XII

LANGUAGE MEANING AND LOGIC A Sanskrit poet has remarked that in the absence of the light of language this universe woul l have been nothing but darkness. This may not be literally true' but its suggested meaning cannot be lost sight of. Our knowledge is largely an accumulated product of informations received from verbal sources. Commu- nication oconpies the central place in the life-history of men. We live because we are able to convey our ideas, feelings, emotions, knowledge and what not to others and also because we receive these from the other end. Language is the most effective instrument given to us to keep on the line of communication alive. There may be many other means but none of them can be so precise and fruitful as language is found to be. I can communicate certain ideas with the help of gestures; but I cannot "talk" about philosophy in that mode of expression. But it would be idle to believe that every problem connected with communication is solved by using a language. It has been found that language creates many more problems which would not have been there had there been no language. Unlike gestures one language cannot be a universal instrument. There is no such thing as the universal language of mankind ; there are languages as there are groups of people. In this way one language becomes the exclusive property of a particular group of people using it. It begins-

140 A PANORAMA OF INDIAN PHILOSOPITY

to acquire emotional affiliations. Once a language becomes linked up with the emotional frame of mind, it tends to create many social, political, religious, cultural and philosophical problems. In India we are facing a political prollem which has its origin in the emotional affiliation of languages. In the past a religious problem of importance was created. Sans- krit being the language of scriptures, it was thought to be the only language which could give rise to spiri- tual merit. Hence other languages were regarde l un- worthy of any religious significance. This idea natu- rally gave a place of prominence to those who used this language with effect. This may be one of many reasons that made the Brahmana caste as the most exalted caste. But apart from these defects a language is found to contain inherent weaknesses. A language may not be so precise as we want it to be. At times it may give false picture of reality and consequently we are very often misled by deceptive linguistic presentations. We may begin our enquiry into the nature of language as explained by Indian philosophers by con- sidering the nature of language itself. The sole pur- pose of a language is to communicate some meaning. Postponing the consideration of meaning for the pre- sent we may simply say that a language by its nature must be meaningful. Is this purpose served by a full sentence or mere words constituting a sentence can do? These questions have been answered in affirmative by two schools of Indian philosophy. The school of grammarians maintains that it is invariably

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a sentence that gives full meanng A word in a sen- tence is only an abstraction, just as a letter is an abs- traction of a word Even when one single word is capable of conveyig full meaning, a full sentence is impled The followers of the Nyaya argue that a sentence is a meanmngful whole, therefore its compo- nents also must be meanmgful Thus the views about the umt of language are guided by respective meta- physical standpoits If a whole is regarded as a structure of mherently related parts then the parts are primary But if a whole is not a structure of parts, If it is a self contamned umt, its parts shall naturally be regarded as abstractions Whether we regird a sentence as an mndivisible unit or a structure made up of parts, we have to show the principle of umty that retais the distmet nature of a sentence A sentence is & verbal expression We find that it can be divided into various "parts of speech" Its unty therefore lies in syntactical rela- tions holding these parts together Any combmation of words does not make a sentence, we can obtam a sentence only when these parts are related according to certam rules If sentence is pnmary, its abstracted parts display that primary umty even though they aro beig considered m isolation from s ntence Thus relation among various parts of speech is regarded by grammanans to be an mnherent and natural relation But if parts themselves umte to make a sentence, their relation would naturally be external and arti- ficial According to the former view, abstracted parts never ceaseto be related, therefore the study ofthe parts

142 A PANORAMA OF INDIAN PHILOSOPHY

of speech is concerned with the observation of the way m which the relation among them is displayed Accord- ing to the latter view such a study is concerned with finding out the laws that make different combinations of these parts meamngful For the sake of a clear understanding of the struc ture of a sentence we divide a sentence into valous parts Indian grammanans are of opimon that the parts of speech can be broadly divided under two categories There are such parts that are name based, other parts are verb based Names and verbs are the two basic paits into which sentences can be analysed But a controversy arses with regard to the primacy of a part over the other Thus the Naryayrhas think that in a sentence the subject is primary, the rest 1s subordinate to it The grammanans and the Mimam sakas are of the opiion that the verb being the primary part, names are subordmnate to it These differences with regard to the primary part in a sentence arise agamn owing to metaphysical preoccupations of these schools Thus having adopted the Varseśika meta physics the Nyaya school has to hold the supremacy of substance If the same view is adopted with regard to language, it yields a philosophy which we have stated above On the contrary, a dynamic view of realty pields a plulosophy adopted by grammarians The school of Mimamsa differs from the grammarians although both these regard a verb to be primary The meaning of a verb is analysed mto action and the result thereof The Mimamsa school thinks that it is the result which is primary while active part of verb and

LANGUAGE MEANING AND LOGIC 143

names are subordinate to it Here again the general standpoint of the school concerned is reflected The Mimmsa being concerned mamly with ritualsm tries to interpret the statements of the Vedas in the light of injunctions and prohibitions A sort of causal rela- tion is accepted holding between an action and a result yıelded by that action An mjunctive sentence there- fore would mean that in order to obtam a result a particular action is to be performed Thus in the light of this explanation the result of an action becomes primary Grammarians have accepted a dynamic view of realty, they obviously advocate the action- part of a verb to be supreme Conditions under which a sentence becomes mean- ingful are discussed at great length by various schools of Indian philosophy A part of a sentence must be an incomplete symbol We can call a symbol mcom plete when it gives meaning which itself is incomplete When in a given sentence a symbol occurs which is Incomplete, the sentence itself will remam mcom- plete In fact a sentence is nothing but the comple- tion of the meaning of incomplete symbols The idea of completion of meanng goes along with compatibi- lity Therefore a sentence can be said to be that expression which has such symbols as its parts whose meaning are incomplete and these parts when united are compatible with each other yielding a complete whole Incompatibility is detrimental to sentential unity Incompleteness and compatibility may be regarded as the two material conditions for a sentence becoming meaningful Proximity of words in a sen-

144 A TANORAMA OF INDIAN PHILOSOPHY

tence, both temporal and spatial (when a sentence 1s written) is the formal condition of meaningfulness Thus when a word of a sentence is pronounced now and other words are uttered after one hour no meaning can be obtamed

While determining the meaning of a word or a sentence as a whole we have also to take into account the intention of the speaker This can be determined by examining verbal and extra verbal contexts in which that word occurs Indian philosophers are unanmous mn holding that language cannot be divorced from its psychological affiliations This view imples. that a language, basically designed to communicate with others, is purposive Even such statements which state bare facts without any apparent intention have been motivated by at least the idea of expressing ıt Mechamcal reproduction of a sentence differs from the actual use of it only on this count Even the structure of a sentence, choice of words in it and very often modulations in its expression depend upon the intention of the speaker The use of passive voice instead of active voice or the use of a particular word out of varous other words expressing approximately the same meaning can be explamed only in the light of the intention working behind them Moreover, we can as well infer the presence of some intention from the analysis of a given sentence There are differences of opmion with regard to the nature of meaning itself The word 'artha' in Sans krit is an ambiguous word For our purpose we can

LANGUAGE MEANING AND LOGIC 145

select only two meanings of it In one case it means the object beig referred to by a word and in another case it means the mode of reference So far as the second meaning is concerned, the Nyaya school is of the opimon that a word gets the power to refer to an object because of a convention associated with it to that effect A convention has a beginming and ulti- mately it can be traced back to some person who started it Thus, for example, a father is the originator of the convention associated with the name of his son Meaning, therefore, is not natural, it is acquired As this school, with other Brahmanical schools, believes that the Vedas have supreme authority in religious and spiritual matters, God in the beginning of his creation uttered words and started conventions asso ciated with them Hence words of the Vedas are regarded as the oldest words of mankind and they alone are said to embody the power to generate merits Words comed by mortals are just conventional words having no power to create any merit, they do not have any rehgious value But words, whether they have divme or mundane origmn are bound to be associated with certam conventions This convention has a beginmng m the mtention of the person, divme or human, which assumes the form let this word mean this object The Mimamsa school and the school of grammarians propound a theory according to which the power to refer to an object is natural with words Their conten- tion is that a word has unlimted power to mean any- thing and everything There is nothing in a word it- 10

116 A PANORAMA OF INDIAN PHILOSOPHY

self to restrict its use for one thing There is nothing, for example, in the word 'man' which mahes it to mean a human being This word could mean a horse or a dog or a chair Therefore any word possesses the power to mean the entire universe But for the sake of con- vemence in communcation we have to limit that un himited power and make a word mean only one thing Ths hmitation is imposed upon a word by convention But smnce the Mimamsakas have no place for God in their philosophical scheme, they hold that the words of the Vedas have eternal meaning In other words, these words have meaning not because their unlimited power to mean has been made limted by any person but because these words could not by their very nature mean something else They are like onomatopoeio words but with a significant difference While ono matopoeic words are not capable of generating some relgious merit when used, the words of the Vedas have that capacity In fact the reason why the words of the Vedas though unhmited in their meaning have acquired specific meaning is the spirtual efficacy of these words So it is assumed that these words when used in the sense in which they are used m the Vedas are spiritually efficacious while the use of them in other senses cannot be so efficacious Other Brahmamical schools of Indian philosophy follow any one of these two views about the origin of the meaning of words

Buddhists do not agree with either of the two views They reject the possibility of God and refuse to believe mn relgious efficacy of the Vedic words On the contrary they propose that mermngs of words

LANGUAGE MEANING AND LOGIC 147

depend upon human convention They try to disso ciate religious considerations from the discussion about meaning Therefore their view is akin to the view of the Nyaya mn so far as meaning is regarded as a matter of convention

Apart from the consideration of the meanmng- power of words, we have a question with regard to the thing which is meant by words We shall call this thing so referred to as referend On this question three different views are to be found mn the history of Indan phlosophy The schools of Nyiya and Mimamsa hold that a referend is a combination of a particular and a umversal These schools accord objective realty to unversals and thinh that universals are associated with particulars The only notable difference between these two views is that for the Naiyayikas the referend of a word is a particular which is qualfied by a umversal Hence in this view a particular is the primary referend where a unversal has only a secondary place For the Mimamsakas a universal is primanly referred to by words, particulars are only imphed in tls act of reference The grammarans are conceptualsts, they think that the existence of objective universals cannot be supported But at the same time universal class concepts cannot be demed When words ore uttered these concepts, which are integrally associated with the knowing faculty of mind are referred to It is through these that we come to know of particular objects Thus the direct referend of a word is a um versal concept In addition it is also mamtamed that the concepts cannot exist without forms Words

148 A TANORAMA OF INDIAN PHILOSOPIY

provide forms to them Thus words and concepts are inseparably associated and when words refer to some- thing they refer to themselves along with concepts with which they are associated Words and concepts are not separable but they are distinct like form and matter From this point of view no knowledge, for the grammarians, is possible without words It may very well be observed that all the Brah manical schools of philosophy advocate that mean ingful words necessarily refer to something, whether that thing is a unversal or a particular or a concept is a different question Words that cannot possibly refer to anything (eg 'round square') are supposed to have no meaning Grammarians of course think that these words do refer to certam concepts but corres ponding to these concepts there are no particular ob jects These considerations gave birth to not so happy a view which holds that even words having negative force also refer to something which is positive The view of the Buddlusts on this problem needs special mention We have already seen that the Budd- hists do not subscribe to the view according to which universals are real entities They also reject concep tualsm on the ground that if concepts are found to be mvariably associated with words, there is no pomt in saying that concepts have their own existence apart from words Hence what we call as concepts a e no more than general words Therefore words do not refer to anything, they are meanmngful or significant without referring to anything How can, they ask, words produced by vocal chords under

160 A PANORAMA OF INDIAN PHILOSOPHY

very often imparts a gram of vuthenticity to our verbal knowledge

The views about meanng have shaped the nature of logic accepted by different schools of philosophy The Nyaya school, for eximple, believes that words have capacity to refer to reality as it is supposed to be Hence they mamntam that the laws of thought are actually the laws of things As language mirrors the reality, the analysis of language will give us the true analysıs of reality I shall give only one example to illustrate my poit We use negative expressions If our language is supposed to express the world of facts in its true colours, there should obviously be negative facts corresponding to negative expressions A negative statement therefore is supposed to refer to something which occupies a status equal to posi tive entities Buddhists, on the contrary, think that there bemg no relationsluip between words and realty, laws that we follow in thinking are creations of our imaginations Thus all affirmations and denials are irrespective of reality So when we make categorical statements we simply assert that two or more concepts are compatible with each other This is achieved by means of a special theory of 'denying the other' Thus to say that a thing exists is to say that it is not other than itself Hence any defimtion is only verbal in character Therefore A, for example, can be defined as not not A Here what we negate are mere concepts or the use of other words than what we are going to define The law of identity for the Buddhists is bası cally a negative law which only by way of remote

LANGUAGE MEANING AND LOGIO 151

implication affirms. Similarly when a negative ex- pression is analysed, negation simply rejects the possi- bility of a concept being negated. Thus like affirma- tion negation also does not refer to any corresponding fact in the world of reality. Thus merely on the basis of language nothing can be said abont the world as such. For the Naiyayikas, on the other hand, every thing concerning reality can be known by analysing the language. The grammarians regard concepts inseparable from words and maintain that knowledge and words go hand in hand. Therefore there is no indeterminato perception at the pre-linguistic level. Since words, concepts and reality are never found to exist in isola- tion from each other they are supposed to have come out of one common source which has all these three in its nature. It is therefore held that the ultimate Reality is one supreme Absolute. This appears to have evolved on two different lines. There is a series of words and there is a series of objects. Concepts, in the form of awareness, institute a bond between these two series. But since in our knowledge words have primary place, the Absolute, though embodying con- sciousness and existence, is designated as the word- Absolute. The grammarians explain our knowledge-situation by postulating the existence of an entity which em- bodies words and knowledge existing in the state of fusion. This entity is called Sphota and its main function is to make our verbal knowledge possible. Words in a sentenee being momentary in nature cannot

152 A PANORAMA OF INDIAN PHILOSOPHY

make a whole If all the words of a sentence are not put together, we cannot know a sentence This is made possible because each and every word of a sen tence makes the vague Sphota clear , when a complete sentence is uttered the Sphota within us becomes fully manifest This manifest Sphota makes us know the meanmng Momentary words cannot give meaning, It can be given only by something which is perma nent In a way it acts is a unifying factor between momentary words and our knowledge of their merning The relation supposed to exist between language and meaning or referend determines the nature of logic and consequently metaphysical and epistemo logical theories are shaped We have tried in this chapter to give a brief sketch of some important views regarding language and meaning It is not possible to deal with all the aspects of the problem within the space at our disposal However our treatment of the subject is bound to raise some mterest m the mind of readers about the philosophy of language as it was developed in India Those who wint to know more about this philosophy may read my book "The Problem of Meaning in Indian Philosophy"

CHAPTER XIII

BEYOND DUALITY

The contrbution of Samkhya philosophy to Indian way of thinking is smngular in as much as it has shown convmcmgly that soul must be of the nature of consciousness Consciousness is the essence rather than the accidental property of it Its strict duahsm of mind and matter, of person and nature, takes its clue from the Upamsads which advocate consciousness to be irreducible to matter In fact, as has been shown m the first chapter, the Upamsads have directed their efforts to seeking the abiding principle behind the evanescent world of experience The firm behef of the thinkers of the Upamsads was that any change without a constant substratum could not be possible The theory of causation as propounded in the Samkhya system is nothing but a development of this beltef But the Upamisadic thinkers were not very much concerned with logical presentation of their idens, they stated their views about things It became the duty of those who follo wed them to explam these ideas and make them Intellgible It is impossible to say what the exact nature of the plnlosophy propounded by the Upamsads was because they did not propound one single philosophy We can find instances where one and the same text gives two different views about an identical problem

154 A PANORAMA OF INDIAN PHILOSOPHY

Thus it would be going agunst the accepted canon of scientific study of a text to hold that all the Upam sads propound a single philosophy But in the past attempts have been made to show that all the principal Upamsads have one single idea to give whatever be the nature of this iden Thus if an interpreter is by conviction an absolutist he cin show that all the Upanisads propound absolutism of his brand A duahst may find support for his own ideas These differences in the interpretation are owing to the highly flexible nature of Sanskrit language Very often expressions are distorted and far fetched explanations are imposed The ides of these mterpreters has been to read their own views in the Upanisads rather than to read the Upamsads themselves An mnterpreter may take a particular type of expressions to be the basic type and the rest of the expressions may be regarded to be subordinate to the chosen expression

These differences m mterpretation and contro versies with regard to the real meaning of these Upa msads have been occasioned by the fact that these texts had been given the place of religious scriptures But as every person was free to interpret these mn his own way, a single body of the Upanisadic texts gave birth to many systems of Indian thought Dach one of these systems claims to have been solely pro pounded by all the Upamsads, that other systems do not represent true teachings of the Upamsads is the corollary drawn by every system without fail How else could the nuthenticity of a philosophical view be proved ?

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Although we cannot say that the Upamsads as a whole preach a particular type of philosophy yet it is possible to ascertam what type of philosophy occupies a place of prommence in the Upamsadic literature Thus keeping oneself free from sectarin prejudices one can, on the basis of textual evidences and popular opimons, say that non dualistic Abso- lutism reverberates in a significantly important part of this hterature In fact this philosophy has been so popular mn India that very often the word 'Vedanta' meaning the philosophy propounded in the Upamsads (Veda+anta, end of the Veda), is identified with non dualistic Absolutism Sankara, a great scholar as well as a relgious and social leader m the 8th century A D, gave this philosophy a definite logical shape and was responsible for its propagation The Vedantic systems of Indian philosophy are mamly mterpretative in nature They are all based upon the Vedanta sutras of Badarayana who in his turn composed hs work with a view to mterpret the Upamsads They all accept the authorty of the Vedas and relegate reasoning to a secondary position But ths does not mean that they are anti rationalists, they recognise the role of reason within the boundary set by the Upamsads As I have already pointed out, the Upamsads do not present systematic and well argued views, they simply make attempts and leave the task of dressing these with the garb of reason to an interpreter Thus withmn the old of the Upanisads there is an ample scope for reason to play its part But all the systems unammously

156 A PANORAMA OF INDIAN PRILOSOPHY

hold that reason should not be allowed to cross the boundary of the Upanisads and decide rationally whether the teachings of the Upanisads are correct. Thus in Vedanta the method of investigation is deduc- tive; we start from a given statement and seek to justi- fy it by logic but we cannot question the validity of that statement itself which we seek to justify. In other systems of philosophy usually the inductive method is followed; we start from given empirical facts and try to arrive at a general conclusion. Vedanta is based upon a priori judgments but they are neither analytic nor synthetic: not analytic because they are something more than tautologies, not synthetic because they are not based upon and warranted by our experience. But they are valid in as much as they belong to the realm of faith. But one should not think that there must be inevitable cleavage between reason and faith. In that event there would be a split in the man which would lead him to conflict, chaos and destruction at the end. A little considcration can reveal that reason if let loose would break the man into pieces because of its destructive nature; on the other hand faith, having given an unchecked role, will end in an endless blind alley. Thus philosophy cannot be allowed to preside over the funeral of man who gave birth to philosophy. Hence the Vedantie ideal of philosophy is that faith] should guide the reason. I have said above that the Vedantic method of investigation is deductive but deduction in this con- text does not mean mere derivation; it means also

BEYOND DUALITY 157

a justification in return besides It as a circular deduc- tion Thus if a particular statement of an Upamsad is analysed and reason is adduced m its support, the purpose of Vedanta is not served It is only when the reason thus mustered to support a statement is examined and found actually supporting that state ment, that Vedantic investigation becomes complete Vedanta does not only seel the support of logic, it also, mn the process, constructs a metalogie to examine the logic thus employed In other words, it does not rest content with mere analysis , it also wants to see whether the analysed parts when synthesised yield the whole agam If the origmal picture is not available, the analysis being faulty must be abandoned Thus Vedanta is an analytical philosophy where synthesis is the test of analycity What I have said so far can be illustrated by reviewing the philosophical standpoint of Sankara But mn order to make my point clear and to present the non dualistic Absolutism mn its historical pers- pective I shall begmn with a survey of non-dualsm of Mahayana Buddhism No one can deny Sankara's indebtedness to these Buddhists and it will be mterest- ing to note that mn the history of Indtan plulosophy Absolutism as a philosophical system owes its origin to Buddhists In the Brahmamcal fold the Absolu- tist system of philosophy started with Sankar The Buddhists do not usually start with any scriptural or authontative statements, they do not beheve m the authenticity of senptures in the same wmhy as the followers of other systems do Hence

158 A PANORAMA OF INDIAN PHILOSOPHY

their starting point is some fact of experience Thns the Madhyamikas begin their investigations by analy sing our experience of the objective world and the Yogacaras by malysing the experience as such The former shows that any objective category being re lative cannot constitute the real core of reality which ıs taken to be non relative axiomatically But no non categoric experience is ever possible Cate gorisation is the essence of experience hence any experience has the same fate as categories Rela tivity of experience as well as objects prevents us from knowing reality if there be one because symg any thing about realty is made possible only through such categories Hence reality is to be conceived by our ertegory oriented mind only negatively Re Iativity is the negation of Absolute but Absolute can in no way be said to be the reverse of relativity 10 by denying relativity of objects the Absolute is not implcitly affirmed because every affirmation is a cate gory howsoever harmless it may seem to be Heie therefore reason has only a destructive role to play No assertion or demal is capable of deseribing reahty, hence strictly speaking the Madhyamika position can not be labelled as pluralism But if the fashion of labelling is to be followed in philosophy, we can say that Madhyamika philosophy is non duahsm where non dualsm means the demal of dualty but not the affirmation of an Absolute

The Yogacara school starts with the analysis of experience and finds that experience sets the limt for our probe into the mystery of realty We

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futation ? But Sankara's position m [this respect Is unque m as much as he finds it impossible to connect reason solely with ideas or with objective categories He does not agree with the Madhyamkas when they say that relativity is an indication of the non existence of realty Without reference to an Absolute, nothing can be said to be relative On the other hand he 18 not prepared to subscribe to the Yogacara theory that there cannot be any external object His mam objection to this position is that from the finding that one cannot go beyond one's ideas to reality, a long jump to the conclusion that external reality does not exist cannot be warranted Hence in order to show that relativity pomts to an Absolute and that there is an objective ground for ideas, Sankara 19 not prepared to abandon logic nor logic can legiti- mately be abandoned in that way An extra effort is therefore needed for this purpose which is served by meta logic, 1, e an mndependent enquiry into the nture and ultimacy of logic In Sankara's philoso- phy, therefore, logic becomes self-conscious and not 1 self devouring monster as it is held to be mn Mahayana schools Hence we cannot say that Advaita Vedanta is anti rational, it is more than a rational system, it is a supra iational system

Now I shall rapidly sketch the map of Sankara's pllosophy to make my treatment of the subject appear complete The Upamsads declare that Brahman, which is pure consciousness, evistence and bhss in one, is without a second It is also sud that the individual soul ts identical with Brahman and the

162 A PANORAMA OF INDIAN PHILOSOPIY

world of pluralts is unreal The task for Sankara is to show how these thiee points cohere He begins by showing that our knowledge is necessarily based upon confusion In everv knowledge situition not only duality between a subject and an object is in volved but also an mevitable imposition of charac- teristics of one upon the other Thus when I know an object I think of that object in terms of myself 1e as belonging to me This belongingness may not be actual what he means is perhaps belongingness in the epistemic sense The subject not only does know the object it also knows that as epistemically as his own Similarlv a confusion is mvolved in our knowledge of our own selves We identify our selves with our body, mind senses and sometimes with relatives and dear objects The sense of belong ingness md identification of one s self with thigs other than itself are the two instances of confusion where the common factor at work is the knowledge of a thing as it is actually not But such a confusion is at the root of our behaviour The supreme task of philosophy is to ravel out any confusion, hence to begin with in enquiry into the nature of self or soul becomes imperative Conscionsness and soul cannot be separited or even conceptually distinguished But anything whtch pertains to consciousness any mentil act or con fusion or the hke does not arise solely because of consciousness but beeause of something which 19 not consciousness Consciousness is self existent ie it does not require something else to impart a sense

BEYOND DUALITY 163

of reality to itself On the contiary there is every justification foi conceiving that an object is not what it appears to be, whereas no one can say that conscious- ness is not consciousness without committmg a logical contradirtion Again, an object depends for its knowledge upon a conscious knower but a knower does not depend upon another knower in order to be known These are some of the reasons which are adduced in favour of the theory that consciousness qua consciousness is not only primary but an indubi- table and independent reality as well Consciousness admits of limitations and deno- minations only with ieference to something which is hot consciousness Thus when identified with a body or a mind it is called as individual, when related to in object it gets the names like thmking, feeling or willing But if we begin to thinh that conscious- ness is not this, not that or, that, in other words, it is pure and unalloyed by anything all its limitations would disappear Thus pure consciousness would be 1 boundless reahty as well Considered from this angle consciousness cannot but be conccived to be one of which indriduals are only appearances Basr- cally every mndn idual is this one consciousness Umty is reality, drversitr is a fiction The Upamsads do not only declare this to be one but they mamtain that its oneness should be inter preted m the sense of absence of anytling other than itself Granting that consciousness in its pure state may not admit of limitations imposed upon it by external factors, it does not necessarily follow that

164 A PANORAMA OF INDIAN PHILOSOPHY

those external realities are non existent How can then we say, it may be asked that these objects have no existence of their own ? Here Sankara gives an explanation with the ud of reason He says that there are levels of knowledge and experience Objects appearing in a dream are known to be real as long as a dream lasts but they are recogmised to be unreal when that dream is over To him knowledge of an object and its valdity are given simultaneously hence the question of validity of knowledge cannot be raised at the same level at which knowledge has arsen But since there is every possibilty of a knowledge bemg contradicted at the next level no knowledge can be regarded s vald for ever Know ledge is vald but it cannot be absolutely vald This view holds equally good for knowledge of objects at the waking level of experience Knowledge m waking life cannot also be absolutely vald It can only be relatively vahd Validity itself consists in our convichion that knowledge corresponds with certain facts which are given and not m actual correspon dence If correspondence be the test of validity there would be no end to tlus test and we shall never be able to judge validly Thus some a prion con viction alone is capable of imparting validity and when this is shaken by new encounters with facts valdity shifts This shows that our knowledge of a real world of facts is actually based upon our conviction Our conviction in the reality of objects is not of our own creation This is mnherited through succes sive births and it is not easy to get rid of it It 1s

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engramed in our mind and mdividual consciousness is entangled in it It would be our ideal to see things as they are without the aid of any a prior conviction. How could this be done ? How could we get unbiased knowledge of reality ? The answer given to this question is that it can be done by directly realsing and not by knowing through the instrument of convictions

Realisation is possible only by becoming one with the object of realisation As long as a dualty between the knower and the known persists, we are playing mn the hands of convictions because in any case of duality the approach is inevitably through some medium. This medium serves as a relation between two given points Knowledge is an outcome of the relation which mediates between the subject and the object But this mediary relation itself requires our conviction about its reahty If one is not convinced about the genumeness of the relation between the subject and the object, one cannot know the object So as long as there is any trace of duality, we cannot get rid of convictions Realisation therefore is concerved as that knowledge which is free fiom the tinge of dualty. This is possible only by becoming what one would like to know mtimately In that case knowledge will not be of the form "I know this" but "I am this". Therefore true picture of reahty can be obtained by becoming one with it and not by remaiing at a dis- tance

It would be preposterous to mamtain that when, for example, one tries to realise an object belonging

166 A PANORAMA OF INDIAN PHILOSOPHY

to the world of matter he becomes one with matter Consciousness can never be tiansformed into matter because of the same reason which would prevent us from holdmg that matter is reducible to consciousness Two diametrically opposed things consciousnes as ever a knower and matter as ever the known cannot become one But as stated above from the level of pure consciousness the objective matter cannot have any real existence but we cannot say that from the pomt of view of matter consciousness has no evis tence Because the very issertion tht there is no conscionsness at the level of pure matter would imply the existence of consciousness Hence consciousness cannot be reduced to matter it is primary in relation to matter The problem of drect knowledge or realsation can only be solved by first realsing the true nature of the mdividunl consciousness It would be meaning less to say that smnce one knows himself fully well therefore one has already the reahsation Because what one knows about himself is only through con victions It is only with reference to mind or body that one is capable of knowing consciousness There fore this is only mediate knowledge winch does not amount to realsation But as soon as consciousness has been realsed by transcending the limits imposed upon it it becomes undifferentited and Absolute conscrousness which has no trace of duality relation or conviction From this ideal level of direct ex pemience matter and its products cease to have any value So it may not be possible to realise matter but it is possible to realse one's own consciousness,

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but in that case the world will cease to be. From this standpoint there will be no world which would require any explanation or knowledge of it. So there is no relationship between the Absolute and the world or anything other than the Absolute. Hence Brahman is said to be one which has nothing else by its side.

Realisation in this system does not mean passing from one stage to another stage nor does it involve some gain in the process, It is so because a person who has attained realisation did never cease to be what he actually is, in other words, he never ceased to be the Absolute. But at one stage he was unaware of his real nature and at the next stage he comes to recognise his own true nature. There is thus a nega- tive gain in the sense that he had misconception about himself which has been removed. Liberation, which is only another name for realisation in this system, is therefore nothing but complete freedom from the bondage of body, mind, society, nation etc. It is a state when the soul comes to exist all by itself; it comes to its own pure nature. This nature, as we have seen, is that of a universal Absolute which does not admit of any distinction. So a liberated person is he who sees everything in himself and sees himself in everything. He is the entire world and the entire world is in him. This view has significant implica- tion in the realm of social values and ethical consi- derations which we shall see later on. Sankara adduces arguments and logically justifies what the major Upanisads teach. But it must be

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acknowledged that the method that he adopted while justifymng the Upamsads was developed in essence by the Mahayanists The Mahayansts themselves might have taken their clues from stray utterances found mn the Upamsads and might have developed them m their own way Thus, for example, the idea that there are two or more levels of experience and knowledge is, in its logically developed form, a contribution of great philosophical significance made by these Buddhists to Indian philosophy Sankara seized this idea mn its ready-made form from the Buddhists and made an extensive use of it But as this idea itself is to be found hinted in the Upansads, Sankara declares that while using this theory of levels he is following the Upamsads But though using the same method Sankara arrives at an entirely different conclusion from those of the Mahayana The Madhyamikas con tended that soul also belongs to the same level to which other categories belong but Sankara thinks that since soul is never contradicted as other cate gories are shown to have been pregnant with con tradiction, it is undemably present as realty even though nothing remains to be contradicted For Sankara soul is the presupposition of contradiction but for the Madhyamikas no such presupposition is neces sary Sankara comes very near to the Yogacāra position and at times it becomes impossible to find even insignificant pomts of differences

CHAPTER XIV

SCIENCE AND NESCIENCE The survey of Indian philosophical scene will remain incomplete if no mention is made of the sense in which philosophy has been pursued in India The Indian word for the activity, called philosophical in modern sense, is 'darsann' This word does not cairy with it the connotation of resoning and logical analysis. It rather sigmfies perception and, mn a metaphorcal expression, vision What comes at the end of philo- sophical activity is not some chnty of thought or ravellig out the linguistic knot, this end is very per- sonal, having its impct upon the very basis of one's existence In this sense phuilosophy and the way of life are intertwined Thus mere satisfaction of mnte- llectual curosity is not plnlosoplncal in the Indian sense of the word nor is an empty way of life, un- supported by the discrimintive faculty of mind, an atthentic expression of life But this should not lead us to beleve, as many uncritical students of Indmn philosophy have rishly concluded, that there is no pure philosophy m India; it i9 all religion In order to keep away from commit- ting this error, we shall have to see the way mn which Indan thinkers have used the words 'philosophy and 'rehgion' (of course, their eqmvalents in Sanskrit, 1 e 'darsann' and 'dharma') The life when led according to certain universal moral principles like those of for- giveness, self control, non violence, purity of body,

170 A PANORAMA OF INDIAN PHILOSOPEY

mind and heart. abstention from indulging in sense- pleasure, forbearance, truthfulness and knowledge is called a religious life in one sense. As is evident, this type of life could be led in any society at any time and place. This does in no way bind a person to a particular seet or ereed. to a particular family or culture. There- fore the word 'dharma' in this sense could be used as a synonym for 'virtue'. What we actually require for darsana or philosophy to be complete is the combination of intellectual activity with a virtnous life. Unless this combination is achieved. we cannot be said to have achieved philosophical vision, whatever else we might have achieved. The other meaning of the word 'dharma' is nearer to that of 'religion'. It concerns outer expressions of a sect or a creed. How to eat or drink, how to act on a particular occasion, what to wear and how to worship are the questions that belong to this secondary sense of dharma. These are not con- cerned with philosophy or darsana.

Philosophy, in the sense explained above, needs further supplementation to become perfect vision. Intellectual pursuit combined with virtuous life does not achieve this status; only when this combination has yielded the realisation of truth, as theoretically determined by our mind beforehand, that becomes worthy of being called darsana. Life prior to realisa- tion of truth is unauthentic in as much as it lacks direct knowledge of the goal to which it is being directed by logic and virtuous life accepted before. Before realisa- tion we are like those travellers who march on the road . which has been said by others to lead to the desired

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destination. But the state of realisation is comparable to that of the traveller wlo has reached and seen for himself where he wanted to go. It is only at this stage that the function of philosophy comes to an end. Virtnous life and intellectual equipment are only means to this end; they themselves, according to al- most all Indian systems of philosophy, do not represent the end. Philosophy in this sense is purposive; it is value-oriented. But value consists not in being known but in being possessed. Possession when complete imparts authenticity in retrospect to the path through which a person has come to achieve his goal. As this could be done only by one's own efforts and not by someone else officiating for him, his darsana is some- thing strictly personal. But it is possible to invite others to have a similar achievement for themselves. The exposition of a system by a particular philosopher is actually nothing but this invitation. But there is no restriction imposed upon an attempt to exploro fresh avenues for new experiences or new darsanas. But one point is very clear : there cannot be as many darsanas as ther are rational animals because rationality is not an invariable mark of originality Otherwise everyone could have become the Buddha It will be interesting to note in this connection that almost all the founders of philosophical systems in India had undergone intense spiritual and moral discipline before being able to establish respective systems of their own. What they have said therefore bears testimony to this discipline and in order to grasp their real intention and essential position in philosophy

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we have ourselves to reach up to the height of therr experence One has to relive the life of the founder of a system which one has opted to follow The founder propounds his philosophy from the pinnacle of his experence but the followers have to start their journey from the threshold of this structure which provides an entry to that sanctified chamber Therefore the philosophical process mvolved m the grasping of a system 1s just the reverse of that of its founder We have to take the words of a philosopher as the starting pomt and follow it up through the highways and by- ways set up by him and ultimately try to reach upto the point of start During this course of ascent there is little scope left for questioning the leader It is somewhat lhe following a guide who showa you around an ancient maze-bke building, if you question ls moves you will never be able to see the building. Simlarly when one selects a particular system for investigation his first duty is to obey faithfully the master who promises him to lead to a particular kind of experience Only when after following him you reach the top but are unable to see around the promised spectacle, you can question and repudiate the statement of the founder of a system that you have followed faithfully so far. The task of a beginner in the study of a particular philosophical system is therefore very dehcate and there is every temptation to distract him from the duty which he is expected to perform A system of philo sophy, according to Indian pomt of view, has two as- pects Being concerned with some spiritual experience

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which is to be achieved at the end of the discipline, its mam object is to provide an opportunity for having that experience The founder of a system has that experience, at least he claims to have that experience The nature of such experience and that of the object of experience varies from system to system But one point whtch emerges from this is very clear and com- monly accepted by all the systems the arm of philo- sophy is intimate and direct acquaintance with the ulti- mate reality, where reahty is to be taken in a particular sense accordmg to a particular system In the begin- mng a student of a given system cannot have that experience Therefore the path which he has to follow is provided by the description of that expenience A fastra or a text is therefore a verbal description of some experience given by the person who has himself achieved it Description is informative but ithout any tangible experiential content, acquamtance being strictly personal cannot be communicated But the two-acquamtance and deseription-are closely related, description m its origin has emanated from the same source which has the acquamtance, therefore it is not without iny foundation This pomt is very iportant for a clear understanding of Indian philosophy In order to show that a particular sastra is not authentic, logical demonstration of its inherent contracctions and imperfections alone is not considered to be suffi- cient, what is essentil is to show that either the claim of acquamtance made by ita founder is such that it 18 not possible or, else, the founder of that system is shown to be incapable of such experience Thus description as verbal elaboration of acquaitance has its roots in

174 A PANORAMA OF INDIAN PHTILOSOPHY

reality. A person who begins his journey in the realm of a philosophical system has inevitably to start with the description since there is no other means to do that. But a great limitation is imposed upon his endeavotr by the very nature of his undertaking. He cannot question the truth of descriptive statements as he is not yet fully equipped to test the vitalty of these. Therefore he has to use these statements as if they are referentially opaque. In other words, for him these statements are within quotation marks But once he has made acquaintance with the desired reality, these quotation marks disappear and descriptive statements become referentially transparent. This should not create an impression that there is no scope for free logical enquiry. What I have said at the outset of this chapter will always have to be kept in mind while studying a philosophical system. I have pointed out that religion in the sense of virtue is an integral part of it but darsana is something more than mere cultivation of virtue. It must have reason and logic. Although a beginner uses the text of teachings of the founder of a system as description within quota- tion maiks, yet he is allowed to offer logical arguments in - support of these statements. We do, mn fact, use argu- ments to support what a person has said without our- selves being able to ascertain the truth of his statement. In order to do that the only essential condition is that the statement to be supported is "plausible". In reli- gious contexts we may call this plausibility as faith. This means that even though the question of truth or falsity with regard to the statements made by the found-

SCIENCP AND \FSCIENCE 175

er of a system does not yet wise (as we have been using them within quotation marks) still these state ments are meaningful and significant It is because of our understanding of the meaning of these statements that arguments can be advanced and observations and experiences can be analysed and put forth m support of these statoments But it must be admitted that how- soever strong these arguments, observations and ex- periences may be, they can never impart truth-value to these statements They are true or they may be false m their own right, only we are not able to affiim or deny them from the pomt of vien of truth-value If we are able to affirm the truth of a particular state- ment at a later stage, it is wrong to say that the st ite- ment was not true m the beginning and has become true only subsequently A statement onre true oi false is always true oi false, only we may not Know truth or falsity of it for sometime or for ever There- fore in such cases affirmation of truth-value remams suspended In ordet to study the statements of the land men tioned above we do not, i9 has been made ck ar, require a logic of truth functions Linguistic analysis is the most suitable method of investigation m such cases If we review the philosophical hterature of Indi, we

tention find an overwhelming evidence in support of this con Our plnlosophy is said to hive evolved in q miss of commentatorl literature This is true but tls should not be taken in any derogatory sense It is the concept of philosophy as evolved in Indin that leads to this state The aim of any commentary is to show that the bisic text stands the test of logic and

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there is no formal contrdiction in the body of the text commented upon If some apparent contradic tion is discovered, then attempt is made to reconcile contradictory statements Lngwistic elucidation, exposition, and ittempt at reconcihation require great skill in logic and it is here that a person is free to show his origmalty But is soon as a person forgets this lmitation and brings in the question of truth with regird to the statements of the founder he enters into forbidden land Moreover there is a still greater opportunty for evercising logieal talent and even a scope for bringing in the question of truth value A person may not be allowed to question the vahdity of a statement made by the founder of a system because that is being treated as 4 closed statement but explanations given in support of the statement made by the founder being m the form of open statements can be evamined from the pomt of view of truth value The entire furmture of truth func tion logie is pressed into this service For evample though we may not question the truth of a statement made by Gotama the founder of the Nyiyr system yet we are completely free to exammne the statements of Vatsyiyana or Uddyotakara who commented upon Gotama's work and question their validity Dis cussions about pramanas for example, among Indian pllosophers sndicate that logre of truth funetion 1s fully developed in India Thus so far as statements made by different foun ders of systems are concerned, we find the observance of some 'code of conduct' or ethics of philosophising by philosophers When, during the course of discussions,

SCIENCE AND NESCIENCE 177

philosophers belonging to differnt systems come upon a statement of the founder of a given system, they refram from criticising it , they, as a rule, agree to differ on such poits We can see that it is not the Buddha who is criticised by non Buddhist philosophers but his followers, on the other hand, are never spared Any exception will only confirm the rule Darsana therefore mcludes both a virtuous life and a vigilant logiesl enquiry One and the same text provides an opportunitv for the operstion of both Just as logical enquiry proceeds tahing the original statement as the basis, simlarly virtuous life is also to be modelled according to them There should be a perfect co ordination between life and logic I have said enough about the logical aspect of Darsin, now I shall concern myself with the practical aspcet of it I have been talking thout systems of Indian philosophy I firmly beheve that one of the pecuha nties of Indin thinking has been to group sımilar thoughts together and give it the name of a svstem But these should not be regarded as closed systems Withm a generl frimework provided by the founder of a system iny indrvdual is free to mntroduce mnnova- tions and he mfluenccd to some extent without impur- ing the basic approach by other systems In spite of this tendenty of systomatisation, there is m open dialogur mong different groups of philosopheis But system building is inevit ible because adherence to some basic text or a collection of sayings prevents any kmnd of spilling over A follower of Nyaya mav be very much influenced by Buddhist logic or philosophy but

178 A PANORAMA OF INDIAN PHILOSOPHY

when the question of final goal of life is raised, his attitude becomes rigid. There are persons who think that systematisation is superfluous and believe that the history of Indian philosophy is not actually the history of systems but, akin to western philosophy, it is also actually the history of philosophuical thinking done by individual philosophers. In this connection they also point out that the final goal or liberation has only a very remote relation with the mam philosophical thinking But to me, this view appeais to go against the very spint of Indian philosopleal tradition. By saying this, I am not trying to justify what the tradi- tion has handed down to us, my objection is only to the way in which this tradition is being misrepresented and wrongly interpreted. Fust, there is no historical evidence to show that in India adherence to systems was ever counted as superfluous; on the contrary, thete are positive and very clear evidences to suppoit the view that such an adherence was an integral part of philosophical activity. Secondly, while asserting that liberation is remotely related to the main philosophy of an individnal thinker, people completely forget that the final authority accepted by any individual philosopher in India is the one whose view concerning hberation is unquestionably accepted by him. I may give one or two examples to prove my ease. Dharmakirti, a well-known Buddhist logician, finds logically difficult to support the view that mental awareness, as distinet from five sensual awarenesses, should be given a separate status. But he cannot rejeet it beeause, as he confesses, the Buddha has accepted it to be the sixth awareness. Vacaspati

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Misra, though himself an Advaita Vedantin, has written books on many other systems of Indian philosopby. But he never allows his Vedantic leanings to'interefere with his exposition of a non-Vedantic text and at times he does not hesitate even in assailing Vedantic stand- point. Whatever system he takes for explanation he tries to remai meticulously faithful to its baste tencts. Had he been a free tlinker of the type we come across in the history of western philosophy, he would have certainly viewed all these systems from his own Vedantie standpoint But he makes sure that while wrting a book on, say, Nyaya the view of Gotama should be as faithfully and logically explained as any other person, having personal conviction in Nyaya, could do. In short, he does not violate the sanctity of a system, docs not question the basic authority of a system although in his personal conviction he belongs to a different system Lastly, any remote relation that may appear to hold between the nature of liberation and logical formulations of views should be mvestigated very carc- fully Nnvana being understood as an mndescribable state, objects that are describable are relegated to the posttion of appearance Moksa beig the ideal state of peifect identity between the mdividual and the Absolute, anything displaying diffeience is regarded as unrerl Such instances wheie the vien of liberation determine, the pluilosophieal theories of any system could be multiphed In many cases we may ignore this mnhcrent relationship and confine our investiga- tions to the secular pait of a philosophy but m that case we shall not be able to give reasons for the accep-

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tance of a particular theory or for holding a particular view The explanation, for example, of the Nyaya theory of inference may be possible without taking into consideration its views about liberation but we cannot say why this school has accepted a particular logic in preference to another logic, which might have been more convemient at times, unless we bring m its views about the ultimate end of philosophy Therefore we are driven to conclude that philo- sophy, being oriented towards moksa or liberation mn India, is not purely an intellectual enterprise, it de mands intense spiritual discipline It demands a combination of reason and intution, logic and wisdom But since liberation is the supreme goal of life, any- thing that falls short of this ideal is mv arably regarded as less valuable, as belonging to the realm of nescience The central theme of Indian philosophy is the investiga- tion of ways and means that could lend a person from nescience to science, from lesser vilues to the supreme value, from darkness of barren renson and logic to the light of wisdom and rerlsation of truth, in other words, from mortahty to immortahty The goal set by the Vedas and the Upamsds has been sought by all those who came after them irrespective of their sectarian or rehgious fflations If mything is true about the entire history of Indian philosophy, it is this fact But, agun I may warn that reason, logic, nescience, darkness are not superfluous and unnecessary , they are indispensable for the achievement of the supreme and perfect value These provide a stepping stone to reach the pinnacle

CHAPTER XV

SECULARISM AND DEMOCRACY

India was subjugated by foreign invaders some time in the XII century and she could get political indepen dence only in 1947 During this long period of depen dence Indian people had to fight for their survival They were facing the enemy on two fronts When Mushms came here, they did not only covet political and economic gains, they also wanted to convert the whole of Indian population to Islam Poltically India was weak therefore political supremacy though hard-fought, was won by these foreigners But on the front of religion and culture the battle was not so decisive Although the rulers wielded sword and did not spare its use in the service of the expansion of Islam yet philosophical outlook spiritual convictions and religious faith are not the things that bloodshed and terrorism could buy They succeeded in convert- ing a part of Indian population but their dream to make India an Islamc country could never be realised In my opmion this was due to two mamn factors Local people shielded themselves agamst the ahen relgious assault by resorting to the polcy of withdrawel Secondly, they cultivated an attitude of tolerince The first method wis responsible for rigid orthodoxy and consequent degeneration of the open society that India had It is at this time mn her history that India became really divided, not poltically which she perhaps was ever before but also from the poit of view

182 A PANORAMA OF INDIAN PHILOSOPHY

of rehgion and the way of life What Buddhism and Jumsm could not dare to do was accomphshed to a great disadvantage of the Indian people Buddhism and Jainism mn fact never umed at creatig a chaos in the society their principal aum was to make the Indian society follow an Indian religion Although this could not be fully ichieved yet had this ideal been accompli shed no sigmficant harm would have resulted Because these religions were after all born from the same cultural spring which had long ago given birth to Vedic relgion and philosophy There was a umty among them at the souce But Islam came here as a stringer and it was greeted that way In the absence of one unifying pohtical force various groups had to defend themselves singly and in the process they, is a result of dissatisfac tion with their fellow brothers nouushed i feeling of independence In this struggle for self preservation Buddhism had to lose the ground in India and Jamism had to go underground Buddhism is a relgious creed flouushed among the groups of monks who were taught to nourish an attitude of apathy towards worldly life When Islam came here with swords worldly people got busy with the preparation for their own preservation, they could not come to the rescue of monks As monks were living mn monasteries, it was easy for the mvaders to attack them and to uproot therr organstion But the community of triders was actively associated with Jama istitutions and even after the destruction of Jama orgamisations it could 'lbernate' in the houses of these traders Vedit relgion bemg a relgion of the family had to suffer

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the least Thus whde attempting to preserve itself agamst the attack of Islam India became divided into rastes creeds, groups and even families Besides this negative attitude of withdrawal, we witness a positive attempt at creting an atmosphere of co existence and tolerance In fact this attitude was not emerging for the first time as a result of the confrontation with Islum It wis a part of the normal life of Indian people and at times it was already subjected to severe tests Religious tolerance was m fact, a natural outcome of the famous Absolutistie philosophy of the Upamisads which sud that except Biahman everything was appearince When a relgion teaches that worldly life and all that goes with it has no value, how could it mstigate its followers to lnte those who followed some other religion ? This conviction was tested when Jaiism and Buddhism came on the Indian scene Mahavira and the Buddha were greeted with the same enthusiasm as any Vedic Scer could have been There was no bloodshed, no resentment of the kind we usually find at the time of emergence of a new religion in a country No one was crucified , none had to kill innocent people to prove his prophetship These new relgions only strengthened the conviction of the Indin people that it was not the appearance that counts, tranqmllty and spitun! enlghtenment alone make a religion what it 1s But when people eame face to face with a religion w hich valued the force of sword, as much if not more, as matters spiritual, they could not nourish the idea of passive tolcrance One can remam passively

184 A PANOPAMA OF INDIAN PHILOSOFHY

tolerint agunst a reckless brutal force only at the cost of his existence Passive tolerance was therefore replaced by vigorous tolcrance This change in the meaning and purport of tolerance does not indicate any fundamental sluft m Indian attitude it merely indicates the change in the method Saints and scho lars cime forward and preached the fundamental unity of mankmnd They propounded that Allah of Islam God of Vedic Aryans and the Lord of the Budd hists are all one ind therefore various sectarian institu tions and differences based thereon are superfluous Some of them went to the extent of condemning rel gious practices as useless and as sources of discord These were mostly the samt poets who wandered from place to plice and sung in the dralect of the common people These saints were found in every part of the country at the time when Islam threatened Indian culture Their tenchings solaced the bewildered and exaspcrate Indian mind showed new avenues through which the stream of cultural heritage could be safely channeled for the posterity Jammism Buddhism and other relgious movements were merged in essentials at least with Vedicism to yield a new religion which we today know as Hinduism Relgiously and polti cally divided India kept up its cutural heritage by being religiously umted Hinduism therefore has its roots in the attempt of umty m diversity But alas ! India still could not achieve poltical umty at that time Muslims themselves could not remam unaffected by this vigorous campaign of religious tolerance Muslm saints came forward too and sang the same song as

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Hindus did. After all the same blood was flowing in the veins of Muslims, who were Indians converted to Islam, and Hindus. How could the aeon-old bond be snapped overnight ? Though fanatics among them could not approve of this yet the Hindns accepted them, heart and soul and enriched their culture. The impact of Islam on Hindu culture cannot be lost sight of. This was the greatest triumph of Indian spirit of synthesis over Islam and had a salutary effect even upon hot-blooded orthodox Muslims. This policy saved Indian philosophy, religion and culture from the cruel clutches of oblivion.

India's first acquaintance with Christianity was not marred by any hostilty. It came through mer- chandise and generally it remained cordial. After all, Islam was a newly emerging religion whereas Christianity had developed a solid culture behind it. A culture gains in depth and sobriety through the passage of time. But Christianity brought with it a different kind of conflict. Unlike in the past, India was confronted at the level of thinking. Islam gave rise to a conflict at the religious level, Christianity produced a crisis at the intellectual level. This was largely accentuated by the introduction of western system of education in the country. This is also one significant point of contrast between Islam and Chris- tianity as India came to know them. Islam had practically nothing to give by way of secular education to Indian people whereas Christianity was prepared to teach a religious dectrine and a matching body of secular knowledge. In fact when the British traders

186 A PANORAMA OF INDIAN PHILOSOPEY

established their political paramountcy in India they thought that unless the Indian mind was inculeated with western knowledge, it would be well-nigh impo- ssible to provide a firm foundation to British rule in India. With this end in view they first undertook to convinee Indian people that they were leading a primi- tive life and that they lacked in education in its proper sense. Along with this negative approach, aimed at convincing Indian people of their degenerate civilisa- tion, they introduced positive steps to fill in the vacuum thus created. Universities and other institutions were opened and western way of thinking and life gradually began to infiltrate. I do not believe that the introduction of western ideas and ideals was harmful or undesirable. On the contrary it was a boon in disguise to Indian people who were so oppressed by Islam that by that time they had forgotten what they were and what their poten- tiality was. But that manner in which this was done may not be approved. It would have been fair if western education could have been provided in the perspective of Indian knowledge and wisdom rather than as its superior adversary. But ultimately things could not go the way the British rulers of India anticipa- ted or liked. Enlightened Indians themselves took the task of assimilating what was good in the western tradition with India's heritage and thereby undermined the very foundation of the British rule in India. · If we carefully review the lustory of Indian struggle for freedom from the British imperialism and the principles that were working behind the freedom

SECULARISM AND DEMOCRAOY 187

movement we can eastly discover that the basic question at ssue was philosoplucal rather than pohtical mn charac- ter When Indian mind was somewhat freed from the oppression by the western education, it began to realise the valte of freedom personal digmity and justice These are the fundamental values of life and throughout the Instory of Indian philosophy we see Indian thinkers toilng to preserve them at any cost But efforts mn the direction were slachened durig the Islamic rule merely beciuse at times spirit and mtellect have to surrender themselves to brute foices When a new outlook developed as a result of Indr's contact with the western woild, this spuit redeemed itself with redoubled vigom and once more Indian people tred hard to conneet themselves with their glouous past There is nothing hke the past repeating itself in its totahty Even if we hold a cyche vicw of Istory we eannot look over the encumstances and changed conditions where history is supposed to have repeated I personally beleve that events do not repeat them- selves, every time an event is i new event What actuilly repeats is our own pomt of view, the way of tookmg at things This is moie pronounced when something very extraordinary hppens In our thinking we are uble to keep steps with rapidly changing environment, thus when a new event occurs we try to read m that what we m our mind have already mnherited from the past Along with the advent of the era of scence mntroduced m India with western svstem of education, the way of thmkmg could not be brought upto the level of screntific thmnking Wonders of science were therefore mterpreted in terms of Indta's

188 A PANORAMA OF INDIAN PHILOSOPHY

own heritage There was i section of people who thought that so called mythological elements ID Indian history are not fictions of mind but, as they were convmnced about the possibility of such events through their acquaitance with science, are actuahties Thus attempts were made to show that things like aeroplanes, electricity, wireless were known to anctent Indians Behind this attitude was also a subtle sense of national pride Howsoever crude this pride may appear to us today, it was undoubtedly pregnant with the possibibty of national freedom There ws a more polshed section which acknow ledged without any reservation the potentrahty of science and tried to follow the scientifie method People also went to the extent of admitting that science presented a new phenomenon Intherto un known m India But these very persons devoted themselves to a full demonstration of India's spintual superionty over the west They started the study of the Upamsads, the Vedas ind Buddhist texts mn this hght and they even took the ssistance of the scientific method of study The Brahmo Samija, under the leadership of Raja Ram Mohan Roy represented this group of people oriented in western education There were others who did not go to the extent of acknowledging the superiority of western education and the way of life They regarded that western education provided only a basis for our contact with foreign lands and their people So far as scientific studies are concerned, they can only help us mn leading a modern life But it is not materil comforts alone that go to

SICULARISM AND DEMOCRACY 189

make the life really worth living and dignified. Full- ness of life comes with spiritual awakening and a rich treasure of knowledge deposited with India was fully used for this purpose. It is interesting to note that this branch of movement played a very important role in winning political freedom for India. It is easy to know that Indians could not use arms and stage a bloody revolt against the British rulers mainly because it was against Indian temperament and also, to a certain extent, they were not in a position to procure sufficient quantity of arms. The only way open to Indian people was to prepare themselves for a "spiri- tual battle of liberation". The point at issue was an immoral and unjust rule of a race over another race and the main culprit in this case was the policy of the British people and not the people themselves. This distinction is very significant in as much as this provides a clue to under- stand the development of modern India. Therefore the battle was to be fought not with men but with their ideas and their philosophy. Sri Rama- krishna Paramahansa and his illustrious disciple Swami Vivekinanda showed the way. They took up the challenge and understood the intricate strategy of the opponent at the right moment. These worthy cons of India and their followers drew their arms for this philosophical battle from the armoury of Advaita Vedanta. The same reality pulsates in every living cell, therefore on the plane of life there is fundamentally no difference between man and man. It follows from this basic assumption that none has any right to rule

190 A PANORAMA OF INDIAN PHILOSOPHY

over others and there cannot be any distinction, based' upon race, country, creed, colour and so on, between people. The implicit conclusion that could be derived from these premises in the realm of polities was that every person is free to live and it is his duty to seo that the freedom of others remains unimpaired. Thus what we have to resent is not the person, who is one with our own selves, but the ideas that he propounds to a great disadvantage of others. This perversion springs up from the lack of knowledge that one Reality pervades the entire universe. Swamī Vivekānanda propounded this central theme and created an atmos- phere wherein people were compelled to pause and think for a while what they themselves really are. The old Vedantic command "know thyselt" acquired a new significance in the context of India of that time. The best strategy to defeat an opponent is to persuade him to think the way you would like him to think. Hence he thought it necessary to propound the Vedanta in Europe and America. He compelled the westeru world by his gifted eloquence that its policy was rooted in immorality, injustice and ignoranee. This de- moralisation of the enemy is the greatest achievement of Vivekānanda.

Swami Vivekananda used public platforms to propagate his ideas but some people preferred to confine their efforts within the academic world. Theee were mostly scholars trained in the western system of education. In this connection three names very easily come to our mind. Dr. S. Radhakrishnan combines in himself the eloquence of Vivekananda and

SECULARISM AND DEMOCRAOY 191

subtle thinking of an academic philosopher. Loka- manya Bala Gangadhar Tilak was both a politician as well as an academic philosopher. It is difficult to say which of the two aspects of his life was more prominent but it is certain that had he only written the Gitarahasya, a highly valuable scholarly exposition of the Bhagavadgita, he would have received as much respect and admiration as he has actually received as a politician. The third name is not so well known outside the scholarly cirele. Professor K. C. Bhatta- charya was onc of those silent scholars who devote their life to a cause without demanding anything, not even name or fame. His exposition of self as freedom may seem to some as an abstruse philosophical jargon but if we take into consideration the overall picture of the country at that time and his own personal life, every word of what he has said or written begins to unfold the vision of its author. Besides these three there were many others in Indian Universities whose main concern was the study of Advaita Vedanta. It is interesting to note that at that particular time Advaita Vedanta was the most popular subject of study, research and discussion in Indian Universities. Even common people, who had nothing to do with Universities, took active interest in it. This is not without reason. To my mind this is significant because Advaita Vedanta was found to be the most effective means to create an atmosphere of freedom and to strengthen the political struggle against the British rule. The Vedantic ideal of equality of all beings found its expression in creative literature too. Rabindranath

192 A PANOPAMA OF INDIAN PHILOSOPHY

Tagore and Prem Chand may be mentioned as typical representatives of this movement in hterature Vishwabharati at Santmketan was started to impart the new knowledge that India needed by that great poet-philosopher, Rabmdranath, who set his mark among the writers of the world by winning the coveted Nobel Prize for literature Pandit Madan Mohan Malaviya founded a great University at Varanası the most sacred and anrient centre of lening with a view to dissemmate Indrn knowledge and wisdom All these attempts iepresent different facets to the same central idea whtch I have called as the "spiritual battle of liberation'

All these efforts were mostly made by mndividuals, there was no single organistion to coordmate these activities But no one can deny the fact that these efforts vitally contributed to the final freedom that India won at last When Mahatmq Gandhi came on the political scene of India these attempts finally crystallised and took the form of a defimte policy whose immediate aim was to gain political freedom Gandhi with lus foresight and subtle analytical bent of mind saw that inspite of our study and preaching of Vedinta the objectne could not be achteved tmnless the people of India were united It is true that all the human bemgs are equal, bemg expressions of the same Reality, which he preferred to call as God, yet a distmnction between the oppressor and the oppressed becomes mnevitable if the people are to live in the "Kingdom of God" Unity is our essential nature, differences are only man-made Treedom is our birth-right,

SECULAFISM AND DEMOCRACY 193

so said Tilak, both in plulosophical and poltical sense Oppression, subjugation and the rule of tyranny are the offsprings of Satan sud Gandhi Those who hear the voice of God through their clear conscience have as their duty to fight the e out This fight is there- fore a fight for the truth But the fight for truth agunst demomc forces should not adopt the demome method This would be the greatest triumph for the opponent Let this fight for truth be based upon the principle of truth and let it adopt only those means that do not violate the basic idel The usual method adopted by those who act agaist the rules of the kingdom of God pertams to the nse of physical force The truthful method should, therefore be the use of spintual force V10- lence should be met with non volence, war with peace Gandhı started the famous satyumaha movement with these ideas mn his mmd and India's freedom testifies to the efiicacy of ths unque method Gandln used to call lus whole life as an experi- ment with truth Ils idea of truth was denved from the basic and umversal punciples of moralty and natural justice He was of the fim opmion that any attempt to sow the seeds of discord among the people is an act of sacrlege and any act that is based upon any distmction breeds sin Any person can see that ths idcal is nothing but a social and political version of Advaita metaphysics In the long lustory of Ad- vaitie thinking m Indi Gandh was the first man to use it as a polttical and social weapon Thus basically Gandhi was all for the world umtv But m practice

194 A PANORAMA OF INDIAN PHILOSOPHY

this cannot be achieved beeruse the foul play of ignorance obseures om vision The ideal of right minded people should be a world government and total disarmament We should replace the wepons of destruction with the mstruments of construction The duty of state is therefore to ensure that everyone gets full opportunity for hts welfaie Welfare of dll Sarodaya is the concrete form of the abstract ideal of truth

People pomt out a contradiction between what Gandh preached ind how he acted They sav that the ideal of Sarvodays is not compatible with the org v msed movement nagunst the British rulers of Indri But tls erticism is without any foundition in i much is we ire not able to distingwsh betwecn policy and those who execute that pohey Gindhi hated the British poley but not the British ruler Hate smn not the sinner, Gandhi ised to say fhat is why he did not eall his struggle a fight because that word belongs to the vocabulary of Satmn he namcd it as perseverance foi truth or satyigiaha Another criticrsm stems from ls emphasis upon non volence It is true thit Gandl decried the use of any kind of physical force but to do justice to his thuinkmg we should try to understand his conception of non violence m the hght of the complete mcture of tiuth visualısed by huim When 7 woild government t- achieved, the use of force will have no meaning bectuat that government will be based upon muturl trust ind love But before that state is icleved natiou which believes in the principle of non violence shoutr

SECULARISY AND DEMOCRACY 193

be strong enough to face those elements that have not yet realsed the ideal here envisaged Moreover, non- violence is meaningful only when a person who is capable of using force restrains lumself from the temp- tation of its use. It becomes meamngless m the case of that person who does not possess any capacity to use foice Non-violence therefore is a weapon of only those who aie ieally stiong Thus, force could be used, of couise with great restramt, only when there is no alternative left and there is a serious theat against the very existence of a nation or an individual But as far as possible dsputes should be settled by peaceful means Thus what Gandhi said and did was permeated with one sigle thought-the thought of truth hom which concepts of non-violence, peace, satvagrih and equilty of all followed naturally Theie miv not be any logic in the strict deductne sense of the term, found m his train of thinking but none ean deny the fact that hfe is more precious than logic and it was love for life and all that goes along with it wlnch made Gandhian thought valuable I must emphasise the fact that Vedanta was everting a great mfluence upon his mind and for this he was in- debted to all those lus contemporaries and immediate predecessors whose liboms he was utilsing Although the umty of a nation would be artificial and based upon arbitrarv considerations, yet to start wth, one has to confine himself to a limited gioup of people When Gandht thought of India or Indian people he did not mean that they formed a class by themselves What he actually meant was that they

196 A PANORAMA OF INDIAN PHII OSOPHY

berg withmn his reach and to a grent extent capible of appreciating lns cultural bickgiound, which all Indians shared in common, could be easily tramed Thus lns first step in this duection was to remove the 4 yil of separatism People m the country were divided into cistes, religious groups soonl lnerarchy and conomic pochets He hated those buriers that divded human beigs and hunched a system itie cam- pugn to eradicate these evil It is not possible to discuss all these refoims introdnced by hum but I would buefly mention the wax m which he handled the problem of ielgions differenees India has the right pride of bemg a land of relt- gions Ary ans themselves produced thiee iehgione Bralmanism, Jamism and Buddhism, Islam and Christiamty though imported from sbrod had become by that time, parts of Incian lfe Fanaticim guns stiength when therc is a competition among co evtst- mng rehgions Tls leids to blood shed and bieeds hatred In mediaeval India sunts and poets preached equality of all religions and the importance of tolerance But since then the British rulers tried to convinco Indin people by their deeds that Ihdus and Mushms are fundrmentally different In fact Chustian rulers had brotherly feclings for Muslims because both Islam and Christianity were not indigenous ieligions Their policy of ruling by creatig drvision among the people could therefore be checked only when the basic ques- tion of religious difference is settled Gandhi agamn gave a new life to what Kabn, Nanak Nnmadeva and a host of other poet-samnts of the pist had alrendy done These samts were not direetl conceined with

SECCLARISM AND DEMOCRACY 197

political problems, therefore they could say that all religions are basically one although they in their per- sonal life could follow religions of their own. Gandhi could not do that merely because when a political leader says that religions have basic unity, he is ques- tioned about the nature of this unity. In that case he cannot and should not begin to describe this unitary religion in the light of one or the other nor can he present a mixture of all religions as the true religion simply because nobody would be prepared to follow it or even honour it. Thus the best way for Gandhi was to explain that all religions. as they are, express the same fundamental truth although in different ways. There- fore religions could co-exist without coming in con- flict with each other. In short the Gandhian ideal about religions can be described as that of a Republic of Religions. Within the Kingdom of God the Re- public of Religions alone is the right thing to have. This is the core of Gandhian secularism. Secularism which constitutes the foundation of present day India is therefore not negative in its import. A secular state in the context of present day India does not mean that religion has no place in the affairs of the state; on the contrary, it means that not any one but all the religions have equal status in the scheme of the government. Democracy is consistent only with this positive interpretation of secularism. There cannot be any compromise between a theocratic and a real democratic state. Just as Swāmi Vivekānanda gave a practical shape to the ideas of his master Ramakrishna Parama- hansa similarly Jawaharlal Nehru executed the policy

198 A PANORAMA OF INDIAN PHITO OPHY

of Gandh Nehru's special field was relations with foreign countrics It is here that he can be seen at his best But what he actually did in this sphere of politics was basically a translation of Gandhian idea in the language of international politics His efforts for the preservation of world-peace complete disar- mament lessening of tension and promotion of a healthy chmate where all the nations could peacefully co evist are well known to need elaboration The polcy which he pursued at home was equally saturated with the sacred ideal of secularism and democracy The constitution of free India is an epitome of these two noble ideals It is reallv a fulfilment of the aspirations of Indian mind In fact the fust hne of this constitution was written about one thonsand years ago when India staged her first revolt agamst the foreign rule During the last eighteen vears this constitution has been successfully tried and found worthy of standing firm against odds Ideas that have given shape to this have been put to ngorous test both at home and abroad Indian mind is now confident and strong enough to face any challenge that may be thrown to it agamst secularism demo- cracy and world peace It is the past of India that has shaped hei present -- now on it will be her present that will shape her future But the present contais the past The Upamsads have said, "Let us move together, let us speak with one voice and let us think together for a common cause" In the words of the Rgveda let us say: sa ma santer edht, let that peace grow for me, for us all

IPPENDIX 1

KARMA AND REBIRTH1 The purpose of tlus note is to exammne the relation- sbip between Karma and rebirth I shall take it for granted that rebirth is possible although I am aware that much can be sid agamst rebirth I shall also avoid discussions about the existence of a permanent sonl Rebirth cannot be regarded as a given fact, its possbility is supposed to come from the nature of karma Therefore we cannot exammne the relationship between karma and rebirth from the side of rebirth If at all relarth can be supported its support can come only from the natme of karma Thus our enquiry should proceed from karma the cause, to rebirth, the effeet We can therefore ask a specific question Does rebnth necessardly follow from karma ? If it does not what sort of relationship, if any can we have between the two ? Since the word 'karma' belongs to Indian plulo sophneal tradition, I shall be mainly concerned with the exammation of Indian standpoint but occasional reference to other pomts of view wherever necessary for the sake of clarty, will be made The word 'Karma' is used in more than one sense It is an ambiguous word m as much as it lacks sharpness 1 Read in the seminar on "harma and Rebirth' organised by the Cen're for Advanced Study in Philosophv, Umversity of Madras, in September 1965

KARMA AND REBIRTH 20L

are fruitless karmas They have a negative iesult in the form of avordance of undesirable results This is the reason why Jamism, Buddhism and Advaita Vedānta regard nıtya and naimittika karmas on a par with kāmya karmas We can therefore say that the view of karmr as found in Indian philosophy presupposes that any karma is bound to yield some result, positive or negatve. But what happens when a karma is done but no iesult is obtamed ? Will then that karma become fruitless ? Indian plulosophers have held that a karma never fals to give an appropriate result but when (1) there is some defect in the act itself or (u) when there is some powerful obstacle (pratibandhaka) preventing the occurrence of the result, then alone the result is not obtamed But even in these cases the efficacy of karma is not ruled out But it is not necessary for a karma to yield a result instantaneously Moreover in the case of moral acts the result need not ivariably be perceptible (drsta), it may very often be imperceptible (adrsta) Sımılarly it is said that if after doig a karma a person dies, the force of his karma leads him to another life where he can obtain the result of his karma Thus the very idea of karma implies (1) a permanent soul and (2) a life hereafter, 1e rebirth It is evident now that the theory of karma is based upon the assumption that a karma is bound to yield a result From this assumption the following pomnts follow (1) Smnce there is a time gap between an act and its result there must be some unpereeptible lmk

202 A PANORAMA OF INDIAN PHILOSOPHY

between the act which is no more now and the result which is yet to come In the absence of this link the result would be without any cause (n1) If the result is not in sight, it is bound to come, in that case it 18 umperceptible (m) Death does not prevent a result from taking place (iv) A soul is bound by its act or karma and (v) by the tmperceptible force of karma the soul is compelled, even against its wishes to move from one body to another body (vi) Lastly, the freedom of the soul is checked m so far as the result of its past karmas is abiding Thus, mn order to support the theory of kama as it is propounded by Indian philosophical schools one has to assume so many imperceptible things But the axle of ths whole issue is the necessary relationship which is supposed to hold between a karma and its result Let us examme a case of an ordinary karma which does not involve any moral issue This my help us in our understanding of a moral karma A carpenter makes a chair His work with a piece of wood and tools is his karma When the chur is made, his karma is complete If he sells this chair in the market, he may get money as ita value In this example there are two results the chair and the money The chair is evidently the direct result of the karma, money is the result of his having made the charr A carpenter may make a chair "with a view to get money" but it does not ncecssarily follow that (1) he is bound to get money and (n) that the amount of money he gets for his chair is according to his expecta tion So far as the making of a chair is concerned,

EARMA AND REBIRTH 203

n carpenter is sure of himself. He can make a chair of his liking. Karma is within his control. But the value of the result of his karma depends upon many other factors such as the position of supply and demand for chairs in the market.

In the realm of morals we cannot separate a karma from its value. An act is intrinsically good or bad; it is not made good or bad wth reference to the result that is yielded. Thus, for example, when a sacrifico is performed or a person is helped, the act of perform- ing a sacrifice or that of helping a person being good in itself, the result itself becomes good. But what is the result in these cases ? Obviously when a sacri- fice is performed successfully or when a person is helped successfully or when a person is helped, the respective acts cease, just as when a chair is made the act of the carpenter ceases. Completion of a task undertaken should be regarded as the direct result of any karma. But in the case of amoral karmas the achievement of some value is yet awaited whereas in the case of moral karmas this value is achieved along with the comple- tion of the task. All the philosophical systems in India unani- mously agree that even when a good or bad kerma is done and its immediate result achieved, one has to wait for the further reward for his good or bad karma. To achieve a result is not a reward ; it is something over and above that result. Thus when a person is helped the helper gets a prosperous life as a reward for the help that he has given. The idea behind this view seems to be that the performer of karma should

204 A PANORAMA OF INDIAN PHILOSOPHY

himself get something in return. This means that a good karma in itself is not an appropriate reward. Those who hold that nitya karmas do not yield any positive result seem to think that these karmas are good in themselves but they carry no further prize. They are different from kamya karmas in as much as the latter karmas are undertaken with a view to get some reward. Thus when a person acts "with a view to" get some roward, he is bound to get it, if not in this hfe at least in the life hereafter. If a person does some act mn order to get something else, his primary concern is not with the act itself but with that some- thing ertra which he wants to achieve by means of his act. But, we may ask whether that "extra" which a person wants from a karma accrues necessarily to that person. Indian philosophers have admitted that this is so. On this basis alone they could surmise the possi- bility of rebirth. If no reward comes out of kamys karmas, a person would become free after his death. Buddhists and Advaita Vedantins go a step far- ther. They hold that even nitya and naimittika kar- mas are undertaken with a view to get some reward, although this reward is negative. Thus for them such karmas are also responsible for rebirth. Whatever is done with a desire to get something is the source of rebirth. Thus all the systems of Indian philosophy hold that any act done with a desire to get positive or negative rewards is bound to give that reward and in order to get that reward a person is forced to move on in the cycles of birth and death.

KARMA AND REBIRTH 205

It is clear now that a karma is supposed to bring an extra reward only when it is motivated by a desire for that award. Those who regard nitya karmas to be obligatory admit that these karmas do not yield any reward. On the other hand those who believe every karma to be motivated regard karma as such to be the source of extra reward. The Buddhists, for example, maintain that our contact with the world is invariably accompanied by pleasant or unpleasant feelings. These feelings themselves are sufficient to arouse a desire and lead one to act. Advaita Vedan- tins hold that the sense of duality invariably begets desire and any karma, being based upon the duality of the man who acts and the result he wants to achieve thereby, is rooted in desire. So it seems that it is not karma that leads to rebirth, rather it is the desire or motive behind a karma that yields an extra reward.

But how can mere desire on the part of a person, åt may be asked, yield a result ? The carpenter of our example may desire to get Rs. 50 for the chair that he has made but he need not necessarily get that amount. The extra reward cannot therefore depend upon the desire of a person. Moreover, desire and that extra reward which is desired are supposed to be causally related. But as Vasubandhu (in Vijnaptimātratā- middhi-Vimsatika 6-7) has said, the desire and the reward so desired should exist together. Desire being a mental state is in the person but the reward that is supposed to come is obviously outside the person. This means that my mental state cannot affect the external world; the laws of mind cannot govern the

200 A PANORAMA OF INDIAN PHILOSOPHY

laws of nature Hence, desire cannot determine & person's physical status, cannot determine his rebirth But there would be no objection in holding that desires do affect our mind One desire says Manu, begets another desire If somehow one desire is satis fied once a person wonld like to have a prolonged ex- penence of that state of satisfaction If it is not satis fied, he will hanker after the object of his desire So it is more reasonable to hold that desire (hama or, vasana) rather than karma keeps a soul moving and rebirth cin be explamed as purely a mental and spiritual phenomenon We have seen that so far as physcal karm1 i8 concerned, it cannot support the theory of rebirth It is kama rither than krma, desire to get in extra reward rather than the actual effort, which alone can support this theory The ideal of Bodhisattva state or that of Jivanmukta can be supported only on this ground Accordingly liberation would consist mn be coming free from desire ind the association of desire less karma (mskama karma) with a person who has no. desire left m limself would not breed further birth All mentil ind spintual disciplines aim at purifying a soul from the effects of kima Our sistras do not preach mskriyata , they teach the way to mskamata Therefore karma, in the sense mn which we ordi narly use this word, cannot be a cause of rebirth But if kama is supposed to be a mental act or m mnasa karma, then this can be a reason for supporting the theorv of rebirth But in that case the word karma will have to be redefined

APPENDIX-B

EXTRA-SENSORY PERCEPTION AND YOGAI Extra-Sensory perception is thought to be a spe- cial type of perception In normal circumstances perception involves the function of one of the sense organs and the stimulation of these senses by objects In ESP no such stimulation of senses takes place mamly because m telepathy we aie supposed to peiceive thought of other people, m clairvoyance we are said to perceive the happenings which are not mn the vicmity of the percerv er and precogmtion would, by Its very defim tion, be the perception of what is yet to come Tele pathy, clairvoyance and precogmition therefore cannot be included among the types of sensory perccption Hence they collectively are called extra sensory But the question is that if senses are not involved in what sense of the term "perception" do we recognise them as perception ? To convince a person who Is already convinced otherwise is a hard nut to crack But even to a person wedded to commonsense view it will seem absurd to call these as perception In the first place he will be with hot-headed scientists and philosophers m violently shaking their heads m dis approval of the possibihty of such a phenomenon He would call any enqwiry mnto these as a study in 1 Read in tho seminar on ' logr and Parapsychology ', Organt sed by the Department of Psychology Philosophy, Lucknow Umversity Tucknow, in December, 1962 Published in the Rescarch Journal of Philosophy and Social Sciences, Meerut Vol I Part I, October, 1963

208 A PANORAMA OF INDIAN PHILOSOPHY

ghosts Or else if Ins be a plastic mind he would pause for a moment to hear the implorations of psychic reseirchers and to ponder over them with a view to find out for himself if he can any theoretical justi fication for ESP I for one would prefer the company of those who see things and then proceed to exammne the nature of them in order to see whether thev are not deluded rather than cross the floor to jomn the benches of such people who refuse even to see the light out there Dogmatie rejection of ESP as ghost will render any attempt at perstiasion to test it futtle The other course left open for laymen like my self is to hear, first of all, what people have to say about their experiences Books on para psychology abound mn such reports and more often than not they give reports and nothing else to the utter dismay of inquisttive reader There are great names among the reporters and the reporters of these reports whose sincerity in reporting first hand and mntegrity in reproducing such reports may searcely be exposed to doubt Let us then give them patient hearing and the rest of it we shall ourselves take care of They say they have commumcated mentally with other minds otherwise than through the known chan nels of the senses , they claim some of them to possess the power of seeing things not present to the senses and Istly they proclaim having foreknowledge of events True they might have had such experiences We do not question their experience But we may iequest them to pause a while so that we can put forth our doubts regarding their claims of havmg ESP "Well

EXTRA-SEN SORY PERCEPTION AND YOGA 209

Sir", our doubt may run, "when you have telepathy, clairvoyance or precognition, do you perceive your objects in the same way in which you perceive your . friend sitting by your side ?" Naturally this question may be embarrassing and they may feel a bit uneasy about it. To admit the parity between normal percep- tion and ESP will land them in difficulty. (1) The role of the known channels of the senses apart, ESP differs from sensory perception in a very fundamental sense, viz., when I see a table before me I know that I am seeing, but when a person has clair- voyance or precognition he is not so sure about the object of his ESP. Sensory perception brings with itself a sense of conviction and confidence which is not present, at least in the same degree, in ESP. To witness an accident is not the same thing as to precog- nise it. (2) Secondly, as a corollary of the first, when a person is having sensory perception, he knows that he is having it but when a person is having ESP, he is not aware of this fact. He may take hs ESP to be mere hallucination. In the case of sensory perception we can immediately know whether a particular perception is veridical or it is mere hallucination, by referring to peiceptible environment. But in ESP no such refer- ence is available. That is to say, there is a very wide scope for chance in ESP whereas sensory perception offers little scope for it. (3) Every body who is capable of exercising with his senses can have sensory perception as and when he cares to have it. But every such person cannot have

210 A PANORAMA OF INDIAN PHILOSOPHY

ESP. Not only that, a person, supposed to be endowed with the power of ESP, cannot have ESP whenever he likes. ESP, unlike the sensory perception, is an in- voluntary phenomenon and therefore it does not reem . consistently.

Lack of conviction and awaiences of its oecurrence and its deceiving nature make a man sceptical about ESP. Thus a man of commonsense will say in reply to our first question that ESP is not a legitimate mode of perception.

The exponents of psi-capacities are a bit obstinate people. They won't let you go like that. They themselves sportingly enough condemn the study of ESP phcnomenon which is reported verbally. To them spontaneous cases of ESP may not be admissible because in their reports coincidence, fiaud, evaggera- tion, remembering only favourable cases and so on cannot be ruled out. To test the validity of ESP they have devised some methods which can control this phenomenon under laboratory conditions. Not spontaneous cases of ESP but the same as a laboratory phenomenon needs investigation.

At this stage we see that the atrategy is being shifted from common reports to laboratory tests. The psy- chic researcher hopes that the phenomena of ESP could better be established by laboratory experiments and the result thus obtained could legitimately be labelled as scientific. The word 'scientific' has these days become a trade-mark which in itself is a guarantee for the genuineness of the stuff designated by it.

EXTRA-SENSORY PERCEPTION AND YOGA 21I

II Then, let us ask our second question Tests about ESP have been carried out in laboratories and the phenomena studied have been conditioned Here ESP no longer remains a spontaneous occurrence; the defects in the spontaneous cases have been sought to be removed. Every detail i9 recorded and any variation is designed to see how the hypothesis works Such tests are chiefly confined to guessing unscen cards or influencing dice throws-phenomena that can casily be repeated, checked and calculated Those who have put in their heart in the subject have lauded spectacnlar results, they claim, they have obtained through these tests. The method adopted by these people is well known to need any detailed elucidation. What T am concerned with here is the fundamental question regarding the testibility of ESP phenomena (1) ESP is a mental phenomena and as such it must be conscious But the fact is that the subject in the lab does not get any mental image or picture or consciousness of the unscen card he guesses. Then in what sense is he having an extra-sensory perception ? To perceive is to be conscious of the object of perception but in ESP no such consciousness obtains and conse- quently the feeling of confidence which invariably accompanies any consciousness is lacking here The subject in laboratory tests does not know whether he had guessed correctly (2) Attempts have been made to justify ESP on the basis of statistical method adapted in tests. Here I may be permitted to quote the opinion of Mr.

212 & PANORAMA OF INDIAN PHILOSOPHY

R J Hirst who has done valuable work in the field of perception He says "ESP is fanta tically mefficient compared with normal perception by the senses, on pure chance you get 20 per cent nght ind the best ESP subjects iverage 28 per cent right i e less than one correct answer in ten cin be attubuted to the mind, from the co working of LSP and chanee you still get ovei 70 per cent wiong" (P 204) Not only that, tests carried on at Duke Unneisity give better results than the tests done at other places The English clims show fewer success

Let me here quote from the work of a well known para psychologist Mi Harry Pnice He sys "With Mrs Eileen Garrett at Duke Umiversity, Di Rhine has recorded some extriordmnary results In the 625 tnals at Pure Telepathy she scored 336 correct hits, an average of 13 4 per twenty five Zener cards In a series of more than 100,000 gne ses Mr Soal obtamed only a single set of twenty five with as many as thir teen guesses correct-a result wiuch is in accordance with chance expectation' And here is what Mr Soal has to report about his tests with Mrs Cileen Garrett In her case, he says, 'we ful to find the slightest confirmation of Dr J B Rhine s remarkable claims ielated to her alleged powers of ESP' This viration may men either that Di Rinne's procedure and statistics were faulty or theic is nothing hke the powers of ESP And on both these counts our faith in the laboratory experiments is shaken The man reason, it seems, of this fatlure m consts- tency of the ESP phenomena is that "one cannot re

EXTRA-SENSORY PERCEPTION AND YOGA 213

peat any experiment of this kind with certainty five minutes later". The psychological state of a subject appears to flicker like a "shadow in the fire light". This revelation will help to a great extent in removing the misconception about the stability of the para- normal faculty of mind. Statistics is notorions for its vagrancy. In statisties we may get a normal curve but the fact may just be otherwise. The experimental method adapted to test the ESP phenomena has also revealed some interesting characteristics of ESP. The atmosphere has a great influence upon the performance of the subject. In an atmosphere of enthusiasm. confidence, friendliness and positive enconragement, the extra-sensory faculty may produce results whch will be looked for in vain in chilly or repressive surroundings. Mr. Tyrell, perhaps the most outstanding scholar para-psychologist, was of opinion that personal and social influences which are too subtle to be defined make all the difference bet- ween success and failure. The difficulty with these expenmentalist para- psychologists is that they are as yet unable to find any firm ground on which they can establish their claims. The performance of a subject should be studied in its entirety, i.e. that to repeat any experiment one must reproduce all the essential conditions. What is essen- tial for the recurrence of ESP phenomena is not known to any one. Unless this is discovered any attempt to study it is bound to fail. Those who are devoting their time to this investigation assume ab initio that ESP should be studied in the same way in which any other

214 A PANORAMA OF INDIAN PHILOSOPHY

mental phenomena is being studied by experimental psychology This is a mistake which has been demon strated beyond doubt by the repeated failure of any experiment done up to date ESP is not the same as perception nor is this to be investigaated m psycholo gical laboratories along the same lme on which other experiments are carried out Assuming, though hypo thetically, that there is such a phenomenon we can say that this investigation must devise its special method III Text books on Yoga and the followers of the philosophy and practice of it claim the possibility of ESP They assume, in contradistinction to our para- psychologists, that ESP and for that matter any para normal phenomena of mind does not occur mn any Tom, Dick or Harry It is an outcome of certamn physico mental disciplines These disciplines are what Yoga teaches Having discovered the futilty of common man's belief and laboratory tests in respeot of ESP, let us try with yogic methods and see if yoga can be of any help and if so, in what ways can we derive help from it I am suggesting this not because I bhndly bebeve m yoga but becanse this is a demand of openmindedness Yoga may be condemned as anscientif bat my approach is stnotly za keeping mth the spint of scientific method of investigation Yoga is a discipline of mental activities and for this purpose it has its own techmques We read, for evample, that by means of concentration, contempla- tion and realisation of the other's mind a person can

FXTRA SENSOPY PEPOFTTION AND YO04 215

have the power of telepathy Similarly, by throwing the brillant light of one's mind upon things, that are either too subtle or hidden or are situated at distant place, one can get the power of clairvoyance By reahqng the three types of changes a person can pos- sess the power of pre cogmtion and post cogmition These observations revel that according to yoga the power of ESP is not innate The para paychologista on the other hand assume that if ESP is a mental phenomenon, it should be found in each and every indi udual Dr Rhmne has come to the conclusion that nearly every fifth person possesses this power, and this power is potential or innate

We have seen that the performance of a person at ESP test dechnes after some time and also that any such experiment designed to test the ESP power cannot be repeated with certainty five minutes later It has also been noticed that congemal atmosphere and positive encouragement have good mfluence upon the ESP performance Yoga will sy that at times a per- son is able to have some ESP power because he happens to control the functions of his mind unknowingly At other times he tres to concentrate, contemplate and realise but he is unable to achieve any positive result What makes all the difference, accordig to yoga, bet- ween success and failure in ESP is the concentrative capicity of a mind Unless we are able to find out the ways and means to tram our mind, it will be futile to expect any positive result Congemal atmosphere, friendliness and encouragement help enhance the con- centration but chilly atmosphere retards it

216 A PANORAMA OF INDIAN PHILOSOPHY

Of all the yogic techniques, concentration (dha- raņa) occupies a place of prominence. Concentration is defined as confinement of mind to an object. It is not possible without an object. The mind must be made steadfast on one pomt. A mind is said to have achieved perfection in concentration when the mind does not flicker from the object of concentration even though the man acts as he hkes On the basis of con- centration, the capacity of contemplation is developed and consequently the capacity of realisation or sama- dhi is achieved. Psychologically it is impossible to have constant concentration and contemplation but yoga is of opinion that such a state can be achieved by practice. Our mind being momentary cannot remain steadfast bnt practice at concentration can make momentary series of mind ocenpied only by the object of concentration and undisturbed by any other object. Concentration is confinement and not the arrest of the momentary flow of mind. When the concentrative power of mind is fully developed, a person can employ it for any specific purpose and the result can be achie- ved. Certainty of the result depends upon the degree of perfection achieved in the capacity of concentration. ESP therefore, can be sure and certain only when the person having it has trained his mind perfectly well, This is all speculation and in the age of science nothing can be taken for granted unless supported by empirical tests. But how to test the claims of yoga ? Texts on yoga are full of theoretical speculation about ESP. They also describe the ways following which perfection in this respect can be achieved. But these

EXTRA-SENSORY PERCEPTION AND YOGA 217

descriptions, mn the first place, are not clear as to their import and secondly they are not complete Most in these texts is left out mainly because it is assumed that the reader knows about these things and also because, prompted by a sense of secrecy, then authors thought it proper that certam things should only be conveyed orally by the teacher to the pupil These are the reasons why only with the help of these texts a person cannot practise yoga He needs the personal gurdance of a teacher.

There are people who claim the knowledge of yoga theory and practice We have no means to know whe ther their claim is true But tor ou purpose we may subject these yogms to test The tests devised for ESP can be admmtstered to these people and their work can be assessed If the result is encouraging we may request them to co-operate with us in our mvestiga- tion by imparting traming in yoga to some persons Students in Unversities or colleges can stand as control group and those who have undergone a course of tram- ing in yogic practices may be tested for ESP These people while under training should be placed under the joint observation of the yogin and the psychologist This will give the psychologist an opportunity to study the yogic method of tramng in the lght of science and also to preclude the possibilty of any trick that the yogin may play upon the tramees If this procedure is carefully followed, I am sure, either the yoga will become the science of all sciences or the claim of ESP will have to be abandoned

218 A PANORAMA OF INDIAN PHILOSOPHY

This is a very rough suggestion. I do not know how far it is practicable. The yogins are notorious for their whims and caprices. They may not co-operate with the psychologists They may not undertake a course of tests for ESP. But if no help is forthcoming from that quarter it will be quite unfortunate. But let us hope that even if half a dozen yogins come out with their offer of help, I am suie, a good progress can be visible in the study of ESP phenomena.

BOOKS SUGGESTED FOR FURTHER READING

S Radhakrishnan Indian Philosophy, 2 Vols London S N Dasgupta A History of Indian Philosophy, 5 Vols Cambridge T R V Murti The Central Philosophy of Buddhism, London Th Stcherbatsky Buddhist Logic, 2 Vols USSR Th Stcherbatsky The Conception of Buddhist Nirvana US S R Th Stcherbatsky The Central Conception of Buddhism and the Meaning of the word 'Dharma', London D T Suzukı Outlines of Mahayana Buddhism, London B M Barua Prolegomena to a History of Buddhistic Philosophy S Mukherji Buddhist Philosophy of Universal Hlux, Calcutta L Frauwallner Geschichte der mdischen Philosophic, 3 Vols Salzburg S O Vidyabhusana A History of Indian Logic, Calcutta Karl Potter Presuppositions of Indian Philosophy R C Pander t The Problem of Meaning in Indian Philo sophy, Delhi G C Pande Studtes in the Origin of Buddhism, Allahabad D N Shastrı Critique of Indian Realism, Agra S Radhakrishnan & C A Moore \ Source Book of Indian Philosophy, P'rinceton K N Jayatılleke Early Buddhist Theory of Knowledge, London T W P Mahadevan The Philosophy of Advaita, Madras

TEXTS

Max Muller & The Vedic Hyinns, Sacred Books of the East Oldonberg Series Max Maller The Upanisads, SB E B G Tilak Gitarahasya, Poona G Jha Mimamsa Satras of Jaimin (Tr ), Allahabad S O Vidyabhusana Nyaya Sutra of Gotama (Tr ), Allahabad Īsvarakrana Samkhyakarıka Dd ? S S Sastri, Madras Anrambhatta Tarkasamgraha Ed, Athale & Bodas, Poona Patañjalı Yogasutra, Ed, R Prasad Allahabad Patañjalt Mahabhasya, Bombay Bhartrhar Vakyapadıya, Benares Mallisena Syadvadamanjar Ed, A B Dhruva S Radhakrshnan The Dhammapada, (Tr ), London Madhava Sarvadarsana samgraha, Poona R C Pandeya Vijnaptı-matrata siddhi (Eng Tr ), Varanast S Radhakrishnan The Brahmasutra (Tr ), London G Jha Tattvasamgraha (Tr ), Baroda V V Gokhale Abhidharma Losa (Ed ), Bombay

INDEX

Advaita Vedanta Philosophy 159-168 Lightfold Path 2If Ajanta 27 Arvan culture 1-11 Error, theories of, 102-105

Athartaveda 6 Evolution, according to Samkhya 131f

Atomtsm, according to Jamas 49f Vašeşıka 58ff Faith and reason 135ff 174-177

Attitude to worldly life 24-33 Tire-worship 6

Authority of the Vedas 92-95 Four Noble Truths 15ff

Badarāyana 155 Gandhı, Mahatma, Philosophy of, Baņa 27 192-196

Bhattacharya, K C 191 God, the author of the Veda 92f,

Bhavabhūti 27 Kingdom of 197

Bloomfield 7 Body and consciousness 119-124 Hoyley 41

Brahman, the nature of 163ff Brahmo Samaja 188 India, before 1917, Ch XV, and the

Buddha, on soul 17ff, method of West 186-188, democracy, Ch XV, Chrstiamty 185f teaching 20f, and Upamsads 15ff and Islam

middle path 13 ff, stlence of, 22 182-185, Mushm rule m 181f

Buddhism and Carvaka 32f, and Indian and Western Philosophies 114ff Jainism 35ff, and Vedanta 157f, Individual 26ff Islam in India 182-18> 159ff Buddhist concept of mind 67ff, Intention 144

reaction to Vedic Philosophy 12f, Jama, philosophy 34-41, theory of riew of reality 52ff, view of universe 51ff , causalty 18ff knowledge 39ff , theory of relative standpoints 40ff, theorv of soul

Cārvaha philosophy 30m, 42f, 50f, vew of universe 47f.

Buddhism 32f and way of life 41-43, omniscience 41ff

Categories, according to Varenka Jaimism and Buddhism 35ff

56-62 Causalty, according to Buddha 1Sf Kabir 106

Chnstiamty in India 185-186 Kapria 119f

Consciousnes, and body 119-124. Karma, meanings of 199-200, types of, 200f; and its result 201-206 and soul 69ff Convention and meaning 96ff Kaldāsa 26f Kamasttra 27

Dandın 27 Kingdom of God 197

Democracy in India, s Ch XV Knower and known 66ff

Duke Universitr 212 Knowledge, Jains Theory of 30ff, theones of, s Ch 's VI, VII, VIII,

222 A PANORAMA OF INDIAN PHILOSOPHY

IX, and validity 65ff, 105-109 , and languige 149f , practicality of Prem Chand 192

107ff Samkhya Price Harry 212

126-128 self validtty of 109 -- 112 theory of, Purusa 128ff and Prakrti 131-136

Language nature of 139f, and Radhakrshnan Dr S 190f

knowledge 149f, and emotions 110, Ramakrshna Paramahansa 189 umt of, 110ff Ram Mohan Roy, Raja, 188

Iaw, nature of, 28ff sources of 28f Realsition 165-167

Logic and meaning 150-152 Realty Buddhist wew of 52f, Chs III IV V, X and XIV

Mahavirı, 34ff Reason and faith 155f, 174-177

Malaviyt Pandt Madan Mohan 192 Relatıvism 37ff

Madhyamka philosophy 157f Revelation 97-99

Meaning, mature of 94-96 theories Rgreda 3ff

of 144-150, and convention 96ff, Rhine, J B 212

and logic 150-152 Rsts 1 ~- 3

Middle path 13ff Rta 5f, 11

Mind, Buddhist concept of, 67ff, the nature of 60ff Śakuntala 27 Momentariness theory of, 52ff Samateda 6 Moods 127ff Samkhya plufosophy, 119-138, theory Muslim rule m Indn 181f of knowledge 126 -- 128, cvolution according to, 13If Namadeva 196 Santmıketan 192 Nanaka 196 Sankara's philosophy, s Ch XIII Narhkar 11 Sarvodaya 191 Nature values of, 136ff Science in Indir 186 -- 188 Nehrn Jawaharlal 197-199 Secularism, s Ch XV Newton 10 Self validitt of knowledge 109-112 Nirvana 21n Sentence viens about 110-141 Sex 27f Objects nature of 69-71, and word, Silence of Buddha 22 147 -- 119 Social Welfare 25ff Ommiscienee 11f Soul, Jaina theory 42ff, oOf, Advaita Theor 162f, in Upimisids 8f, Parts of speech 112f and consciousness 69ff Perception, Ch VII, Buddhist vew of, Sramamsm 36f 76ff, Nyaa vew of, 78-83, Substance 53f Samkhya view of, 83f, extra Systems of Philosophy 177-180

Philosophical actrvity, the source of, Tagore, Rabindranath 191f ordinary, 85f

116ff Telepathy 209 Philosophy, the nature of, 169-172, Tilak, Bal Gangadbar 191 systems of, 177-180 Prakrti 128ff, and Purnea 131-136 Things-in themselves 55ff Trustworthiness 89ff Practicality of knowledge 107ff Trell 213

IDEY 223

Umty of nature 4 Verbal knowledge 89-101, and Umverse, views about, 46-54 Umversals, theomes of 61-81 inference 9If

Upmsads 7ff, philosophy Vishwabharat: 192 of, Vivekananda Swam 189-190 153-155, soul theory mn 8ff and Buddha 15f 23 Western education 188 Vartesika, philosophy 56-62 Western and Indian philosophies 114ff Valmıkı 26 Word independent source of Values of nature 13Gff knowledge 91f and objcet 147-149 Varanası 192 Vatsyāyana 27 Laureda 6 Vedanta and Buddhism 157f, 159ff Yogucara plnlosopby 15Sf Vedantsūtra 155 Yogic perception 85f Vedic philosophy, Buddhist reaction to Yogie techniques 216f

Vedie ntualism 5ff Zener cards 212