1. samkhya_tattva_samasa_1980

Philosophy East and West

A Quarterly of Asian and Comparative Thought

Volume XXX, No. 3 July 1980

Articles

Does the rasa theory have any modern relevance? R. B. Patankar 293

Kung-sun Lung, designated things, and logic Fred Rieman 305

Philosophical nonegocentrism in Wittgenstein and Candrakirti in their treat- ment of the private language problem R. A. F. Thurman 321

The Gita's way as the only way Robert N. Minor 339 339 In defense of the traditional order: Ch'oksa Wijong Chai-sik Chung 355 Comment and Discussion

The format of technical philosophical writing in ancient India: Inadequacies of conventional translations Gerald James Larson 375

Feature Book Review 381

The wayward mysticism of Alan Watts Louis Nordstrom and Richard Pilgrim Book Reviews 403

Anton Dumitriu, History of Logic, reviewed by Irving M. Copi Ved Prakash Varma, Some Contemporary Meta-Ethical Theories, reviewed by Ashok Malhotra Margaret Nowak and Stephen Durrant, The Tale of the Nisan Shamaness: A Manchu Folk Epic, reviewed by Margaret Lock Kisor Kumar Chakrabarti, The Logic of Gotama, reviewed by Lawrence Davis Books Received 413

Current Periodicals 415

.News and Notes 417

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Gerald James Larson The format of technical philosophical writing in ancient India: Inadequacies of conventional translations

The astika (or so-called orthodox) philosophical systems of South Asia are presented in the form of highly condensed utterances called sūtra-s or kārikā-s upon which interpreters or adherents of a particular system compose bhāsya-s (full, word-by-word commentaries), țīka-s (subcommentaries on the com- mentaries), vrtti-s (partial or short commentaries on the sūtra-s or kārikā-s), or vārttika-s (glosses, corrections or expansions of problematic aspects of a sūtra or kārikā). Thus, each āstika system (namely, Nyāya, Vaiseșika, Sāmkhya, Yoga, Mimāmsā, Vedānta, and so forth) possesses a set of authoritative sūtra-s or kārikā-s, a set of bhāșya-s, a set of țīkā-s, a set of vrtti-s, and some- times one or more värttika-s. In many instances, unfortunately, the commen- taries, subcommentaries, and glosses on the various collections of sūtra-s or kārikā-s are from periods that postdate the compilation of sūtra-s and kārikā-s by several centuries, and it is frequently impossible to judge if a given commen- tator (bhāsyakāra) is a reliable interpreter of the sūtra or kārikā. Moreover, because of this unusual format for philosophical writing, it is often difficult to sort out what is a legitimate explication of a sūtra or kārikā, on the one hand, from what is a creative innovation by a commentator, on the other. The commentator is constrained by the format of the genre to pass off his own views as being a traditional reading or interpretation of a given utterance (sūtra or kārikā). For every system of thought there was presumably an elabo- rate oral tradition of dialectic, argumentation, and polemic, but only a small percentage of that larger body of content has been retained because of the restricted format for philosophical writing in ancient India. The task of translating ancient India's philosophical tradition, therefore, is unusually difficult, and the conventional approach is to attempt to recon- struct or piece together the sequence of arguments or series of inferences that were operating in a given system, and then to cast that reconstruction into a format that is suitable for a European or modern reader. The task is conven- tionally construed to involve not simply finding appropriate equivalents for the concepts being employed, but more than that, recasting a versified, laconic and formulaic shorthand into a discursive, sequential prose that resembles a European-style philosophical treatise. The modern reader sometimes gains the impression, therefore, that Iśvarakrsņa's Sāmkhyakārikā or Patañjali's Yogasūtra or Bādarāyaņa's Vedāntasūtra are philosophical works analogous with Aristotle's Metaphysics or Thomas Aquinas' Summa Theologica or Descartes' Discourse on Method, when in reality these so-called Indian "phil- osophical treatises" are more analogous with indexes, tables of contents, telephone directories, sets of algebraic equations, lists of linguistic rules, dictionaries, or annotated bibliographies.

Gerald James Larson is Professor in the Department of Religious Studies, University of California, Santa Barbara. Philosophy East and West 30, no. 3, July 1980. C by The University Press of Hawaii. All rights reserved.

376 Larson

Most modern interpreters or translators deal with the problem of the tradi- tional format by simply dismantling or ignoring it. The laconic, formulaic shorthand of traditional Indian philosophizing is explained away as a mnemon- ic device for preserving the oral tradition. Some effort is made to translate a sūtra or kārikā into sentence form, usually utilizing parentheses or brackets by which means the translator introduces assertions or propositions that render a sūtra intelligible; but the main focus in most translations is then given to an accompanying commentary. The final result of such an approach is some kind of discursive philosophical treatise in sequential prose with the sūtra-s or kārikā-s interspersed throughout as sentences that function like topic headings-for example, most translations of Bādarāyaņa's Vedāntasūtra with Sankara's Bhāsya or of Patañjali's Yogasūtra with the commentaries of Vyāsa and Vācaspatimiśra. We know, however, that although the laconic, shorthand method of Indian technical writing was often mnemonic, early along it developed into something much more than that. Panini's sūtra-s on Sanskrit grammar, for example, although on one level a set of mnemonic utterances for ease of learning, on another level turn out to be a subtle network of interrelated linguistic rules that must be applied systemically and sequentially and for which an elaborate metalanguage is required. The sūtra-s function as a complex network of sym- bolic notations, and one must grasp the entire sūtra-collection qua sūtra- collection in order to grasp the subtlety of the grammatical system as a whole. A discursive commentary on the sūtra-s, though essential for understanding the semantic significance of the notions and concepts in the system, can never fully communicate the elegance of the system itself. That elegance can be grasped fully only by the student who learns the sutra-s as a whole and then comes to "see" the total functioning of the grammatical system. I wish to suggest in this short article that sūtra-s or kārika-s function in a similar way in technical Indian philosophizing and that the sūtra-s provide a network of symbolic notations that permit a systemic "seeing" (darśana) of a certain way of interpreting some aspect of human experience or some aspect of the world. I wish to suggest that Indian philosophizing appears to have an important component of a kind of systems-theory in it that is best translated not so much as discursive prose or sequential dialectical argumentation but, rather, as a chart or a diagram or a network of symbolic notations which one can "see" as a whole and upon which one can reflect or meditate. To support my suggestion I cannot really "argue" discursively, for that would be to employ precisely what I am calling into question, namely that there is an important component in technical Indian philosophizing that is not discursive and argumentative in our European philosophical sense but, rather, systemic and recursive. Methodologically, I must support my sugges- tion by "showing" or "illustrating" a sūtra-system, and allowing it to be "seen" and "contemplated." A text which permits such a "showing" or "illustrating" is one that many

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scholars have dismissed as an utterly meaningless and unintelligible collection of utterances, namely, the Tattvasamāsasūtra-s of the Samkhya tradition. The text as we now have it is undoubtedly late (somewhere between A.D. 1300-1500), and the five important commentaries on the text (namely, the Bhāşya of Narendra, the Tattvayāthārthyadīpana of Bhāvāgaņesa, the Sarvopa- kāriņī possibly of Mahādeva Vedāntin, the Vivaraņa and the Kramadīpika) are also late. The text is used mainly in the pandita-communities in and around Varanasi, and, although its extant form is late, it may well represent an ancient compendium of the Sämkhya system (at least, according to Max Müller and more recently E. Frauwallner). Its title, Tattvasamāsa, means simply a "com- pendium of basic principles." Some of the commentaries read the text as having twenty-three utterances while others consider the text to have twenty-five utterances. My own preference for a variety of reasons is the latter, and I shall present the text, therefore, as read by Bhāvāganesa-that is to say, the text read in twenty-five utterances as set forth in Bhāvāgaņesa's Tattvayā- thärthyadīpana (from the edition Samkhyasamgraha, Chowkhamba Sanskrit Series Office, Varanasi, 1969, pp. 33-58).

The text in its entirety is as follows:

(1) aştau prakṛtayah (2) șodaśa vikārāḥ (3) puruşaḥ (4) traigunyam (5) samcarah (6) pratisamcarah (7) adhyātmam (8) adhibhūtam (9) adhidaivatam (or adhidaivam) (10) pañcābhibuddhayah (11) pañca karmayonayah (12) pañca vāyavah (13) pañca karmātmānaḥ (14) pañcaparvāvidyā (15) aştāvimśatidhāśaktih (16) navadhā tuştih (17) aştadhā siddhih (18) daśa mūlikārthāh (19) anugrahah sargaḥ (20) caturdasavidho bhūtasargahı (21) trividho bandhah (22) trividho moksah (23) trividham pramāņam (24) trividham duhkham (25) etat param yāthātathyam etaj jñātvā krtakrtyah syān na punas trivid- haduhkhena abhibhūyate (or yāthārthyam).

A direct English rendering would be the following:

(1) Eight creative natures; (2) Sixteen derivatives;

378 1 Larson

(3) Consciousness (or Soul); (4) Tripartiteness; (5) Manifestation; (6) Dissolution; (7) Pertaining to the subjective; (8) Pertaining to the objective; (9) Pertaining to the divine; (10) Five cognitions; (11) Five sources of action; (12) Five breaths; (13) Five initiators of action; (14) Fivefold ignorance; (15) Twenty-eightfold incapacity; (16) Ninefold contentment; (17) Eightfold perfection; (18) Ten basic categories; (19) Spontaneous creation; (20) Fourteenfold manifest creation; (21) Threefold bondage; (22) Threefold release; (23) Threefold means of knowing; (24) Threefold suffering; (25) Understanding the sequence properly one has accomplished all that needs to be done, and one is no longer affected by the threefold suffering.

Quite apart from the content of the Samkhya as systematically presented (which for purposes of the present context I shall simply assume), the inter- preter or translator is initially puzzled by the format of the enumerations in the text and, more than that, how the enumerations relate to one another, especially in view of the final verse in which attention becomes focused on the sequence of enumerations. On one level, of course, the enumerations are just conventional lists of things or principles in the Samkhya that are well known to students of the system. Verses 1, 2 and 3, for example, call attention to the twenty-five basic tattva-s or principles of the Samkhya system. Verse 4 refers to the guna-s, sattva, rajas, tamas, and so on. On this level the Tattvasamāsa is șimply a digest of Sämkhya lists, and one is tempted to concede the conventional schol- arly opinion that the text provides no new information whatsoever concerning the Sāmkhya. On another level, however, something more interesting emerges. If one passes through the verses, breaking down the apparent enumerations into their attested components-by attested components I mean other, more basic ways of construing the components for which there is clear evidence in the classical tradition -- the following renumbering becomes possible:

(1) 8= 1+7 (2) 16 = 11 + 5 (3) 1 (?) (4) 3 = 1 + 1 + 1 (but functioning usually as 2 + 1)

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(5) 1 1 (6) 1 = 2 (7) 1) (8) 1 =3 (9) 1J (10) 5 (11) 5 (12) 5 (13) 5 (14) 5 (15) 28 = 11 + 17 (16) 9= 1+1+1+1+5 (17) 8 = 5 + 3 (18) 10= 3+ 3+ 3 + 1 (19) 1 (20) 14 = 13 + 1 (21) 3 (22) 3 (23) 3 (24) 3 If one then puts the more basic (that is to say, renumbered) components (from which the apparent enumerations are derived) into a series, one has the sequence: (1) 2, 3, 5, 7, 11, 13, 17. This, of course, is the sequence of prime numbers. Moreover, between 1 and 100 there are exactly twenty-five prime numbers, and, according to the classical Samkhya tradition, there are twenty-three basic tattva-s or principles that are derived from the copresence of prakrti and purusa. All prime numbers (as well as composite numbers) presuppose number 1, and the number 1, therefore, must perforce be the mūlaprakrti, and the sequence of Sāmkhya tattva-s might be construed as follows:

(1) mūlaprakrti (and implicit in prakrti are the 3 guņa-s in an unmanifest 1 + 1 + 1 which will eventually manifest itself structurally in pairings of 2+1); (2) buddhi (with its twofold bhāva-structure); (3) ahamkāra (with its threefold structure as vaikrta, bhūtādi, taijasa); (5) tanmātra-s (five subtle elements); (7) five tanmātra-s + buddhi + ahamkāra referred to as the "seven" in Sāmkhyakārikā III; (11) indriya-s including the five sense capacities, the five action capacities and manas or "mind"; (13) linga or karana. the thirteenfold instrument made up of buddhi, aham- kāra, manas and the ten sense capacities; (17) structure of ahamkāra when fully manifest (namely, the elevenfold vaikrta-ahamkāra, the fivefold bhūtādi-ahamkāra, and the one taijasa-

(19) transmigrating entity empowered by prakrti (namely, the thirteenfold ahamkāra);

instrument + the five tanmātra-s + prakṛti); (confer SK. XL) (23) the manifest world that emerges because of the co-presence of prakrti and purușa (from "Brahma down to a blade of grass", according to SK. LIV).

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The twenty-fifth tattva, of course, is purusa, and the Sāmkhya texts describe the purusa as contentless consciousness whose presence allows prakrti to become manifest. Given the number sequence that has emerged, there is, of course, only one possibility for purusa, namely, zero (0), a notion which was not only known to the ancient Hindus but possibly discovered by them. The notion of zero is necessary for all sophisticated calculation, yet it has the peculiar char- acteristic of not adding anything in any calculation. It is an irreducible princi- ple necessary in any sophisticated theory of numbers, yet it is not clear, even in modern mathematics, if zero itself can be construed as a number. In any case, from the perspective of this emerging number-theory, the Sämkhya on one level may have been dealing with the following kinds of problems:

(a) What is the nature of 0? (b) What is the nature of 1? (c) What is the relation between 0 and 1 and what is the relation between 1 and the sequence of prime numbers? (d) What is the relation between prime numbers and composite numbers? (e) What is the relation between number-theory and the kind of world in

(f) Is it possible to correlate prime numbers with the basic principles or "par- which we live?

ticles" (tattva-s) that constitute subjective experience (adhyātma) and objective existence (adhibhūta)? and so forth.

What appears to emerge, then, is that the Samkhya may have been asking questions on analogy with those of Pythagorean mathematical philosophy or traditions of mathematical Platonism rather than those of Aristotelian naturalism. Or, even more radically, in modern terms the Samkhya may have been dealing with issues that are analogous with reductive materialism, semi- otics, systems-theory, or mathematical physics rather than traditional Euro- pean-style metaphysics. Returning, however, to the basic point of this short article, there is merit perhaps in attempting to exhibit the ancient philosophizing of India in its own laconic, formulaic shorthand, for only by "seeing" its inherent symbolic notations can one come to see interpretive possibilities that may have been hidden or concealed by conventional, discursive translations.