Perspectives on Ontology and Epistemology

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Unfortunately, ‘colonial consciousness’ has taken hold of many Indian intellectuals, a great consequence of Macaulay’s educational policies. Deracinated and derooted from the ethos of Bhārata, these intellectuals, many times holding a dominant position in the corridors of power and deciding the narrative, simply believe that a 5000-year-old civilization (at the very least) had nothing to offer to humanity and were waiting with folded hands for the colonials to come and give us education and other positive values. India has a deep intellectual history. It would be far better to sensitize students to this rather than filling our narratives and textbooks with blanket proclamations of an ‘unscientific, primitive, superstitious’ India before the colonials came. The narrative becomes more damaging when combined with, of course, fanatics today talking about airplanes and genetic cloning in the ancient past. We have amazing knowledge systems, and it is time to regain it.

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

The holistic vision of our rṣis simply subsumes Western notions of knowledge. Our darśanas, reflecting the philosophy of a multi-traditional land, just tell the Western world, “I am true, but you are not wrong.” The materialistic western paradigm can perhaps never have a proper ontology and epistemology in the present frameworks. It will continue to try and seek unity in the material world while our seers attained that deep unity binding both the material (laukika) and transcendental (alaukika) thousands of years ago. Socrates believed in an immortal soul and all knowledge residing in that soul. In the rebirths that an individual takes, all knowledge gained is simply remembering what was already existing in the soul. The Greeks had a vibrant notion of the soul, which had its echoes in our darśanas. We can only speculate whether Greek thought arose independently or whether Bhāratīya thought influenced them.

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

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

Authored by Dr. Pingali Gopal. Published by Brhat.