Part 58 (1/2)

The mantras which are generally hymns in praise of some deities or powers are to be taken as being for the specification of the deity to whom the libation is to be offered. It should be remembered that as dharma can only be acquired by following the injunctions of the Vedas they should all be interpreted as giving us injunctions. Anything therefore found in the Vedas which cannot be connected with the injunctive orders as forming part of them is to be regarded as untrustworthy or at best inexpressive.

Thus it is that those sentences in the Vedas which describe existing things merely or praise some deed of injunction (called the _arthavadas_) should be interpreted as forming part of a vidhi-vakya (injunction) or be rejected altogether. Even those expressions which give reasons for the performance of certain actions are to be treated as mere arthavadas and interpreted as praising injunctions. For Vedas have value only as mandates by the performance of which dharma may be acquired.

When a sacrifice is performed according to the injunctions of the Vedas, a capacity which did not exist before and whose existence is proved by the authority of the scriptures is generated either in the action or in the agent. This capacity or positive force called _apurva_ produces in time the beneficent results of the sacrifice (e.g. leads the performer to Heaven). This apurva is like a potency or faculty in the agent which abides in him until the desired results follow [Footnote ref 1].

It is needless to dilate upon these, for the voluminous works of S'abara and k.u.marila make an elaborate research into the nature of sacrifices, rituals, and other relevant matters in great detail, which anyhow can have but little interest for a student of philosophy.

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[Footnote 1: See Dr [email protected] Jha's [email protected]_ and Madhava's _Nyayamalavistara_.]

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CHAPTER X

THE [email protected] SCHOOL OF VEDaNTA

Comprehension of the philosophical Issues more essential than the Dialectic of controversy.

[email protected]_ in Sanskrit signifies the means and the movement by which knowledge is acquired, _pramata_ means the subject or the knower who cognizes, _prama_ the result of [email protected] knowledge, _prameya_ the object of knowledge, and [email protected]_ the validity of knowledge acquired. The validity of knowledge is sometimes used in the sense of the faithfulness of knowledge to its object, and sometimes in the sense of an inner notion of validity in the mind of the subject--the knower (that his perceptions are true), which moves him to work in accordance with his perceptions to adapt himself to his environment for the attainment of pleasurable and the avoidance of painful things.

The question wherein consists the [email protected] of knowledge has not only an epistemological and psychological bearing but a metaphysical one also. It contains on one side a theory of knowledge based on an a.n.a.lysis of psychological experience, and on the other indicates a metaphysical situation consistent with the theory of knowledge. All the different schools tried to justify a theory of knowledge by an appeal to the a.n.a.lysis and interpretation of experience which the others sometimes ignored or sometimes regarded as unimportant. The thinkers of different schools were accustomed often to meet together and defeat one another in actual debates, and the result of these debates was frequently very important in determining the prestige of any school of thought. If a Buddhist for example could defeat a great Nyaya or [email protected] thinker in a great public debate attended by many learned scholars from different parts of the country, his fame at once spread all over the country and he could probably secure a large number of followers on the spot. Extensive tours of disputation were often undertaken by great masters all over the country for the purpose of defeating the teachers of the opposite schools and of securing adherents to their own. These debates were therefore not generally conducted merely in a pa.s.sionless philosophical

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mood with the object of arriving at the truth but in order to inflict a defeat on opponents and to establish the ascendency of some particular school of thought. It was often a sense of personal victory and of the victory of the school of thought to which the debater adhered that led him to pursue the debate. Advanced Sanskrit philosophical works give us a picture of the att.i.tude of mind of these debaters and we find that most of these debates attempt to criticize the different schools of thinkers by exposing their inconsistencies and self-contradictions by close dialectical reasoning, antic.i.p.ating the answers of the opponent, asking him to define his statements, and ultimately proving that his theory was inconsistent, led to contradictions, and was opposed to the testimony of experience. In reading an advanced work on Indian philosophy in the original, a student has to pa.s.s through an interminable series of dialectic arguments, and negative criticisms (to thwart opponents) sometimes called [email protected]@da_, before he can come to the root of the quarrel, the real philosophical divergence.

All the resources of the arts of controversy find full play for silencing the opponent before the final philosophical answer is given. But to a modern student of philosophy, who belongs to no party and is consequently indifferent to the respective victory of either side, the most important thing is the comprehension of the different aspects from which the problem of the theory of knowledge and its a.s.sociated metaphysical theory was looked at by the philosophers, and also a clear understanding of the deficiency of each view, the value of the mutual criticisms, the speculations on the experience of each school, their a.n.a.lysis, and their net contribution to philosophy. With Vedanta we come to an end of the present volume, and it may not be out of place here to make a brief survey of the main conflicting theories from the point of view of the theory of knowledge, in order to indicate the position of the Vedanta of the [email protected] school in the field of Indian philosophy so far as we have traversed it. I shall therefore now try to lay before my readers the solution of the theory of knowledge ([email protected]_) reached by some of the main schools of thought. Their relations to the solution offered by the [email protected] Vedanta will also be dealt with, as we shall attempt to sketch the views of the Vedanta later on in this chapter.

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The philosophical situation. A Review.

Before dealing with the Vedanta system it seems advisable to review the general att.i.tude of the schools already discussed to the main philosophical and epistemological questions which determine the position of the Vedanta as taught by [email protected] and his school.

The Sautrantika Buddhist says that in all his affairs man is concerned with the fulfilment of his ends and desires ([email protected]_).

This however cannot be done without right knowledge (_samyagjnana_) which rightly represents things to men. Knowledge is said to be right when we can get things just as we perceived them.

So far as mere representation or illumination of objects is concerned, it is a patent fact that we all have knowledge, and therefore this does not deserve criticism or examination. Our enquiry about knowledge is thus restricted to its aspect of later verification or contradiction in experience, for we are all concerned to know how far our perceptions of things which invariably precede all our actions can be trusted as rightly indicating what we want to get in our practical experience (_arthapradpakatva_). The perception is right (_abhranta_ non-illusory) when following its representation we can get in the external world such things as were represented by it ([email protected]_). That perception alone can be right which is generated by the object and not merely supplied by our imagination.