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Jessica Frazier
Yet explicitly philosophical traditions were not the only venue for systematic
reasoning in the Hindu intellectual world. Intellectual historians such as Dominik
Wujastyk have identified systematic empirical methodologies at the root of Hindu
natural sciences such as medicine, veterinarian science, and astronomy. Medicine
leaps fully formed (Dominik Wujastyk, 2003) into the sam.hit@s of Caraka, Susruta,
and Bhela, and these compendious accounts of current practice describe a medical
culture in which competing theoriesemphasising breath, force, fluids, digestion
and metabolism, or the three humours, for instancewere debated amongst
practitioners (Meulenbeld). The existence of detailed means for testing hypotheses, and also for preserving ones reputation if failure threatened, attest to a
community that drew on a significant history of practice. Indeed, one of the earliest uses of the notion of pram@n. as, foundations of knowledge, is in relation to
the science of accurate diagnosis. Approximately two thousand years later, both
astronomy and the Indian medical sciences continue to be practised in contemporary Indian communities.
Vedic sciences, such as mathematics and astronomy, are often accessible to
modern scholars only through the allusive record of their practical application
to ritual. Indeed, it is for this reason that Pythagoras was credited for the geometric theorem to which he gives his name: Indian mathematicians discovered the
rule first, but felt no need to document their proof of it in an expositional text, as
their main goal was an applied one. Nevertheless, the religio-scientific wonder at
discovering the natural order of mathematics, which we see in thinkers like
Pythagoras and Plato, finds a parallel in the Vedic emphasis on the mathematical
patterns instantiated in rituals, and even in the Tantric use of yantras and numbers as tokens that were believed to possess intrinsic power.
Frits Staal has been an enthusiastic champion of the grammatical tradition,
asking us not only to consider the sophistication of the Sanskrit science of language, but also to ask what reasoning underlay the application of such extraordinary precision to the informal natural phenomenon of our speech. Grammar, for
Panini and his peers, was not merely a practical science; like the natural sciences it
entailed the empirical charting of natural lawsin this case, of sound and semantics. Grammarians were not marshalling possible uses of language into practical
forms. They too saw themselves as discovering truth in the underlying structures of
which natural language is only a crude representation.
Those who wrote on poetics similarly took to their subject like cartographers on
a voyage of discovery, attempting to map out the semantics of literary expression
and the nature of language itself, the science of emotional manipulation through
the theatrical arts, and in later philosophies of rasa. Thinkers such as
Abhinavagupta and R+pa Gosv@mi also mapped the terrains of aesthetic and emotional response. Bharatas compendious N@t.ya S@stra, which lays out principles for
theatre construction, stagecraft, costume, music, acting, and aesthetic effect, demonstrates the purpose of some s@stras to wholly capture and encompass a
Jessica Frazier
Jessica Frazier
faithful to the information gained through them. Such inquiry is objective, even
though its valid conclusions may differ from those of other inquirers with other
starting points (i.e. it is objective in a way that is relative to ones position). The
thinker who is subject to bad prejudice, however, is not faithful to the sources
and rules that he has set up for himself. He lets his desire for a particular result
override his commitment to truth, and predetermine his conclusion. It is the
capricious and sophistic arts which are the counterpoints to traditions of
reasoning.
Many rational traditions subjected their theories to the test of best fit to empirical experience, which meant that they had to be able to stand up in public
arenas of dissemination, whether performed (in sung narratives or formal debates)
or private (in texts and private research). Here ideas had to be verified and confirmed. The narrative reasoning found in the arts also had its means of verification, with new ideas being informally vetted through the process of retelling or
omission as the sequence of performances unfolded. Far from the image of the
lone scholar agonising over difficult problems, this public process of collaborative
reasoning has produced some of the traditions most influential philosophical and
theological texts.
Alternative methods and models
Formal observational and inferential techniques were also complemented by other
methods of reasoning. One such method was the practice of classificatory analysis
to good effect, using categories to parse out the object of study. Others used
analogies to try out different explanatory accounts of the world. Narrative reasoning, used in stories to reveal the practical implications of given models and
principles, were particularly helpful for assessing the ethical, psychological, and
soteriological implications of certain beliefs. Phenomenological description of
mental states was also employed in a systematic way at an early stage in the
Indian tradition; it is used in a fragmentary way in the Upanis.ads and more systematically in texts such as the Yoga-S+tra, or in the later aesthetic treatises of
Abhinavagupta and others who attempted to catalogue the emotions.
Indian approaches, developing in both Hindu and Buddhist philosophies, have
been particularly good at bringing the limits of reason itself into the sphere of
understanding. The assumption in early Ved@ntic and S@m.khya traditions that a
pure form of consciousness is possible, devoid of mental content, provided a platform on which to reflect on the limitations of thought, and to think about truths
that by their very nature are not accessible to thought. The Kena Upanis.ad says of
reality that He by whom it is not thought, by him it is thought; he by whom it is
thought, knows it not. It is not understood by those who understand it, it is
understood by those who do not understand it. It thereby invites rationality to
develop methods of transcending or cancelling its own normal action. One implication here (a conclusion often found in Taoist thought), is that reason can
Jessica Frazier
sometimes act most effectively in the world by suspending its own activity: observing but not analysing, holding contradictions together in the imagination to
achieve a multi-faceted viewpoint, or letting emotions and natural functions
follow their own implacable momentum.
One might also speak of the sacral or transformative reasoning of tantric liturgy,
the emotional reasoning of bhakti devotion, and the naturalisation of social kinds
through the system of defaults and exceptions used in Dharma-S@stra. In short,
the Indian arts and sciences are a rich resource for styles of reasoning - ways of
developing new material that is faithful to framework ideas and authorities, subject to systematic methodological traditions that unite new and old participants,
and accountable to the public reason of the community at large.
Five articles on reason and rationality in Hindu Studies
In the articles which follow, different methods and goals of reasoning are explored
through the disciplines of philosophy, philosophical theology, jurisprudence, and
aesthetics. Jonardon Ganeri, who has worked so extensively to encourage a
broader acknowledgement and understanding of Indian rational traditions, reflects here on the criteria of philosophy.
Drawing on his prolific study of Indian philosophical thought, Jonardon Ganeri
seeks to provide a hermeneutic framework for understanding Indian notions of
rationality and objectivity. A philosophy that does not assume metaphysical realism can still eschew relativism by pursuing positional objectivity; a search for
truth that is determined by its conditions of time, place, and culture. Ganeri discerns a certain organic pattern in the growth and decay of intellectual traditions,
progressing towards a particular form in which their guiding ideas can be fulfilled,
and even argues that the increasing shift of Indian philosophical reflection into
the lecture halls of the Anglo-analytic philosophical academy is a case of just such
an organic growth out of Indias colonial history. What emerges from his article is
a new appraisal of Indian philosophy as the site of a distinctive positional approach to truth which is both ancient and strikingly contemporary.
Patrick Olivelles article explores the reasoning behind the forms of penance and
punishment prescribed for different crimes in the Dharma S@stras. In it, he applies
Michel Foucaults critical analysis of social ideology to these texts, and shows that
they sought to mediate complex webs of power and legitimation within Sanskritic
culture. Utilitarian purposes for corporal punishment (it recognisably marks out
criminals), combine with an appeal to natural law; crimes are manifested on the
body, whether through humanly inflicted punishment (criminal penalties) or naturally inflicted punishment (rebirths in animal or deformed bodies). Classical texts
such as the Dharma S@stras have received much attention over the centuries, but
little attention of this subtle hermeneutic kind, which seeks exposition of the
implicit messages and effects of the text. In bringing Foucault, Peter Berger and
Thomas Luckmann, Pierre Boudieu into dialogue with this text, Olivelle reminds us
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that the Vedic concern to establish order through ritual, language, and law is not
only a theological desideratum but a reflection of a basic and universal human
need for stability.
While most medieval Hindu intellectual history suffers from a lack of biographical and social information with which to illuminate the context in which the ideas
were disseminated, Jacqueline Suthren Hirsts article is an exemplary case of careful detective work that could only have been done by a scholar who has spent a
lifetime with the texts of a single figure from the past. Her aim is to reveal the
background personal emotions, social relations and intellectual context of
Sam.karas writing by using register theory to analyse Sam.karas impassioned
treatment of a particular sect. As she meticulously rules out the unlikely matches
and closes in on the identity of this sect about whom he is so derogatory, the
centuries seem to fold inwards and we are led towards the intriguing notion that
Sam.kara might already have encountered, in his lifetime, the earliest glimmering
of the philosophical position that would be his main competitor centuries after his
death. The exercise gives a striking sense of the crowded community of debaters in
which thinkers like Sam.kara lived, and brings to life the polemical content of what
for many seem to be merely propositional ideas.
Mandakranta Boses article on the interpretation of classical descriptions of
Indian dance is also a piece of textual detective work, in that it attempts to discover clues to the aesthetic taste that informed the detailed technical descriptions of Bharata. Like Olivelle, she shows that S@stra is a medium which begs the
question of the underlying rationale informing its rules. In this case, she must
uncover the sense of beauty that governed the art, and in doing so, we see that she
is following in the footsteps of dancers who must also have had to interpret such
texts in the light of aesthetic considerations. Her article provides a
thought-provoking window onto hidden processes of interpretive interaction
that went on between the sources, mediators, and receivers of tradition.
Finally, Tim Dobe explores the ways in which, in the midst of Hindu Renaissance
movements of reform and revival, a new theological authority is claimed by
Day@nanda Sarasvata. Using the model of Sarasvata as an Indian Lutheran
image that the Arya Samaj itself propagatedDobe analyses the rationales on
which he drew. Sarasvata appears both in Hindu terms as a r..si, an irascible individual whose insights are presented as a form of response to contemporary social
inadequacies in the maintenance of dharma, and in Christian terms as a protest
reformer who opposes egalitarian access to originary scripture to the hierarchical,
ritualistic rule of decadent religious leaders who he referred to as popes.
Ultimately, Hindu religious innovation is given a fresh identity as a form of
social protest, and conversely a distinctly Hindu form of protestant religion is
suggested. Dobes study is an important step forwarding in correcting the image of
the modern Hindu thinkers as unsystematic, irrational, and alienated from the
classical traditions. Rather he depicts Sarasvata as drawing on Vedic, Epic, and
Jessica Frazier
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