INDIAN CONSCIOUSNESS THROUGH AGES
Ashok R. Kelkar

 

 

What has Bhart?hari got to Say on Language?

 

Not being an Indologist and not knowing Sanskrit I am at best a curious layman full of questions. I decided that I could play a limited but useful role in this preparatory seminar by asking questions and looking not only for answers but also for evidence in the texts and other artifacts of the Great Traditions and the Little Traditions that would have a bearing on the answers.

 

Instead of cluttering the presentation with question marks, I have a numbered series of propositions to offer, each with an implied question. Isnt that so? The propositions are grouped according to certain perspectives against which the cosmic elements have been viewed. India here stands for ancient and medieval south Asia. The Islamic Tradition has been left out though not completely.

 

The Perspective of Cosmology

 

Any cosmology worth the name presupposes a certain philosophy of reality in relation to a certain philosophy of understanding. There are two alternate ways of relating these two with two concomitant styles of philosophizing.

 

1-A. There cannot be a philosophy of reality distinct from a philosophy of understanding. Indeed the former flows from the latter. In philosophizing it pays to be sceptial, reductionist, and parsimonious. In India this style of philosophizing was called the philosophy of search (nvkik).

 

1-B. Of course there can be a philosophy of reality distinct from a philosophy of understanding. Indeed the latter flows from the former. In philosophizing it pays to be boldly speculative, phenomenological, and integrationist. In India this style of philosophizing was called the philosophy of vision (darana).

 

 

Indian cosmology started by asking what the Prime Cause (di-kraa) (not reducible to others) of the universe is. The two styles correspondingly offered two different answers.

 

2-A. The world (viva) is a universe. The universe comes from atoms (au, plu).

 

2-B. The world is a universe. The universe comes from a single principle or Urgund.

The second answer has been variously elaborated.

 

2-B.1 Vedic tradition: This was the principle of growth (brahman).

 

2-B.2 gamic tradition: This was the principle of energy (akti).

 

2-B.3 Synthetic traditions:

 

2-B.3-a This was the principle of conjunction of the male and the female.

 

2-B.3-a-1. The constant male and the variable female stand in a joyful union (mithuna).

 

2-B.3-a.-2. The many potent yet passive males (puruas) make it possible for one active yet latent female (prakti) to become more specific-and-manifest (vyakta). At a certain point the male loses interest in watching (being skin) and becomes free from involvement; and the female loses interest in becoming more specific-and-manifest and desists from it.

 

2-B.3-b This was the principle of delegation, the constant growth delegating variable energy to

 

2-B.3-b-1 The male power (vara)

 

 

2-B.3-b-2 The female power (akti)

 

Indian cosmology continued with the question as to what the universe was made of or reducible to

 

3-A.1 The Universe was reducible to certain running (or binding) threads (gua, namely the thread of essences (sattvagua), the thread of activity (rajogua), and the thread of inertia (tamogua).

 

3-A.2 The universe was reducible to certain sensible quanta (tanmtra), namely, sound (abda), touch (spara), visible form (rpa), taste (rasa), smell (gandha).

 

3-B. the universal power has created and controlled certain material being (bhta), namely, earth (pthivi), water (ap sg, pa pl), (fire (agni) and wind (vyu).

 

In the synthetic tradition the last two answers were married together after adding a fifth member to the second list.

 

3-C.1 the universe is made of five grossly accessible elements (sthula-bhta, mah-bhta), namely, earth, water, fire, wind, ether (akaa), and five subtly accessible elements (skma-bhuta, di-bhta), namely, smell, taste, visible form, touch and sound that correspond to them.

 

In the synthetic tradition (3-A.1), the first of the three answers was also accommodated.

 

3-C.2 The animating energy in the universe may be either manifest (vyakta) and uneven (viama) or unmanifest (avyakta) and even (sama). When the thread of essence is operative energy tends to go from the unmanifest to the manifest state (avasth), when the thread of activity is operative, energy tends to stay manifest, when the thread of inertia, is operative; and energy tends to go from the manifest to the unmanifest.

 

Note : (3-C.2) read with (3-A.1) makes one feel tempted to find an analogy between the three threads and, correspondingly, information, energy, and matter of modern physics as its variable primes.

 

The Perspective of Human History of Ideas

 

There is an interesting parallel between Greek and Indian cosmology. Was there an Indo-European cosmology? The European order of the first four elements is variable.

 

4.                  The Indo-European cosmology: The Universe is made of four elements:

earth (hot and wet to Greeks, heavy and dense to Indians)

water (cold and wet to Greeks, cold and soft to Indians)

fire (hot and dry to Greeks, hot to Indians)

air (cold and dry to Greeks, light to Indians)

 

Note: Medieval Europe added ether as the fifth element (quinta essentia) on the authority of Plato, who spoke of the fifth non-limited element. Ancient India added ether as the fifth neutral element.

 

The parallel extends to their account of the microcosm of the human person. The Greeks spoke of the four elements:

 

blood

phlegm : the cool temper

choler (yellow bile): the hot temper

melancholia (black bile)

 

The wind (of the respiratory and alimentary canals) was never added to this list but often considered to be a major variable. The Indians spoke of the three elements (dhtu) corresponding to the middle three of the five cosmic elements.

 

phlegm (kapha): water: the system of fluids

choler (pitta): fire: the system of heating

wind (vta): air: the system of impulses

 

The first two are also called: coldness (aitya), hotness (uat). (Incidentally, the Arabs cameup with a synthetic list: wind, bile, phlegm, blood).

 

5.                  The Indo-European cosmology: The human person (the body-mind complex) is governed by three elements.

water: phlegm

fire: yellow bile

air

 

Note: The Greeks split the fluid system into blood and phlegm, split the heating system into yellow hot bile and black cold bile, and left out air. The Indians recognized two manifestations of bile: hot bile and cold bile.

 

The earth was recognized as the inert substratum of the human body by the Indians and the Semitics. The respiratory wind (pra, anima, spiritus) was recognized as the animating principle of the human body by the Indians, the Greeks, and the Semitics.

 

Speech (abda, logos) was recognized by all the three as the animating principle of the universe; the Indians linked it with sound (abda, nda); the Greeks linked it with musical sound.

 

It will perhaps be worthwhile to compare these with the classical Chinese system of elements. (The expression wu hsing is probably better translated as five virtues or forces.) They are usually enumerated as follows:

 

chin (metal, which accepts form by melting and moulding)

mu (wood, which accepts form by cutting and carving)

shui (water, which soaks and descends)*

huo (fire, which blazes and ascends)

thu (earth, which accepts seeds and allows reaping)

 

It is interesting that air and ether are missing and that metal and wood are present.

 

The Perspective of the Theory of Art

 

The animating principle of the universe was also identified with water - jvana means both. The powerful image of the monsoon cloudburst on the subparched earth, which then turns green, may be at the back of this. Consider also the coupling of the earth (pthiv) and the sky (dyaus) (Vedic dyaus-pit - is cognate with Zeus and Jupiter.)

 

Another powerful image is that of vital sap (rasa) rising in the growing plant. The criss-cross semantic links can be shown thus:

 

6.                  rasa

(1) juice

(2) taste

(1a) (metaphor from 1) animating principle

(2a) (metonymy from 2) enjoyment

 

Note: The historical link, if any, between (1) and (2) is obscure. But the identity of sound between (1a) and (2a) has been exploited twice. That both (1a) and (2a) are relevant for the theory of art is argued in A. Sankaran, Some Theories of rasa and dhvani, Madras 1926, reprinted New Delhi 1973, chapter 1.

 

7-A rasa

(1a) animating principle of the universe

(2a) enjoyment from contemplating this

 

Note: Taittirya-Upaniad raso vai sa | rasa hyevya labdhvnand-bhavati |

 

7-B rasa

(1a) animating principle of a work of art

(2a) enjoyment from contemplating this

 

Note: The parallel between 7-A and 7-B was noticed by Jaganntha.

 

The sense (1a) of rasa has also been exploited in yurvedic Pharmacology. There is an interesting parallel between that and the theory of rasa as the animating principle of a work of art.

 

8-A yurvedic Pharmacology:

(1)     material cause (kryin, updna): herbal substance

(2)     efficient cause (kraa): the active principle (vrya)

(3)     animating energy: animating principle of medicinal cure (rasa)

 

Note: See Suruta cited S.N. Dasgupta, History of Indian Philosophy, pp. 361-62, note.

 

8-B Theory of the reception of dramatic art

(1)     material cause, story content of the text (Kryrtha)

(2)     efficient cause, the various bhvas in the work.

(3)     Animating energy, animating principle of art reception and enjoyment (rasa)

 

Note : The parallel between 8-A and 8-B was pointed out by D.K. Bedekar (Alocan, Delhi, April-July, 1952; reprinted, January-March, 1990).

 

The Perspective of the Practice of Art

 

The cosmic elements can appear in the experimental content of literary art and figurative plastic art. In European and Chinese art the elements appear as powerful presences animating the scene

 

earth as mountains, vast expanse of land

water as sea, flowing water, rain, snow

wind as storm

 

and thus often powerfully affecting the human lives on the scene: giving a turn to events, sympathizing with the emotional upheavals, and so forth.

 

In the practice (and the theory attendant on it) of the classical Tamil poetry of the Interior (akam essentially love poetry), five phases of love (uri) are associated with five kinds of landscape. Thus, anxiety and separation in love is associated with

 

the neytal flower, the plants atumpu, punnai

seashore

nightfall

any season

seagull, crocodile, shark

wells, sea

selling fish and salt

fisherfolk

 

9. There are three literary traditions in India:

 

9-A. ra poetics (Vedic hymns and the two major epics)

 

9-B saskta poetics (Classical Sanskrit literature and theatre and poetry modeled on this)

 

9-C prkta poetics (Classical Tamil literature of love, war, and bhakti, Buddhist literature in Pali and Sanskrit, Prakrit and Sanskrit poetry with a Little Tradition base such as Ghsattasai or Gitagovinda, Bhatkath and other narrative cycles like Kathsaritsgara and bhakti poetry).

 

10.              The Cosmic elements play on the whole a supportive rather than a dramatic role in these three traditions, although there are important variations.

 

Indian figurative plastic art is very much man-centred.

 

11. The cosmic elements play a minor supportive role in Indian figurative plastic art.

 

In Indian architecture, the temple is conceived either in the image of Man or in the image of the sacred Mountain. Earth, water, air, and light play important constitutive roles in Indian architecture.

 

In Indian arts of performance (sagta, comprising singing, instrument playing, and dancing), the cosmic elements play at best the role of a model for the technical organization of the medium.

 

It is hoped that the various hypothesis proposed will bear examination, and induce a fruitful reconsideration of received accounts of the subject-matter.

 

 

* of ׾ֿ֍ԭ says: ؍ þ֤ ֟ ־֯ף־ ׭֑ցㄅ (gveda 10:81:4 ab) What was the tree? What wood in sooth came from it? From which they fashioned on the earth and heaven?