Vedic Literature Demystified – I

Māgha is a favourite poet of Sanskrit critics who love to quote him or from his śiśupālavadha. He was a renowned Sanskrit poet in the court of King Varmalata, in Gujarat, and reputed especially for his ingenious use of words, and the manner in which he wrote the most complex sentences, such that scholars would find his work difficult yet engrossing; and each time they read it, they would discover new meaning! As a result, great scholars found themselves constantly reading his work. The story goes that when a certain Sanskrit scholar (allegedly Mallinātha Sūri was hailed for his scholarship, he laughed it off saying māghe meghe gataṁ vayaḥ – Or, I have spent my life studying Māgha Kavi and Kālidāsa’s Meghadūta. That is how intensive the Sanskrit texts are, that one can spend a lifetime just studying one text.

So, should we be discouraged? No! Not in the least. Sanskrit (and Vedic literature) is a language that gives more than the immediate meaning of its words. It carries a whole emotion, an entire culture, as it were, and in no manner does it result in any sense of discouragement. This explains why scholars who have pursued Sanskrit have done so in complete abandonment of their life, ignoring earnings, studying it for its sake than to arrive at any completion or destination.

The world is vast, we have seen. That vastness is both geographical and time-wise. The earth was formed some 4.54 billion years ago. They say recognisable humans appeared two million years ago. Since then these humans have been working at surviving and making sense of the environment.

‘Tradition’ therefore began two million years ago! Within this, if we just look at scientific knowledge and seek to track its origin, it is often credited to Europe. But probing further, China’s contribution was revealed or known. Then, thanks to Arab scholars, the role of Islamic empires and their transmission of knowledge to Europe came to light. That meant, what was originally seen as European knowledge, was traced back to Arab scholars. And then, many innovations and discoveries of India were found to have been retransmitted by the Arab scholars to Europe! [Not unreasonable at all, if we consider that the Kerala School of Mathematics and Astronomy discovered the series expansion for trigonometric functions in the 15^th century CE, two centuries before the invention of calculus in Europe!]

Then again, historian Al Biruni’s translator and editor Edward Sachau wrote: “It is Brahmagupta who taught Arabs mathematics before they got acquainted with Greek science.”^[6]

And through these translations, the use of Indian numeral systems became established[1]  in the Islamic world and the Arabs took this knowledge to Europe. That is how ancient Indian Knowledge is.

And who was Brahmagupta? “Brahmagupta  (born c. 598 CE, died c. 668 CE) was an Indian mathematician and astronomer. His work is entirely in Sanskrit. At first, it was the western civilisations that did not understand Sanskrit. Indology and Indian traditional knowledge was miscommunicated and the more recent dark cloud over Sanskrit that came during the British rule only added to that.

So on and so forth there is so much in our hoary past that is lost to us because all of it lies in mountains of literature that we do not have the time to wade through. Prof. Gauri Mahulikar, Dean of Chinmaya Vishwavidyapeeth, therefore, has started a series of lectures to throw open to us what we have ignored all these hundreds of years. Titled Indian Knowledge Traditions (IKT), her lectures will lift the veil of ignorance, while simultaneously filling that vast gap with her rich knowledge of Indian Knowledge systems.

Naturally, therefore we ask, why the differential use of ‘traditions’ and ‘systems’. The difference is this: Traditions are those practices that come down over centuries without any break and are often not documented. But when practices are systematised and documented, then we have śāstra-s, systems. A śāstra is a compendium of rules, precepts, specific to a subject and infers their scientific basis. A bit like the -ology in English.  Like arthaśāstra (political science) rasāyanaśāstra (chemistry), bhautikaśāstra (physics) and so on.  India is a hotbed of innumerable knowledge systems, but they are all in Sanskrit, a language that is spoken by a few and understood by even fewer. And when something cannot be understood it becomes the source of prejudice.  Even so, many persevering scholars have sought to translate these works and careful preservation of these texts over these hundreds of years is what has made them accessible to the world. 

Vedic literature consists of a huge amount of all that governed the socio-religio-politico-economic and other aspects of human life, spanning worship, governance, mythology, mathematics, poetry, prayer, formula, medicine, the study of space and the skies… this is the base of IKS. But the base is vast and even listing out the choices is not tenable.

We have been deterred by a variety of words that come at us – darśana-s, vedāṅga-s, sūtra-s, mahākāvya-s, chanda-s… But once these terms are arranged in a coherent order and their logic explained, it will be clear to us how the Vedic knowledge is arranged and available to understand.

Prof. Gauri Mahulikar’s effort through this lecture series is to throw open to us how the Vedic literature is classified, how these are navigated and in and through these, show us the relevance, nay, necessity of the integration of Indian Knowledge Traditions with the contemporary fields of study and research.

In the process, she will throw the spotlight on great Vedic scholars who compiled texts, developed great bodies of work and research that are available to this day and which although in Sanskrit, are the gospel for many of the sciences. If all this is overwhelming for us today, it is because the Sanskrit Language which held and continues to hold all the keys for knowledge of any kind is not mainstream for us who are devoted to English. Prof. Mahulikar’s attempt is to build all the bridges necessary for us to reach the content of this vast literature.

Sanskrit used to be the language in which India thought, felt and ideated and therefore, cognised and decoded the world. Language gathers into itself a whole tradition and culture so that even the way we perceive the world is through the culture of the language. Once this language was lost to us, thanks to all kinds of invasions, takeovers, bad business decisions, we verily lost our links with our past, our ancestors and our traditional manner of thinking. Thus, our development was stymied.

Prof. Gauri says, “When we go very far from our roots, is when we realise its value.”Hence her efforts through this lecture series are going to benefit us in ways we cannot imagine.

To be continued…

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Click to read Part I