A COMPARISON OF MODERN SCIENCE WITH VEDIC SCIENCE PART 5 START 13 10 24 K RAJARAM IRS AND HIS READSHIPS
32 1 Vedic cognitive science The Rigveda speaks of cosmic order. It is assumed that there exist equivalences of various kinds between the outer and the inner worlds. It is these connections that make it possible for our minds to comprehend the universe. It is noteworthy that the analytical methods are used both in the examination of the outer world as well as the inner world. This allowed the Vedic rishis to place in sharp focus paradoxical aspects of analytical knowledge. Such paradoxes have become only too familiar to the contemporary scientist in all branches of inquiry. In the Vedic view, the complementary nature of the mind and the outer world, is of fundamental significance. Knowledge is classified in two ways: the lower or dual; and the higher or unified. What this means is that knowledge is superficially dual and paradoxical but at a deeper level it has a unity. The Vedic view claims that the material and the conscious are aspects of the same transcendental reality. The idea of complementarity was at the basis of the systematization of Indian philosophic traditions as well, so that complementary approaches were paired together. 33 We have the groups of: logic (nyaya) and physics (vaisheshika), cosmology (sankhya) and psychology (yoga), and language (mimamsa) and reality (vedanta). Although these philosophical schools were formalized in the post-Vedic age, we find an echo of these ideas in the Vedic texts. In the Rigveda there is reference to the yoking of the horses to the chariot of Indra, Ashvins, or Agni; and we are told elsewhere that these gods represent the essential mind. The same metaphor of the chariot for a person is encountered in Katha Upanishad and the Bhagavad Gita; this chariot is pulled in different directions by the horses, representing senses, which are yoked to it. The mind is the driver who holds the reins to these horses; but next to the mind sits the true observer, the self, who represents a universal unity. Without this self no coherent behaviour is possible. 3The Five Levels In the Taittiriya Upanishad, the individual is represented in terms of five different sheaths or levels that enclose the individual’s self. These levels, shown in an ascending order, are: • The physical body (annamaya kosha) • Energy sheath (pranamaya kosha) • Mental sheath (manomaya kosha) • Intellect sheath (vijnanamaya kosha) • Emotion sheath (anandamaya kosha) These sheaths are defined at increasingly finer levels. At the highest level, above the emotion sheath, is the self. It is significant that emotion is placed higher than the intellect. This is a recognition of the fact that eventually meaning is communicated by associations which are influenced by the emotional state. The energy that underlies physical and mental processes is called prana. One may look at an individual in three different levels. At the lowest level is the physical body, at the next higher level is the energy systems at work, and at the next higher level are the thoughts. Since the three levels are interrelated, the energy situation may be changed by inputs either at the physical level or at the mental level. When the energy state is agitated and restless, it is characterized by rajas; when it is dull and lethargic, it is characterized by tamas; the state of equilibrium and balance is termed sattva. The key notion is that each higher level represents characteristics that are emergent on the ground of the previous level. In this theory mind is an emergent entity, but this emergence requires the presence of the self. 34 The Structure of the Mind The Sankhya system takes the mind as consisting of five components: manas, ahankara, chitta, buddhi, and atman. Again these categories parallel those of Figure 1. Manas is the lower mind which collects sense impressions. Its perceptions shift from moment to moment. This sensory-motor mind obtains its inputs from the senses of hearing, touch, sight, taste, and smell. Each of these senses may be taken to be governed by a separate agent. Ahankara is the sense of I-ness that associates some perceptions to a subjective and personal experience. Once sensory impressions have been related to I-ness by ahankara, their evaluation and resulting decisions are arrived at by buddhi, the intellect. Manas, ahankara, and buddhi are collectively called the internal instruments of the mind. Next we come to chitta, which is the memory bank of the mind. These memories constitute the foundation on which the rest of the mind operates. But chitta is not merely a passive instrument. The organization of the new impressions throws up instinctual or primitive urges which creates different emotional states. This mental complex surrounds the innermost aspect of consciousness which is called atman, the self, brahman, or jiva. Atman is considered to be beyond a finite enumeration of categories. All this amounts to a brilliant analysis of the individual. The traditions of yoga and tantra have been based on such analysis. No wonder, this model has continued to inspire people around the world to this day. 2 Mathematical and physical sciences Here we review some new findings related to the early period of Indian science which show that the outer world was not ignored at the expense of the inner. Geometry and mathematics Seidenberg, by examining the evidence in the Shatapatha Brahmana, showed that Indian geometry predates Greek geometry by centuries. Seidenberg argues that the birth of geometry and mathematics had a ritual origin. For example, the earth was represented by a circular altar and the heavens were represented by a square altar and the ritual consisted of converting the circle into a square of an identical area. There we see the beginnings of geometry! In his famous paper on the origin of mathematics, Seidenberg (1978) concluded: “OldBabylonia [1700 BC] got the theorem of Pythagoras from India or that both Old-Babylonia and India got it from a third source. Now the Sanskrit scholars do not give me a date so far back as 1700 B.C. Therefore, I postulate a pre-Old-Babylonian (i.e., pre-1700 B.C.) source of the kind of geometric rituals we see preserved in the Sulvasutras, or at least for the mathematics involved in these rituals.” That was before archaeological finds disproved the earlier assumption of a break in Indian civilization in the second millennium B.C.E.; it was this assumption of the Sanskritists that led Seidenberg to postulate a third earlier source. Now with our new knowledge, Seidenberg’s conclusion of India being the source of the geometric and mathematical knowledge of the ancient world fits in with the new chronology of the texts. 35 Astronomy Using hitherto neglected texts related to ritual and the Vedic indices, an astronomy of the third millennium B.C.E. has been discovered. Here the altars symbolized different parts of the year. In one ritual, pebbles were placed around the altars for the earth, the atmosphere, and the sky. The number of these pebbles were 21, 78, and 261, respectively. These numbers add up to the 360 days of the year. There were other features related to the design of the altars which suggested that the ritualists were aware that the length of the year was between 365 and 366 days. The organization of the Vedic books was also according to an astronomical code. To give just one simple example, the total number of verses in all the Vedas is 20,358. 2: The Vedic planetary model equals 261 × 78, a product of the sky and atmosphere numbers! The Vedic ritual followed the seasons hence the importance of astronomy. The second millennium text Vedanga Jyotisha went beyond the earlier calendrical astronomy to develop a theory for the mean motions of the sun and the moon. This marked the beginnings of the application of mathematics to the motions of the heavenly bodies. Planetary knowledge. The sun was taken to be midway in the skies. A considerable amount of Vedic mythology regarding the struggle between the demons and the gods is a metaphorical retelling of the motions of Venus and Mars. The famous myth of Vishnu’s three strides measuring the universe becomes intelligible when we note that early texts equate Vishnu and Mercury. The myth appears to celebrate the first measurement of the period of Mercury since three periods equals the number assigned in altar ritual to the heavens. Other arguments suggest that the Vedic people knew the periods of the five classical planets. Writing Cryptological analysis has revealed that the Brahmi script of the Mauryan times evolved out of the third millennium Sarasvati (Indus) script. The Sarasvati script was perhaps the first true alphabetic script. The worship of Sarasvati as the goddess of learning remembers the development of writing on the banks of the Sarasvati River. It also appears that the symbol 6for zero was derived from the fish sign that stood for “ten” in Brahmi and this occurred around 50 B.C.E.-50 C.E. Binary numbers Barend van Nooten (1993) has shown that binary numbers were known at the time of Pingala’s Chhandahshastra. Pingala, who lived around the early first century B.C.E., used binary numbers to classify Vedic meters. The knowledge of binary numbers indicates a deep understanding of arithmetic. A binary representation requires the use of only two symbols, rather than the ten required in the usual decimal representation, and it has now become the basis of information storage in terms of sequences of 0s and 1s in modern-day computers. Music Ernest McClain (1978) has described the tonal basis of early myth. McClain argues that the connections between music and myth are even deeper than astronomy and myth. The invariances at the basis of tones could very well have served as the ideal for the development of the earliest astronomy. The tonal invariances of music may have suggested the search of similar invariances in the heavenly phenomena. 36 3 The Samaveda, where the hymns were supposed to be sung, was compared to the sky. Apparently, this comparison was to emphasize the musical basis of astronomy. The Vedic hymns are according to a variety of meters; but what purpose, if any, lay behind a specific choice is unknown. Grammar Panini’s grammar (6th century B.C.E. or earlier) provides 4,000 rules that describe the Sanskrit of his day completely. This grammar is acknowledged to be one of the greatest intellectual achievements of all time. The great variety of language mirrors, in many ways, the complexity of nature. What is remarkable is that Panini set out to describe the entire grammar in terms of a finite number of rules. Frits Staal (1988) has shown that the grammar of Panini represents a universal grammatical and computing system. From this perspective it anticipates the logical framework of modern computers. Medicine There is a close parallel between Indian and Greek medicine. For example, the idea of breath (prana in Sanskrit, and pneuma in Greek) is central to both. Jean Filliozat (1970) has argued that the idea of the correct association between the three elements of the wind, the gall, and the phlegm, which was described first by Plato in Greek medicine, appears to be derived from the earlier tridosha theory of Ayurveda. Filliozat suggests that the transmission occurred via the Persian empire. These discoveries not only call for a revision of the textbook accounts of Indian science but also call for new research to assess the impact on other civilizations of these ideas. 73 Rhythms of life We have spoken before of how the Vedas speak of the connections between the external and the internal worlds. The hymns speak often of the stars and the planets. These are sometimes the luminaries in the sky, or those in the firmament of our inner landscapes or both. To the question on how can the motions of an object, millions of miles away, have any influence on the life of a human being one can only say that the universe is interconnected. In this ecological perspective the physical planets do not influence the individual directly. Rather, the intricate clockwork of the universe runs on forces that are reflected in the periodicities of the astral bodies as also the cycles of behaviors of all terrestrial beings and plants. It is not the gravitational pull of the planet that causes a certain response, but an internal clock governed by the genes. We know this because in some mutant organisms the internal clock works according to periods that have no apparent astronomical basis. So these cycles can be considered to be a manifestation of the motions of the body’s inner “planets.” 37 In the language of evolution theory one would argue that these periods get reflected in the genetic inheritance of the biological system as a result of the advantage over millions of years that they must have provided for survival. The most fundamental rhythms are matched to the periods of the sun or the moon. It is reasonable to assume that with their emphasis on time bound rituals and the calendar, the ancients had discovered many of the biological periods. This would include the 24hour-50-minute circadian rhythm, the connection of the menstrual cycle with the motions of the moon, the life cycles of various plants, and the semimonthly estrus cycle of sheep, the three-week cycles of cattle and pigs, and the six-month cycle of dogs. The moon (Soma) is called the “lord of speech” (Vachaspati) in the Rigveda. It is also taken to awaken eager thoughts. Other many references suggest that in the Rigvedic times the moon was taken to be connected with the mind. This is stated most directly in the the famous Purushasukta, the Cosmic Man hymn, of the Rigveda where it is stated that the mind is born of the moon and in Shatapatha Brahmana where we have: “the mind is the moon.” Considering the fact that the relationships between the astronomical and the terrestrial were taken in terms of periodicities, doubtless, this slogan indicates that the mind is governed by the period of the moon. Fire, having become speech, entered the mouth Air, becoming scent, entered the nostrils The sun, becoming sight, entered the eyes The regions becoming hearing, entered the ears The plants, becoming hairs, entered the skin The moon, having become mind, entered the heart. —Aitreya Aranyaka 2.4.2.4 This verse from the Upanishadic period speaks at many levels. At the literal level there is an association of the elements with various cognitive centers. At another level, the verse connects the time evolution of the external object to the cognitive center. Fire represents consciousness and this ebbs and flows with a daily rhythm. Air represents seasons so here the rhythm is longer. The sun and sight have a 24-hour cycle. The regions denote other motions in the skies so hearing manifests cycles that are connected to the planets. The plants have daily and annual periods; the hairs of the body have an annual period. The mind has a period of 24 hours and 50 minutes like that of the moon. What are the seats of these cycles? KR IRS TO BE CONTD 131024 -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Thatha_Patty" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/thatha_patty/CAL5XZopVxJ70uxnxbOrY_n%3Dzxj4W0Qmgc0tvt2yqV%3DbseU3%3DbA%40mail.gmail.com.
