Some Buddhist epistemologists just accepted it, as a necessary consequence of their idealism. The example of Ratnakīrti’s “Rejection of the existence of other continuous sequences [of causes and effects leading to the illusion of a separate mind]” comes to mind. In my opinion, Ratnakīrti has a specially strong argument in favour of his view, namely: The Buddhist epistemological school denies the ultimate mind-independent existence of external objects. But once one accepts that, and thus accepts idealism, how can one safeguard intersubjectivity? If there is no reality other than our representations, how comes we can understand each other? Would it not be much more economical to imagine that there is only one representation?

Others rejected it based on analogy (basically: I am a mind, i.e., a continuous sequence of causes and effects; other people behaving similarly must be a mind too). The first and main example of this reasoning is Dharmakīrti’s “Establishment of the existence of other continuous sequences” (santānāntarasiddhi).

The Pratyabhijñā and the Advaita Vedānta schools are ultimately forms of solipsism. In the former case, there is only Śiva’s mind, and the appearance of other minds is part of his līlā ‘playful activity’. In the latter (at least after Śaṅkara), there is only brahman, and the appearance of other minds is due to māyā. What is the different explanatory power of līlā vs māyā? That māyā’s ontology is hard to explain, whereas once one has committed to the existence of a personal God, with Their likes and dislikes, then līlā is a perfectly acceptable solution. Thus, AV is light on the Absolute’s ontology, but implies a leap of faith as for māyā, whereas the opposite is the case for the Pratyabhijñā school.

What about the realist schools? Some of them established the existence of the self based on aham-pratyaya, i.e., our own perception of ourselves as an ‘I’ (so the Mīmāṃsā school). Some thinkers within Nyāya (like Jayanta) used inference to establish the existence of the self.

Is this enough to establish the existence of other selves?

Yes, in the case of Mīmāṃsā, because other minds seem prima facie to exist and due to svataḥ prāmāṇya (intrinsic validity) such prima facie view should be held unless and until the opposite is proven.

Yes, according to Jayanta, because other selves can be inferred just like the own self is.

Realistic Vedāntic schools will rely on either the Mīmāṃsā or the Nyāya paradigm. Thus, the question at this point will rather be: What is consciousness like, if one subscribes to this or the other school?

Some schools (like Pratyabhijñā, Yoga…) claim that we can have direct access to other minds, through yogipratyakṣa or intellectual intuition. However, yogipratyakṣa is possible only to some exceptional individuals. Moreover, Pratyabhijñā thinkers like Utpaladeva think that even this is not an evidence of the existence of separate other minds.

When one works on the intellectual history of the Sanskrit cosmopolis*, by contrast, one still needs to map the entire territory, whose extension still escapes us. Very few elements of the landscape have been fixated, and might still need to be re-assessed.

What are the mountains, main cities as well as rivers, bridges, routes that we would need to fix on the map? Key authors, key theories, key schools, as well as languages and manners of communication and how they worked (public debates? where? how?).
I mentioned authors before schools because for decades intellectual historians looking at the Sanskrit cosmopolis emphasized, and often overemphasized the role of schools at the expense of the fundamental role of individual thinkers, thus risking to oversee their individual contributions and to flatten historical developments, as if nothing had changed in astronomy or philosophy for centuries. This hermeneutic mistake is due to the fact that while the norm in Europe and North America after Descartes and the Enlightenment has been increasingly to highlight novelty, originality is constantly understated in the Sanskrit cosmopolis. It is not socially acceptable to claim to be novel and original in the Sanskrit world, just like it is not acceptable to be just “continuing a project” in a grant application in Europe or North America.
Still, schools are often the departure point for any investigation, since they give one a first basic understanding of the landscape. How does this exactly work?
For instance, we know that the Vedānta systems were a major player in the intellectual arena, with all other religious and philosophical schools having to face them, in some form of the other. However, it is not at all clear which schools within Vedānta were broadly influential, where within South Asia, and in which languages. Michael Allen, among others, worked extensively on Advaita Vedānta in Hindī sources, but were they read also by Sanskrit authors and did the latter react to them? Were Hindī texts on Vedānta read only in the Gangetic valley or throughout the Indian subcontinent? The same questions should be investigated with regard to the other schools of Vedānta (Viśiṣṭādvaita, Dvaita, Śaivādvaita…), the other vernacular languages they interacted with (respectively: Tamil and Maṇipravāḷam, Kannaḍa…), and the regions of the Indian subcontinent they originated in. And this is just about Vedānta schools.
Similarly, we still have to understand which other schools entered into a debate with philosophy and among each other and which interdisciplinary debates took place. Scholars of European intellectual history know how Kepler was influenced by Platonism and how Galileo influenced the development of philosophy. What happened in the Sanskrit cosmopolis?
Dagmar Wujastyk recently focused on the intersection of medicine (āyurveda) alchemy (rasaśāstra) and yoga. Which other disciplines were in a constant dialogue? Who read mathematical and astronomical texts, for instance? It is clear, because many texts themselves often repeat it, that Mīmāṃsā, Nyāya and Vyākaraṇa (hermeneutics, logic and grammar) were considered a sort of basic trivium, to be known by every learned person. But the very exclusion of Vedānta from the trivium (it cannot be considered to be included in “Mīmāṃsā” unless in the Viśiṣṭādvaita self-interpretation) shows that the trivium is only the starting point of one’s instruction and is not at all exhaustive. And we have not even started to look at many disciplines, from music to rhetorics.

One might wonder whether it is not enough to look at reports by today’s or yesterday’s Sanskrit intellectuals themselves in order to know what is worth reading and why. However, as discussed above, such reports would not boast about innovations and main breakthroughs. Sanskrit philosophy (and the same probably applies to Sanskrit mathematics etc.) is primarily commentarial. That is, authors presuppose a basic shared background knowledge and innovate while engaging with it rather than imagining to be pioneers in a new world of ideas. In a commentarial philosophy, innovations are concealed and breakthroughs are present, but not emphasised. Hence, one needs a lot of background knowledge to recognise them.

I would like to map the territory to realise who was studying what, where and how. How can this be done? The main obstacle is the amount of unpublished material, literally millions of manuscripts that still remain to be read, edited, translated and studied (I am relying on David Pingree’s estimate). Editing and translating them all requires a multi-generational effort of hundreds of people. However, a quick survey of them, ideally through an enhanced ORC technology, would enable scholars to figure out which languages were used, which theories and topics were debated, which authors were mentioned, and who was replying to whom.

This approach will remind some readers of the distant reading proposed by Franco Moretti. I am personally a trained philologist and a spokesperson for close reading. However, moving back and forth between the two methods seems to be the most productive methodology if the purpose is mapping an unknown territory. Close reading alone will keep one busy for decades and will not enable one to start the hermeneutic circle through which one’s knowledge of the situation of communication helps one better understanding even the content of the text one is closely focusing on. As hinted at above, this is particularly crucial in the case of a commentarial philosophy, where one needs to be able to master a lot of the author’s background in order to evaluate his contribution.

*As discussed several times elsewhere, I use “Sanskrit philosophy” or “Sanskrit intellectual history” as a short term for “philosophy in a cosmopolis in which Sanskrit was the dominant language of culture and everyone had to come to terms with it”, as with the use of “philosophy in the Islamic world”, that includes also thinkers part of the Islamic world but who were not themselves Muslims.

(The above are just quick notes. Any feedback is welcome!)

1. They do not value originality per se. I am probably preaching to the converted if I say that one can make incredible innovations while writing a commentary (and in fact, this routinely happened, with sources of knowledge being removed from the list, new accounts being added, completely different explanations being offered etc.). However, the genre “commentary” involves the habitus of intellectual humbleness. One does not praise one’s innovations and rather locates them in a tradition of exegesis of truths that were already available for everyone, if only one had paused long enough to see them.

2. Lower level explanations about word-meanings, sentence-syntax etc. are mixed with high level elaborations. This means that even the most self-confident intellectual will not disdain intellectual labour, because the two are contiguous.

3. Philosophy is constantly seen as a dialogue with one’s intellectual predecessors. In fact, and unlike in other philosophical traditions, Sanskrit commentaries typically take the form of dialogues among possible interpretations.

4. The constraints of the commentary open the way for the never-ending play of possible interpretations. Abhinavagupta lists 18 (if I remember correctly) interpretations for the word anuttara in his Paratriṃśikāvivaraṇa and everyone is aware of the amplifying potential of commenting on words and texts.

In later times, I would add two further features of commentaries:

5. Commentaries tend to take into account more and more networks of texts rather than single texts

6. Consequently, one comments not only on the texts of one’s schools, but also on influential texts one wants to appropriate (think of Śaṅkara’s inaugurating the use of commenting on the BhG and the Upaniṣads, as well as Abhinavagupta’s commentary on the Triṃśikā). Still later, one comments on the texts on one’s adversaries as a way to refute them, like Madhusādana Sarasvatī did in the case of Vyāsatīrtha.

UPDATE: I am sitting in a workshop about commentaries and Ash Geissinger points to something similar to No. 2 in Arabic commentaries to the Quran, and Y.K. Lo to something similar to No. 3 in Chinese commentaries.

This post is part of a series discussing Arindam Chakrabarti’s Realisms Interlinked. The previous posts are available here, here and here.

The last chapter (chapter 16) of the second part is a discussion of the Nyāya theories for the existence of the self and it includes also discussions about the no-ownership theory (mental states don’t need to be *of someone*) and against physicalism (pp. 189–191). I especially enjoyed the discussion about the inner sense faculty (manas, already discussed in chapter 13) and its role as a connector among sense faculties. How else could we compare different sense data, given that sense faculties do not have autonomous agency and cannot communicate with each other? However, this seems to be a lot of burden placed on the shoulders of manas.  It seems straightforward to accept a sense-faculty for inner sensations, but how can one justify its extension to other functions? manas seems to grow to incorporate also what Sāṅkhya authors would have called a buddhi ‘intellect’. Can it do so and remain a sense-faculty? Can it really be responsible, e.g., for anuvyavasāya and *still* remain a sense-faculty?

Next, the third part (“Other subjects”) starts. In this third part, the book’s title (“Realisms interlinked”) increasingly looses its cogency and the book is more and more about “objects, subjects and other subjects”, including also less closely connected topics, such as the brilliant article on the ontology of shadows and Arindam’s theory of śabdapramāṇa —but Arindam waves them together nicely, e.g., by discussing how śabdapramāṇa is part of our acknowledging the existence of epistemic others, i.e., others we can learn from.

To be honest, I enjoyed the first part, but I enjoy even more this latter part, since it is more experimental and draws from more sources (whereas the first part was closer to keeping the Anglo-Analytic and Nyāya paradigms). For instance, the wonderful chapter 18, on the vocative reminded me of Martin Buber’s masterpiece, “I and Thou” and how relating to one by addressing them is different than discussing about them. The latter way to speak reifies them, the former means entering into a relation. Thus, whereas it is contradictory to say “I am now talking to God. I do not know whether They exist”, it is not meaningless to address God asking for faith, because addressing is not about existence, but about relation. 

As hinted at above, Arindam follows different philosophical inspirations in this part, starting with Abhinavagupta, whom, as discussed in a previous post, is also responsible for his moving beyond realism. We had already seen this influence at play, for instance in chapter 12, and within the third part again in chapter 17, while discussing how it is possible to know about the existence of others. The whole chapter discusses the arguments by analogy in Dharmakīrti and its critique by Strawson, which Arindam labels as “devastating”. Why so? The argument by analogy is, according to Arindam’s reading of Strawson, an induction. But how weak is an induction, if it is based on a single case? Moreover, according to Strawson, there is strictly speaking not even a single case the induction can be based on. In fact, predicates such as “happy” or “depressed” are completely different if they are experienced from within and attributed from the outside to other alleged subjects. And in which sense is a predicate a predicate if it is not predicable of others? Thus, for predicates to be predicates, they need to be applicable to more than one person, even if in one case through direct access and in the other through behaviour-observation. At this point, Abhinavagupta is ready to step in. But before getting to his solution as understood by Arindam, let me pause a little longer on why following Abhinavagupta.

Why would Arindam be ready to sacrifice direct realism and follow Abhinavagupta on this dangerous path? Because Arindam likes intelligent thinkers, but also because Abhinava allows for a rich conception of the ātman, which is dynamically evolving (against the permanent self of Nyāya and Vedānta), and can therefore be an agent and a knower of intentional contents (the Sāṅkhya and Advaita Vedānta subject could be aware, but of no contents, the Nyāya subject had knowledge as an additional quality). 

Thus, while holding Abhinavagupta’s hand, Arindam ends up coming out of the plains of naïve realism and ends up in transcendental idealism or panpsychism. And here comes the solution for the problem of the existence of other subjects. In Arindam’s words:

“Post-Cartesian Western thought finds the problem of the Other Mind challenging and the very presence of the Other existentially constraining and self-annihilating. Abhinavagupta, on the other hand, finds the You to be a foundational middle-reality between the pure Self and the apparent non-Self, in contrast and continuity with which the Self discovers its own playful knower-hood” (p. 202).

Next come chapters 19 and 20, which discuss the epistemology of testimony. Arindam is here preaching to the convert when it comes to me, but let me repeat that unless we accept testimony, we have no way to ensure knowledge of basic facts, like our name and date of birth. Arindam also convincingly shows that testimony cannot be reduced to inference (pp. 217–8). Can the Nyāya theory of śabdapramāṇa, which is based on descriptive language, work also in the case of prescriptive language. As a Mīmāṃsaka, I am biased against it, but also Arindam’s reconstruction seems to allow for some doubts (“You are a person who is qualified by the agency to do X” does not seem tantamount to “do X!” —the prescriptive character appears to be just missing).

A last word on chapter 21, which is one of the best pieces of writing by Arindam in general and which allows me to go back to a point I discussed in the second post of this series, namely Arindam’s way of doing philosophy through a dialogue with other authors. In chapter 21 Arindam mentions a sentence by Wittgenstein. The interesting point is that the sentence looks trivially true. It says: “In paintings darkness *can* also be depicted as black”. No source is given, and I don’t know Wittgenstein good enough to be able to identify and reproduce the original German and check whether there is any additional shade of meaning, but as it stands, the sentence looks banal. However, Arindam is able to go deeper and disagree with the ontological theory about shade it presupposes. The key point that became clear to me only at this point is that Arindam is a great philosopher because (or also because) he is a great interpreter. He is able to let sentences by Nyāya philosophers (or by Leonardo, Turner or Goethe) disquiet him, and then keeps on thinking about them until he can identify what they implicitly presuppose, spell it out, and continue thinking philosophically about them until he can elaborate a theory that answers all the objections he has contemplated and taken seriously.

First, the facts: The first part defended realism about objects, this second part is about the knowing subject. Arindam argues against fictionalism (especially in chapter 15, entitled “Fictionalism about the mental”), and in favour of the persistence through time of the knowing subject as proven through memory and recognition, but also through our capacity to correct our errors (how else could one correct oneself, if there were not a subject who is aware of the mistake and goes back to it?).

This leads to an important subtopic, namely the epistemology of the knowing subject, which occupies at least two chapters, namely “In Defense of an Inner Sense” (chapter 13) and “Our Knowledge and Error about Our Own Cognitions” (chapter 14).

Another interesting subtopic regards the nature of the defended subject. I have already revealed that Arindam does not defend the Naiyāyika ātman (which is inherently quality-less), but rather a full-fledged knowing subject, closer to an aham than to an ātman. Ram-Prasad’s review says that Arindam is more comfortable with P. Strawson’s concept of person. In Sanskrit terms, one might want to go back to the dialogue with Abhinavagupta (who gets the idea of aham, I believe, from Mīmāṃsā), but Arindam also adds further remarks on the usage of the first-person pronoun (chapter 10). This, in turn, leads to the problem of solipsism and the existence of other knowing subjects (chapter 11). The connection with Abhinavagupta also enables Arindam to discuss a topic which is very much discussed in the Pratyabhijñā school, namely how can one know a subject *qua* subject? Does not one transform it into an object, thus violating its nature, as soon as one approaches it (chapter 12)?

In fact, chapter 11 (a refutation of solipsism entitled “The Self at Other Times and in Other Bodies”) is connected with both the establishment of a first-person-like subject (the topic of chapter 10) and with the inaccessibility of subjects to objectification (dealt with in chapter 12). If we can know other subjects qua subjects, we can at the same time establish the existence of other subjects and the possibility of their non-objectification. Arindam does not mention it, but I can’t avoid thinking of Buber’s “I and Thou” for its emphasis on two modalities of knowledge (an objectifying one, which knows others as things, and a relation one, through which subjects enter in a dialogue).
Chapter 12 also discusses anuvyavasāya, the second cognition occurring after a first cognition during which one becomes aware of having had that first cognition. If we know our cognitions only through anuvyavasāya, then we are not only objectifying other subjects while knowing them, but even ourselves. In fact, we can’t know even ourselves *qua* subjects. By contrast, if Prabhākara is right and each cognitive act includes an awareness of the object, the subject and the cognition, we can know ourselves from within.

Chapter 13 discusses the elusive inner sense faculty (manas) and its domain. Manas is generally invoked to explain one’s perception of inner qualia, such as pleasure and pain and to justify the phenomenon of attention (and lack of thereof) and the impossibility of simultaneous perceptions.
Further, chapter 14 also discusses how manas works as the sense faculty for the successive awareness of a just occurred awareness event. In this case, the contact (sannikarṣa) at stake occurs not directly between manas and the object of the preceding awareness event, but rather via the awareness event itself. It is through this mānasapratyakṣa (my label, Arindam does not use it), that we can move from the perception of an apple to the awareness of “I have seen an apple”.
Moreover, Arindam also mentions manas’ role in the context of language-based knowledge: “In Navya Nyāya semantics, the resulting understanding of meaning is not classified as knowledge by testimony (śabdabodha) or information gathered from words, but as make-believe awareness generated by the manas (āhāryamanasa bodha), which can creatively put together a cow and chairing [found together in a non-sensical poem]” (p. 152). The āhārya (‘artificial’) suggests that manas can also play an active role, and in fact Arindam points out to this possibility while discussing the Yuktidīpikā stance about it. Can this work also in Nyāya? This artificial language-based understanding seems to suggest that manas can concoct a non-committal understanding. Along this line, is manas also able to lead to synaesthetic judgements (“I like this music more than I enjoyed the smell of the jasmine flowers”)? I would be inclined to say that it cannot (since it is a sense faculty, it cannot be responsible for judgements), but any synaesthetic judgement by the buddhi presupposes the manas as being able to run from one sense experience to the next so as to make the buddhi able to formulate a comparative judgement. Let me also follow Arindam’s lead and add an “Unscientific post-script”: Can manas also be responsible for proprio-perception (perception of one’s own body and its position in space as standing, sitting etc.)? Of inner sensations such as hunger? Or are they awareness events and as such cognised like any other awareness event?

Chapter 14 discusses epistemology and intrinsicism (svataḥprāmāṇy) and extrinsicism (parataḥprāmāṇya) in connection with some theories in Analytic epistemology, primarily internalism vs externalism, and then also fallibilism and reflexivism. I discussed aspects of this topic elsewhere (in a nutshell: I think that intrinsic validity disjoins elements that are generally found conjoined in internalism, namely access to cognitions and no external reasons needed). I am also not completely convinced of the connection between infallibilism and intrinsicism. On p. 160, Arindam writes: “If intrinsicism is correct, then once a true cognition is registered, it would be impossible to entertain a doubt about whether it is knowledge or error. But in certain circumstances, when for the first time cognition about an unfamiliar object occurs, it is often made the subject of subsequent doubt”. The last step evokes Gaṅgeśa’s distinction between familiar and unfamiliar circumstances and doubt being the default response only in the latter case. Gaṅgeśa’s was a good step forward if compared to the previous position considering doubt the default attitude in all cases (so that we would not be able to prepare a coffee with our usual coffee machine in the morning before having verified that it is really a coffee machine, that the tin really contains coffee, that the liquid coming from the tap is really water etc. etc.).
Still, I don’t think that the one described by Arindam is a counter-argument against intrinsicism. A svataḥprāmāṇyavādin would say that even in the case of an unfamiliar object, we initially cognise it as X, even if immediately thereafter we might switch on the light, correct ourselves and realise it was not an X but a Y. Overturning the previous cognition is not excluded by svataḥprāmāṇya (in fact, it is its very foundation!), that rather attacks the idea that doubt is our first response to familiar (or unfamiliar) circumstances.

A last word on methodology and the need of Global Philosophy, by Arindam himself: “Within the insular power-enclaves of philosophy, even a mention of non-Western theories […] is punished by polite exclusion. Well-preserved ignorance about other cultures and mono-cultural hubris define the mainstream of professional philosophy in Euro-America. In many cases, the discovery of exciting connections, sharp oppositions, or imaginable parallelisms is greeted with condescension or cold neglect” (p. 145).

The early second millennium in South India saw a culmination of scholarly activities in the sphere of Śaiva and Vaiṣṇava devotional movements, including both philosophical and ritual discourses. While we tend to study these separately from each other, for Śaiva and Vaiṣṇava thinkers both aspects – theological speculations and ritual practice – played an integral part in their intellectual and daily lives, and thus we should consider their theological works deeply entangled in the ritual world they moved in.

Further, these scholarly activities were embedded in an environment with a long history of Śaiva and Vaiṣṇava interactions, with some works showing passages conceived in direct response to their competitors. The present workshop aims to transcend disciplinary boundaries and investigate the interactions between both Śaiva and Vaiṣṇava thinkers as well as theological theory and ritual practice and how these may be manifested in discourses of identity on both an ideological and a practical level. Some of the questions will be: Do ritual practice and theological theory correspond to each other? How did theories develop from rituals and subsequently feed back and impact theological discourses and vice versa? To what extent do rituals presuppose an identification between God and His human devotees? And does the answer to this question depend on a dispute between opponents, who upheld the opposite view (i.e., a non-dualist Śaiva answer may depend on a dualist Vaiṣṇava opponent)? Or how much do Śaiva-Vaiṣṇava or intra-Vaiṣṇava and intra-Śaiva exchanges shape prescriptive and theoretical discourses on ritual practices relating to external religious markers?

In order to pursue this set of questions, a range of specialists has been asked to choose a passage from key works that shaped the intellectual and ritual life of early medieval South India. While an introduction to each of the sources will be presented, the sessions will focus on the joint reading to be held in the light of this set of guiding questions. In addition, further specialists have been invited to join the reading and contribute towards the discussions.

You can read the whole program here.

The range of omniscience
A problem (raised by Sudipta Munsi in a comment on this post) connected with the scope of omniscience regards the question of whether an omniscient being also knows all erroneous beliefs. At first sight it might seem that if she does not, she is not completely omniscient and that if she does, she shares also erroneous beliefs, which seems paradoxical. A possible way out consists in claiming that she knows all erroneous beliefs but she attributes them to us. In other words, she knows that I do not know about the place and year of birth of Kumārila, but still correctly knows where and when he was born. Is this solution satisfactorily? Possibly, although this kind of omniscience would lack the first person grasp on how it feels to not know that X or to hold a false belief.

A connected problem regards specifically God’s omniscience: Does God also knows what it is to be in pain? If He does not, He seems to be not omniscient. If He does, He is no longer untouched by sufferance (duḥkha), as claimed in Nyāya and Yoga. In other words, an Īśvara-like God (see below) cannot be said to have experience of duḥkha. His knowledge would nonetheless not be incomplete because duḥkha would be conceived as just a negative entity (the absence of pleasure), which does not need to be separately known. God would be omniscient insofar as He knows all states of affairs, without needing to know also their corresponding absences. By contrast, God as conceived in theistic Vedānta (see below the lines on Viśiṣṭādvaita Vedānta) can even be said to have experience of duḥkha, insofar as He is the inner controller of each conscious being and shares therefore their experience from within.

God’s omniscience
Nyāya authors accept the existence of a God, usually referred to as Īśvara, who can be proved to exist, and develop on this basis a rational theology which accepts His omniscience and omnipotence. They explain that Īśvara `Lord’ needs to be omniscient in order to deploy His functions, which include the re-arrangement of the world after each periodic destruction and the re-assignment of their karman to each living being. Accordingly, God’s omniscience needs to be understood in a robust sense as the knowledge of all present, past and future states of affairs and as completely actualised (against some Buddhist conceptions discussed above). This, however, entails some problem, insofar as the Lord’s knowledge needs to be at any time complete and is in this sense atemporal. But this seems to mean that (a) there is no space for human free will and (b) the Lord knows the world outside of time. He knows, in other words, all states of affairs simultaneously and independent of time. This mirror-like omniscience has been criticised by authors of the Buddhist epistemological school (see Moriyama 2014 and forthcoming).

Śaiva authors, especially of the Pratyabhijñā school, accept both omniscience of yogins and of the Lord/Īśvara. The first one is often referred to in discussions aiming at establishing the omnipresent nature of the Lord as the supreme subject. In fact, how could memory be possible, if there were not a single subjectivity connecting events from a subjective point of view? And how could knowledge be possible, if there were not a fundamental similarity of nature between knower and known things, which does betrays its partaking to the nature of the absolute subject? The Nyāya account of a plurality of subjectivity is rejected insofar as it clashes with cases like the yogins’ ability to access other minds. The yogin, explain Pratyabhijñā authors, knows other minds from within, as the subject of their thoughts, and does not take other minds as an object to be known, since this knowledge would not be a real knowledge of the other mind, which is intrinsically subjective and cannot be reduced to an object. This ability of the yogin depends on the fact that he has recognised his identity with the Lord and can therefore access any mind. The Lord, as the single all-pervading subject, is in fact de facto omniscient and liberation consists in recognising one’s identity with Him (see R. Torella’s studies on yogipratyakṣa in this school).

Vedāntic authors conceive of God as brahman, and therefore as the only absolute reality. In this sense, the brahman is not an additional entity in the world, and the latter only exists because of Him (Dvaita Vedānta), in Him (Viśiṣṭādvaita Vedānta) or does not exist ultimately (Advaita Vedānta). Knowledge is considered in Vedāntic school to be a substance. Advaita Vedāntins resolve the duality which would emerge out of the assumption of brahman and knowledge by stating that brahman consists of cit `consciousness’. This is unintentional, since any content would include duality.

Viśiṣṭādvaita Vedānta authors conceive of God as brahman and at the same time as a personal God. He is therefore the material cause of the world, which is conceived by Viśiṣṭādvaita Vedāntins to exist only as a specification of Him. Like in the case of Advaita Vedānta, knowledge is conceived as a substance. Unlike in Advaita, knowledge is intentional, and has as its content the whole world. The reality of the world is thus guaranteed by its being a specification of the brahman and by its being a content of His knowledge. At the same time, the brahman is conceived of as a personal God, which means that the two above mentioned ways of relating to the world are not mutually exclusive (as it happens to be the case in Spinoza’s pantheism). Rather, knowledge is connected to Him as His characteristic. It is not just one characteristic among many, nor is it connected to the Lord as a quality to its substrate. By contrast, Viśiṣṭādvaita Vedānta authors describe the relation between God and His knowledge as one of indissolubility. The two cannot be experienced the one without the other and, although knowledge is ultimately a substance, it behaves as a characteristic of Him (it is therefore called dharmabhūtajñāna `cognition [behaving] like a characteristic’).

Against omniscience
Basing on the same elements, the authors of the Mīmāṃsā elements altogether deny the possibility of omniscience. They explain that omniscience contradicts our experience, where knowledge always increases but never reaches on outmost limit. Against the argument of repeated exercise, they observe that exercise does not need to be able to reach whatever result. For instance, no matter how much one exercises, one will never be able to jump until the moon. Nor will one’s smell be able to perceive sounds, even after an intense training. Thus, there are intrinsic boundaries to each faculty, including one’s intellect, which cannot directly grasp things, without the mediation of perception, inference and the other instruments of knowledge.
Moreover, no one could judge the omniscience of someone else. Thus, claim the Mīmāṃsā authors, the accounts about the Buddha’s omniscience cannot be trustworthy, since no one but an omniscient can vouch for someone else’s omniscience.

Why do Mīmāṃsakas insist so much on the impossibility of omniscience? From an internal and argumentative perspective, because of their commitment to common experience, which should not be contradicted without a valid reason. From an external and socio-philosophical perspective, because their defence of the Veda depends on its uniqueness as instrument of knowledge for knowing dharma `duty’. It is clear that no other human instrument of knowledge could compete with the Veda, since all human instruments of knowledge can only grasp what there is and not what ought to be. However, if there were an omniscient human or divine being, then they could reasonably compete with the Veda and possibly even falsify it.

The Buddhist arguments against omniscience (see Moriyama 2014 and Moriyama forthcoming) are different, insofar as they object only against the Lord’s omniscience, but accept the Buddha’s one. The difference lies in the fact that the Buddha became omniscient, whereas the Lord is allegedly permanently omniscient. Hence, only in the case of the Lord’s omniscience one encounter paradoxes such as the ones seen above and regarding the incompatibility of temporality and omniscience.

Suganya has focussed so far on the Vaiṣṇava devotional poetry written in Tamil by the Āḻvārs, the poet-saints who were active in South India approximately between the 6th and the 9th c. AD. She also worked on the medieval Śrīvaiṣṇava commentaries on these works, typically written in Maṇipravāḷam, a sanskritised form of Tamil. She also started researching bhakti literature in general, i.e., by reading Śaiva texts.

E.F.: Tell us about your early formation.
S.A.: Tamil is my mother tongue, but I did not have any classical Tamil at school. I went to a French school, where I took (contemporary) Tamil lessons for a few years only. However, I kept on studying Tamil also with my mother. I then studied English literature as a graduate and post-graduate student.

E.F.: What brought you back to Tamil?
S.A.: At that point I had moved to Paris and was teaching there in the public high school. I got interested in Telegu at the INALCO (http://www.campusfrance.org/en/resource/inalco-institut-national-des-langues-et-civilisations-orientales-paris) and this brought me back to Tamil, so that I took an MA in classical Tamil. Dr. Gérard Colas, a Vaiṣṇava scholar with whom I had started working, introduced me to Jean-Luc Chevillard and he introduced me to Eva Wilden. I did my PhD with her and I learnt a strong philological method through her and the Classical Tamil Summer Seminaries (http://www.efeo.fr/base.php?code=534) she conducts every year.

E.F.: You are clearly interested also in the literary aspect of your translation. Has this interested been fuelled by your studies in English literature?
S.A.: Yes, but not only. Eva too helped me with that, since she produced many translations. With each translation, there is a wish to create a basis for further studies, for the sake of which we produce glossaries in order to check how semantic uses and grammar have evolved. So, translating systematically goes with glossary-making and this enables us to check the evolution of language.
Personally, I make two translations, a first one which is only technical, and a further one that is reader-friendly, but never compromises with the meaning. If possible, I also try to make it beautiful.

E.F.: How did you manage to find enough time and money to make your Tamil studies possible?
S.A.: I was working as a school teacher in the Parisian region and thus I could manage to pay the French fees, which are very reasonable anyway.

E.F.: How did you manage to complete your PhD while working full time?
S.A.: This involved a lot of preparing and a lot of responsibility, since I could only work in the evenings and during the weekends. Still, I managed to complete my PhD in 5 years. In this connection, I have to say that in the previous ten years I had explored all possible aspects of teaching and I really wanted to get out of that, go and explore what is beyond that. My PhD became my hobby, I took the same pleasure in doing it as for a hobby. It would have been great to have had a scholarship for my PhD, but at the same time having a full time job was also highly motivating, although I was permanently tired and overworked. This way, you make the most of whatever little time you have and you become organised because you do not have any other choice.

E.F.: What came after your PhD? How did you start your academic career?
S.A.: I started working as a postdoctoral fellow for the NETamil project in Pondichéry in September 2014. The project will go on until February 2019.

E.F.: Which aspects of the academic life do you enjoy more? What bothers you more?
S.A.: I would like to keep on doing research, but I do not mind teaching, as long as this is related with my research.

As for the negative aspects, non-constructive criticism bothers me, but if you are passionate enough about research, you should use these criticisms as fuel to light your passion instead of taking them as water and allowing them to extinguish it. I learnt that you can feed your passion from such destructive remarks. In general, in order to do research you have to be passionate enough not to give up at the first sign of bad weather.

E.F.: Tell us more about the NETAMIL project as an example of a collaborative project.
S.A.: There can be possessiveness (about one’s field of research for example) and envy in this field like in any other, but my NetTamil colleagues are exempt from such non-constructive attitude and behaviour because of the following reasons: 1. each has his/her own field, so they could not really tread on another’s field. 2. even when there are people working on partly overlapping fields, they believe that working together is good for all parties, the results are better and the learning process which is initiated would not be imitable on one’s own. They in this way empower each other instead of taking each other down. And the field is so vast, that people just need to work together.

We have a shared goal: classical Tamil studies should get the right kind of attention and they should be grounded on a solid basis. The former goal depends on the latter: We are doing solid groundwork, upon which proper research on this field can be done.

Eva Wilden, who started the NETamil project, greatly encourages reading together regularly, as she believes in working together she even reads with people not even connected with the EFEO, so the idea is spreading out of its traditional boundaries.

This programme consists of the following courses: Features of Vedic Poetry (slot 1), The syntax of Vedic Prose (slot 2), Readings in Early Śaiva Literature: manuscripts and editions (slot 3), and How to slay a monkey king in Sanskrit theatre: Readings from Bhāsa’s Abhiṣekanāṭaka (slot 4).

Slot 1: Features of Vedic Poetry (9.30 – 11.00) (Werner Knobl)
Slot 2: The Syntax of Vedic Prose (11.30 – 13.00) (WK)
Slot 3: Readings in Early Śaiva Literature: manuscripts and editions (14.00 – 15.30) (Peter Bisschop)
Slot 4: How to slay a monkey king in Sanskrit theatre: Readings from Bhāsa’s Abhiṣekanāṭaka (16.00 – 17.30) (Daniele Cuneo)

Of related interest is also a class on Old Javanese (whose literature has been massively influenced by the Sanskrit one). The class will be held by Willem van der Molen.

Further information about the school and the detailed program can be found here (for Indology) and here (for Old Javenese). You can sign up via the website. The deadline is approaching, hurry up!

Arne Niklas Jansson

The first attitude could lead to a rational theology, or even to deism, as it happened during the Enlightenment, since it presupposes that all human beings could equally reach an adequate knowledge of God, if only they were to apply properly their instruments of knowledge. The second attitude suggests that there is no way to prove the existence of God apart from one’s own experience and the (one of others as recorded in) Sacred Texts. Historically, religions tend to explain that one should be suspicious of one’s insight alone, since it might be due to one’s projections of what one would like to see as the ultimate reality, so that the second way is usually at least a mixture of personal experience and its validation through the Sacred Texts. In other words, if you “saw” the Virgin Mary as she is described by other reliable sources, yours could have been a genuine religious experience, whereas if you “saw” a Flying spaghetti monster, you should reconsider your evening meals.
Now, the first attitude may seem appealing to our contemporary and secularised world (csw), since it does not recur to the external authority of Sacred Texts, which is usually hard to accept to members of csw. However, it presupposes a totalitaristic move, since if the existence of God can be rationally proved, then your failure to comply amounts to a cognitive fault. It is the same argument which enabled Soviet Union (etc.) leaders to claim that the ones who were not agreeing with the rationality of Communism needed to be reeducated.