Toward a Scientific, Sacred Indology

Prof. Ravi Gomatam (aka Rasaraja dasa)

Visiting Professor, ICPR

Swadeshi Indology Conference, Chennai

6-8 July 2016

Director
Institute of Semantic Information Sciences & Technology
(www.insist.ac.in)
Talk Overview
Purvapaksa on Pollock
His unacceptable characterization of Premodern Sanskrit

A New Understanding of the Oral Tradition

Sacred Indology in Action Three examples
The Concept of time (as well as space and objects) crucial to any
Indology. Sacred Indologys notions are more scientific than the ones
that currently undergirds WI
Separating Sanskrit from its sacred
roots
Central to Pollocks divide & rule Indology
A great moment of transformation in culture and power in pre-
modern India occurred in around the beginning of the Common
Era, when Sanskrit, long a sacred language restricted to religious
practice, was reinvented as a code for literary and political
expression. (1) The Language of the Gods in the World of Men
Sanskrit, Power and Culture in Premodern India, UCP, 2006
Premodern is a label linking to current times
Pollock doesnt even name the antecedent Sanskrit
This allows him to introduce Premodern Sanskrit entirely in terms
of 18th century European thought
Step #1 in the Separation
Premodern Sanskrit began around the Common Era
No factual basis for this claim

A British predilection, but Greek recorded history itself could be a myth

Parmenides composed only a single work (Diogenes Laertius 1.16), a
metaphysical and cosmological poem. SEP
The work of Democritus has survived only in secondhand reports,
sometimes unreliable or conflicting SEP
Euclid is thought to be a fictitious character.
Pythagoras himself wrote nothing, so our knowledge of Pythagoras'
views is entirely derived from the reports of others. SEP

Greek thought, a subset of Ancient Indian thought?

The notion of four elements; atomism; Greek gods; Poompuhar
Step #1 in the Separation

The scanty Greek tradition, echoing Vedic ideas is accorded primacy as

part of recorded history

The Vedic tradition with its immense range of works the Vedas,
Upanishads, Brahma Sutras, Puranas, itihasas, yamalas, etc. which have
survived intact in their full form and still influence the lives of hundreds
of millions of devout Hindus around the world is treated as mythology
Step #2 Europe-nization
The distinction Indian philosophers have drawn between
paaramaaartika and vyavahaarika is the same as what the eighteenth
century Italian thinker Vico has called verum and certum. (2)

Verum Points toward the absolute truth of philosophical reason

Certum Points toward certitudes that people have at different

stages of their history that provides grounds for their beliefs and
actions, workaday truths. This idea forms the core of this book.

Upon this European view, paaramaaartika and vyavahaarika go in two

different directions.
Enter Sacred Indology
Paramarthika and Vyavharika are not opposed

Both aim for the same, the Absolute Truth (Satyam Param) or Param
Brahman. The former is for those who embrace Sannyasa dharma; the
later is for those who follow regulated householder dharma

Emergence of premodern secular Sanskrit is not due to imagined

emergence of literariness or pursuit of political power

Rather inability of people in general to strictly follow either path due

to the emergence of Kali Yuga

Sacred Indology will date it at 3100 B.C.

Panchagams
5000 Years of Living History
 Merwar palace in Udaipur is said to have 800 generations
record. Descendents of Kusha (Ramayana)

Physical evidence available all over India

 Geologic Periods million
years
Indian Myth or Quaternary 2.58- Homo sapiens
present @ 250,000 yrs ago
Western Myth? Tertiary 66 -2.58 Mass extinction
Cretaceous 145-66 Primates
Duration
Jurassic 201-145 Birds
Kali-yuga 432,000 years
Triassic 252-201 Dinosaurs
Dwarupa-yuga 864,000
Treta-yuga 1,296,000 Permian 299-252 Mass extinction
Satya-yuga 1,728,000 Carboniferous 356-299
1 Catur-yuga 4,320,000
Devonian 419-356 Four limbed
animals
Kalpa 4.32 billion
Silurian 443-419 Life appears
(A day of Brahma) on land
Ordovician 485-444
Lifetime of Brahma 311.04 trillion Cambrian 541-485 Vertebrates
Age of the earth 1.96 Billion appear
Age of the Universe 158.63 trillion Age of the earth: 4.53 billion years
Age of the universe: 13.8 billion years
 Pollocks Sleight of Hand

Separate premodern Sanskrit from its sacred roots, and

define it in terms of European thought

See precursor to latter-day European ideas such as Nazism

in premodern Sanskrit thought.
Oral Knowledge Tradition
Premodern is marked by poetry and polity (5)

The purely oral could not be kavya. (3)

No basis for this claim offered

Sacred tradition Valmiki wrote Ramayana in Treta yuga (2.160

million years). And he is called the Adi Kavi

The tradition being oral at that time does not mean that either
before or after, there was no writing!

Sri Ganesa is known as the scribe of Mahabharata, which was

written at the start of Kaliyuga, 5100 years ago
Sanskrit Alphabets Simultaneous
with Creation
SPaXaRSTaSYaa>avqv" Svrae deh odaTa )
OZMaa<aiMaiNd]Yaa<YaahurNTa"SQaa bl/MaaTMaNa" )
Svra" Sa ivhare<a >aviNTa SMa Pa[JaaPaTae" ))

sparas tasybhavaj jvasvaro deha udhta

mam indriyy huranta-sth balam tmana
svar sapta vihreabhavanti sma prajpate

Brahm's soul was manifested as the touch alphabets, his body as the
vowels, his senses as the sibilant alphabets, his strength as the
intermediate alphabets and his sensual activities as the
seven notes of music. [SB 3.12.47]
Srila Prabhupadas Contribution to
Sacred Indology in Modern Times
Purport : In Sanskrit there are thirteen vowels and thirty-five consonants.
The vowels are a, , i, , u, , , , , e, ai, o, au, and the consonants are ka,
kha, ga, gha, etc. Amongst the consonants, the first twenty-five letters are
called the sparshas. There are also four antha-sthas. Of the smas there are
three, called tlavya, mrdhanya and dantya. The musical notes are sa, re,
g, ma, dha, and ni. All these sound vibrations are originally called Sabda-
brahman, or spiritual sound...

The Vedas are spiritual sound, and therefore there is no need of material
interpretation for the sound vibration of the Vedic literature. The Vedas
should be vibrated as they are, although they are symbolically represented
with letters which are known to us materially
A Sacred Explanation
Letters of the alphabet stand in different relation with reality
Example of classical music

Four kinds of priests for Yagnya:

Hot (One who offers oblations)
Udgt (one who sings the mantras)
Adhvaryu (one who kindles the sacrificial fire by mantras)
Brahm (One who supervises)

Existence of written music sheets doesnt mean learning singing ceases

to be a oral tradition
Western Indology Vyavharika Sound
WI is akin to writing about Classical Indian Music without having ever learnt
it orally

Sound as the first level of matter

Sound is information
Para, Pashyanti, Madhyama and Vaikhari sounds

Sacred Indology starts at the level of Madhyama

Current Science minimally transcends Vaikari

1 2 3 4 5.
Pollock will dare not
analyze pure mathematics
I II III IV V just in terms of its
written symbols!
Pollock Ancient Vedic thought must
be necessarily Regressive
I do not believe that South Asias contribution is the most important ever
made to world knowledge. (p. 19) Why?

The usual answers offered in South Asia itself as nostalgia, hollow cultural
pride and deplorable quackery that aims to find the recipe for cold fusion in
some Vedic text. (p. 19-20)

He speaks of cosmologies that have been thoroughly discredited. (p. 6)

The proper task of Indology is to frame strong hypotheses about the nature
of that consciousness and the conditions of its transformation. (p. 19)
From Pollock, S. (2014), "What is South Asian Knowledge Good For?" South
Asian Institute Papers, Issue 1, Heidelberg University
Science and Reality
Scientific Realism has failed. My own version

Every theory we can name in the history of science is, in

retrospect, erroneous in some respect. The Newtonian theory of
gravitation is incorrect, as is the classical theory of
electromagnetism, Dalton's atomic theory, classical physical optics,
the special theory of relativity, the Bohr theory of the atom, and
so on Since all theories in history have been false, we should
conclude that our present scientific theories, which were obtained
by the same methods, are false as well. (Glymour, 1992, 125-6)

My own version based on Sacred Indology: Tandem Realism

Uttarapaksha Creating a New Scien
Sound in Sacred Indology will be the first level of mater and is
information
Objective Semantic Information (OSI) A new concept of
matter. It involved a host of New Ideas within science
New Empiricism
New Scientific Realism (Tandem Realism)
New Mathematics for Macroscopic Quantum Mechanics
(replacing Hilbert space)
A New notion of biological information
New Quantum Computing .
All based on the concept of panca bhutas, tanmatras and the
senses. Hence a contribution from sacred Indology to science
Contemporary scientists have begun to appreciate it
Nobel Laureate Appreciates

I was very interested in the talk by Dr. Ravi Gomatam . . . because

he showed, by some nice arguments, that the proper way to think
of quantum mechanics is in terms of relationships .
This is a new way of thinking.
It may be that this is how we should be doing science.

Brian Josephson, Nobel Laureate;

At Quantum Approaches to Consciousness Conference, Arizona,
USA; August 1999
On Winning the battle for Sanskrit
Reclaim the continuity of connection between Vedic Sanskrit and
premodern Sanskrit

Make premodern Sanskrit go back to its Vedic roots, rather than be pruned
of it

Trace the influence of Kali Yuga on its emergence

Develop Sacred Indology on a theistic and Scientific Basis

Crucially dependent on developing our own notion of time within science,

which in turn depends on introducing our own notion of space, and
material objects

Visit www.insist.ac.in & www.bvinst.edu

THANK YOU!