Indian Journal of History of , 51.1 (2016) 9-21 DOI: 10.16943/ijhs/2016/v51i1/48373

An Introductory Outline of Production in Pre-colonial India

Rajan Gurukkal*

(Received 25 January 2015; revised 20 November 2015)

Abstract In the introduction we seek to discuss the features of knowledge production in pre-modern India by taking astronomy as a case of illustration. It is an effort in the perspective of historical that inquires into the premises, inferential logic, proof, concept of , and method of confirmation of knowledge. It is an examination of the link of the concept of objectivity, rationality, and methodology at distinct stages of the production of knowledge as indicated by the tradition of vyākhyā and bhāya. What the introduction seeks to highlight is the progress of methodological pre-occupation in knowledge production of Pre-colonial India, which starts from the axiomatic approach to the insistence of confirmation through the production proof over the centuries. Key words: Historical epistemology, Knowledge production, Methodology, Textualisation and epistemic properties

1. INTRODUCTION 2. TRADITIONAL INDIAN KNOWLEDGE Systematised knowledge production of In a natural condition the human brain is specialised knowledge in India goes back to the genetically imbued with the capacity of age of the Vedāga texts (c.700 BC) which unconscious experiential , memorising, witnessed constitution of fields of knowledge and reproducing from time immemorial. Over the around linguistics and astronomy as the earliest years human faculty of reflexivity grew up main components of the formal knowledge system tremendously enabling formal constitution of of traditional India. Astronomy, , knowledge through conscious analytical grammar, , theatre, architecture, reasoning, comparison, rethinking and improving healthcare and agriculture are examples of deep the knowledge. Subsequently, knowledge itself rooted and pervasive fields of knowledge in became an object of analysis, which led to its traditional India. Each system of knowledge had critical examination, validation, expansion, and a splendid course of exponential growth across reconstitution, possible only in a formal textual the centuries till the British occupation of the tradition. subcontinent, thanks to the tradition of both the According to the textual evidence household based and institutional facilitation of knowledge production in ancient India was an learning. It is a matter of wide recognition today individualistic meditative enterprise (tapas), that traditional Indian knowledge systems had improved upon through dialectics (tarka), contributed significantly to the growth of the world hermeneutics (mīmāsā), interpretation scholarship in the past. (vyākhyā), commentary (bhāya), compilation

* Visiting Professor, Centre for Contemporary Studies, Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore - 560012 Email: [email protected] 10 INDIAN JOURNAL OF

(sahitā) and analytical comprehension transmitted practical knowledge with inseparable (sagraha). Although every vyākhya or bhāya links to subsistence and survival. Nevertheless, was apparently an interpretative commentary of a the innate faculty of knowledge production was previous text, in reality it was addition of fresh not active in all people, for many of them had knowledge, sometimes even strikingly original. existed as subsumed and controlled by one kind Although often stated as part of the original of institution or the other, depriving them of their proposition, most of the elaborations and natural autonomy. Artisans and craftsmen who had expansions made in the vyākhyā-s, bhāya-s, a relative autonomy in the domain of skilled sahitā-s and sagraha-s were fresh. Each of practices could produce and preserve knowledge them proved to be a corrective exercise, of course essential for their arts and crafts. Having in varying degrees from text to text, and each incorporated to the caste system, their practices analytical comprehension an integrative function were subjected to upper-caste impositions upon the extant corpus of knowledge. Any of the enforced through textual appropriation. Vāstu texts taxa like vyākhyā or bhāya or sahitā or best exemplify this through the mixing up caste sagraha of disparate ages and regions in based social norms with architectural traditional India would vouch for this fundamental prescriptions. Multiple forms of knowledge got feature of knowledge production and transmission. preserved as part of orality during all periods, but All these textual forms of knowledge were part of all of them never had equal acceptance, for the the practice of storing knowledge for learners as properties of authority, authenticity and credibility well as practitioners. Needless to say that were neither ontological nor epistemological but knowledge production in the Indian sub-continent ideological as determined by the social system’s was not confined to the brāhmaas and their texts power relations. This Marxist, modernist in Sanskrit. There is a commendable body of interpretation is criticised and substituted by the evidence for the persistent tradition of knowledge postmodern deconstructionist perception of production by the sramaas and their texts in Pāli. Solipsistic Cartesianism (Lyotard, 1984). Only Production and practice of knowledge was those who could wield control were able to an innate feature of all kinds of people, except generate knowledge and dictate it for others to perhaps those belonging to the dāsa-bhtaka blindly follow. In a band the authority was the category deprived of natural autonomy, which śaman; in the tribe, the headman; in the slave suffered servitude under subjection and society, the master; in the feudal society, the lord immobility. Artisans and craftsmen had been and so on. It is indeed, a complex situation that generating and improving knowledge in their precludes a detailed recounting of the process as hereditary trades, although no written texts empirically given. In stratified and structured enshrining it have survived to the present. As societies of specialisation the sections that could knowledge embedded in the practice and orally own and control decided what should prevail as transmitted by its users across generations, it might knowledge of authority, authenticity and not have been turned into texts at any point of credibility. time. Surviving artefacts and their traditional Always the powerful and the dominant in makers constitute the proof. the society decided what to be recognised as knowledge. In the case of the society of caste based 3. TEXTUAL DOMINATION differentiation and hierarchy of the Indian sub- Autonomous ethnic groups living in the continent, the power relations structured by the forests and along the fringes had their orally dominance of the upper castes (trivarika-s), AN INTRODUCTORY OUTLINE OF KNOWLEDGE PRODUCTION IN PRE-COLONIAL INDIA 11 competitively decided knowledge by using their and the parallel streams of ‘the knowledge – command over material and cultural resources. practice combine’ of the lower strata. Caraka and This accounted for the privileging of the Suśruta in their texts acknowledge as to how they brāhmaical against the śramaic or the produced knowledge by learning and analysing precedence of the former over the latter or the ‘the knowledge – practice combine’ of the people obliteration of the multiple forms of knowledge of the forest and the lower castes.1 Textualisation and practices among the lower castes and various or the constitution of the sahitā was the result ethnic groups. Elaborate textualisation of of the process of extraction or absorption. It was knowledge and its preservation as part of orality mostly a one-way process, for the caste based with strategies ensuring continuity and error-free social differentiation and distancing precluded recollection made the brāhmaical texts different dissemination of the textualised brāhmaical from the śramaic knowledge that had resorted to knowledge. literacy. Also, there was institutionalised Knowledge being symbolic of status and prevention of the flow of formal knowledge from ranking was contested primarily between the above as borne out by the prescriptions in the brāhmaa-s and śramaa-s over a long period, Dharmaśāstra. Indeed there was dissemination which involved the use of all intellectual means from above (abhisakramaa) and below of debate (tarka), rituals methods of enhancing (pratisakramaa), primarily of ideological royal status (yajña, hirayagarbha and tulābhāra), elements that the latter had to accept invariably, genealogical strategy of the divinisation of royalty for they were integral to the process of domination. (the puranic process and praśasti-s), political In the process the brāhmaical knowledge seldom means of appointing scholars as royal preceptors went into the hands of people belonging to the and creation of noble status (sāmanta) in the social other vara-s. However, the textualised or the hierarchy of power relations. At some point the processed form of knowledge in the custody of śramaa-s secured dominance over the brāhmaa- the śramaa-s did percolate to the practices of the s with some precedence of the Pāli texts of lower castes to a great extent as the ethnographic knowledge over the Sanskrit texts, but lost it for survival of the scholarship of Sanskrit the good in a couple of centuries and the latter repository of textualised knowledge systems and established their dominance all over the sub- practices based on scholarly texts in astronomy, continent with an undeniable status of intellectual architecture and healthcare among the lower castes authority attributed to Sanskrit texts. Sramaa-s indicates. At any rate absorption from below was themselves took to learning Sanskrit not only to perceptibly far more than dissemination from debate with the knowledge texts thereof but also above. to acquire cultural legitimacy and status. 5. EPISTEMIC DIFFERENCES 4. PROCESSES OF SYNCRETISM What one observes as the major epistemic Nevertheless, there was always a process difference between the textually ordained of absorption and extraction of knowledge from knowledge of the upper caste exclusiveness and the non-brāhmaical other namely the śramaic ‘the knowledge – practice combine’ of the lower

1The verse from Caraka sahitā Sūtrasthānam, Chapter I, Dīrghamjīvitiyam, 121. oadhīr nāmarūpābhyām jānate hy’ajapā vane | avipāścaiva gopāśca ye cānye vanavāsinah || 1.1.121 || Shepherds and other pastoral groups (ajapa-s and gopa-s ) of the forest areas are well versed in the knowledge of herbs. 12 INDIAN JOURNAL OF HISTORY OF SCIENCE castes is that the former is a self-consciously realist (vyākaraam) owed their origins to the Vedic academic product while the latter, an unconscious rituals, the former as part of efforts to ensure cultural practice. The former constitutes a concrete precision in the ritual architecture and the latter body of knowledge in the form of the text that is as part of efforts to ensure error free preservation amenable to open interventions leading to and interpretation of ritual texts. It was the beliefs additions to as well as the improvement of the around the Vedic sacrificial ritual that necessitated knowledge whereas the latter is an abstract and knowledge in astronomy, the seeds of which are closed practice undergoing changes as the present in the gveda itself. The that the culturally given. This is not to say that there is conduct of sacrificial rituals would go futile in case nothing culturally given about the former. of the incidence of an eclipse during their Knowledge is purely objective in no society, for performance was the primary compulsion for in all societies it is rendered plausible as the acquiring knowledge and competency to predict discursively tempered and manipulated, under the the occurrence of eclipse. Being elaborate, long- inescapable structure of power relations (Foucault, lasting, and expensive in terms of goods, services 1972). and rewards, the Vedic sacrificial rituals once Historical epistemology of both the commenced should have their successful śramaic and brāhmaical forms of knowledge completion was quite important. Losing a sacrifice would show that they were culturally given too in on the incidence of an eclipse was ignominious to the sense that the Piaka and Nikāya categories of the priest who officiated and the king who the śramaic knowledge and the Vedic, Itihāsic, patronised its performance. Therefore, ability to Śāstraic, Purāic categories of the brāhmaical predict the eclipse was a crucial need for both the knowledge had their pressures and impositions of priest and the king. Mathematics began to grow the changing material base and the entailing social as the fundamental tool of astronomy that had power relations in time and space (Kosambi, 1958 ritual pressure in producing predictive knowledge & 1962). For instance, the knowledge produced about planetary positions and movements. and preserved by the śramaa-s was primarily of a didactic kind with a pragmatic dimension due 6. EPISTEMIC PROPERTIES to the obvious factors related to their worldview That there was politico-ritual imposition of differing degrees of austerity. Healthcare, a on scholars would not mean that it precluded prominent field wherein they generated adherence to epistemological principles such as knowledge was driven by the purpose of dhamma rationality, objectivity, verifiability, proof and according to which treatment (cikitsā) of illness notion of truth in their enterprise of knowledge (vāti) was an important means to resolve the production (Matilal, 1971). An inquiry into the sorrow (āti) of the devoted people (upāsaka-s). It aspects of historical epistemology such as was more ontological in nature. However, for the premises, inferential logic, proof, concept of truth, purpose of debate they did produce knowledge and method of confirmation of knowledge is based on epistemic principles of objectivity, proof, feasible here for visualising the development of veracity and concept of truth. The logic of methodological pre-occupation in terms of the mathematics was central to all forms of Traditional concept of objectivity, rationality, and Indian knowledge with hermeneutic primacy. methodology at distinct stages of the formulation Even the most extensively approved of knowledge (Renn, 1996, p. 4; Hacking, 1999; brāhmaical fields of knowledge, namely Daston, 1994). An important epistemic property mathematics (gaitam) and linguistics of the traditional Indian astronomical knowledge AN INTRODUCTORY OUTLINE OF KNOWLEDGE PRODUCTION IN PRE-COLONIAL INDIA 13 is its theoretical situation beyond the empirically comprehended by succeeding scholars from time given and articulation of the premises and to time. Āryabhaīyam, the most widely cited text conclusions in the language of mathematics. The of authority in time and space, had acquired integrated nature of production of knowledge, empirical base and proof for its theoretical essentially addressed to the extant corpus, propositions only during the successive ages necessitating every scholar to be thorough with through scholarly interpretations and elaborations the master texts, was another significant epistemic (Shukla and Sarma, 1976). However, something feature that ensured linearity about the intellectual culturally significant about the tradition of progress through fresh contributions. Long term reinterpretation in Indian astronomy is the direct as guided by the extant retention of Āryabhaa’s authority as the highest knowledge, regular and systematic recording and in spite of corrections, additions and reckoning by means of mathematical tools had improvements on his findings by others through been the features of heuristics related to independent perception. In the perspective of contemporary knowledge production. historical epistemology, when the previous claims Mathematics was the object of understanding, tool are explained in the light of new perceptions, of analysis, field of hermeneutics, subject of variations occur even at the level of the basic discovery and medium of articulation. However, structure as a result of historical changes. In , insistence on production of proofs as an epistemic this text was subjected to the greatest number of property began only at a later stage. reinterpretations and additions, of which probably It is true that initially these properties were the first known case that improved Āryabhaa’s not explicit and theorems were stated without results was by Haridattan who is said to have proof. Strong traditions were often resorted to for added graded tables of the sines of arcs of anomaly accepting certain statements of precursors and of conjugation at intervals of 3° 45' to know sustainable as pramāa or a rule of thumb. A the correct planetary positions. Similarly Nārāyaa pramāa is an all inclusive abstraction stated in Paita’s Gaita Kaumudī and an algebraic verse (śloka), almost like a formula or an equation, treatise called Bījagaitāvatasa are said to have but with a prescriptive tone. It is statement of added a methodological discussion of observational results but often without disclosing mathematical operation to Āryabhaa’s theory of the cognitive strategies followed to arrive at them. planetary positions. Sometimes a precursor’s statement was adopted and sustained as pramāa for the reason that There is a perceptible epistemic shift in he had stated it affirmatively. This initial attitude traditional Indian knowledge production in general apart, it began to be routine for a vyākhyā or and Kerala astronomy in particular since the time bhāya to delve seriously into an earlier claim, of Mādhava who made lasting contributions to made as a pramāa by a precursor and to try and mathematical astronomy by developing on the make explicit the basic premises of the claim and inferential items in Āryabhaīyam. Inferences to develop on the inferences thereof. This is not drawn from Mādhava were subjected to scrutiny to mean that constitution of evidence was insisted and correction by Parameśvaran, his pupil in the upon as an epistemic law in those days. Their light of the results of his long sustained primary intellectual concern was bringing out . He seems to have done direct more precision to results in the studies, which were astronomical observations for fifty-five years, given as statements as if axiomatic (pramāa). systematically recorded the results, and wrote a Every previous text of authority was interpreted, treatise on Dggaita, a mathematical model of reinterpreted, commented upon and astronomy, an example par excellence for the 14 INDIAN JOURNAL OF HISTORY OF SCIENCE epistemic tradition (Sarma, 1990). His mastery He is an example worth citing in the context of over the extant knowledge and sizeable epistemic universals about knowledge production contribution to it in the form of new theorems are in traditional Indian, such as rationality, analytical embodied by the bhāya-s he wrote on comprehension of the extant knowledge, new tools Mahābhāskarīya, Āryabhaīya and Līlāvatī of of observations, methodological modifications, Bhāskara II (ibid.). The mean value theorem systematic recording of observational results, propounded by him is considered to be quite mustering of inductive mathematical proofs for crucial and essential subsequently in proving the previous theorems, hermeneutic additions and fundamental theorem of calculus. Similarly, his scholarly integration. Tantrasagraha embodies mean value type formula for inverse interpolation these epistemic distinctions, which one of its of the sine function, a one-point iterative technique contemporary bhāya-s, namely Yukti-dīpika, is for calculating the sine of a given angle, and a said to have highlighted (Narasimhan,1998). His more efficient approximation that works using a Graha-parīkā-krama is a methodological manual two-point iterative algorithm, is now understood of observations in astronomy and the use of essentially the same as the modern secant method observational tools. Siddhānta-darpaa is (Dreyer, 1989). He is said to be the first Nīlakaha’s another significant work often noted mathematician to provide the radius of a circle for the interest he exhibited in methodological with an inscribed cyclic quadrilateral. instructions. Nīlakaha’s Āryabhaīya-bhāya, his masterpiece provides a heliocentric model of the Likewise Nīlakaha Somayāji in his solar system and many results on calculus. Tantrasagraha carried the process further Nīlakaha attributes the series to Mādhava, producing more clarity in pre-existing theories, although it is not possible to ascertain whether particularly expansion of the sine cosine series of Mādhava discovered all the series. It has been Mādhava. He is acclaimed for expanding the shown that Mādhava’s discoveries include the methods and theories of Mādhava, particularly by Taylor series for the sine, cosine, tangent and elaborating his derivation, improving proofs for arctangent functions, the second-order Taylor his series of the arctangent trigonometric function, series approximations of the sine and cosine and other infinite series. Tantrasagraha is in 432 functions and the third-order Taylor series śloka-s in Sanskrit and in 8 chapters, generally on approximation of the sine function, the power the epicyclic and eccentric models of planetary series of π (usually attributed to Leibniz), the motion, but specifically dealing with the motions solution of transcendental equations by iteration, and longitudes of the planets, various problems and the approximation of transcendental numbers related with the sun’s position on the celestial by continued fractions. Mādhava is said to have sphere, including the relationships of its correctly computed the value of π to 9 decimal expressions in the three systems of coordinates, places and 13 decimal places, and produced sine namely ecliptic, equatorial and horizontal and cosine tables to 9 decimal places of accuracy. coordinates, the lunar and the solar eclipses, the He also extended some results found in earlier deviation of the longitudes of the sun and the works, including those of Bhāskara (Rajaraja moon, the rising and setting of the moon and Varma, 1896; Ramasubrahmanian, Srinivas and planets, and a graphical representation of the size Sriram, 1994, pp. 784-709 ). He is said to have of the sun-shine part of the moon. significantly improved Āryabhaa’s model for Nīlakaha’s study is a clear indication of Mercury and Venus. Nīlakaha’s equation of the how new knowledge is created lineally by centre for these planets remained the most accurate developing on the results of the previous studies. until the time of Johannes Kepler in the 17th AN INTRODUCTORY OUTLINE OF KNOWLEDGE PRODUCTION IN PRE-COLONIAL INDIA 15 century. It was C.M. Whish, a civil servant of East methods for the calculation of the circumference: India Company, who brought to the attention of The first gives an algebraic recursion relation the western scholarship the existence of involving a sqare-root that converges to the exact Tantrasagraha through a paper published in value, and the second starts as a way to avoid 1835. The other grantha-s mentioned by C. Whish sqare-roots in the calculation. What turns out as a in his paper were Yukti-bhāā of Jyeadeva, matter of epistemic significance in Yuktibhāā is Karaa-paddhati of Puthumana Somayaji and the onset of the practice of providing proofs rather Sadratnamālā of Sankara Varman (Wish, 1835, than just statements of results (Raju, 2001, pp.325- pp. 509-523). 61). Another significance of the text is its use of the regional language (Malayalam) instead of Insistence of the production of proof as a Sanskrit and replacement of the poetic genre with primary epistemic requirement is best manifest prose. In short, it goes quite evident that the basic perhaps for the first time in the work of Jye adeva.  epistemic concept called objectivity was the It is interesting to note that proofs for M dhava’s ā cognitive motor in traditional Indian knowledge series expanded by Nīlakaha into sine, cosine production and it progressively persisted as the and inverse tangent series were given only after a central string of control across every vyākhyā or century by Jyeadeva in his Yuktibhāā, a bhāya. Malayalam text. In spite of the constitution of the three crucial power series heading towards the 7. OVERSEAS TRANSMISSION invention of calculus, a comprehensive theory of differentiation or integration was not achieved by Circulation and progressive accretion of him. The fundamental theorem of calculus knowledge across regions in India had always facilitating higher trigonometric functions was gone beyond the sub-continent to Persia and the developed by Leibniz and Newton almost a couple Arab world in the west and to China and the larger of centuries later. However, there exists a running Asia in the east, thanks to the long distance thread of the same epistemological control across itinerant traders. Long distance trade hardly meant the cognitive exercises involving empirical mere exchange of material goods. It inevitably scrutiny, rational analysis and theorisation in involved exchange of cultures to which transaction Jyeadeva’s constitution of proofs for the power of knowledge was integral. Production of new series and in Leibniz’s or Newton’s formulation knowledge in a region was often catalysed by of the fundamental theorem of calculus enabling elements drawn from the knowledge of another th higher trigonometric applications. Jyeadeva’s region. Cultural transactions during the 15 and th Yuktibhāā which is in a way his bhāya of 16 centuries that marked extensive and frequent Tantrasagraha embodies mathematical proofs of overseas voyages by merchants and missionaries the theorems of Mādhava and Nīlakaha. were of an unprecedented dimension. Often regional sharing carried knowledge forward to Nīlakaha’s methodological rationality is best higher phases, the accomplishment of which highlighted and pursued further by Jyeadeva who has given many rational approximations based on would normally be within a larger geographical continued fractions, which scholars have not made entity with a knowledge-language of intra-regional out as yet. What has been shown totally new is a use for sustained scholarly enterprises, unless convergent infinite process capable of attributing socio-economic and politico-cultural changes become totally unsuitable. the value of π to arbitrary accuracy. Jyeadeva shows that several such processes were known to It is evident now that mathematical the astronomers of Kerala. Yuktibhāā gives two astronomy in 16th century Kerala with a few 16 INDIAN JOURNAL OF HISTORY OF SCIENCE centuries of persistent efforts and systematic quite explicable in relation to contemporary social progress was fast heading towards the fundamental compulsions on the one side and the declining theorisation of calculus (Rajagopal and critical intelligence of the scholarly generation on Venkataraman, 1949, pp.1-13; Rajagopal and Iyer, the other. Viewing from the perspective of 1952, pp.65-74; Joseph, 1994; 2009a and 2009b). historical epistemology, the process was that of But culmination of the theorisation did not happen an uncritical return to the axiomatic and the in the region not due any traumatic changes in its traditionally given, from the threshold of proof socio-economic and politico-cultural spheres construction shown by Jyeadeva. Actually what leading to an unfavourable environment. Europe developed subsequently was a linear Nevertheless, the growth of garden land economy, advancement of the same epistemic tradition with influence of market, increased monetisation, additions enabling improvement of knowledge as transmutation of agrarian rent into cash, urban well as cognitive means to go further. Jyeadeva’s growth, political instability, social tension and a formula showing a passage to infinity, which greater dominance of the cult of devotion were facilitates calculation of areas under parabolas, is characteristics of the time. Knowledge production an essential constituent of the theory of calculus was advancing in various fields. In mathematical (Joseph, 2009a). It is the same formula that astronomy Achyuta Piāroi, Sankara Varma, and contemporary European scholars like Pierre Melppathur Nārāyana Bhaatiri were eminent Fermat, Blaise Pascal and John Wallis also had names. More gurūkula-s were coming up used. The planetary model of Nīlakaha and the imparting scholarship increasingly in the regional planetary model of Tycho Brahe are one and the language, as indicated by the work of Jyeadeva. same. Similarly, it is said that Wallis’s results on However, it appears that there was the conspicuous continued fractions are identical to those of absence of a scholar of Jyeadeva’s calibre during Bhāskara II (Dennis and Joseph, 2004). That there the period, precluding the possibility of evolving exists no linearity but instead an epistemic rupture a comprehensive theory of calculus. about the progress of mathematics between India and Europe is a matter taken for granted under A very significant factor was the the influence of the long sustained belief about unprecedented possibility of overseas transmission the East as the opposite of the West in all respects. of the knowledge from the Kerala region to the The West had built up this contrast through the Persian world and Europe through maritime historical process of representing the East on the traders and Jesuit missionaries (Mallayya and basis of unfounded ideas, imaginary notions and Joseph, 2009b). Moreover, Europe after prejudices, which subsequently gave rise to the Renaissance was witnessing a phenomenal techno- myriad of discursive strategies of Eurocentrism economic, socio-cultural and politico-intellectual for distinguishing the West from the East in every development providing an ideal environment for aspect of culture (Foucault, 1972; Said, 1977). the production of new knowledge, thanks to the Between the East and West, there was no paradigm primacy of reason, critical intelligence and shift in terms of epistemic meanings, measures curiosity of the age. The situation of Kerala was and parameters regarding the production of just the opposite, characterised by a preponderance astronomical knowledge in the 17th century. Their of the cult of devotion to gamic gods and the mathematical approach through the development entailing irrational beliefs. In fact, there was a of infinite series for understanding and reckoning marked shift from astronomy to astrology, planetary positions and movements were āyurveda, epic studies, and theatrical literature epistemologically the same. AN INTRODUCTORY OUTLINE OF KNOWLEDGE PRODUCTION IN PRE-COLONIAL INDIA 17

8. OBSERVATIONS the overt or covert demonstration of their embedded methodological aspects that we have Scholars were engaged in addressing briefly discussed as part of our introduction. These intellectual issues in the domain of knowledge of their choice, a process that inevitably transcended articles deal with knowledge produced at disparate the region and Sanskrit, the language of specialised periods between the early historic and the late traditional scholarship, facilitated their sub- medieval or early modern. Sharada Srinivasan’s continental convergence. It becomes clear that article explores the trajectory of knowledge intellectual perception comes into being out of production in the realm of metallurgy from the interaction with the community of scholars and Bronze Age to the Iron Age. She attempts to show their scholarship on the one side and under socio- how archaeometallurgical aided by cultural compulsions. The traditional Indian inscriptional and literary sources juxtaposed to intellectual culture, disrupted and alienated by ethnoarchaeological survivals in the continuing colonialism, is inaccessible today not solely artisanal technologies can provide insights into the because it is all in Sanskrit but mainly because antiquity of knowledge production, through her we do not know its knowledge-language that is case studies of high-tin bronzes from Iron Age ontological and culturally contingent. It is a Tamil Nadu, zinc smelting evidence at Zawar, language of historically contingent cultural Rajasthan, gold working in the Nilgiris, and the constructs that are not mere words or tropes but high-tin bronze mirror craft of Aranmula, Kerala. established traditional practices. Thanks to the She also seeks to explore the interplay between studies by a few dedicated modern scholars, we functional and cultural imperatives through which realise that there existed a single cognitive thread one may explain the preferential emergence of of epistemic control in the production of certain technologies with respect to debates on knowledge. The long protracted and persistent knowledge production. vyākhyā /bhāya tradition demonstrates a clear M.S. Valiathan’s article seeks to study linearity about the progress of methodological pre- Caraka’s views on knowledge with reference to occupation in knowledge production of Pre- Āyurveda. He shows how Caraka conceived colonial India from the axiomatic through proof Āyurvedic knowledge as having no beginnings creation to the scientific over centuries. There was since there was never a time when the flow of life no rupture in the process although the next higher and intellect did not exist or a time when the phases were manifested not in regions across India knowers of āyurveda did not exist. According to but in Europe. What emerges is the universality Caraka, knowledge dealt with the eternal of epistemic properties that make deeper characteristics of life endowed by nature, which knowledge distinct irrespective of its geography. included health and disease, happiness and sorrow, Any inquiry into the methodological ideas of their material substrates and many inter-relations. knowledge production in pre-colonial India Valiathan’s article informs that to Caraka starting with mathematical astronomy and substances and their inherent properties such as proceeding to other areas discovers this heavy and light, cold and hot and the law of epistemological unity. generality and particularity which determine the union and disunion of substances are also eternal. 9. ABOUT THE ARTICLES Based on the views of Caraka, Valiathan argues The articles in this Special Issue are that the knowledge of Āyurveda did not arise out specialised engagements in the select branches of of nothing or from a moment of creation, for it is knowledge outlined in the above paragraphs and the sum total of timeless concepts and traditions 18 INDIAN JOURNAL OF HISTORY OF SCIENCE crystallized as a treatise or a system. What his knowledge was formulated on the basis of certain article underlines as an enduring lesson is Caraka’s specific criteria of theoretical rationality known willingness to draw upon the philosophical as tantra-yukti. Āyurveda is a holistic knowledge, perspective of the Vaiśeika, Nyāya and Sānkhya the whole of which cannot be comprehended just thinkers and adapt them so as to suit his own by knowing the parts. intellectual conception of āyurveda. Divakaran’s article starts with the premise There is an attempt to trace the history of that the principle and results of mathematics are Āyurveda in the article by Raghava Varier from universal and immutable. However, he observes the antiquity of the healing and health care that there are significant variations in the practice tradition. He argues that the making of Āyurvedic of mathematics from culture to culture. The article knowledge was a long process involving the seeks to inquire into the roots of the broad contributions of several generations of universals across the culturally contingent practitioners over centuries. Varier shows that variations. He illustrates extensively and argues different healthcare traditions in the past had a long that the oral and nominal mode of communication course of interactive co-existence involving accounts for the variation. The Indian approach mutual borrowing of , techniques and to geometry as distinguished from the Hellenic, approaches. They involved those of the tribal the evolution of the idea of proof in India, and the peoples, brāhmaas and śramaas. As regards the explosion of new mathematical ideas in Kerala methodology of knowledge production embedded during 15th and 16th centuries and a review of cross- in both the traditions, he rightly points out many cultural influences are other topics discussed in years of experiential learning through constant the article. observation, careful examination and scrupulous verification as central. According to him none of In the joint article by Balachandra Rao, the traditions was in isolation. He maintains that Rupa K. and Padmaja Venugopal, they seek to it was with the sahitā-s that Āyurveda became analyse the phenomenon of heliacal rising and an explicitly coded and systematised form of setting of stars in general and of Canopus in knowledge. particular in the light of the theories in Indian astronomy. They argue that it is the circumpolarity In a joint article, Venugopal and Darsan for different latitudes during different periods, Sankar seek to examine the epistemic properties usually in intervals of thousands of years, which and methodological aspects of Āyurvedic makes the star Agastya (Canopus) significantly knowledge at the instance of the allusions in the distinct. The article seeks to explain how the star, text. The authors argue that the knowledge in circumpolar for an extreme North Indian latitude, yurveda is based mainly on four types of theories Ā attained some status after two thousand years for (siddhānta ) viz., śarvatantra siddhānta (the a lesser North Indian latitude. It has been argued theory universal to all śāstrās), pratitantra that the course of circumpolarity of Canopus siddhānta (the theory particular to Ayurveda), moves southwards reducing the terrestrial latitude adhikaraa siddhānta (the theory relating to each successively until it reaches a southern limit. topic) and 4) abhyupagama siddhānta (the According to the authors the star reverses its untested theory). These siddhānta-s were debated course moving northward until it reaches the among practitioners and novices of various northern limit of terrestrial latitude. schools of thought on the basis of entrenched logical procedures (vādāmarga) followed to Rajendran in his article on the inferential justify propositions. They show that the Āyurvedic episteme termed ‘anumāna’ points out an AN INTRODUCTORY OUTLINE OF KNOWLEDGE PRODUCTION IN PRE-COLONIAL INDIA 19 unfortunate grey spot in the Indian intellectual In an article R. Champakalakshmi seeks tradition, i.e. the relative lack of methodological to explore the beginnings and growth of discussions in the otherwise impressive theoretical knowledge production in the Tamil language, treatises. However, it is evident that knowledge literature and culture. Starting with the poetics and in various spheres like astronomy, mathematics, the grammatical exegesis of the heroic poetry in engineering, metallurgy, medicine, , Tolkāppiyam that laid the foundation of specialised aesthetics and yoga was formulated through a knowledge tradition in Tamil, she discusses the rigorous procedure of logic relating to deduction. production and transmission of knowledge in Raghuramaraju’s article deals with the issue Grammar, Mathematics and its ancillary further, by shifting the focus from the site of Astronomy through the gurukula system. knowledge production to the site of organisation. Referring to the subsequent period of 4th-6th Organising, according to Raghuramaraju, requires centuries AD, representing a new socio-economic a different methodological preoccupation. It formation and the spread of the Buddhist and Jain involves a methodological strategy to assemble religions in the region, she examines the the diverse elements in the different texts as specialised knowledge content in the Patinekī; exemplified by the work of Bādarāyana in the kkaakku, a series of 18 didactic works on organisation of the Vedānta sūtra-s. contemporary ethics, morality and social norms. Raghuramaraju argues that there is a difference The article by Y. Subbarayalu examines in the case of Nāgārjuna who, in the process of the historical context and features of the earliest organization of the sayings of the Buddha, available grammatical text of old Tamil literature, provided them with a philosophical foundation. popularly known as the Sangam literature (dated Embarking on the acknowledgment of studies on anterior to the fifth century AD) – the knowledge production in pre-modern India, he Tolkāppiyam. His essay discusses the importance begins by tracing a trajectory from the present, of the later commentaries in making sense of the neutralised or frozen. laconic and terse aphorisms of this treatise, and Sundar Sarukkai’s article maintains that in also the importance of this grammar as a historical the history of science, there are two significant chronicle of socio-cultural value. questions relating to the transmission and Mundoli Narayanan brings out the fact that circulation of ideas and knowledge across different most traditional Indian performance forms are cultures. One is the question relating to the claim characterised by distinct modes of embodied of greater antiquity of science in the Indian and knowledge. Taking the case of Kathakali, the Chinese civilizations. The other is the question traditional performance art from Kerala, he shows concerning the cross-cultural transmission of the how with the degree of systematization present in Indian and Chinese science to Europe before the their performative practices enhances its intensity onset of ‘modern science.’ Sarukkai, focusing on and problematizes the inherent mind-body the use of translation and the theoretical hierarchies. According to him the performative assumptions therein, enquires into the relation practice of Kathakali, involving a repetitive between translation and transmission. He rightly training regimen, inscribes in the young student a argues that the framework of translation studies comprehensive language and aesthetic of has a great relevance to the discussion of the cross- performance. He argues that a distinctive ‘body cultural transmission of knowledge, for it brings mind’ and a ‘body ’ relationship is to the fore serious methodological issues in the established, almost entirely precluding the process of the production of science. intervention of the ‘conscious mind.’ Narayanan 20 INDIAN JOURNAL OF HISTORY OF SCIENCE observes that the formal embodied knowledge is philosophy, grammar, architecture, intellectual expected to be informally enriched in performance history, histrionics and musicology. They are by a greater awareness of the aesthetic, emotive, illustrative of the fact that the pre-modern Indian thematic and other significant aspects of knowledge in such fields was generated through performance, as the student acquires life determinate logical ways and means (tantra-yukti- and matures both as a person and as a s) ensuring intellectual depth, authenticity, and practitioner. credibility. Interestingly these strategies confirming the veracity of knowledge are what Naresh Keerthi’s article seeks to study the modern methodology embodies. In that sense the musical meta-genre known as the prabandha that systematised knowledge of pre-modern India has much variety in number, description and represents antecedents of scientific thinking that details as per the musicological sources of the early signifies ‘science,’ derived from the Latin word and late medieval times. The author considers here ‘scientia’ denoting profound knowledge, until a specific sub-category – the śrīraga Prabandha, Newton’s Principia set the example of science with studies its genealogy through the musicological an epistemic distinction. literature, and uses it as an example to understand the life trajectory of the concept of a prabandha. Bibliography By studying the structural, textual and musical Almeida, Dennis F. and George G. Joseph. Eurocentrism in content of the song in comparison with the the History of Mathematics: The Case of the Kerala musicological prescription, he exemplifies and School, in Race and Class Series: 45.4, Institute of draws attention to the methodological problems Race Relations, Sage Publications, London, 2004, in studying the history of something as transitory pp.53-54 as a performed genre – be it musical, theatrical or Daston, Lorraine. Historical Epistemology in James otherwise. Chandler, Arnold I. Davidson, and Harry D. Harootunian (Eds), Questions of Evidence, Proof, R.V. Achari’s article examines the Practice and Persuasion across the Disciplines, Vāstuśāstra, a term occurring in several Sanskrit University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1994. texts of early India to mean Vāstuvidyā or Dreyer, J.L.E. Tycho Brahe, a picture of scientific life and architecture, against the historical context of the work in the Seventeenth Century, Adam and Charles text’s transformation into a set of Sanskrit lyrics Back, Edinburgh, 1890. with the prescriptions based on mythical beliefs Foucault, Michel. Archaeology of Knowledge, Routledge, of a society of vara/jāti discriminations. He London, 1972. argues that in the process of filling the text with Hacking, Ian. The Social Construction of What, Harvard bizarre beliefs, the architectural knowledge and University Press, Harvard, 1999. skill developed and continuously improved by the Joseph, G.G. The Crest of the Peacock: Non-European Roots community of artisans and craftsmen got sidelined. of Maths, Penguin Books, London, 1994. Critical of the present practice of using the Joseph, G.G. 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