The Darśana (Perspectives) of Sānātana
One of the core ways of looking at everything from different perspectives and how the darśana śāstra's provide a rather analytical way of doing this
Darśana śāstra's are an extremely important topic that tie all Sānātana together and illustrates the advancement of the concept of ‘dharma’ as opposed to the otherwise concepts of ‘religion’ or other related terms from foreign epistemologies to the nation of Bhārat (the common and official endonym for India which you’ll find on every Indian’s passport and in every Indian language translation).
Before, we get into the details of how beautiful and scientific this is, you would need to understand what is an epistemology. The definition of epistemology is a branch of philosophy that investigates the origin, nature, methods and limits of human knowledge.
However, every culture has its own epistemes or ways of looking at the world.
For the most part, the west functions on very binary thought process which you’ll see in their stories, phrases, movies and more. The more limited the episteme is, the more you would tend to force fit another cultures narrative into the epistemology you understand.
This has unfortunately happened with the history of Bhārat and its traditions.
With the unfortunate takeover of the educational systems and elevating literacy to levels higher than real education by forcefully implementing the Prussian system of education by the British, these rather simplistic binaries are now even embedded into the psyche of almost everyone who went to study at institutions called schools, colleges or universities.
Unfortunately, it is taught to us as a philosophy which in reality is a western concept with Greek origins. Darśana may resemble philosophy, but in reality it is a perspective based lens.
In technology, we have data, business rules and information which we get by applying the business rules to the raw data. The focus of the consumer of the information is what decides on the focus of the lens.
As a simple example the people higher up the organization would tend to look at aggregated (totals) numbers as they’re running the business. The folks in Sales would be looking at individual sales numbers and performance, but the people in Marketing would be looking at the effectivity of marketing campaigns using the same numbers.
They have different interests.
The data is the same, but …
Each has their own lens for looking at the same set of data.
Sanātana, similarly has books of knowledge including the Vedas, Upavedas, Upanishads, Puranas and more. These are all essentially just data.
There are 6 vedaṇgas which are essential to interpretation of the Vedas. They are a non-optional requirement. Think of them as tools that are simply needed.
These are:
Śikṣa - The science of phonetics. There was an incredible system of data preservation of these over very long periods of time using humans to transfer this data orally. There are many different aspects to how they did it, but it starts with the siksha vedaṇga as described in this article.
Vykaraṇam - This is the grammar that was already inherently there in the language, but later it was codified by Pāṇini in the Dhātu Pāṭha and Aṣṭādhyāyi which made Sanskrit immortal by giving it the ability to create words using approximately 2000 verbal roots and with 4000 odd meta rules on the language. It has been equated to a turing machine and incredibly predates Backus-Naur by millennia.
Chhandas - Which describes the poetic meter. This was done by Piṇgaḷa (Pāṇini’s brother) and has the binary usage of short and long syllables. There are interestingly combination tables also given using formulaic methods which makes him not just the originator, but also the first user of binary, albeit in a different notation. According to Mary Everest Boole (George Boole’s wife and a mathematician herself, he was heavily influenced by this).
Nirukta - This is where one can understand the etymology (origin) of the words. In Sanskrit it is called vyuttapatti (origination) and is different from western etymology because Sanskrit words origin from root verbs and sounds. I’ll have to explain this in detail and it would require an entire write up dedicated to it.
Jyotisha - According to eminent Mathematician, Dr C K Raju, the Vedāṇga Jyotish is a purely astronomical treatise with only Mathematics and not a single line of astrology.
Kalpa - This deals with the ritualistic aspect of the Vedas. This is the most visible today as you’ll see this in rituals performed by temple priests and the pūjas organized by people.
Now, once you have the data (source) and the tooling, you need the lenses. There are two major divisional groups here, especially pertaining to the origination of the Vedas. There is one group that says that these are not of man made origin or apaurusheya. This particular line of thought makes them the āstikas. The ones who deem the Vedas made by man are whom you would call nāstikas. Do not confuse these with theists and atheists.
They all accept the Vedas as works of knowledge as well as they were given by rishis. The difference is that the āstikas would say, these seers essentially were the medium of information delivered from some divine power. They had abilities that made them connect with the divine. On the other hand, the nāstikas say, that they were simply super-intelligent beings and the result is the product of their own brilliant minds.
Either way, it is from the minds of the rishis. This they agree on.
While there are over 343 darśana śāstras, most are considered minor variations of the 9 major perspectives. The difference between them lies in which pramāṇas (type of evidence) they accept and at what levels.
These perspectives are all important as they create several ways of interpretation of the data. Sometimes they debate with each other, and some are complimentary. What is important for us to understand is how interesting these perspectives are and how they give us extremely valuable information in both the physical and non-physical.
There are 6 types of core pramāṇas, namely:
Pratyaksha - This is what is either experienceable through our outer senses or through internal senses. The levels of acceptance can vary with some perspectives only accepting what can be experienced by the 5 senses and nothing else.
Anumāna - This is an inference based on what is seen. It is a logical estimation. The common example given is “Where there is smoke, there should potentially be a fire.”
Upamāna - These are comparison of similar things. A large forest cat to a small house cat which is easier to study. The larger cat is an exaggeration of features especially size. The other way also works for minuscule things which aren’t visible but similar.
Śabda - This literally means word and depending on the acceptance levels, it can vary from eye witness testimony to scriptural evidence. Something that has been written or spoken is counted. Even lore comes under this and there would be certain people that accept the stories and others that reject them.
Arthāpatti - This is a postulation or that which becomes easily evident. You can make logical deductions based on the evidence. Many of us analytics folks use this to examine data and come up with potential interpretation of what we see.
As an example, when I saw decimals to the power of 10, sine difference tables, algorithmic square and cube rooting in the Āryabhaṭiyam, I was sure, it’s impossible for Āryabhaṭa to have invented the zero as there has to have been a pretty long evolution prior to this point.
Anupalabdhi - This is a negation to prove absense or falsehood. Falsifiability in the west was promoted by a person named Karl Popper and he is somewhat of a controversial figure. However, there is merit in having the ability to falsify, so it is also a pramāṇa.
Now, there are sub-aspects and levels of these evidences that I really don’t want to go into here as I intend to essentially describe the lenses or perspectives of Sanātana.
None of these are right or wrong. They’re simply different from each other.
We’ll start with the 6 āstika ones which are divided as:
Nyāya or Logic - There is both boolean and multi-variate logic here. When people mention quantum physics has roots in Hindu philosophy, they’re usually referring to Nyāya.
Vaisheshika - This is Physics. It is all about matter and forces. It includes descriptions of the composition and decomposition of matter. In Sanskrit, the word for particle is kaṇa and for atom is āṇu. There are aspects of laws of motion here which predate Newton by several millennia. Dr Subhash Kak has done some fantastic work on organizing and comparing the two.
Yoga - This is about psychology and physiology. There are levels to this which include breathing, meditation, exercise and more. Yoga literally means union. There are sub-divisions as well.
Saṇkhya or Cosmology - In this perspective, one looks at everything with a lens of cosmic allegories. Like Shiva who is anādi (having no beginning) and ananta (having no end), he can be used to represent space or time or both as examples. This has parallels with the nāstika bauddha darshana.
Mimamsa - Sometimes equated to language. The focus of this lens is to find practical applications. It is represented as a means to earn wealth (artha) and have desires (kāma) and fulfill them. This is why, it is said, this is essentially for gṛhasthas.
Vedānta - This translates to the anta (or end) of the Vedas but in essence it is about completeness. It is sometimes translated as “reality”, but not in the way we understand it with just our external senses.
Besides the above 6 major āstika, there are 3 major nāstika perspectives or lenses. These are as follows:
Cārvaka - This is akin to hedonistic atheism. They reject almost everything that cannot be seen or felt. So, they accept only the pratyaksha pramāṇa and that too only physical. Many of the modern atheists would fall in their category if they stop using the Gregorian calendar because just by using it, they’re acknowledging the existence of Christ from a timeline perspective.
Bauddha - This is the first of the theistic nāstika perspectives. They’re similar to saṇkhya but focus on zeroism (or non-existentialism). There are several sub-groups within them.
Jaina or Ārhata - Another theistic nāstika but with very different practices. It accepts many pramāṇas and at several levels. There are sub-groups within this as well.
Besides these there are other minor variations.
But, these are major lenses of Sanātana.
Just like when one person reads the Rāmāyaṇa, they can look at simply the travel geography and geographical and scientific descriptions of the plants, rivers and other scapes whereas another person can look at logic and justice and yet a third can find spirituality and messages, and a fourth can find instructions for good governance etc etc.
There are several combinations and divisions in the darśanas and they have dedicated shāstras or works. When you examine scientific works like mathematical treatises, you’ll find contributions from across the board.
In certain empires, you would find family members such as different brothers following different perspectives. You could have a brother who is follows Vedānta, another follows Jaina and yet another follows Bauddha.
Not only did they respect each other, but there are several examples of them sponsoring each others research and places of worship etc.
In this pluralistic society, they were already much far ahead of what is called secularism in the modern sense. Since it was already there in the civilizational ethos, forcefully adding it into the constitution after a few decades made zero sense and actually limited it.
It is important for the people of Bhārat to understand their roots so they can truly understand the their indigenous epistemes.
Evidences or pramāṇas were always used, not just for scientific debates and development of works but also in spirituality and in debates called shāstrārth where things were argued using rules of tarka (very elaborate) and settled without any wars or bloodshed.
That is the sign of an extremely evolved society. Of course, the next barbarian from outside or greedy person from inside would easily upset the balance, and that happened too.
The one thing that is true though is that all this is extremely non-binary, especially the way the so called eminent historians portray it by force-fitting everything to a limited and extremely simplistic binary lens.
People are fighting without Knowing the Meaning of Sanatana.. It is an Eyeopener . Thank You
One of the best brief Abstract and clear expalination at the same time of The Very Zist of "Darshana" and " The Basic Structure of its Analytical tools", which constitutes the foundation pillors of "Sanatana Dharma" - which is also the basis of The only Survinig Ancient Civilization that it self is "Bharat" (known lately as India post Colonial powers of west). The Author has presented the foundations in very simple language but with clarity - a must read for anyone who wants to embark on A Journey to Understand-Hindu- Sanatana Dharma and why and how Bharat has so much resilience and survived so far including its aspects of "Dharma". Overall a Great write up.
Best regards to the Author.