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God in Indian Philosophy

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God in Indian Philosophy Empty God in Indian Philosophy

Post  Guest Thu Dec 13, 2012 8:39 pm

But is it really a fact that most of the traditional Indian philosophers were committed atheists? There is only one answer to this question, and that is highly embarassing for the theists today, as it must have been for the theists of medieval India.

And, what is the orthodoxy oriented philosophers' usual trick to cover up facts that are embarassing? It is to take refuge in verbal subterfuge.

This must have been a fairly common form of intellectual dishonesty in the philosophical debates even in ancient India, in as much as in the oldest available treatise on the codes of such debates (Nyaya Sutra), we come across a detailed discussion of this trick, and of course its philosophical futility.

In Indian terminology, this is called chala i.e. a verbal subterfuge designed deliberately to distort the position of the opponent and thereby impute to him a view which he does not actually maintain. It may be done in various ways. One of these is called samanya-chala. It consists in inventing an absurd meaning regarding something mentioned by somebody and this by taking advanatage of some general characterestic being present in objects other than the one really intended by the speaker (Nyaya Sutra i.2.13).

An interesting example of this trick is to be found in the writings of Udayana (circa 10th century AD), an extremely renowned medieval philosopher belonging to the Nyaya school, whose Nyayakusumanjali is considered the classic of Indian theism. In the opening portion of the Kusumanjali, Udayana claims that there is actually none who can be considered an atheist, in as much as everybody believes in God--though in his own way.

The passage needs to be quoted in full and here it is as translated by one of the ablest of modern Indian scholars (Gopinath Kaviraj in Saraswati Bhavan Studies ii.165):

"Although with regard to that Being whom all men worship, whichever of the Aims of Man they may strive after viz. the Being which the followers of the Upanisad worship as One, by nature pure and enlightened, the followers of Kapila as the perfected First Knower, the followers of Patanjali as the Being who is untouched by afflictions, actions, and fruits and who by assuming a 'phantasmal body' revealed the Veda and imparts (Saving) Grace, the followers of Mahapasupati as the absolutely independent One, who is undefiled by actions opposed to those enjoined in the Vedas and sanctioned by popular usage, the Saivas as Siva, the Vaisnavas as Purusottama, the Paurinkas as the Supreme Father, the sacrificialists as the soul of Sacrifice, the Saugatas [i.e. Budhists] as Omniscient, the Digambaras as the Uncovered, the Mimansakas as That which is enjoined (by the Vedas) as the object of worship, the Naiyayikas as the Being who is endowed with all the attributes which befit Him, the Charvakas as One whose authority is established by the convention of the world (loka-vyavahara-siddha), --what more, whom even the artisans worship as Visvakarman, the Great Architect--now, although with regard to such a Being, the Lord Siva, whose power is universally recognised, like caste, gotra, school (of Veda), family duties, etc. there can hardly be any ground for doubt and consequently any need for investigation, still--this logical dissertation of God, which may be called his contemplation, constitutes verily His worship, in as much as it follows the hearings of the Sruti."

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Such a high flown style in which everybody is sought to be converted into a believer of God may have some interest for the student of Sanskrit language and literature. For the honest student of the actual history of Indian philosophy, however, the whole thing is only a verbal wrapping covering deliberate distortions. Specially so are the references to the 'followers of Kapila' or the Sankhya philosophers, the Saugatas or the Budhists, the Digambara Jains, the Mimansakas, and even the Charvakas--all of whom were sought to be shown as real believers in God, but all of whom as a matter of fact did their best to argue against His existence.

In short, perhaps to the envy of a stage magician, Udayana shows the grand trick of conjuring up a series of devout theists from a hat containing renowned atheists. And how does he try to perform this magic? By the use of what Indian philosophers called samanya-chala--a form of purposive distortion of the actual position of the atheists.

The Sankhya philosophers did call Kapila the First Knower or adi-vidvan, just as the Budhists and Jainas refused to admit any limit to the wosdom of the Budha and the Jinas. But does this mean that they believed in omniscience and therefore in God? Far from this. One of the main reasons why the Sankhyas considered the founder of their philosophy (Kapila) to have been so profoundly wise was his determined effort to evolve an explaination of the universe with the conscious exclusion of God from it. The same was broadly true for the Budhists and Jainas.

The Mimansakas did firmly believe in the Vedic injuctions mostly concerned with the performance of the Vedic rituals. But nowhere in Mimansa literature do we come across the strang e idea that the Vedic injuctions are 'the object of worship'. On the contrary, the Mimansakas were themselves never tired of repeatedly explainaing that they found it necessary to deny God--and therefore also the efficacy of worship--precisely because they wanted to make room for the absolute validity of the Vedic injuctions. The rituals by themselves (i.e. by their inherent efficacy) were supposed to produce their respective results. There could be no place for any divine intervention in this belief.

But the limit of Udayana's chala is to be seen in his characterisation even of the Charvakas as pious believers in God, and this on the ground that even they believed in one whose authority is established by the convention of the world. Later writers tried to salvage some sense out of this, but this was trying to achieve the impossible; a chala as absurd as this made no sense at all. (It is suggested that in the Charvaka view, God is nothing but the visible image of the deity popularly worshipped. Assuming historicity behind this, it is evidently to be understood as a way of mocking at the idea of God: the lump of clay or stone popularly worshipped is real like any other material object, but the attribution of divinity to it is fictitious.)
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