Abstract
This paper pursues precise information on the use of the Sanskrit word buddhi, “the intellect,” in the context of epic adhyātma discourse. The term buddhi makes its debut in this genre of discourse in texts of the Mahābhārata’s Mokṣadharmaparvan before going on to become a central term of classical Sāṃkhya philosophy. This paper examines closely the presence and role of the “intellect” (usually “buddhi,” but other words are used as well) in the argument of the Manubṛhaspatisaṃvāda, a text that is unusually rich in its theorizing and description of the intellect. But this text is not primarily about the intellect, even if that organ plays a prominent role in the three main phases of the text’s teaching (its basic psychology, its arguments to persuade its audience of the reality of the super-sensuous soul, and its soteriological method). The Manu-Bṛhaspati is a major, deliberately constructed body of teaching on ethics, ontology, and psychology, and what it says regarding the buddhi is embedded in those teachings, usually, but not always, incidentally. This paper tries to grasp those teachings in their particular idiom and present Manu’s teachings on the buddhi in the natural progression and settings of the overall argument. A number of points comparing the buddhi in this text to the adhyātma text-pair of MBh 12.187/239–41 are made and a striking contrast between Manu’s buddhi and the ‘saving buddhis’ of the early Mokṣadharma is discussed briefly. The main points regarding the buddhi in Manu’s teachings turn out to be: First, and most importantly, the buddhi has the ability not only to see and “resolve” current sensory experience coming from the senses and the mind, but to store those sensations (memory) and re-arrange and re-interpret them outside of ‘real time’ (imagination). This ‘trans-temporal depth’ of the buddhi may be the reason for the second major fact about it, that the buddhi is the locus in a person from which that person’s residual energy from past deeds (karma) operates; the buddhi transmits that energy and its qualitative differentiations into the mind (manas) and the senses, entities that derive from it and operate “below” it. Third, the buddhi’s ability to select and arrange past perceptions and imagine not previously observed arrangements among them is the source of its fatefully erroneous substitution of the immediately present, phenomenal self of experience for the transcendent true Self. Fourth, the buddhi’s ability to imagine and re-interpret experience makes it the principal faculty for determining the truth of things that are not immediately apparent to the senses. Establishing the existence of the transcendent soul is the most important such truth, for that serves as the foundation for one’s eventually coming to see the true Self. Fifth, the buddhi works with the main perceptual organ, the mind (manas), to clarify and then neutralize the operation of the senses, allowing yoga meditation to go forward. In the course of yoga meditation, when the buddhi is emptied of karma energy, the buddhi becomes “tantamount to the manas” and the ultimate reality is “seen, as if it were a streak of gold on a touchstone,” undoing the buddhi’s fateful error. Sixth, a point stressed in several places in the text, is that the entire embodied soul, which is basically led by the buddhi, is tremendously energetic in its rush down to the (separately created) physical reality (in constituting a body and interacting with the sensed objects of the physical world). It is not clear whether some of this energy is part of the original emanation of the principle of the embodied soul (“jñāna”, “Consciousness,” in the Manu-Bṛhaspati) from the Absolute, but it is clear that some of it is the energy of karma stored in the “intellect.”
Similar content being viewed by others
Abbreviations
- BG :
-
Bhagavad Gītā
- CE:
-
The Critical Edition of the Mahābhārata: (Sukthankar, Belvalkar, and Vaidya 1933). See under Sukthankar in the General References
- DS :
-
The translation of the Mokṣadharma of Paul Deussen and Otto Strauss (Deussen and Strauss 1906)
- jlf :
-
James L. Fitzgerald
- Manu-Bṛhaspati :
-
Manubṛhaspatisaṃvāda (adhyāyas 12.194–99 of MBh)
- MBh :
-
Mahbhrata. See under Fitzgerald, Smith, Sukthankar, and van Buitenen in the General References
- MDh :
-
Mokṣadharmaparvan (adhyāyas 12.168–353 of MBh). See under Belvalkar in the General References
References
Bakker, H. (1982). On the origin of the Sāṃkhya Psychology. Wiener Zeitschrift für die Kunde Südasiens, XXVI, 117–148.
Bakker, H., & Bisschop, P. (1999). Mokṣadharma 187 and 239-241 reconsidered. Asiatische Studien, 53(3), 459–472.
Belvalkar, S. K. (1954). See under Belvalkar in the General References.
Deussen, P., & Strauss, O. (1906). Vier philosophische Texte des Mahābhāratam. Leipzig: F. A. Brockhaus.
Fitzgerald, J. L. (2002). Nun befuddles King, shows karmayoga does not work: Sulabhā’s refutation of King Janaka at MBh 12.308. Journal of Indian Philosophy, 30(6), 641–677.
Fitzgerald, J. L. (2010). The ethical significance of gleaning (Uñchavṛtti) in the Mahābhārata. In A. Bigger, R. Krajnc, A. Mertens, M. Schüpbach, & H. WernerWessler (Eds.), Release from life: Release in life. Festschrift Peter Schreiner (pp. 89–110). Zürich: Institut für Indologie der Universität Wien.
Fitzgerald, J. L. (2012a). Philosophy’s ‘Wheel of Fire’ (Alātacakra) and its epic background. In F. Voegeli (Ed.), Devadattīyam, Professor Johannes Bronkhorst felicitation volume (pp. 773–807). Bern: Peter Lang.
Fitzgerald, J. L. (2012b). The Sāṃkhya-Yoga ‘Manifesto’ at MBh 12.289-290. In J. Brockington & P. Bisschop (Eds.), Battles, bards, brahmins. Papers from the epics section of the 13th world Sanskrit conference (pp. 185–212). Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass.
Fitzgerald, J. L. (2014). Old, older, and oldest Dharmaśāstra: The manuscript tradition of the Manu Śāstra, the original text of the Manu Śāstra, and the first Dharmasūtras. Journal of the American Oriental Society, 134(3), 481–503. doi:10.7817/jameroriesoci.134.3.481.
Fitzgerald, J. L. (2015). ‘Saving Buddhis’ in Epic Mokṣadharma. International Journal of Hindu Studies, 19(1–2), 97–137. doi:10.1007/s11407-015-9173-2.
Fitzgerald, J. L. (2017). A semantic profile of early Sanskrit buddhi. Journal of Indian Philosophy. doi:10.1007/s10781-017-9318-2.
Frauwallner, E. (1925a). Untersuchungen zum Mokṣadharma I: Die nichtsāṃkhyistischen Texte. Journal of the American Oriental Society, 45, 51–67.
Frauwallner, E. (1925b). Untersuchungen zum Mokṣadharma II: Die sāṃkhyistischen Texte. Wiener Zeitschrift für die Kunde des Morgenlandes, 32, 179–206.
Frauwallner, E. (1926). Untersuchungen zum Mokṣadharma III: Das Verhältnis zum Buddhismus. Wiener Zeitschrift für die Kunde des Morgenlandes, 33, 57–68.
Frauwallner, E. (1953). Geschichte der indischen Philosophie (Vol. 1). Salzburg: O. Müller.
Ganguli, K. M. (1884). The Mahābhārata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Translated into English Prose from the Original Sanskrit Text. Calcutta: Bharata Press.
Gonda, J. (1963). The vision of the vedic poets. The Hague: Mouton & Co.
Halbfass, W. (1992). On being and what there is: Classical Vaiśeṣika and the history of Indian ontology. Albany: State University Press of New York.
Hopkins, E. W. (1901). The great epic of India: Its character and origin. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons.
Johnston, E. H. (1937). Early Sāṃkhya. London: The Royal Asiatic Society.
Malinar, A. (1996). Rājavidyā: Das königliche Wissen um Herrschaft und Verzicht.Studien zur Bhagavadgītā. Wiesbaden: Harrossowitz Verlag.
Malinar, A. (2007). The Bhagavad Gītā: Doctrines and contexts. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Malinar, A. (2017a). Philosophy in the Mahābhārata and the history of Indian philosophy. Journal of Indian Philosophy. doi:10.1007/s10781-016-9294-y.
Malinar, A. (2017b). Narrating Sāṃkhya philosophy: Bhīṣma, Janaka and Pañcaśikha at Mahābhārata 12.211–12. Journal of Indian Philosophy. doi:10.1007/s10781-017-9315-5.
Oberlies, T. (1998). Die Śvetāśvatara-Upaniṣad. Edition und Übersetzung von Adhyāya IV-VI. Wiener Zeitschrift für die Kunde Südasiens, 42, 77–138.
Onians, R. B. (1951). The origins of European thought. Cambridge: University Press.
Schreiner, P. (1999). What comes first (in the Mahābhārata): Sāṃkhya or Yoga? Asiatische Studien: Études Asiatiques, LIII(3), 755–777.
Strauss, O. (1908). Über den Stil der philosophischen Partien des Mahābhārata. Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenländischen Gesellschaft, 62, 661–670.
Strauss, O. (1911). Ethische Probleme aus dem Mahābhārata. Giornalle della Società Asiatica Italiana, 24, 193–353.
van Buitenen, J. A. B. (1956a). Rāmānuja’s Vedārthasaṃgraha. Poona: Deccan College Postgraduate and Research Institute.
van Buitenen, J. A. B. (1956b). Studies in Sāṃkhya (I): An old text reconstituted. Journal of the American Oriental Society, 76, 153–157.
van Buitenen, J. A. B. (1957a). Studies in Sāṃkhya (II): Ahaṃkāra. Journal of the American Oriental Society, 77, 15–25.
van Buitenen, J. A. B. (1957b). Studies in Sāṃkhya (III): Sattva. Journal of the American Oriental Society, 77, 88–107.
van Buitenen, J. A. B. (1959). Akṣara. Journal of the American Oriental Society, 79, 176–187.
van Buitenen, J. A. B. (1964). The large Ātman. History of Religions, 4(1), 103–114.
van Buitenen, J. A. B (1968). The speculations on the name ‘Satyam’ in the Upaniṣads (B. Krishnamurti, Ed.). Studies in Indian Linguistics. Emeneau Felicitation Volume (pp. 54–61).
van Buitenen, J. A. B. (1973). The Mahābhārata. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Winternitz, M. (1908). A history of Indian literature. Calcutta: University of Calcutta.
Wynne, A. (Trans.). (2009). Mahābhārata: The book of liberation. Clay Sanskrit Library 43 (Vol. 1). New York: New York University Press.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Fitzgerald, J.L. The Buddhi in Early Epic Adhyātma Discourse (the Dialog of Manu and Bṛhaspati). J Indian Philos 45, 767–816 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10781-017-9323-5
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10781-017-9323-5