Abstract
The basic principles of Vedic cosmology, from where Classical Indian theories draw their sustenance as well as criticize it, are discussed in terms of a unitary cosmic energy evolving into various forms till involution occurs again in which the whole evolution goes into a potential form. The ideas discussed are the puruṣa-prakṛti principle representing the evolutionary mode; the principle of ṛta or the cyclical mode which controls the birth, growth, decay, and rebirth of organic life; and the process of association and dissociation of gross matter in the maintenance of the cosmic order and the doctrine of karma which ensures that every action has an equivalent effect be it in the form of physical action or the formation of “traces” left in consciousness which ensured that “cause” is always equated to the “effect” produced by it. These powerful instruments of understanding the cosmos had formed various ontological and epistemological theories both for and against the Vedas which together are called the “classical Indian theories.” These ideas have hugely influenced the formation of various motifs in Indian artworks which, in certain respects, had influenced world arts as well.
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Notes
- 1.
Amartya Sen, “Preface”, in The Idea of Justice (London: Allen Lane, 2009): VII–XIX, XIV, modified.
- 2.
Harold Coward, “Jung’s Encounter with Yoga”, in Jung and Eastern Thought (Delhi: Sri Satguru Publication, 1991): 3–27, 9.
- 3.
Coward, “Jung’s Encounter with Yoga”, 15.
- 4.
Hiriyanna, Outlines, 66.
- 5.
Ibid.
- 6.
Ibid., 56.
- 7.
Coward, “Jung’s Encounter with Yoga”, 31; Jung’s comment on “The Secret of the Golden Flower”, translated by his friend Richard Wilhelm, in his “Alchemical Study” (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1967): 51.
- 8.
Harold Coward, Jung and Eastern Thought, 1st Indian ed. (Delhi: Sri Satguru Publications, 1991): 31.
- 9.
Sen, “The Impetus Theory of The Vaiśeṣikas”, 39; we know the details of this theory primarily on the basis of the commentary written by Praśastapāda (c. 5th CE). Sen notes: “Actual development of the Impetus Theory in any detail is really witnessed in Europe only during the 13th & 14th centuries. But here in Praśastapāda’s Padārthadharma Saṃgraha (c. 5th CE), we have more or less a complete and full-fledged impetus theory in the fifth century CE of whose germ can be traced without any ambiguity to the third century BCE when the Vaiśeṣika viewpoint was being established.” Ibid., 44.
- 10.
Hiriyanna, Outlines, Footnote 2, 67.
- 11.
S. N. Sen, “The Impetus Theory of The Vaiśeṣikas”, presented on December 13, 1965 at the Indian Association for the Cultivation of Science, Calcutte and published in the Cultivation of Science Magazine, Vol. 1 No. 1, December 1965, pp. 34–45, 39–40.
- 12.
Hiriyanna, Outlines, Footnote 4, 67.
- 13.
Ibid.
- 14.
Puligandla, Fundamentals, 157–8.
- 15.
Puligandla, Fundamentals, 158–9, 163.
- 16.
Ibid., 164, emphasis added.
- 17.
In the Indian theories, “desire” is of various kinds. One classification mentions 8 types: kāma (“desire for erotic pleasure”), abhilāsah (“eagerness to possess something”), rāgah (“repeated desire to enjoy a thing”), samkalpah (“resolution”), kārunyam (“altruisitic desire in complete disregard of one’s own interests”), vairāgyam (“desire to renounce all objects because of their inherent faults”), upādhi (“desire to cheat”), and bhāvah (“desires deeply concealed within oneself”), Mohanty, Classical Indian Philosophy, 67.
- 18.
Hiriyanna, Outlines, 230, modified.
- 19.
Hiriyanna, Outlines, 238.
- 20.
Mohanty, Classical Indian Philosophy, 74.
- 21.
Ibid.
- 22.
Mohanty, Classical Indian Philosophy, 75.
- 23.
Dr. Deepak M. Ranade, “Consciously Unaware or Unconsciously Aware?”, Newspaper Article in the Times of India, Thursday, 27th July, 2017, modified.
- 24.
The above is a summing up of Dr. Rande’s Article mentioned above.
- 25.
Pulingandla quotes Hiriyanna, Fundamentals, Footnote 11, 123.
- 26.
Puligandla, Fundamentals, 127.
- 27.
Hiriyanna, Outlines, 283–4.
- 28.
Ibid., 284.
- 29.
Mohanty, Classical Indian Philosophy, 76.
- 30.
Hiriyanna, Outlines, 281–2, modified.
- 31.
Mohanty, Classical Indian Philosophy, 76.
- 32.
Ibid., 81.
- 33.
Hiriyanna, Outlines, 67.
- 34.
E. Conze, Buddhist Thought in India (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1967): 97, quoted in Puligandla, Fundamentals, Footnote 45, 65.
- 35.
Mohanty notes: ‘The smallest aggregate of rūpa is called an “atom.” However, it is not a substance-atom (dravya-paramāṇu), but the smallest gestalt (samghāāṇu)’, Classical Indian Philosophy, 53–4.
- 36.
Bimal Krishna Matilal, Logic, Language and Reality: Indian Philosophy and Contemporary Issues, 2nd ed. (Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1991): 334–5.
- 37.
Mohanty, Classical Indian Philosophy, 53–4.
- 38.
Junjiro Takakusu, Elements of Buddhist Philosophy (Honolulu: Office Appliance Company, 1956), 59, quoted in Puligandla, Fundamentals, Footnote 54, 69, emphasis added.
- 39.
Internet Entry on “Nāgārjuna and Sunyata”, Accessed April, 2018.
- 40.
Ibid.
- 41.
Saṁyutta-Nikāya II, 64–5, quoted in Puligandla, Fundamentals, 53.
- 42.
Hiriyanna, Outlines, 138–9.
- 43.
Ibid., 333–4.
- 44.
Dasgupta, A History, 93.
- 45.
Hiriyanna, Outlines, 334.
- 46.
Puligandla, Fundamentals, 55.
- 47.
Hiriyanna, Outlines, 145.
- 48.
Ibid.
- 49.
Hiriyanna, Outlines, 211, modified.
- 50.
Ibid., 212.
- 51.
Ibid., 209–10.
- 52.
The details of the Śiva-Pārvatī myth, also called Hara-Pārvatī or Śiva-Kāli myth, have been collected from Harsha V. Dehejia, Pārvatīdarpaṇa: An Exposition of Kashmir Śaivism through the Images of Śiva and Pārvatī (Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1997): 62.
- 53.
Wendy Doniger O’Flaherty, Śiva: The Erotic Ascetic (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1973): 35, original emphasis.
- 54.
O’Flaherty, Śiva, 35.
- 55.
Vatsyayana, “Metaphors of the Indian Arts”, in Indian Art: Forms, Concerns and Development in Historical Perspective, VI Part 3, Ed. B. N. Goswami in association with Kavita Singh, in the series History of Science, Philosophy and Culture in Indian Civilization, Gen. Ed. D. P. Chattopadhyaya, Reprint (New Delhi: Centre for Studies in Civilizations, 2005): 247–77; 248, especially see her portion on the “Navel”.
- 56.
Dasgupta, Fundamentals of Indian Art, 20–1, modified.
- 57.
Vatsyayana, “Metaphors of the Indian Arts”, 258.
- 58.
Ibid., 248.
- 59.
S. N. Dasgupta, Fundamentals of Indian Art, 2nd ed. (Bombay: Bharatiya Vidya Bhawan, 1960): 71–2, modified.
- 60.
Richard Lannoy, The Speaking Tree: A Study of Indian Culture and Society (New York: Oxford University Press, 1971), modified, emphasis added.
- 61.
Vatsyayana, “Metaphors of the Indian Arts”, 276.
- 62.
Alice Boner, “Introduction”, in Principles of Composition in Hindu Sculpture: Cave Temple Period (Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1990): 1–50, 18.
- 63.
Ibid.
- 64.
Boner, “Introduction”, 18.
- 65.
Ibid., 45–6, modified.
- 66.
Ibid., 50, modified.
- 67.
Ibid., 9–10.
- 68.
Ernst Neizvestny, unknown quote.
- 69.
Boner, “Introduction”, 29–30.
- 70.
Ibid., 49.
- 71.
Ibid., 49, emphasis added.
- 72.
Christopher Pinney, Camera Indica: The Social Life of Indian Photographs (London: The University of Chicago Press, 1997): 149, modified, emphasis added.
- 73.
Ibid., 77–9.
- 74.
Pinney, Camera Indica, 95; quote from “Women at Sipi Fair”, c. 1905, in Judith M. Guttman’s Through Indian Eyes: 19th and Early 20th Century Photography from India (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1982): 6.
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Mullik, G. (2020). Vedic Cosmology and the Notion of Correlative Opposites: An Indian Paradigm of Thought and Its Influence on Artworks. In: Explorations in Cinema through Classical Indian Theories. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-45611-5_3
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