The Battle of Pramanas

Ever since Indians of the Vedic era created poetry, prose and philosophy and recorded them for posterity in the Samhitas, Brahmanas and Upanishads, a profound and perennial question challenged them. A question whose answers remain to be perfectly grasped and applied by the modern world, despite all its advancements.

What is valid knowledge? What is its true source?

As the centuries rolled by in India, many a great philosopher tried to answer this. Let us hear what each of them had to say, sticking to chronology wherever possible. Let us see if their story of debate, disagreement and yet a subtle underlying similarity has anything to teach us.

At the very earliest time, the Vedic philosophers reigned supreme in India’s intellectual sphere. They held debates among themselves, as we see in stories about the courts of Janaka and Ajatashatru. But it was always on the details of their system and not on epistemology. In their monopoly of philosophy, they held that the Monism of the Upanishads was the truth. What was the proof? It is ‘shruti’ and hence true. It is the conclusions from direct experience of reality by the rishis without the aid of the senses. But this was the most ancient situation. Very soon, as naysayers began to object strongly, they began to recognize that there are other sources too- pratyakṣa (The empirical), anumāna (Inference), upamāna(analogy), sabda(valid testimony) etc. And that pratyakṣa was the second most important. When exactly this expansion of epistemology happened is open to speculation. But if one man is to be credited for forcing such a change of thought in the entire civilization, it is Kapila Kardama.  

Who was Kapila? When did he live? Again, a historical black hole. All we can know for certain is that he is truly an ancient figure. The founder of the dualist Samkhya, he was highly respected, even though he rejected Vedic sacrifices, monism and even the supremacy of shruti as the primary source of knowledge. Every Vedic text that mentions him does so with reverence. So much so that by the time of the Mahabharata, in the Gita, the two philosophies seem to be merged into one by Krishna. Too good to be rejected! Even the Buddha’s first teacher was a Samkhya philosopher. What exactly did Kapila do? He may have been the first Indian to declare ‘pratyakṣa > anumāna’ and that sacred literature is a magnificent source of wisdom, but not a primary source of knowledge. A momentous event in the history of human thought. If non-Vedic tradition is correct, he was also the first atheist thinker. You must depend on the sense organs to observe and obtain valid knowledge from the world. Just closing your eyes and thinking is not enough. He set an iron rule that no Indian philosopher after him- Vedic or non-Vedic- dared to defy.

Next in line came Kanada Kashyapa and his school of Vaisesika atomists who followed suit, accepting the supremacy of pratyaksha over anumana while also acknowledging shruti. A lip service to garner support, it could have been. Akshapada Gautama’s Nyaya was even stronger in the primacy afforded to the empirical. These were India’s earliest atomists as well as the first formal logicians. Yet they too knew better than to hold their logic supreme. Anything that is real is humanly knowable, these realists proclaimed.

Somewhere at an unrecorded point of history came the Lokayatas/Charvakas. The staunchest empiricists of the ancient world. The empirical is supreme! They fearlessly declared. Anyone can twist logic and prove anything, provided it is twisted well and long enough. And your traditions, rituals, ‘expert opinions’ and blind faiths-yes, you can keep them for yourself!

The followers of Gautama Buddha were close behind. Dharmakirti and Dignaga took Indian logic to new heights of rigor. But even they did not tamper with Kapila’s iron rule. Why would they? Had not the Buddha himself said that his own teachings are to be rejected if it goes against the world of experience?

Do not accept anything just because tradition or hearsay or logic or inference or your own ponderings ask you to. Or merely because it was said by your teacher. If it agrees with your own experience, only then should you accept.

Anguttara Niyaka 111.65

The Jainas held Kevala-Jnana, a sort of direct or intuitive knowledge, as ultimate, much alike the shruti which the Vedic rishis reported out of their own direct and meditative experience. But even they placed pratyaksa close behind and did not meddle with Kapila’s law.

As one can realize by now, they had their differences, but all ancient Indian philosophers were agreed on one thing. That empiricism was greater than rationalism. Even Indian mathematicians (the ones who actually invented most of math) accepted the empirical, a thing modern mathematics considers to be anathema. Baudhayana used ropes and bricks in his sulba sutras! His theorem, now known as Pythagorean, was proven with a rope!

The diagonal opposite of Indian pramanas was Greek epistemology which declared ‘Inference is greater than the empirical’. We find thoughts like this in ancient Greece-

"These harmonies are ultimate reality! All existence is numbers"
-Pythagoras

"Reality is not the material world known through our senses but the non material world of ideas! The empirical world is inferior!"
-Plato

"Truths are demonstrated by syllogisms- set of premises - which are true"
-Aristotle

"Geometry is eternal truth and can rouse the soul!"
-Proclus

Western intellectual thought was always drunk with the Greek madness right until the renaissance age when empiricists like John Locke and David Hume came forward to challenge it. Yet such culturally ingrained rationalism was not one that could be overthrown by just two men. It took centuries of debate and trial and error until finally modern science declared without a shred of doubt, echoing the Lokayata of old, ‘The empirical is supreme!’

‘Torture the data long enough and it will confess!’ Ronal Coase, the economist once said. Perhaps one day, even mathematics and the data sciences might make the same transition. Perhaps one day, data will no longer have to confess to anything. As we face the dawn of the era of artificial intelligence, as we bless and bestow numbers and algorithms with intelligence of their own, the need for mitigating biases is ever increasing. Will the science of numbers return to its roots, the roots that sprouted in India? For it is here that Baudhayana invented geometry. It is here that the Bakhshali manuscript and its algebraic leaflets were found. It is here that Aryabhata invented trigonometry. Here that Madhava invented calculus.  And it is also here that thinkers for millenniums in unison have declared ‘pratyakṣa > anumāna.’