self authentication of vEdAs

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SrI:

SrImatE rAmAnujAya nama:

SrI krishNa parabrahmaNE nama:

 

dear vaishNavAs,

 

The following is a good article about the self

authentication vEdAs published in sapthagiri magazine

of TTD.

 

dAsOham,

SrIperumbUdUru vEnkaTa vinOd.

----------------------

 

VERACITY OF THE VEDAS

L. Srinivasan

 

Knowledge, to be reliable has to be derived from

impeccable and unimpeachable sources. Hence,

epistemology is at the very root of all philosophy.

Visishtadvaita relies primarly on the Vedas, ending

with and inclusive of the Upanishads, for its

authenticity. Hence, the question naturally arises how

far its source of knowledge is trustworthy.

Means of Knowledge

 

The various schools of thought have, by and large,

agreed on three sources of knowledge, viz., Pratyaksha

or direct sense perception, Anumana or inference which

is based on past experiences of sense perception, and

sabda or reliable verbal testimony, other minor

pramanas being subsumed under the above three. Among

the sources falling under the head sabda, the Vedas

are the most important. According to sage Apastambha,

Veda is so called because it imparts knowledge not

obtainable from the other two means of perception and

inference.

 

Certain basic principles determine the attitude of

Visishtadvaita towards the scriptures, which are now

examined in detail.

 

The Doctrine of Svatah Pramanya or self-validity of

all knowledge :-

 

Visishtadvaita adopts the theory established by the

Mimamsakas with great acumen, that all knowledge is

intrinsically valid. That is, it is natural and

inherent to thought to be true. No adventitious

support or evidence, no alien quality of excellence,

is needed to vest knowledge with truth. Only falsity

is brought about and cognized through such

adventitious circumstances. Thought, when pure, is in

rapport with reality. That is the basis of all knowing

and all claim to the apprenhension of reality. But

when thought is sullied or distored by falsifying

adjuncts, it misses the truth. Such falsification is

made evident by it being contradicted by the rest of

the body of knowledge. This principle implies, in

relation to spiritual knowledge, that it necessarily

carries validity unless it is subject to

contradiction. This is a general epistemological

principle developed and defended on a free and

independent philosophical basis and rests on no

dogmatic belief.

 

Illustration

 

Let us take two words, for instance, "this" and

"silver". By themselves each is incapable of imparting

any false knowledge, but when an object which is not

silver is pointed out and it is said, "this is

silver", there is false information'. The reason for

the falsity does not lie with the words themselves,

but with the user of the words.

 

Human Frailties

 

Why should a person try to give wrong information ?

There can be several reasons like bhrama (error,

delusion or misperception), pramada (negligence or

inadvertence), Upralipsa (desire to deceive), physical

defects etc. Such are the frailties that human beings

suffer from.

 

Misperception

 

A person may mistake one thing for another, say a rope

for a snake, and shout "Snake, Snake !" If the words

related to a real snake, there would be no fault, but

because of misperception, mistaking a rope for a

snake, the same words convey false information to the

hearers.

 

Inadvertence

 

While identifying a rope as such, the person may,

through a slip of the tongue declare "Here is a

snake". Though it is due to negligence or inadvertence

it results in disseminating false knowledge.

 

Deceit

 

Desiring to deceive another playfully or wilfully, one

may declare a rope to be a snake.

 

Physical Defects

 

While recognizing a conch, a person with a jaundiced

eye mistakes its pure white hue to be yellow because

of a defective eye.

 

Impersonal character of Vedas

 

An objection

 

The claim that Vedas are reliable because they are

revelations, they have not been composed by any

purusha or person and hence they are called

Apaurushaya, may be contested thus.

 

Sabda, after all, is sound emanating from parts within

the body. Veda being a collection of such sounds, it

must also have been the product of sounds emanating

from a person or persons, and hence the claim that it

is non- personal is untenable.

 

Reply

 

Let us take two examples, say Kalidasa's Raghuvamsa

and the Yajur Veda. White the former starts with

vagarthau, the latter begins with "ishe tva". What is

the difference between the two ? The words in

Raghuvamsa were not created by Kalidasa. All that he

did was to string together certain existing words in

his stanza in a particular order to express the idea

that he had in mind.

 

Now, who, in the case of the Yajur Veda, performed a

similar office of putting together the words in the

beginning, or for that matter, the whole of that Veda

? If there were any, their names would have been

known. The authors of all important works like

Ramayana, not to speak of even minor works, have come

down to us through long generations, but in the case

of the greatest of all writings, the Veda no one has

ever known or heard of its author or authors. The

absence of such vital information forces us to the

conclusion that it is self-born and authorless, a

revelation.

 

Unbroken Continuity

 

The Vedas have been transmitted from time immemorial

orally from Guru to Sishya, through a long chain, up

to the present day. There are very strict rules as to

who are eligible to learn and recite it. It has to be

learnt only from the Acharya in the prescribed manner

and certain expiations have to be undergone if the

rules are transgressed.

 

The unbroken continuity and absence of authorship show

that the function of speech or communication is

natural and intrinsic to the Veda.

Even God is not the Author

 

Sri Ramanuja does not take the Vedas as springing from

God. That position is possible for the Nyaya school

which claims to have established the existence of God

on speculative grounds. But in Visishtadvaita, and all

Vedantic schools in general, which altogether base

their idea of the supreme on the Vedas, such

attribution of authorship to God would imply a logical

see-saw in this form, "God exists because that is the

verdict of the Vedas, and the Vedas are to be admitted

because they are revelations from God."

 

Spiritual Speech

 

Spiritual speech is primeval and original, while

ordinary discourse is derivative and secondary.

Understanding through such spiritual verbal testimony

can also not be reduced to inference.

 

Eternality of the Vedas

 

The Vedas are claimed to be eternal, but the Veda

itself says (Svetasvatara Upanishad 6-18) that at the

beginning of creation, the Lord created the four faced

Brahma and imparted the Vedas to him. So earlier they

must have been non-existent. Then, how are they

eternal ?

 

The answer to this is that the Lord retains within

Himself the Vedas during the periods of Pralaya and

reveals them again at the beginning of every creation.

 

Objection of the Scripture

 

The deliverance of the scripture, on the principle of

svatah pramanya adumbrated earlier, possesses

objectivity, it has to be clearly understood, only on

the condition that it is free from contradiction. Now

contradiction can be of two kinds, internal and

external. The utterance may be self-contradictory or

may be in conflict with unimpeachable facts

ascertained by observations and reasoning. The Vedas

fulfil both these conditions.

 

Absence of Internal Contradictions

 

Following the Brahma Sutras, Sri Ramanuja devotes the

whole of the first chapter of his Sri Bhashya to the

removal of the apparent and alleged contradictions in

the Upanishads. He points to the essentially coherent

structure of the philosophy that is embodied in them.

In the Vedartha sangraha also there is a systematic

analysis of the various types of Upanishadic

intention, and their coherence and inner harmony is

exhibited.

 

Absence of External Contradictions

 

In the second chapter of Sri Bhashya in the first,

third and fourth padas, there is a resolute effort to

answer all objections to the philosophy of Vedanta

presented in the Brahma Sutras. The objections based

on supposed or real facts of experience and

considerations of logic are squarely faced and the

principle of non-contradiction from the rest of

knowledge is established.

 

Thus, non-contradiction, both internal and external,

is assured to the thought of Vedanta.

The doctrine of self-validity, strictly speaking,

needs no further intellectual demonstration of the

truth of the scriptures. However, Sri Ramanuja does

not stop here.

 

Positive Coherence

 

He goes a step further and examines all the current

doctrines that claim to make out a coherent

philosophical system independently of the upanishads.

This extension, in fact, is necessary because

non-contradiction does not mean merely freedom from

contradiction but positive coherence. It is necessary

to demonstrate that the rejection of the doctrine of

the Upanishads lands all thought and life in sheer

self-contradiction.

 

Limitations of Reason

 

(i) Reason cannot prove God

There is another foremost argument. There are certain

ultimate metaphysical questions to which empirical

thought can offer no decisive answer. The fundamental

question of that kind is about the existence of God.

Empirical intelligence can offer no conclusive proof

for the existence of God. Sri Ramanuja has powerfully

argued out this point in his interpretation of Br.

Sutra 1-1-3.

(ii) Reason cannot disprove God

Again, empirical intelligence can offer no conclusive

refutation of theism. Sri Ramanuja has brought this

out with equal power in his criticism of sankhya

system in Sri Bhashya in the second pada of the second

chapter of the Brahma Sutra.

The significance of this impasse is that God is

neither to be based on empirical reason, nor to be

discredited on that ground. Reason is powerless to

prove and equally powerless to disprove God. This is a

decisive proof of the limitations of the empirical

stand point and pure reason seeking to discover

reality in its own light.

 

Validity of Vedanta

 

Thus, while the scriptures are free from self-

contradiction and contradiction from the rest of

assured knowledge, other pathways of philosophy are

riddled with contradictions, and the nature of

observation and reason (Pratyaksha and Anumana) are

such that they cannot furnish satisfactory and

conclusive answers to certain fundamental and

irrespressible questions. Hence, the scriptures, the

Vedas inclusive of and eulminating in Vedanta, have to

be acknowledged as valid.

 

Scripture is neither superfluous nor false

If scripture merely reiterated other modes of thought,

it will be superfluous. If it stood in conflict with

the deliverances of perception and inference, when the

latter are valid, it would be false. As it is neither

reiterative of, nor in opposition to them, it has to

be accorded acceptance as a valid mode of thought.

 

In case of conflict

 

In case of conflict between scripture and perception,

or between scripture and reason, it is definitely

contended by Sri Ramanuja that scripture is not always

to be preferred. Such conflicts are not natural and

are the result of some trespass either by the one or

the other of the pramanas. That pramana has to be set

aside whose trespass engenders the conflect. Sri

Ramanuja enunciates the fundamental principle that,

even for supporting the sruti, what is against reason

and is contradictory of the evidences should not be

postulated.

 

Scripture satisfies empirical standards

The supremacy of the scripture, its role as the

revelation of the supreme, is itself based upon its

satisfactory fulfilment of the criterion of truth and

validity settled by empirical intelligence. It

satisfies its claim to truth by conforming to a

standard that is not set up by itself.

 

Impersonality and Eternality of the Vedas

The impersonality and eternality of the Vedas have

been mentioned earlier, but there is another important

point added here.

 

The Vedas are no doubt, intuited by the seers, but

they intuited only pre-existent truths. The knowledge

that they thus acquired was there externally, and they

only rediscovered this ancient treasure.

This eternality relates not only to the knowledge

enshrined in the Vedas, but also to the actual words

and the order of the words constituting the Vedic

composition. The knowledge that is ever existent must

have an ideal mode and that can be no less eternal

than the knowledge that it embodies.

Fluctuation in self-expression is a mark of finite

intelligence. Vedas constitute eternal knowledge

embodied in an eternal form. Thus, the form and the

thought of the Vedas are coterminous with the supreme

reality that they reveal. In effect, all spiritual

apprehension is a revelation or a communication.

 

The importance of Svatah-pramanya

 

It is important to emphasize here that the validity of

the Vedas mainly rests not on their impersonality or

eternality, but it flows from the principle of

svatah-pramanya and the manifold application of the

criterion of coherence. The impersonality and

eternality of the Vedas just ensure their freedom from

the defects of human composition, and such freedom

leaves their svatah - pramanya or self-valdity secure.

Their validity is also supported by the inadequacy of

empirical thought and the unreasonableness of

rejecting knowledge that at once transcends empirical

knowledge and is free from contradictions. It has been

well said that the most, reasonable thing that reason

can do is not to reason about things beyond reason.

 

Further, the rejection of the body of knowledge

provided by the Vedas, as demonstrated in the polemics

against non-Vedic schools, would land all philosophy

in chaos and confusion.

 

Simha - avalokana

 

After traversing some distance, the lion is said to

look back at the tract that it has covered. This is

called simha-avalokana. In that manner, we may now

look at the tract covered so far, thus by summing up

what has been said so far.

The Vedas are valid authority because of ...

1. being svatah-pramana or self-valid;

2. imparting, knowledge not available from other

sources;

3. absence of internal contradictions;

4. absence of external contraditions;

5. positive coherence and internal harmony;

6. absence of such coherence and harmony in non-Vedic

schools;

7. absence of human defects of composition;

8. unbroken continuity from time immemorial;

9. satisfying empirical standards;

10. not having reiterative of other modes of thought;

11. the limitations of reason which can neither prove

nor disprove God; and

12. the unreasonable rejection of the transcendental -

knowledge of the Vedas resulting in sheer

self-contradiction.

 

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