PHILOSOPHY,CULTURE AND RELIGION

Mind, Language and World

PHILOSOPHY, CULTURE AND RELIGION

The Collected EssaysofBimal Krishna Matilal

Mind, Language and World

Edited by

Jonardon Ganeri

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The Matilal Trust

The Matilal Trust is a foundation set up at King's College Londonwith a generous donation made by Mrs Karabi Matilal. The pur-pose of this Trust is to promote Matilal's work by making IndianPhilosophy accessible to the general philosophical community. Ithas sought to do this by creating a post in Indian Philosophy atKing's College London for the provision of undergraduate andgraduate teaching in Indian Philosophy, and by sponsoring a seriesof conferences on Indian Philosophy in London. The Trust does notyet have the funds to make a full-time appointment, and its Trus-tees are actively raising further sponsorship. More information onthe activities of the Trust can be gained from Professor RichardSorabji, Department of Philosophy, King's College London, WC2R2LS, UK.

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank, first of all, my assistant, Joerg Tuske, for his dilig-ent and painstaking labours, in helping me locate references and correctthe text, and for keeping me sane with amusing email messages. Thefunds for this assistance were kindly provided by the Matilal Trust, afoundation set up at King's College London to promote Matilal's work.

I should like to thank Karabi Matilal herself, who made available tome MatilaFs unpublished writings for the purposes of these volumes,and who has been a constant source of encouragement. I would also liketo thank Dr Heeraman Tiwari, to whom the original idea for these vol-umes owes a very great deal, and also the Trustees of the Matilal Trust,Professors Richard Sorabji, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, and AmartyaSen. I am also grateful to my department at the University of Nottinghamfor their support. Finally, I must express particular thanks to the editorsat OUP Delhi. They have been hugely supportive, and have taken uponthemselves such onerous duties as obtaining copyright permissions forall the articles. Having published Matilal's The Word and the World( 1990), and a commemoration volume, Relativism, Suffering and Beyond:Essays in Memory of B.K. Matilal (P. Bilimoria and J.N. Mohanty eds,1997), OUP India has also produced, in addition to his Philosophy, Cul-ture and Religion, an imprint of Matilal's The Character of Logic in India(SUNY Press 1998). The most onerous task of all has been the retypingand setting of the text, and for this I thank most warmly the typists andcopy-editors involved in the project.

Jonardan Ganeri, October 1998

Contents

Mind, Language and World

PART I: SCEPTICISM AND MYSTICISM 11 Mysticism and Reality: Ineffability 32 The Logical Illumination of Indian Mysticism 383 The Ineffable 654 Scepticism and Mysticism 725 Scepticism, Mysticism and Sri Aurobindo's Optimism 84

PART II: NYYA REALISM 956 Naive Realism, Nyya Realism and the Causal Theory 977 Awareness and Meaning in Navya-Nyya 1148 On the Theory of Number and Parypii in Navya-Nyya 1339 Some Issues of Nyya Realism 141

10 Knowledge, Truth and Pramtva 14911 Understanding, Knowing and Justification 16212 A Realist View of Perception 182

PART III: INDIAN BUDDHISM 20113 A Critique of the Mdhyamika Position 20314 Nyya Critique of the Buddhist Doctrine of Non-soul 21315 Dinnga as Interpreted by Uddyotakara 230

Part I: Uddyotakara's Exposition of Diringa'sApoha Theory 230Part II: Uddyotakara's Critique of Dinnga 237

viii / Contents16 Is Prasanga a Form of Deconstruction? 25517 What is Buddhism? 27218 The Perception of Self in the Indian Tradition 299

PART IV: SANSKRIT SEMANTICS 31519 Some Comments of Patanjali Under 1.2.64 31720 On the Notion of the Locative in Sanskrit 32621 What Bhartrhari Would Have Said about Quine's

Indeterminacy Thesis 33322 Some Reflections on Sanskrit Semantics 343

PART V: PHILOSOPHY IN INDIA:PERCEPTIONS AND PROBLEMS 349

23 Indian Philosophy: Is There a Problem Today? 35124 On the Concept of Philosophy in India 35825 On Dogmas of Orientalism 37026 Ideas and Values in Radhakrishnan's Thought 37727 India without Mystification: Comments on Nussbaum

and Sen 38628 Images of India: Problems and Perceptions 40229 Bankimchandra, Hinduism and Nationalism 41530 Radhakrishnan and the Problem of Modernity in

Indian Philosophy 433Index 441

Contents I ix

Ethics and EpicsPART I. DHARMA, RATIONALITY AND

MORAL DILEMMAS1 Moral Dilemmas and Religious Dogmas2 Sri Rmakrsna: Simplicity with Profundity3 Moral Dilemmas: Insights from Indian Epics4 Elusiveness and Ambiguity in Dhanna-Ethics5 Dharma and Rationality6 Rationality, Dharma and the Pramna Theory

PART II . EPICS AND ETHICS7 Rma's Moral Decisions8 Krsna: In Defence of a Devious Divinity9 The Throne: Was Duryodhana Wrong?

10 Karma and Renunciation11 Caste, Karma and the Gta12 Love and Sensuality in the Epics13 Violence in the Epics: Sati and Suicide

PART III . PLURALISM, RELATIVISM ANDINTERACTION BETWEEN CULTURES

14 The Problem of Inter-faith Studies15 Towards Defining Religion in the Indian Context16 Religion and Value17 Between Peace and Deterrence18 Ethical Relativism and Confrontation of Cultures19 Pluralism, Relativism and Interaction Between Cultures

PART IV. IDEAS FROM THE EAST20 The East, the Other21 Salvation in a Bottle: Religion, Psychedelics and

MysticismA Post-mortem22 Yoga, Mediation and Mantras: The Oceanic Feeling23 Back to Godhead: The Hare Krsna Movement

PART V. CONCEPTS IN INDIAN RELIGIONS24 On Omnipotence25 Duhkha, Nirvana and Holy Men26 On the Universality of Suffering27 The Quest for Immortality28 Karma and the Moral Order29 A Note on Samkara's Theodicy

Index

Introduction

Bimal Krishna Matilal ( 1935-91 ) became Spalding Professor of EasternReligions and Ethics at the University of Oxford and Fellow of All SoulsCollege in 1976, before which he held teaching positions at the Universityof Toronto for eleven years. He was born in Joynagar, West Bengal, andleft for Calcutta at the age of fourteen, where he studied first at theIslamia College and then at the Sanskrit Department of the University ofCalcutta. In 1957 he was appointed as lecturer in the Government Sans-krit College. He continued to study Ny y a there with a number of eminentpandits, and under their guidance completed a traditional degree, that ofTarkatlrtha, Master of Logic and Argument, in 1962. For some time priorto this, Matilal had been in correspondence with Daniel Ingalls, who sug-gested to him the possibility of moving to Harvard in order to acquainthimself with the work being done by W.V.O. Quine in philosophical andmathematical logic. Breaking with the tradition in which he was trained,Matilal followed this advice, completing his Ph.D. at Harvard in 1965having taken Quine's classes, and continuing his studies in mathematicallogic with D. F0llesdal. In his doctoral thesis, The Navya-Nyaya Doctrineof Negation, published by Harvard University Press in 1968, he givesvoice to his growing conviction that 'India should not, indeed cannot, beleft out of any general study of the history of logic and philosophy'. Thiswas to be the first statement of a thesis to the defence of which he devotedhis academic life, that our philosophical understanding of fundamentalproblems is enriched if the ideas of the philosophers of classical India arebrought to bear in the modern discussion.

These volumes have a double function. The first is to bring togethermany articles that have been published before in journals, anthologiesand Festschriften. Many of Matilal's articles from before 1985 have al-ready been reprinted, sometimes in a revised form, in his earlier collec-tion, Logic, Language and Reality (Delhi: MotilalBanarsidass, 1985; 2ndedition, 1990), and for that reason are not included here. Nor have I

Introduction I xi

included articles which have appeared as chapters in one of Matilal'sother books, notably The Word and the World (Delhi: Oxford UniversityPress, 1990). In the section 'The Provenance of the Essays', I have givendetails of the original place of publication of all of Matilal's essays, andwhere they can be found, if not in Philosophy, Culture and Religion thenas chapters in one of these books.

The second function of these volumes is to publish for the first timea set of essays on which Matilal was working at the end of his life. Matilalwas engaged principally on three projects (I do not include here his pre-paration of The Character of Logic in India, published by SUNY Press,1998 and OUP Delhi). One project Epics and Ethics, sought to uncoverthe dynamic moral theorizing implicit in the epic, narrative and dharma-sstra literature. This literature, he argues, redresses the classical philo-sophers' failure to fully discuss moral philosophy. Some essays fromthis project have already been published, but several are new. A secondproject was to study the role perceptions India had in the rise of the 'guruculture' of the sixties, in the movements founded by Maharishi MaheshYogi, Prabhupada and Yogi Bhajan. This project was entitled Ideas fromthe East, and resulted in the four long essays under that heading inVolume 2. Finally, Matilal had begun work on a new introductory bookto Buddhism, in which philosophical ideas were to have a central place.The part he completed is now 17-1 (Essay 17, Volume 1). Several otherpreviously unpublished essays, some of which have their origin as con-ference papers or talks, are included here too for the first time.

Collected together, Matilal's essays reveal the extraordinary depth ofhis philosophical interest in India. His reputation as one of the leadingexponents of Indian logic and epistemology is, of course, reflected here.Yet those who know of him through his major books in these areas, TheNavya-Nyya Doctrine of Negation (Harvard: Harvard University Press,1968), Epistemology, Logic andGrammarin Indian Philosophical Analysis(The Hague: Mouton, 1971), and Perception: An Essay on ClassicalIndian Theories of Knowledge (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1986; 2ndedition 1991), may be surprised to discover the range of his other writ-ings. The essays here deal, in general, with every aspect of the relationbetween philosophical theory and Indian thought: from analysis of thearguments of the classical philosophers to evaluation of the role of philo-sophy in classical Indian society, from diagnosis of western perceptionsof Indian philosophy to analysis of the thought of past Indian intellectualslike Bankimchandra and Radhakrishnan. Matilal, strikingly, is willing tolook at a great range of sources for philosophical theory. As well as the

xii I Introductionwritings of the classical Indian philosophical schools, he uses materialfrom the grammatical literature, the epics, dharmasstras, medical lite-rature, poetics and literary criticism. This eclecticism is no accident buthas important methodological motivations. Matilal argues that it is onlyin the study of such diversity of literature that one can discover the mech-anisms of the internal criticism to which a dynamic culture necessarilysubjects itself in the process of revising and reinterpreting its values andthe meaning of its fundamental concepts, and to be sure that one's ownevaluation and criticism is immersed in, and not detached from, the prac-tices and perceptions of the culture (27-1, 28-1). He also observes thata selective attention to particular aspects of Indian culture is part of whathas generated a set of my ths and misperceptions about Indian philosophy,most notably the popular idea that Indian philosophy is primarily spiritualand intuitive, in contrast to the rational West. Explicitly recognizing thisrisk of bias produced by selective attention, Matilal extends as widely aspossible the 'observational basis' from which his conclusions are drawn(25-1).

While the great majority of the essays appeal to classical Indian sour-ces, Matilal's treatment is neither historical nor philological. He does notengage in the reconstruction of the original Ur-texts, nor in descriptionsof the intellectual development of aperson or the evolution and chronologyof a school. Instead, Matilal approaches the Indian materials with a meth-odology that is explicitly, if moderately, comparative-philosophical. Inone essay (23-1), he describes the aims of this approach in the followingterms: 'the purpose of the Indian philosopher today, who chooses to workon the classical systems, is to interpret, and thereby offer a mediumwhere philosophers . . ., both Indian and Western, may converse.'Behindthis modest statement lay a bold intellectual programme, a reinterpretationof the relationship between contemporary philosophy and the classicaltraditions, the main features of which I shall attempt briefly to describe.

The history of Indian philosophical studies in the twentieth centuryhas been a history of comparisons, comparisons between Indian philo-sophy on the one hand, and whatever philosophical system was in vogueon the other. British idealism, logical positivism, neo-Kantian philosophy,the ordinary language school, and many other theories have all been usedas counterpoints for a comparison with Indian theory. Matilal, an Oxfordphilosopher himself, depended mainly on the developments in contemp-orary anglo-american philosophy. Is Matilal's work, then, simply thelatest in a long line of fashionable but transient comparisons, this timebetween Indian philosophy and the western analytical school? Matilal

Introduction / xiiihimself responded to this criticism, arguing that, if nothing else, his workwas a much needed 'corrective', a way of displacing prevalent mythsabout the irrational and mystical nature of the Indian philosophers {Per-ception, pp. 4-5). He also criticized early comparativists for 'misunder-standing the nature and extent of the problem' they were addressing(23-1). The early comparativists were unclear first of all about the pur-pose of making the comparison, and in consequence rarely got furtherthan merely juxtaposing doctrines, making priority claims in the historyof ideas, or, at best, arguing that a doctrine acquires prima facie supportif it can be shown to have arisen independently in different places. Theycould supply, however, no criterion for determining when a point of com-parison is significant and when merely superficial. Indeed, the veryexistence of such a criterion is cast in doubt by J.N. Mohan ty ' s observationthat, in practice, 'just when an exciting point of agreement is identifiedand pursued, surprising differences erupt; and just when you have thefeeling that no two ideas could be further apart, identities catch you offguard' (Mohanty, 1993, p. 216). Comparison is always a process ofsimplification, in which allegedly 'accidental' differences in formulationor context are eliminated, but without a criterion for distinguishing theaccidental from the essential, the comparison lacks proper grounding.Another objection to the early approach is that the Indian theories weremostly treated as the objects of the comparison, to be placed in corres-pondence with some sub-set of western theory, an approach whichnecessarily denied to them the possibility of original content.

In Matilal's work, on the other hand, the goal is not merely to compare.It is informed, first and foremost, by a deep humanism, a conviction thatthe classical thinkers should not be thought of as mysterious, exotic ortradition-bound creatures, but as rational agents trying to understandtheir cultures and societies with as little prejudice as possible: 'we maydiscover in this way that in the past we were not all gods or spiritual dolls,but we were at least humans with all their glories and shortcomings, theirambitions and aspirations, their reasons and emotions' (24-1). It is thishumanism in Matilal's approach which is brought out in his claim that thecomparativist should create the means whereby philosophers of differentages and societies may converse. The point is to establish the prerequisitesfor a debate or an interaction, something which can sustain, in AmartyaSen's apt phrase, an 'intellectual connecting' between philosophers andtraditions (Sen, 1992, p. 5). The basis for such an interaction is a sharedcommitment to a set of evaluative principles, norms on reasoned argu-ment, the assessment of evidence and value, rather than to any particular

xiv / Introductionshared body of doctrine. A little like the adhyaksa or 'supervisor' in atraditional Indian debate, the comparativist' s role in Matilal ' s conceptionis to set out and oversee those ground-rules, adherence to which is a pre-condition for the conversation to take place. The same commitment torational inquiry can be found elsewherefor example, in Greek andmedieval philosophy, phenomenalism and elsewhere. Matilal's field ofexpertise was analytical philosophy, however, and so he sought to openthe conversation between the classical Indian philosophers and theircontemporary analytical colleagues. Where he succeeds so well here isin charting the philosophical terrain, identifying the salient groups oftexts appropriate for the analytical enquiry (most notably, the pramna-sstra), and pin-pointing the topics in which Indian theory can be expect-ed to make a substantial contribution. A good example of the latter is theepistemology of testimony, where the extensive Indian discussions havea real prospect of informing contemporary debates. A volume of arti-cles co-edited by Arindam Chakrabarti and B.K. Matilal (Knowing fromWords, Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1994) brings together the leading Indian andwestern philosophers in the area, and is an impressive illustration of thesort of philosophical 'interconnecting' Matilal sought for and believed tobe possible.

Matilal stresses that it is essential for the modern comparativist tohave, in addition to sound linguistic and philological skills, a good under-standing of 'what counts as a philosophical problem in the classicaltexts' (23-1; cf. Logic, Language and Reality, p. xi). How does one know,when reading a classical text, what is to count as a philosophical prob-lem? Broadly speaking, there have been two sorts of response to thisquestion: those of universalism and those of relativism. Universalism, inits extreme form, is the doctrine that philosophical problems are global,that diverse philosophical traditions are addressing the same questions,and that the differences between them are ones of style rather than con-tent. A more moderate universalism claims only that there is a single'logical space' of philosophical problems, in which different traditionsexplore overlapping but not necessarily coextensive regions. Uni versalistsbelieve that there is a philosophiaperennis, a global philosophy, whosenature will be revealed by a synthesis or amalgamation of the ideas ofEast and West. The opposing doctrine, relativism, states in its extremeform that philosophical problems are entirely culture-specific, that eachtradition has its own private conceptual scheme, incommensurable withall others. A more moderate relativism permits a 'notional' commensur-ation of the ideas of diverse cultures, but insists that the similarities are

Introduction I xv

in style alone, and not in content. The doctrines of the East can be madeto look familiar, similar enough indeed to seem intelligible; but in subs-tance, they are radically different.

Matilal rejects completely the kind of relativism that would regardideas and values as inevitably indexed by cultural context, and he offersboth a critique and an alternative. The alternative, a form of pluralism, ismost clearly formulated in his later work on relativism in moral theory.He formulates there the thesis of 'minimal universal morality', the doct-rine that there are certain basic and universally applicable values, a'minimal moral fabric underlying all societies and all groups of humanbeings' (18-2). The minimal universal morals are values which attach tothe 'naked man' stripped of specific cultural context; they are, perhaps,the basic capacities and needs associated with being a human being in asociety. These are values which the comparativist can identify, if he ap-proaches the other culture with humanity and imagination (cf. 24-1,25-1). The existence of such raw human values is consistent with therebeing substantive and even incommensurable local differences, and forthis reason Matilal regards his position as combining pluralism withmoral realism. The relativist, mistaking the local, context-specific valuesof a given society with the totality of its values, overlooks the existenceof a commonality which can serve as the basis of real confrontation,interaction and exchange between cultures: 'to transform two monologuesinto a dialogue we need a common ground, some common thought pat-terns between the participants, as well as a willingness to listen to eachother' (14-2).

At the same time, it is the local, culture-specific values which charac-terize or individuate a given culture, distinguish it from others (an exam-ple is Louis Dumont's idea that social hierarchy is a value in traditionalsocieties; cf. 28-1,4-2). It is the characteristic values of a culture, religionor society that are often the interesting and important things to explore,but it is the existence of a common framework that makes it possible toexplore them: 'I do not say that different Indian religions talk simplyabout the same thing in different languages and idioms . . . Rather, Iwould say that they talk about different things while standing on a com-mon ground' (15-1). Underlying Matilal's humane pluralism is a boldrecognition that 'human nature is manifold and is expressed throughdiverse values, ways of thinking, acting and feeling' (27-2), that globalhuman values can coexist with culture-specific constraints, that genuinelyconflicting values are possible, and that they are possible because of theexistence of a common set of values.

xvi / IntroductionThe idea has a specific application in Matilal's approach to comparative

philosophy. Here the universal principles are the norms governingrational argument. Any conversation between Indian and western philo-sophers depends on there being a minimum of agreement, or at least a'limit on difference', about what counts as a rational argument or a well-conducted investigation into a philosophical problem. Rationality in aminimal sense is itself a universal value. When he has identified theidioms for these shared principles of rational argument, a comparativisthas a common ground from which to explore differences. Matilal's plur-alism acknowledges what is right about both universalisai and relativism,without being reducible to either. His essays are indeed the 'marvellousconversations of mankind' (Mohanty, 1986), between SextusEmpiricusand Sanjaya, Strawson and Udayana, or Bhartrhari and Quine. They aredemonstrations of an exciting and original way of approaching our globalintellectual history.

Matilal sought in his work to bring classical India into the philosophicalmainstream, thereby 'transforming the exile into companion' (the phraseis from Schwab, 1950, p. 1). If the Sanskrit philosophical literature hadindeed been excluded from the philosophical curriculum, it was becauseof a myth, the myth that there are two philosophical culturesoneEastern, spiritual, atavistic, the other Western, rational, materialistichaving incommensurable values, doctrines and standards. As H.H.Price, while Wykeham Professor of Logic at Oxford, put the matter: 'weseem to be confronted with two entirely different worlds of thought, sodifferent that there is not even the possibility of disagreement betweenthem. The one looks outward, and is concerned with Logic and with thepresuppositions of scientific knowledge; the other inward, into the "deepyet dazzling darkness" of the mystical consciousness' (Price, 1955, p.228). Matilal ruefully comments, in a slightly different context (20-2),that in this strange mixture of fact and imagination, it is as if the West-erner is set on conquering the other (foreign lands, the material world),and the Indian on conquering himself (his inner world). In any case, theeffect of the division was to deny to 'Orientals' the status of being peo-ple-like-us: 'the Oriental man is either subhuman or superhuman, neverhuman. He is either a snake-charmer, a native, an outlandish species, orelse a Bhagawan, a Maharishi, a Maharaja, an exotic person, a Prabhupda.The implication of the presupposition is that there cannot be any hori-zontal relationship between East and West' (25-1).

Matilal regards the very idea that there are independently boundedand closed philosophical cultures as a 'dogma of orientalism', albeit a

Introduction I xviiself-sustaining one which has served the historical interests of Indianand western philosophers alike. Mysticism and spirituality, the propertiesprojected onto the East, do not fit the western self-image as rational andscientific: 'it is as if our Western man is embarrassed to acknowledgeanything that is even remotely irrational or mystical as part of his indi-genous heritage' (20-2). So mystical systems such as neoplatonism havebeen regarded as marginal in western thought. In no less measure, Indianauthors like Radhakrishnan have wished to downplay the rationaliststreams in the Indian traditions in their desire to represent Indian cultureas distinctively spiritual and intuitive, a desire at one with the nationalistsearch for an autonomous Indian identity (26-1). Anthropologists and'colonial liberals' have also found the relativist dogma convenient, for itabsolved them of the need to make value judgements on the practices ofthe society being governed or observed. The platitude, however, is amyth: 'the fact of the matter is that materialism and spiritualism, ration-ality and irrationalism-cum-intuitionism, are monopolies of neither Indianor the West' (2-2). Matilal's argument against the dogma (and indeedagainst other expressions of cultural relativism) is that it is impossibleto individuate cultures in any such way as would give them sharp bound-aries; cultures are always mixing and merging with each other, identitiesare being enriched or revised by adoption and absorption (18-2, 19-2).Indeed, it is for Matilal the very mutability of cultures which shows realconfrontation between them to be possible. If relativism were true, theonly confrontation that could occur would be 'notional', and would haveno impact on the values of either culture. Cultures do not, however, haveunchanging, immutable essences; even what seem to be the most charac-teristic and embedded values of a culture are subject to gradual trade-offs, rejections and modifications in the course of time.

I have spoken so far of Matilal's methodological framework. In the re-mainder of this introduction, I will look at the detail in Matilal's pro-gramme, as reflected in the principal themes of the essays collected here.The unifying motif in his work is the study of rational traditions in Indianthought. Matilal's sustained analysis of the logical grounds of mysticism(1-1 to 5-1 ; see also Appendix 1 of The Word and the World, and Chapter4 of Logical and Ethical Issues in Religious Belief, Calcutta: Universityof Calcutta, 1982) represents therefore a powerful engagement with pre-valent but misconceived ideas about the mystical nature of Indianthought. He seeks to demonstrate that even the so-called 'mystical'philosophers (such as Sanjaya, Ngrjuna and Sriharsa) defend their

xviii / Introductionviews with carefully reasoned argument, and do not let them rest merelyon spiritual insight or intuition. In particular, Matilal perceives and seeksan explanation for close ties between mysticism and scepticism. Bothagree that our beliefs about the empirical world, as ordinarily understood,lack warrant. Both defend this thesis with the help of carefully reasonedargument'mysticism' is no less rational than scepticism. Where theydiffer is in their attitude towards the possibility of knowledge gainedthrough unusual means of unusual matters. Here, as Matilal puts it in5-1, the sceptic is a pessimist while me mystic is an optimist. Unlike thesceptic, the mystic does not regard the failure of our everyday methodsof acquiring knowledge as entailing that there is no knowledge to be had.Knowledge is possible, albeit knowledge of an unusual type, a type typi-cally described as ineffable and unstructured. Scepticism leads to mysti-cism when the state of mind engendered by the sceptic's ataraxia or sus-pension of judgement is regarded as peculiarly suitable for the occurrenceof experiences characterised as 'mystical'.

Matilal's own philosophical sympathies lie with neither mysticismnor scepticism but with a form of realism. Several articles here continuehis celebrated defence of the Nyya position in his magnum opus, Per-ception, and most are written after its publication in 1986 (6-1 is an ex-ception, for it is a prcis of the leading argument in Perception). Thecommon-sense realism of the Nyya philosophers asserts that we doindeed see the objects we take ourselves to see, that those objects existby having parts without being merely the sum of their parts, and that theyfall into objective, natural categories. Two ingredients in Matilal's de-fence of this theory have a particular significance: the doctrine that per-ception is non-partitive, and an interpretation of the concept of objectivity.To say that perception is non-partitive is to say that we can see objectswithout seeing their parts (e.g. their front-surfaces) or their properties(e.g. their colour and shape). That is not to deny that the parts and proper-ties of an object figure in the explanation of our coming to see itit is partof the explanation for our seeing an object that light reflecting from thesurface of the object causes stimulation of the retina. What the non-partitivity thesis does deny is that the parts or properties of the object canenter that explanation only if they themselves become objects of perceptualawareness. If this is correct, Matilal points out, then the move typicallymade by the Buddhist phenomenalist, that the 'support' (lambana) forperceptual awareness must be unstructured and immediately given, isblocked. This leads, however, to what Matilal (6-1 ) claims is the hardest

Introduction / xixproblem for the Nyya realist. If phenomenal entities like sense-data andsvalaksanas have no explanatory role in perception, how do we accountfor such apparently purely phenomenal illusions as seeing the blue domeof the sky, a rainbow, or a circular disk as elliptical?

Maillai's innovative solution introduces a new concept of objectivity(6-1, 9-1, 12-1). To be objective is to be independent of minds. Being'mind-dependent,' however, need not mean being a private, intentionalobject in the way that sense-data and other purely phenomenal entitiesare. It can mean simply having a mental event as a causal condition, anevent on whose continuing existence the object depends. Although illus-ory, the blueness of the sky and the ellipticality of the disk are objectiveat least in the sense that they are not purely private objects of sensation,but are produced by, and shared by, the perception of any observerlocated in the right position. Matilal observes (8-1 ) that the Nyya exploitsuch a notion of objectivity in their theory of number, for numbers arethought to be objective properties, and yet dependent for their existenceon mental acts of counting. The realism which such a notion of objectivitygrounds is softer than that to which sceptics (and at least some mystics)are committed, according to which objects can exist independently ofanyone's capacity to know they exist. We might note too that a conceptof objectivity as an invariance between subjects, rather than as an inde-pendence from any subject, is particularly suitable to the realism Matilalespouses in his moral theory, based as it is on the idea that there is a setof minimal, culture-invariant, moral values (cf. 16-2). The two issues areindeed intertwined in his critique of the sort of 'commitment-free under-standing' of languages or cultures that is presupposed by much ethno-graphy, and which rests on the idea that the existence of propositionsis independent of the languages in which they are expressed (11-1;cf. 21-1).

Matilal's disclosure of philosophical connections is not limited to theconversation between classical Indian and contemporary Western philo-sophers, but extends to the interaction between the classical philosophicalschools themselves. Argument and attempted refutation are the overtmodes of this interaction, but cross-fertilization and absorption of ideaswere the inevitable, if usually unremarked, effects. Matilal regards thesparring match between Naiyyikas and Buddhists as a fundamentalaxis in the history of classical Indian philosophical thought (14-1, 15-1,18-1). In two essays here on Mdhyamika Buddhism (13-1,16-1), Mati-lal considers again the question: what is the status of Ngrjuna's claim

xx / Introductionto reject all theses without thereby having a thesis (namely, that all thesesare false)? Matilal's well-known strategy in other work has been to inter-pret the Mdhyamika 'rejection' as an illocutionary refusal to assent, aspeech-act which is distinct from and does not entail asserting the pro-position's negation. In 13-1, however, he considers a different solution:the doctrine of emptiness is not a thesis precisely because it is a commenton all theses. This move, taking the Mdhyamika claim to be on a dif-ferent level to ordinary propositions, is correlated with the doctrine of'two truths' in Buddhism. In 16-1, Matilal considers whether there is ananalogy to be drawn between the Mdhyamika prasanga technique forreducing a thesis to absurdity, and Derrida's notion of the deconstructionof a text. Another essay, 'What is Buddhism?' (17-1), was to have beenthe basis of a book, and is one of Matilal's last written pieces. It is a sur-vey of the canon and chief philosophical doctrines of the Buddhists, aswell as of the life of Buddha.

The section in this collection on 'Sanskrit Semantics' contains somearticles not included in Matilal's book on Indian philosophy of language,The Word and the World. Two essays (19-1, 20-1) discuss concepts em-ployed in Pninian grammatical theory: the ekasesa rule and the 'locative'kraka. In 21-1, Matilal considers the notion of translation. He arguesthat Bhartrhari would have agreed with Quine that there are no suchthings as meanings as translation-invariants, not on the grounds of anindeterminacy of translation, but because 'meaning' (sphota) is insepar-able from the 'utterance' (nda) that conveys it. In a manner reminiscentof his argument that relativism is false because cultures are not isolatedwholes, Matilal points out that the thought experiment on which Quine'sargument rests depends on a technical notion of language as a closedsystem, whereas natural languages overlap, grow and change, whencehis conclusion that 'translation, understanding and communication areall of a piece and are made possible by a commonly shared world, as wellas by the creative power of each 'living' language.' Essay 22-1, apparentlydelivered to an audience of linguists, suggests a new way to think aboutthe notions of expectancy (kriks) and compatibility (yogyata) inIndian grammatical theory, namely as rules on the combination of gram-matical categories. A verb 'expects' an item of a particular type to be itsdirect object (it 'expects' a noun and not, say, another verb); and the verbis then also 'compatible' only with nouns of a particular type (nouns ofliquid and not say of fire, if the verb is 'drinks'). It is for this reason, Mati-lal suggests, that the apparently semantic notion of compatibility is givena place in Indian grammatical theory.

Introduction / xxiIn a series of essays on images of Indian philosophy, Matilal identifies

a set of myths and perceptions, which have come to constitute the beliefthat there is an almost 'ontological distinction' (25-1) between Indianand western philosophy. Among these myths are: that 'the East is irra-tional and emotional, the West rational and logical'; that 'concepts suchas justice and fairness, privacy and individual freedom, are foreign to theIndian mind [sic], which is at best familiar with a sort of crude intuitionas a guide to ethical and moral sensitivity'; that the 'caste-oriented hier-archical society in India has remained well-integrated and thereby for along time has been tension-free and stable' (28-1). Matilal rejects theargument that these ideas are entirely a product of European romanti-cization of the East, and agrees even that they have an 'observationalbasis' (with a glance at Berkeley, he jokes that it is because every ideamust be caused by an impression ! ). Perceptions become myths, however,when a selective attention to certain facets of Indian culture is over-generalized, and other aspects and characteristics of Indian thought ig-nored. Matilal also rejects as exaggerated Edward Said's thesis thatwestern Orientalist scholarship was driven entirely by the politics ofpower. The Orientalists did at least bring a commendably scientific out-look to their study of the East; however, what should have been a rigorousbut also humanistic study, combining scientific precision with anunderstanding of the humanity in the cultures and societies under in-vestigation, became instead a dry collation of facts and figures into neatsystems of categorization and classification (25-1).

Another issue turns on the classical Indian author's own conceptionof philosophical activity; specifically, the precise meaning of the termsdarsana and nviksiki, and the relation between the study of philosophyand the goals of practical life. Referring to Kutilya's Arthasstra,Uddyotakara's Nyyavrttika and to other texts, Matilal forcefully arguesthat the ancient Indians had a clear conception of philosophy as anindependent discipline which 'primarily concerned itself with rationalinquiry and consciously wanted to avoid religious dogmas' (24-1 ). Philo-sophy is the study of the means of knowing (pramna), by virtue of whichour actions are rewarded with success, we are turned away from thesources of suffering, and so towards the final goal of life, which is des-cribed cagily in Nyya as that 'than which there is nothing better' (nihsre-yasa).

Study of Indian theories of rationality, including the demonstrationthat there do exist rational traditions in Indian thought, is, as I have noted,a key unifying theme in Matilal's work. To be rational is, minimally, to

xxii / Introductionground one's beliefs on proper evidence, and to determine the course ofone's actions on the basis of suitable rules or action-guides. While theconcept of proper evidence is the subject matter of the pramnasstra,a body of literature whose philosophical contours Matilal did much tomap, it is he claims in the epic literature and dharmasstra that one canfind the Indian accounts of practical reason and moral theory. (Thisdistinction is reflected to a considerable extent in the division of articlesbetween the two volumes.) The focus of his journeys into this massiveliterature is the concept of a moral dilemma. Matilal defines a moraldilemma in terms of conflicting principles of moral obligationas a situ-ation in which 'the agent cannot do everytrfing that is morally obligatoryfor him to do in that situation' (1-2). He reviews a number of instancesin the Indian epics. In each of his examples, the structure is similar: typi-cally, a formal ethical duty (dharma) conflicts with another such duty, orelse with a conventional moral obligation. In one example from theMahbhrata, which was the subject of a celebrated controversy betweenRabindranatha Tagore and Bankimchandra Chattopadhyay, Arjuna isfaced with a stark choice between belying an earlier promise (to kill any-body who insults his gandiva bow), or else committing fratricide (againstYudhisthira, who insulted the bow in a moment of rage). It is againArjuna, who, in the story of the Bhagavadgit, is faced with the dilemmaof reneging on his caste duty to fight, or going ahead and thereby killinghis respected elders and family members. Matilal contrasts the 'formal-istic' ethics advocated in the Rmyana, in which telling the truth, keep-ing a promise, or doing one's caste duty, is an 'unconditional obligation'(7-2), with the 'devious diplomacy' of Krsna. in the Mahbhrata (1-2,3-2,8-2), for whom formal obligations need not override all other moral andnon-moral considerations. In an astonishing metaphor, Matilal likensKrsna's attitude to formal moral codes to that of a poet, who 'accepts theconstraints of metre . . . but has absolute control over them . . . who gov-erns from above but does not dictate' (3-2). Responding to situationalconstraints, Krsna breaches rigid moral codes and in doing so createsnew ethical paradigms. The moral insight to be drawn, Matilal suggests,is that the experience of genuine moral dilemmas enriches an agent'spractical wisdom. More generally, the epics give prominence to two im-portant aspects of dharma-ethics: the vulnerability of moral virtues, andthe elusiveness of moral truth (5-2). John Brockington, in his definitivestudy, The Sanskrit Epics, comments that 'if Matilal's ideas are takenseriously, as surely they should be, the concept of dharma in the Malw-bhrata gains a far deeper dimension' (1998, p. 64).

Introduction / x x i i i

The authors of the medieval dharmasstra, notably Manu and Yjna-valkya, though frequently criticized for devising apologia of unjustsocial institutions and caste inequalities, nevertheless realized that 'thefull extent of dharma-movMiy can be sustained only if it can be given arational basis' (5-2). When confronted with a genuine moral dilemmaan irreconcilable conflict in one's moral obligationsthese authors saythat one should do what is 'approved by the heart', which Matilal inter-prets with approval as an appeal to the dictates of a moral conscience,'impartial and not biased by any baser emotions'. In matters of publicmorality, the moral conscience of a suitably constituted assembly is re-commended by Manu as the arbiter, where the assembly should includescholars versed in the three Vedas, a logician, an exegete, an etymo-logist, and an ordinary person from each of the three groups, student,householder and retired person. Matilal suggests that a careful study ofthe treatment of dharma in such texts, as well as in the later retellings ofthe epic stories, would reveal how the changing ethos of a self-criticaltradition attempted to reconcile the tensions and volatilities which arepart and parcel of dharma-elhics (4-2, cf. 28-1, 5-2).

Matilal stresses that the final course of action a moral agent chooses,when confronted with a genuine moral dilemma, will inevitably be ac-companied with regret, remorse, guilt and shame (the 'moral emotions'),for the moral agent has to live with the consequence of violating onemoral duty in choosing to act in accordance with another (5-2,6-2). It isin this context of moral conflict that Matilal places the Bhagavadglt dis-cussion of karma (10-2,11-2). Three 'way s of life' or 'action-guides' aredistinguished: acting-with-desire (karma), non-action (akarma), and act-ing-without-desire (niskmakarm). The first two are the ways recom-mended by brahmanas and sramanas respectively. The former is basedon performing Vedic rites and sacrifices in the hope of getting rewards,or, more generally, on acting even in situations of moral conflict and ac-cepting the consequences. The latter is the way of renunciation, the ideabeing that choosing the path of renunciation saves one from moral lap-ses, even in conflict situations, as one prefers not to act than to act andthereby violate a moral duty. The third alternative is the one recommendedby Krsna in the Gt: to act but abandon all desire for the outcome of one'sactions. Matilal points out that there are certainly philosophical problemswith the notion of desireless action, for instance to do with the coherenceof saying that one should act without desire if one desires to live a goodor moral life, and he considers the available solutions (10-2). He argues,more generally, that the introduction of the karma doctrine and the notion

xxiv / Introductionof caste rationalized dharma-eihics and gave it an appearance at least ofconsistency, but did not really stabilize it or remove the inner conflictsand tensions which gave it life. Matilal's emphasis on the internal dyna-mism and inherent instability of the dharma system is a radical departurefrom traditional Indological scholarship, which saw in the hierarchy ofcaste and karma a highly stable, and thereby static and unevolving, socie-tal structure.

Matilal sees the primary source of moral conflict as lying in real con-frontations between different value systems. This leads him into a moregeneral discussion of the competing claims of different value systems,religions and cultures. He is critical of relativism, the doctrine that dis-tinct value systems do not in fact genuinely conflict. It is a doctrineMatilal particularly associates with the 'colonial liberal,' who refuses tocondone or condemn the practices and values of another culture, on thegrounds that they are incommensurable with western cultural values. Ina sustained attack on relativist claims about religions (15-2,16-2), Mati-lal agues instead that minimal 'common elements' in all religions can beisolated at a suitable level of description. He tentatively suggests, amongothers, respect for life or commitment to non-violence, and a prohibitionon lying, as two candidates; another (27-2) is the quest for immortality.This does not imply that different religions are simply talking about thesame thing in different ways; rather they talk about different things whilestanding on a common ground. Matilal often refers to Tagore's idea thatthere is a 'surplus in man', a capacity to be more than machines, to thinkabout and question our own values, and so to reach a kind of self-under-standing of our place in nature. The different world religions all, perhaps,address this surplus, and in doing so become 'alternative hypotheses torender the universe comprehensible and our life in it meaningful' (16-2).The target of 18-2 and 19-2 is cultural relativism. Matilal again arguesthat there are minimal, culture-invariant values, shared by all cultures,based perhaps on basic human needs and capacities, such as the need forfood, shelter, the alleviation of pain, and interaction with others. The pur-pose of these essays is to show that cultures and religions do interact, thatthere is a common basis for conversation, meaningful connections, gen-uine conflicts and moral dilemmas.

The myth that the East embodies values alien to the West took a newform in the sixties and seventies, as a growing discontent with western'materialism' led to a 'turning East', in search of a more spiritual alter-native to the values of the Enlightenment. In a set of essays on 'Ideasfrom the East' (20-2, 23-2), Matilal examines in detail the extensive de-bates over the value of psychedelic drugs as short-cuts to mystical

Introduction I xxvexperience (Huxley, Zaehner), and the claim that all religions originatefrom drug-cults (Wasson). He looks too at the 'guru culture', the spreadof movements like ISKCON and the popularity of Maharishi MaheshYogi's school of transcendental meditation. The tone of his account is'critical and debunking', but is intended as a preliminary to a discussionof what has lasting worth and contemporary value in the religious doc-trines of the East. For, he comments, 'as regards to turning East, there isalways . . . a distinction between how not to do it and how to do it' (23-2). That leads into Matilal's analysis of Indian philosophy of religion.Concepts which had been 'reinterpreted' by the leaders of the new move-ments are here examined with reference to their proper textual context.Matilal discusses the central ideas in Indian soteriology (a term he iswilling to use in the Indian context with certain qualifications; see 17-1).He isolates a commitment to the 'thesis of universal suffering (duhkha)9as a trademark of Indian religious belief. Rejecting the psychologisticreading of this thesis, which make Indian religions pessimistic, he ins-tead interprets the thesis as asserting that ordinary life-experience, whenreflected on in a certain way, lacks value or significance (25-2, 26-2).Another trademark, however, is that there is a separate and higher modeof experience, nirvana, a cessation of suffering and, perhaps, a trans-cendental value. Matilal argues that the thesis of universal sufferinggenerates an Indian version of the problem of evil, in which the fact ofsuffering is seen as incompatible with a belief in God's omnipotence andbenevolence (24-2), and he goes on to consider Samkara's attempt toresolve the problem, and so to the connection between theodicy and thekarma hypothesis (28-2,29-2). If the problem of evil was not regarded byIndian theologians as a major difficulty, it is because God was not typi-cally conceived of as absolutely omnipotent; His powers are circumscribedby the laws of karma or retributive moral causation. In Matilal's view thekarma doctrine underwent, over the course of its development, a volteface, when, having originally been propounded to oppose the fatalism ofthe jvkas and to encourage a kind of moral responsibility, it laterdegenerated into a doctrine of rigid determinism.

When Tagore spoke of the 'surplus in man', he had in mind our capa-city to question and transcend our own values, and eventually to reach thedignity that comes with self-understanding. Matilal had a deep intellectualrespect for Tagore's humanism, and suggests (12-1) that 'it may benecessary to revive, within modern Western analytical philosophy cir-cles, the old classical Indian or . . . 'premodern' concern for the dignityof human nature . . . making the 'Surplus in Man' more visible to us inour perception of the self. This, he says, is the context in which analysis

xxvi / Introductionand understanding of classical Indian theories about the sense of selfhave their true significance. I would generalize his remark a little, andconclude by saying that central to much of his philosophical programmeis Matilal's conviction that, with a better understanding of 'premodern'traditions, there comes too a clearer understanding of the importance ofold concepts like those of 'human dignity', 'duty' and 'rational self-wis-dom'. In the same essay, Tagore likened the cultures of the world to seve-ral mountain peaks 'having different altitude, temperature, flora andfauna, and yet belonging to the same chain of hills'. There are, he says,'no absolute barriers of communication' between different cultures,because in each case 'their foundation is the same' (1920, p. 34). Matilalwould have agreed wholeheartedly with these sentiments, and confirmedin his scholarship and erudition what Tagore had earlier, and indeed ata time of enormous cultural confrontation and upheaval, already discerned.

JONARDON G A N E R I

NOTES AND REFERENCES

Brockington, John (1998), The Sanskrit Epics (Leiden: EJ. Brill).Mohanty, J.N. (1986), 'A Conversation of Mankind', Review of B.K. Matilal,

Perception: An Essay on Classical Indian Theories of Knowledge, TimesLiterary Supplement, 10 October 1986.

Mohanty, J.N. (1993), 'On Interpreting Indian Philosophy: Some Problems andConcerns', in P. Bilimoria(ed.), Essays on Indian Philosophy (Delhi: OxfordUniversity Press), pp. 207-19.

Price, H.H. (1955), 'The Present Relations between Eastern and WesternPhilosophy', The Hibbert Journal, vol. liii, pp. 222-9.

Schwab, Raymond (1950), The Oriental Renaissance: Europe's Rediscoveryof India and the East, 1680-1880. Translated by G. Patterson-Black andV. Reinking, foreword by E.W. Said (New York: Columbia University Press,1984).

Sen, Amartya (1992), 'Address' delivered on the occasion of a Commemorationof Bimal Krishna Matilal at All Souls College, Oxford, 6 June 1992.

Tagore, Rabindranath (1920), The Surplus in Man', in The Religion of Man (Ox-ford: Oxford University Press), pp. 31-9.

The Provenance of theEssays

ARTICLES INCLUDED IN THESE VOLUMES

Many of the essays collected here have been published before. I shouldlike to thank the respective copyright-holders, for their permission to re-produce the articles. The details of publication are as follows:

1-1. 'Mysticism and Reality: Ineffability', Journal of Indian Philo-sophy^, 1975, pp. 217-52.

2-1. The Logical Illumination of Indian Mysticism. Inaugural Address,University of Oxford, Clarendon Press. 1977.

3-1. 'The Ineffable', in H. Coward (ed.), Language in Indian Philo-sophy and Religion. Studies in Religion, supplement 5. WilfredLaurier University Press, Ontario. 1978, pp. 55-62.

4-1. 'Scepticism and Mysticism', Journal of the American OrientalSociety (Ingalls Felicitation volume), 105, 1985, pp. 479-84.

7-1. 'Awareness and Meaning in Navya-Nyya', in B.K. Matilal andJ.L. Shaw (eds), Analytical Philosophy in Comparative Pers-pective, Dordrecht: Reidel, 1985, pp. 373-92.

8-1. 'On the Theory of Numbers and the Parypti Relation ', The Jour-nal of the Asiatic Society, 27, 1987, pp. 13-21.

10-1. 'Knowledge, Truth and Pramtva\ in Daya Krishna and K.L.Sharma (eds), The Philosophy of J.N. Mohanty, New Delhi:Indian Council of Philosophical Research, 1991, pp. 169-82.

11-1. 'Understanding, Knowing and Justification', in B.K. Matilal andA. Chakrabarti (eds), Knowing from Words: Western and IndianPhilosophical Analysis of Understanding and Testimony (Dord-recht: Kluwer), 1994, pp. 347-66.

12-1. 'A Realist View of Perception', P.K. Sen and R.R. Verma (eds),The Philosophy ofP.F. Straw son, New Delhi: Indian Council ofPhilosophical Research, 1995, pp. 305-26.

xxviii / The Provenance of the Essays13-1. 'A Critique of the Mdhyamika Position', in M. Sprung (ed.),

The Problem of Two Truths in Buddhism and Vednta, Dordrecht:Reidel, 1973, pp. 54-63.

14-1. 'Nyya Critique of the Buddhist Doctrine of Non-Soul', Journalof Indian Philosophy, 17,1989, pp. 61-79. Reprinted in AugustineThottakara (ed.), Self and Consciousness: Indian Interpretations,Centre of Indian and Inter-religious Studies, Rome (Bangalore:Dharmaram Publications), 1989, pp. 173-92.

15-1. 'Apoha: Dihnga as Interpreted by Uddyotakara', Indian Journalof Buddhist Studies,!, 1989, pp. 53-60, Part 1.

16-1. 'Is Prasanga a Form of Deconstruction?', Journal of IndianPhilosophy 20,1992, pp. 345-62. Contains the text of 'Mdhya-mika' , Annals of the Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute, 68(R.G. Bhandarkar 150th Birth Anniversary volume), 1987,pp. 215-24. M

18-1. 'The Perception of the Self in Indian Tradition', R.T. Ames (ed.),Self as Person in Asian Theory and Practice, New York: SUNYPress. 1994, pp. 279-96.

19-1. 'Some Comments of Patanjali under 1.2.64', in S.D. Joshi andS.D. Laddu (eds), Proceedings of the International Seminar onStudies in the Astdhyyl ofPnini. Pune: University of Poona,1983, pp. 119-26.

20-1. 'On the Notion of the Locative in Sanskrit', Indian Journal ofLinguistics (Praci-Bhasa-Vijnan) 10, 1983, pp. 160-8.

23-1. 'Indian Philosophy: Is There a Problem Today?' in S.S. RamaRao Pappu and R. Puligandla (eds),Indian Philosophy: Past andFuture, Motilal Banarsidass, 1982, pp. 253-9.

24-1. 'On the Concept of Philosophy in India', delivered under the title'Pramna as evidence,' to the 32nd International Congress forAsian and North African Studies, Hamburg 1986 (abstract inZeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenlndischen Gesellschaft, supple-ment 9, 1992). Reprinted in Philosophical Essays: AnantalalThakur Felicitation Volume, Calcutta: Sanskrit.Pustak Bhandar,1987, pp. 190-8.

25-1. 'On Dogmas of Orientalism', in K.K. Dasgupta, P.K. Bhatta-charya, and R.D. Choudhury (eds), S'raddhanja H: Studies in An-cient Indian History, D.C. Sircar Commemoration Volume, Delhi:Sundeep Prakashan 1988, pp. 15-21.

26-1. 'Ideas and Values in Radhakrishnan's Thought', in G. Partha-sarathi and D.P. Chattopadhyaya (eds), Radhakrishnan CentenaryVolume, Delhi: OUP, 1989, pp. 20-9.

The Provenance of the Essays I xxix27-1. 'Indian Without Mystification: Comments on Nussbaum and

Sen', presented at a conference entitled 'Development andTechnological Transformation in Traditional Societies: Alter-native Approaches', United Nations University, World Institutefor Development Economics Research (WIDER), Helsinki, 4-7August 1986.

28-1. 'Images of India: Perceptions and Problems', in M. Chatterjee(ed.), The Philosophy ofNikunja Vihari Banerjee. Delhi: IndianCouncil of Philosophical Research, 1990, pp. 1-15. A shorterversion is reprinted in B. Chatterjee (ed.), Bankimchandra Chat-terjee: Perceptions and Problems^ New Delhi: Sahitya Akademi,1994, pp. 242-5. Parts of the paper are also in the Oxford MajlisSociety Commemoration Volume, 1987.

30-1. 'Radhakrishnan and the Problem of Modernity in Indian Philo-sophy', in S.S. Ram Rao Pappu (ed.), New Essays on the Philo-sophy of Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan, Delhi: Sri Satguru PubL,1995, pp. 55-63.

1 -2. 'Moral Dilemmas and Religious Dogmas', Bulletin of the RamaKrishna Mission Institute of Culture, 34, 1983, pp. 243-50. Asummary of six lectures given at the Rama Krishna MissionInstitute of Culture in 1982 as the Malatmala-BankubehariMemorial Lectures.

2-2. 'Sri Ramakrishna: Simplicity with Profundity', Bulletin of theRamakrishna Mission Institute of Culture, 38, 1987, pp. 27-30.A lecture delivered on Sri Ramakrishna's 150th Birth Anniver-sary.

3-2. 'Moral Dilemmas: Insights from Indian Epics', in B.K. Matilal(ed.), Moral Dilemmas in the Mahbhrata, Shimla: Indian Insti-tute of Advanced Study, 1989, pp. 1-9.

5-2. 'Dharma and Rationality', in Shlomo Biderman and Ben-AmiScharfstein (eds), Rationality in Question: On Eastern and West-ern Views of Rationality, Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1989, pp. 191-216.

7-2. 'Rma's Moral Decisions', The Adyar Library Bulletin 44-5,1980, pp. 344-51.

8-2. 'Krsna: In Defence of a Devious Divinity', in A. Sharma (ed.),Essays in the Mahbhrata, Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1991, pp. 401 -18.

11-2. 'Caste, Karma and the Gta , in Roy W. Perrett (ed.), IndianPhilosophy of Religion, Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1989, pp. 195-202.

14-2. 'The Problem of Inter-Faith Studies', in T. A. Aykara (ed.), Meet-ing of Religions: New Orientations and Perspectives, Bangalore:

xxx / The Provenance of the EssaysDharmaram Publications, 1978, pp. 1-6. Reprinted in Sophia 34,1995, pp. 167-72.

15-2. Towards Defining Religion in the Indian Context', in T.A.Aykara (ed.), Meeting of Religions: New Orientations and Pers-pectives, Bangalore: Dharmaram Publications, 1978, pp. 31-41.

17-2. 'Between Peace and Deterrence', in E. Kaye (ed.), Peace Studies:The Hard Questions, Oxford Peace Lectures 1984-5, Rex Collins,London, 1987, pp. 59-82.

18-2. 'Ethical Relativism and Confrontation of Cultures ', in M. Krausz(ed.) Relativism: Interpretation and Confrontation. Notre Dame:University of Notre Dame Press, 1989, pp. 339-62. Revised ver-sion of 'Confrontation of Cultures', S.G. Deuskar Lectures onIndian History and Culture, Centre for Studies in Social Sciences,Calcutta, 1986. ^

19-2. 'Pluralism, Relativism and Interaction Between Cultures', inE. Deutsch (ed.), Culture and Modernity: East-West PhilosophicalPerspectives, Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1991,pp. 141-60.

24-2. 'On Omnipotence', Our Heritage, vol. xxviii, 1980, pp. 3-20.Partly reprinted as 'On God's Omnipotence,' in Bulletin of theRama Krishna Mission Institute of Culture, 33, 1982, pp. 3-7.

26-2. 'On the University of Suffering', in K.N. Tiwari (ed.),Suffer-ing: Indian Perspectives, Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1986,pp. 12-22. ^

29-2. 'A Note on Samkara's Theodicy', Journal of Indian Philosophy20, 1992, pp. 363-76.

INDEX TO THE PAPERS INLOGIC, LANGUAGE AND REALITY

Many of Matilal's pre-1985 articles are reprinted in his earlier collection,Logic, Language and Reality: An Introduction to Indian PhilosophicalStudies (Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1985). Unfortunately, there is noindication there of the provenance of the sections. I list the original sour-ces here.

1.1 'Aristotle and the Question of his Influence on Indian Logic',Proceedings of a Round Table Conference {UNESCO celebrationof the 2500th anniversary of Aristotle), Paris, 1979.

1.2 'Debate and Dialectic in Ancient India', Philosophical Essays:Prof Anantalal Thakur Felicitation Volume, Calcutta: SanskritPustak Bhandar, 1987, pp. 53-66. This article also appears in

The Provenance of the Essays I xxxiPerception as 3.3-3.4, and in The Character of Logic in India,as 1.1.

1.3 The Doctrine of Nyybhsa , The Calcutta Review, 152, 1959,pp. 69-73.

1.5 'A note on the Nyya fallacy sdhyamasama and petitio principiV,Journal of Indian Philosophy, 2, 1974, pp. 211-24.

1.6 'Dinnga's remarks on the concept of anumeyd1, Journal of theGanganatha Jha Research Instituted (Umesha Mishra Com-memoration Volume), 1968, pp. 151-9.

1.7 'Buddhist Logic and Epistemology' in J.D.G. Evans and B.K.Matilal (eds), Buddhist Logic and Epistemology: Studies in theBuddhistAnalysis ofInference and Language> Dordrecht: Reidel,1985, pp. 1-30. This article also appears in The Character ofLogic in India, as chapter 4.

2.1 'A Discourse on Self-Contradictory Terms', The Calcutta Review,158, 1961, pp. 10-16.

2.2 'Reference and Existence in Nyya and Buddhism', Journal ofIndian Philosophy, 1,1970, pp. 83-110. This article also appearsin Epistemology, Logic and Grammar, as chapter 4.

2.3 'On the Navya-Nyya logic of property and location', in Proceed-ings of the 1975 International Symposium of Multiple-valuedLogic, Bloomington: Indiana University, pp. 450-61.

2.4 'Gangesa on the Concept of Universal property {kevalnvayinY,Philosophy East and West 18, 1968, pp. 151-61. Reprinted inThe Character of Logic in India, as part of chapter 7, pp. 143-68.

2.5 'Review of C. Goekoop, The Logic of Invariable Concomitancein the Tattvacintmani: Gangesa ''s Anumitinirpana and Vypti-vda', Journal of the American Oriental Society, vol. 92, no. 1,1972, pp. 169-73.

2.6 'Double Negation in Navya-Nyya', M. Nagatomi et al. (eds),Sanskrit and Indian Studies: Essays in Honour of Daniel H.H.Ingalls, 1980, pp. 1-10.

2.7 'A Note on the Difference of Difference', in G. Bhattacharya etal. (eds), A Corpus of Indian Studies: Essays in Honour ofGauri-nath Sastri, Calcutta, 1980, pp. 69-78.

2.8 'The Intensional Character of laksana and samkara in Navya-Nyya', Indo-Iranian Journal 8,1964, pp. 85-95.

3.1 'Indian Theories of Truth and Knowledge (review of J.N. Mohan-ty ' s Gange sa 's Theory of Truth) ', Philosophy East and West, 18,1968, pp. 321-33.

xxxii / The Provenance of the Essays3.2 'Error and TruthClassical Indian Theories', Philosophy East

and West, 31, 1981, pp. 215-24.3.3 'A Critique of Buddhist Idealism', in L. Cousins, A. Kunst and

R. Norman (eds), Buddhist Studies in Honour of LB. Homer,Dordrecht: Reidel. 1974, pp. 139-69.

3.4 'Memory', in D. Malvania et al. (eds), Studies in Indian Philo-sophy: A Memorial Volume in Honour of Pandit Sukhlalji San-ghavi, Ahmedabad, 1981, pp. 125-34.

4.1 'Ontological Problems in Nyya, Buddhism and Jainism: AComparative Study', Journal of Indian Philosophy, 5, 1977,pp. 91-106.

4.2 'Causality in the Nyya-Vaisesika school', Philosophy East andWest, 25, 1975, pp. 41-8.

4.3 'A Note on the Jaina Conception of Substance', Sambodhi,5,1976, pp. 3-12.

4.4 'Saptabhahgi', in J.N. Mohanty and S.P. Banerjee (eds), SelfKnowledge and Freedom: Essays for Kalidas Bhattacharya, Cal-cutta: World Press, 1978, pp. 159-72.

4.6 'Ignorance or Misconception? A Note on avidy in Buddhism',in S. Balasooriya et al. (eds), Buddhist Studies in Honour ofW. Rahula, London: Gordon Fraser, 1980, pp. 154-64.

4.7 (pp. 333-46): 'layavijnna, Transmigration and Absolutism',Journal of Oriental Research (Madras), 40-1, 1970-1, pp. 151-66. Reprinted in S. Janaki (ed.), M. Kuppuswami Sastri BirthCentenary Volume, Madras 1981.

4.7 (pp. 346-51): 'The Enigmas of Buddhism: dw/zfc/ia and nirvana',Journal ofDharma 2, 1977, pp. 302-6.

4.8 (pp. 351-62): 'Transmigration and the Causal Chain in Nyyaand Buddhism', in R.C. Amore (ed.), Developments in BuddhistThought: Canadian Contributions to Buddhist Studies, 1979,pp. 83-92.

4.8 (pp. 362-78): 'Karma: A Metaphysical Hypothesis in MoralCausation', in T.M.P. Mahadevan et al. (eds), ContemporaryIndian Philosophers of History, Calcutta, 1977, pp. 233-47.

5.1 'The Doctrine of karana in Grammar and Logic', Journal of theGanganatha Jha Research Institute, 17, 1960-1, pp. 63-9.

5.2 The Notion of Substance and Quality in Ancient Indian Gram-mar' ,Acta et Commentationes Universitt! s Tartuensis (Finland),II, 1973, 384-405.

The Provenance of the Essays I xxxiii5.3 'Jagadisa's Classification of Grammatical Categories', in R.N.

Dandekar et al. (ed.), Sanskrit and Indological Studies: Dr V.RaghavanFelicitation Volume, Delhi: MotilalBanarsidass, 1975,pp. 221-9.

5.4 'Indian Theorists on the Nature of the Sentence (vkya)\ Found-ation of Language,!, 1966, pp. 377-93.

5.5 'Grammaticality and Meaningfulness', in S.D. Joshi (ed.),Amrtadhr: Prof R.N. Dandekar Felicitation Volume, 1984,pp. 263-71.

INDEX TO PAPERS PUBLISHED INTHE WORD AND THE WORLD

Some well-known articles are reprinted as chapters in Matilal's TheWord and the World: India's Contribution to the Study of Language(Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1990). They are as follows.Chapter 5: 'Bhavnanda on "What is a krak" ', in M. Deshpande et al.

(eds),S.D. Joshi Felicitation Volume, Poona.Chapter 6: 'Sbdabodha and the Problem of Knowledge Representation

in Sanskrit', Journal of Indian Philosophy, 16, 1988, pp. 107-22.Chapter 10: The Context Principle and Some Indian Controversies Over

Meaning', co-written with P.K. Sen, Mind, 1988, pp. 73-97.Chapter 12: 'On Bhartrhari's Philosophical Insight', in B.K. Matilal and

P. Bilimoria (eds), Sanskrit and Related Studies: ContemporaryResearches and Reflections, Delhi: Sri Satguru Publications, 1990,pp. 3-13.

Appendix 1: 'Mysticism and Ineffability: Some Problems of IndianLogic and Language', in B.S. Alton (ed.), Toronto Studies in Religion,New York: Peter Lang, 1988, pp. 115-24.

OTHER ARTICLES

The article 'Dharmakrti and the Universally Negative Inference', in Er-nest S tenkellner (ed.), Studies in the Buddhist Epistemological Tradition:Proceedings of the Second International Dharmakrti Conference, Vienna(Vienna: Verlag der Oesterreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften,1991, pp. 161-18), is reprinted in The Character of Logic in India, 1998,pp. 1 18-26. A slightly abbreviated version of the article 'Buddhist Logic

xxx iv / The Provenance of the Essaysand Epistemology', in Bimal K. Matilal and Robert D. Evans (eds), Bud-dhist Logic and Epistemology: Studies in the Buddhist Analysis of Infer-ence and Language (Dordrecht: Reidel, 1986), pp. 1-31, is also reprintedthere, pp. 88-105.

None of the articles Matilal wrote as encyclopedia entries are includ-ed in Philosophy, Culture and Religion. 'Indian Philosophy', in J.R. Burr(ed.), Handbook of World Philosophy: Contemporary DevelopmentsSince 1945 (Westport: Greenwood Press, 1980, pp. 437-70), is a usefulsurvey of the secondary literature in Indian philosophy between 1950and 1980. Another encyclopedia article is 'Jainism', World Encyclopediaof Peace (Oxford: Permagon Press, 1987, pp. 495-8). There are entriestoo in Longman's Encyclopedia of Religion (New York: Columbia Uni-versity Press, 1989); and in A.J. Ayer and J. O'Grady (eds), A Dictionaryof Philosophical Quotations (Oxford: Blackwell, 1994). Four other pub-lished articles are not included here, since their interest is mainlybiographical: 'Dialectical Materialism Viewed through an Indian Eye',The Calcutta Review (145, 1957, pp. 10-14; Matilal's first publishedpiece!); 'On Marxist Dialectics: Comments on Hao Wang's Article',Philosophy East and West (1974, pp. 321-8); 'Religion as the Principleof Unity in a Global Community', in I. Nagami (ed.), Proceedings of theFirst International Conference of Scientists and Religious Leaders onShaping the Future of Mankind, Kyoto, 1978, Kyo Bun Kwan, Tokyo,1979, pp. 103-10; 'The Surplus in Man', in Philosophical Papers(Department of Philosophy, University of North Bengal, vol. 2, 1987,PP. 1-7).

PART IScepticism and Mysticism

1Mysticism and Reality:

Ineffability

Wherefrom words turn back,Along with the mind, without reachingThe bliss of Brahman, (but) he who knowsFears nothing at any time.

(2.4, Tr. E.H. Hume)

This is how the Taittiriya Upanisad describes the bliss of Brahman assomething indescribable in words. An echo of the same idea is found inthe Katha Upanisad: 5.14:

'This is it'thus they recognizeThe highest happiness that is ineffable.

The point is that the peak experience in Brahman realization, the sup-reme joy or happiness, is something that cannot be put into words. Themystical consciousness is an ecstatic feeling that is ineffable.

The ineffability of mystical experience or mysticism is a doctrinewhich seems to be unanimously accepted by most modern writers onmysticism. William James (1902) in his important study of religion andmysticism, noted four distinctive marks of any 'mystical' experience,the first and the most important of which was ineffability. He called it 'thehandiest of the marks' by which one could classify a state of mind asmystical. The four common characteristics noted by James were: (1) In-effability, (2) Noetic Quality, which James explained as the experiencer'sfeeling that the mystical experience is a deeper insight into truth and anauthority on truth, (3) Transiency, and (4) Passivity (pp. 292-4).

James thought that the first two characters were all important for theywould allow one to classify an experience as mystical. For the present,

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we should concentrate only on the first character, ineffability. D.T. Suzu-ki mentioned some common characters of satori in Zen Buddhism suchas 'irrationality, inexplicability and incommunicability '. By these expres-sions, most probably, he wanted to carry the same sense as ineffability.

W.T. Stace (1960) has dealt at some length with the notion of inef-"f ability of my stical experience. He has argued that this alleged ineffabilityof the mystical experience need not be taken seriously, for the mystics,in his opinion, had generally mistaken the 'paradoxicality' of mysticismas ineffability. Stace is one of the few modern philosophers who havetried to give a philosophic justification of mysticism and have examin-ed its alleged ineffability. Stace's book has been influential. Thus, forexample, modern researchers on the psychology of drug experience likeW.N. Pahnke ( 1967) and A. Deikman ( 1967) have mainly depended uponStace for their exploration and categorization of LSD-induced mysticalexperience. But unfortunately, Stace misstated the problem of my sticismin general and misinterpreted the problem of ineffability in particular. Infact, his criticism of the ineffability doctrine as well as justification ofmysticism is wrong in more ways than I can hope to mention here. Onespecimen, I believe, will do.

Stace begins on the ineffability problem as follows: (p. 277)One of the best known facts about mystics is that they feel that language is inade-quate, or even wholly useless, as a means of communicating their experiencesor their insights to others. They say that what they experience is unutterable orineffable. They use language but then declare that the words they have used donot say what they want to say and that all words as such are inherently incapableof doing so.Stace then goes on to refer to the unanimity of different mystics likeEckhart, Plotinus, R.M. Bcke, J.A. Symonds and Arthur Koestler aboutthe ineffability of mystical experience. Stace says that James only gavea name to the problem by calling it ineffability but did not offer any solu-tion nor did he contribute anything to our understanding of the problem.But this is an unfair criticism of James, for he did comment on the pro-blem briefly (pp. 292-3), from which one can easily see how he under-stood the ineffability question. He said:

. . . mystical states are more like states of feeling than like states of intellect. Noone can make clear to another who has never had a certain feeling, in what thequality or worth of it consists.Before we proceed any further, I wish to underline a distinction which Isoften confused in the discussion of the problem of ineffability of mysti-cism. It is one thing to say of a particular piece of experience that it is

Mysticism and Reality I 5

effable or ineffable, and it is another thing to say that whatever is experi-enced in such an experience is ineffable. I suggest that in the context of'mystical experience' a distinction between an experience and its 'content'is quite useful. True, such a distinction has been from the point of viewof epistemology, often controversial among philosophers all over theworld through the ages. But without entering into this philosophers allover the world through the ages. But without entering into this philosophicdispute, I would simply urge the reader to keep this distinction in mind.For such a distinction of experience and its content, I think, will facilitateour theoretical understanding of the situation in mysticism.

'Experience' is a word which needs some explanation. In philosophicaland religious literature, the term is used sometimes ambiguously to in-clude not only the immediate experience (sensation) or mediate experience(perception) but also feelings (pleasures and pains), i.e., subjective im-pressions disassociated from cognition or representation of objects.Although pleasure and pain are often regarded as 'qualities' of experiencerather than the experience itself (for we say 'painful experience' or 'plea-curable experience'), the distinction of the quality and the qualified inthis case does not make much sense, and 'a painful experience' is oftenregarded as a stylistic variation of 'a feeling of pain'. It is often said thatpleasure and pain represent nothing actual in the objects, but reveal thestate or condition of the subject. This observation is generally true. Butit may open the door for idealism or subjectivism.

The S anskrit term vedan, under which pleasure and pain are subsumedin Buddhism, shares the same ambiguity as the English term 'feeling'.This bit of cross-cultural agreement is interesting, for it only shows thegeneral feeling of ambivalence of ordinary people about the meaning of'feeling'. Let us note also in this connection that some Buddhists (follow-ing of Dinnga) have argued against the Nyya view by asserting thatpleasure and pain are not distinguishable from the cognitive states thatreveal them. (Cf. Sridhara, 1963, ed., pp. 218-20).

It is true that our observation about 'experience' will be contested bya monistic philosopher who seeks to obliterate the usual distinctionbetween subjectivity and objectivity. But to simplify our understandingat the moment let us talk from the point of view of a person who has notyet accepted monistic epistemology. At this level, it would be useful toremember that a piece of experience (for we shall call it a piece of ex-perience) that is alleged to be mystical can be called ineffable withoutthereby implying that what is experienced or revealed in that experienceis also ineffable. What is called the Ultimate Reality (be it God or Brah-man or Suchness or Emptiness) is usually claimed to be revealed in a

6 / Philosophy, Culture and Religion

mystical experience. And this Ultimate Reality is said to be also ineffablebecause it cannot be properly described in words or characterized bydescription. We have thus to distinguish between 'ineffability' appliedas a predicate to the mystical experience itself and 'ineffability' appliedas a predicate to the Ultimate Reality. In the first case, it is the ineffabilityof a special kind of feeling, and hence comparable to the more mundaneform of ineffability applied to a feeling of love, art experience or appre-ciation of music. In the second case, it is comparable to the ineffabilityof a thing (if the Ultimate Reality can be called a thing), which, for exam-ple, happens to be such a unique thing that our language apparatus cannotdescribe it adequately. It cannot be claimed always that for each uniquething in this world, there exists a proper description in a given language.Thus, from the point of view of a given language, we may reasonablycontend that a particular thing is ineffable in that language. In this way,we can see that the second type of ineffability is also not an entirely un-familiar notion.

When James called mysticism ineffable, he clearly meant the firstkind of ineffability. For he described mystical experience as more like'states of feeling,' i.e., emotive states comparable to love or a lover'sstate of mind. He argued (p. 293): 'One must have been in love one's selfto understand a lover's state of mind.' This is what Stace has describedas 'The Emotion Theory. ' It is, according to Stace, one of the possible ex-planations of the alleged ineffability of the mystical experience. ButStace has found this theory to be inadequate (pp. 281-3).

It is well known that certain emotions in us run too deep for words.Emotions are, in fact, classifiable only under some general names aslove, hate, hope, etc., but a particular emotive feeling with its peculiarshade or intensity may very well be such that words cannot describe itproperly. The situation is comparable to the relation between colourwords and the colour world. Admittedly we have a class of colour predi-cates to which we can also add probably a few more. But each shade (andtone) of a colour that artists produce or nature presents to us cannot al-ways be adequately described in words. A particular emotion likewiseshares the same fate. Probably in this sense Stace has claimed that emo-tions are more 'shadowy and elusive, less sharply outlined, than theconceptual structure of thought when these latter are clear and distinct.'And for this reason, he says, 'words tend to fit them poorly.' But emo-tions in this sense are no more shadowy and elusive than particularshades of colour. Thus, if some emotions are ineffable, so are some pecu-liar shades of colour.

Mysticism and Reality I 7

A mystical experience can be regarded as a special kind of emotivefeeling. For the usual expressions of the mystics are 'ecstasy', 'joy','rapture', 'bliss', etc. Thus it may very well be an emotive feeling. If thisis so then it is not at all difficult to understand that some would be inclinedto call it ineffable. This 'Emotion' Theory can, of course, be criticizedand refuted (and I shall give below the criticism of a very distinguishedIndian thinker, nandavardhana, of the ninth century AD). But I disagreewith the way Stace has attempted to reject it.

Stace has argued that mystical experience is more like perceptionthan emotion, and not only the hyperemotional mystics like St Theresaand Suso but also the calm and serene ones like Eckhart and the Buddhaare reputed to have had mystical experiences. Thus, Stace thinks, theEmotion Theory is wrong because it over-emphasizes the role of emotionin the mystical consciousness and pays no attention to its other aspects.Stace also claims that both Eckhart and the Buddha found mystical con-sciousness ineffable.

But the above argument is wrong. First, it is not clear whether theBuddha himself claimed any mystical experience to be ineffable. So it isnot fair to compare him with Meister Eckhart with regard to the role ofemotion (or the lack of it) in their respective mystical experiences. Inearly Buddhism, nirvana, which Stace claims tobe 'invariably represent-ed as beyond experience,' is usually described as asamkhata (asamskrta)meaning 'unconditioned' or 'uncompounded' and as 'extinction' ofthirst or craving (trsna). It is not also clear whether the early (Thera vdin)Buddhist meant by nirvana anything like an experience that is ineffable.In fact, we have evidence to the contrary. (Such evidence will be citedbelow.)

Second, an experience can be unmoved by 'emotional storm' and stillbe ineffable in principle, if it happens to be a unique kind of experience.It is the uniqueness that accounts for its alleged ineffability, not its emo-tional association (or lack of it). Thus, it is better to settle for a multi-plicity of grounds accounting for the alleged ineffability of mystical ex-periences. In one case it may be due to the emotional overburden, as inthe case of love and art experience or aesthetic pleasure, and in anothercase it maybe due to the uniqueness of the experience itself. Thus, theidea of a common cause accounting for the alleged ineffability of alltypes of mystical experience, an idea which Stace has put forward incriticizing the so-called Emotion Theoryshould be discarded.

The closest notion to mystical states in early Buddhism would be thetalk of mental states developed in what is called bhvan 'meditation'.

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Usually there are two types of meditation mentioned in the Buddhistcanons, samatha (or samdhi) and vipassan (or vipasyana). The firstkind was prevalent in India before the time of the Buddha. The secondkind was what the Buddha was supposed to have discovered. The firstkind leads through extreme mental concentration to the highest mysticalstates such as the mind conforming to the sphere of Infinite Space, thesphere of Nothingness, or the sphere of Neither perception Nor non-per-ception. But all these mystical states, according to the Buddha, are condi-tioned by the mind. They are not 'unconditioned' (a-samskrta), and notTruth. Nirvana is Truth because nirvana is unconditioned. This isdescribed in the Buddha's dialogue with Pukkusati in the Majjhimanikya,Dhtiivibhanga-sutta (No. 140). As the story is interesting, let me relateit briefly:

In a potter's shed the Buddha was staying overnight while he saw another youngrecluse who had arrived there earlier. They were not familiar with each other. Sothe Buddha thought to himself: Pleasant are the ways of this young man. Let meask him about his mission. So the Buddha asked: 'O bhikkhu, in whose namehave you left home? Who is your master? Whose doctrine do you admire?'

'O friend,' answered the young man, 'there is the recluse Gotama, a Skyandescendant, who left the Skya family to become a recluse. He has a high repu-tation as an Arhant, a Fully-enlightened One. In the name ofthat Blessed One Ihave become a recluse. He is my Master. I admire his doctrine.'

'Where does that Blessed One, the Arhant, the Fully-enlightened One live atthe present moment?'

'In the country to the north, friend, there is a city called Savatthi. It is therethat the Blessed One, the Arhant, the Fully-enlightened One, is living now.'

'Have you seen him, that Blessed One? Would you recognize him if you sawhim?'

'I have never seen that Blessed One. Nor should I recognize him if I saw him.'The Buddha realized that the young man had left home in order to become a

monk under him. But without divulging his own identity, he said, 'O bhikkhu, Iwill teach you the doctrine. Listen and pay attention. I will speak.'

'Very well, friend,' the young man answered.Then the Buddha delivered a remarkable discourse, in the quiet night of the

potter's shed, about the Truth:'A man is composed of six elementssolidity, fluidity, heat, motion, space

and consciousness. He analyses them and finds that none of them can be reallysaid 'mine' or 'my self. He sees how consciousness appears and disappears.Therefore, through this knowledge his mind becomes detached. Detachmentgives him a pure spiritual equanimity (upekkh), whieh he directs towards theattainment of any high spiritual (mystical) state. But then he thinks: 'If I focus thispurified and cleansed equanimity on the sphere of Infinite Space and develop a

Mysticism and Reality I 9mind conforming thereto, that will be mind-conditioned (a mental creation). If Ifocus this purified and cleansed equanimity on the sphere of Infinite Conscious-ness . . . or on the sphere of Nothingness . . . or on the sphere of Neither per-ception Nor non-perception, and develop a mind conforming thereto, that willalso be mind-conditioned.' (But nirvana is unconditioned, asamkhata.) Then thatman neither creates anything mentally nor wills continuity and becoming (bhava)and non-becoming (vi-bhava). He does not construct, does not cling to anythingin this world. He is completely calmed, and . . . knows: Finished is birth, lived ispure life, what should be done is done, nothing more is left to be done. At thisstage, when he experiences a pleasant, unpleasant or neutral sensation, he seesit as impermanent, and knows that it does not bind him. He knows that all thosesensations will be pacified with the dissolution of the body, just as the flame ofa lamp goes out when the oil and wick give out.'It is clear from the above discourse that the Buddha regarded all mysticstates developed through the form of meditation called samatha as mind-conditioned. They did not give to the Buddha insight in to the UltimateReality. He practiced them and found that these mystic states were 'merehappy living in this existence' and 'peaceful living, but nothing more'(Rahula, 1959, p. 68).

The Buddha is said to have discovered and preached the second typeof meditation called vipassan, which give Insight into the real nature ofthings leading to the complete liberation of mindto the realization ofthe Ultimate Truth, Nirvana. The system of this meditation is discussedin the Nikyas. The above will be sufficient to show what the Buddhathought about the mystical trances and other mystical states. Since thesestates are said to be mind-conditioned, they cannot be regarded as be-yond linguistic expression or ineffable. For it is conceded in Buddhismthat whatever is mind-conditioned is also expressible in language. Eventhe nirvana consciousness is not clearly stated to be ineffable in earlyBuddhism. It is only claimed to be an insightthe deepest insight into the nature of things. What is, however, claimed to be beyond verbalknowledge or language in Buddhism, particularly in different forms ofMahyna Buddhism, is the so-called Ultimate Reality or Tattva. Weshould now recall that this is then the alleged ineffability of what isrealized or grasped in the mystical experience rather than the experienceitself. And I might add that Stace's explanation and criticism of