Galileo and Meykandar

GALILEO and MEYKANDAR

What Galileo is for the positive sciences, Meykandar is to the Hermeneutic Sciences.

Galileo dared to challenge the Aristotelian physics and introduced the notions of measurements and experimentations to ascertain the physical truths. Thus he threw away the hold of absolute authorities and much to the disapproval and displeasure of the Pope of his time, suffering even imprisonment for his impudence.

However the revolution of Galileo caught on initiating the industrial revolution and so forth and in that also the European ascendance all over the world. Of immediate importance is the developments of various kinds of technologies that changed the very shape of worldly existence itself.

What the philosophies and religions failed, the positive sciences succeeded immensely

Now we find science and technology permeating the whole world transforming all cultures so that overall the quality of material existence has improved considerably,

Now the Tamil Meykandar did something similar in India but to the field of Hermeneutic Sciences where there was a long history of such attempts recorded in Sanskrit, Tamil, Pali and perhaps many other languages.

We see a peculiar feature of Indian religions, almost all of them also developed Logic to justify their metaphysics and with that sought to establish their religion on firm rational foundations, a feature we do not see in the Western philosophies.

As already noted, in this attempt while the Tamils developed EraNam as in Tolkaappiyam, the rest of India developed the Naiyayika where there were PramaNas as the logical measures of Truths. While the ancient Pasupatas developed this Naiyayika, the Buddhist, Jains, Vedanties and so forth adapted this to suit their their own philosophies, where they differed in the number of pramaNas they acknowledged.

There were no consensus among these philosophers and hence no common agreement at all. In fact unlike experimentation and measurements in the positive sciences there were no means of establishing the valid pramaNas. These philosophies or religions were simply belief systems where the LOGIC was simply a way of rationaiising such beliefs. The ancient maxim of Surruppak, the Sumerian text and later that of Tolkaapiyam describe that logical investigations are for encountering TRUTHS, the Mey NeRitttu, never took roots in India among these logicians.

It is here that Meykandar comes and rejecting the Naiyayika type of Logic with its finite set of PramaNas that would measure out truths, rediscovered the EraNam of Tolkappiyam and wrote his Cinajnaana Botham, initiating fundamental metaphysical sciences such as Fundamental Ontology, Theology, Psychology and so forth but all as Hermeneutic Sciences, sciences concerned with genuine Truth Experiences and nothing else.

But how was this possible for Meykandar and not for any of the so many brilliant philosophers in India?

The Hermeneutic Logic, the EraNam was already implicit as part of Tamil culture from Sumerian times itself. It cannot be an accident that even during the period of the Third Academy there were maxims of great universal relevance such as :

" Yatum Uree YavaruG KeeLIr" : the whole world is my city and all are my kinsmen, a kind of linguistic articulation that one never comes across in the whole range Sanskrit literature that remained infected with the highly discriminatory and inhuman VarNasrama Dharma,

Now the question arises: If Galileo's revolution caught on and now has spread across the whole world, why is that nothing comparable is noted in connection with Meykandar where now he remains quite unknown even among the Tamils?

Loganathan Krishnan @ Ullaganar (22-8-09)