Science and Mathematical Formulas are Agamic Semiotic Science - Part 2

Talk by Dr Sivakumar, University Science Malaysia, Penang

Science and Mathematical Formulas are Agamic Semiotic Science - Part 1

Talk by Dr Sivakumar, University Science Malaysia, Penang

The TRUTH of Tamilar Marabu as Tamilar Agamic Science Part 2

Talk by Dr Sivakumar

The TRUTH of Tamilar Marabu as Tamilar Agamic Science Part 1

Talk by Dr Sivakumar.

PHILOSOPHY AS METAPHYSICS AND METAPHYSICS AS HERMENEUTIC SCIENCE

PHILOSOPHY AS METAPHYSICS AND METAPHYSICS AS HERMENEUTIC SCIENCE 

It will not be an exaggeration to say that Meykandar’s Civajnaana BOtam, a philosophic classic that emerged as the critique of the different idealistic and positivistic schools of thought of the Buddhists and Vedanties, is the most profound philosophic treatise that has emerged not only in the Indian soil but also possibly in the whole world. 

It is genuinely a Metaphysica Universalis, a philosophical statement of the most primordial in man and because of that the most universal. It delineates and articulates what constitutes the existence of every man, no matter to what culture, religion and nation he belongs to. It is not an argument for Vedism, Buddhism, Agamism or any other cultural tradition of a narrow kind. It is not a romantic going back to a previous, presumably a glorious past and treating that as authoritative and justifying those beliefs presumed to be it’s essence. On the contrary it is a courageous venturing into the most fundamental in all men, an exercise in expounding what makes human existence what it is in fact. It expounds TRUTHS that all thinking men could agree upon provided they dare to tear themselves away from the cultural, cultic, religious and philosophic prejudices that condition even their philosophic quests. For anyone INCAPABLE of raising themselves to this level of universality, of reasoning without FEAR solely in the pursuit of TRUTH, this text will remain a closed book, forever incomprehensible as Meykandar himself asserts in the preface. 

The universality of aim is combined in this text with a rationality of approach. What we have in this text is metaphysics transformed into the most universal, the most comprehensive Hermeneutic Science, i.e a science proper suited to inquire in a thoroughly rational manner the hidden and the mysterious surrounding even the ordinary human behaviour. The introduction of this magnificent philosophic classic which is simultaneously the most rigorous text in Hermeneutic Science is timely in the present world context where hermeneutics is emerging again as a methodology most suited to the study of human behaviour. 

The vast, monolithic and towering citadels of the positive sciences are crumbling down slowly but surely under the attack of some brilliant hermeneutic philosophers - Dilthey, Husserl, Heidegger, Gadamer, Ricouer, Derrida - just to name a few. Despite many counter attacks to arrest this rebellion, new concepts of science along with their own methodologies are bursting through the limited and restrictive horizons of the positive sciences and making impressive inroads into the realms of the respectable in academic life. Many practical researchers in the social sciences, unlike the philosophers, are trying to formulate in less airy veins, the rational structure of these sciences to varying degrees of success. Deetz (1973), Gauld & Shotter (1977), Parker (1985) and many others have attempted to work out the guiding rational principles of what have begun to be called Hermeneutic Sciences or Interpretive Social Sciences. More recently Silverman (1993) and many others see this debate as between qualitative and quantitative methodologies, argue in favour of qualitative, interpretive studies of data and work out guidelines to ensure rationality. In the vein of Ricouer and many other hermeneutic philosophers, Deetz for example, argues that hermeneutic sciences are concerned with understanding a phenomena, where to understand is to literally stand-under and to do so is to explicate a particular behaviour’s implicative structure of possibilities (Deetz, 1973, p. 155, italics mine). Something similar can be found in the philosophic rumblings of many other hermeneuts as well. 

While those wedded to the positive sciences, adhere to the received models of scientific research, which have been astonishingly successful in the realms of the physical, continue with their conjectures and refutations (Popper,1963 ), there are now a variety of hermeneuts on the scene who have worked out methodologies distinct from the conjectural and constructinistic models where hypothesis testing reigns supreme. We have the ethnomethodology (Garfinkel, 1967), Conversation Analysis (Scheggloff & Sacks, 1973 etc), Discourse Analysis (Coulthard & Montgomery, 1981; Hoey 1983 etc), Hermeneutic Analysis of Discourse (K. Loganathan Mutharayan, 1993) and so forth. 

It is here that Tamil philosophic tradition from which emerged Civajnaana BOtam can meet the above new developments in the West. It appears that right from ancient times the Tamil folks were essentially hermeneuts and all their great achievements - Tolkappiyam, Tirukkural, Tirumantiram and many others that have withstood the test of time - were essentially treatizes with hermeneutics as their own methodology, the principles of which were already clearly formulated in Marapiyal, an independent text but which has come down to us as an appendix to Tolkappiyam, dated around the 3rd century B.C. 

But recent researches in Sumero-Tamil indicates that the hermeneutic orientation of the Tamil folks were very ancient and also something that took firm roots in their mind very early indeed. 

Just to cite an example, we have the following lines from `Enmerkar and the Lord of Arratta,’ a Sumerian text belonging to the third millennium B.C. (Cohen, 1973). 

503. en-kul-aba ki-a-ke im-e su bi-in-ra inim dub-gin bi-in-gub
(The lord of Kulaba patted clay and wrote the mesage like on a present-day tablet )

504. u-bi-ta inim im-ma gub-bu nu-ub-ta-gal-la
(Formerly, the writing of messages on clay was not established-)

505. i-ne-se utu u-de-a ur he-en-na-nam-ma-am
(Now, with Utu’s bringing forth the day, verify this was so) 


Anyone familiar with classical Tamil will recognize the Tamil character of these Sumerian lines. Such words as `innanam’, `aam’, `utu’ `utiyam’ and so forth are still in use. But what is pertinent is the poet’s assertion in 505 which should in fact be translated as: 

Now, with inner sun bringing forth illuminations, verily this was so. 

The poet seeks to understand the origins of the birth of a new competence, a new kind of behaviour - the ability of man to write down speech, an ability that never existed before. There is an emergence of a new talent, a new technical competency. How has this competency come to prevail as a fact in the world? He raises this questions and answers it himself: 

because the inner sun has arisen within, destroying the ignorance with which human understanding was surrounded; and because of the clarity thus attained, new ways of SEEING that has become possible, a new human competency has become a historical reality - a reality that never was but now is. 

Such an understanding of human behaviour in Sumerian times itself appears to have been extended to the whole of Reality for the enormously philosophical `Exaltations of Inanna’ of Ehudu anna, (Hallo & Van Dijk, 1963) a woman head priestess of a Temple, an exordium composed towards the close of the 3rd millennium B.C. begins with these arresting lines: 

1. Nin me sar-ra u dalla-e-a
(Lady of all the me’s resplendent light)

2. mi-zi me-lam gur-ru ki-aga an-uras-a
(Righteous woman clothed in radiance beloved of Heaven and Earth) 

The word `me’ (Ta. mey,moy) that remains untranslated may be equated with competencies, abilities or powers (Ta. Sakti). The Godhead described here as Mother is said to be clothed in radiance, resplendent light AND the POWER of all earthly powers or competencies. The whole world is now understood, like the competency to write,as a GIFT of that POWER that illumines, that lights up and brings forth not only ordinary human competencies but whatever in the world. 

Tamil anthropology, a scientific research into origins of the whole range of human behaviour, taking language as a clue to reach the inner essences constitutes the central achievement of Tolkappiyam, itself an accumulation of researches into human behaviour possibly reaching the Sumero-Tamil past. And when after examining the whole range of human behaviour of the Tamil world known to him and ventures to say something general, in the vein of anthoropological universals, one of the most fascinating and historically most influential is the following occurring as a Sutra in KaLaviyal: 

onRee veeRee enru iru paalvayin
onRi uyarnta paalatu aaNaiyin
otta kizavanum kizattiyum kaaNba
mikkoon aayinum kadivarai inRee 

:Among people who exist socially, as associated or dissociated,On account of the decree of the Brilliant,that remains ever one-with all, a man and woman suited to each other will meet and in this if the man excels somehow there will be no obstacles (to their union) 

Here too, the mystery surrounding love behaviour that leads to marriage and hence the institution of family is inquired into and an understanding is reached, again relating it to the BRILLIANT LIGHT that seems to regulate even the social world. We can cite more but sufficient has been said just to show that hermeneutic sciences were the kind of sciences that the Dravidian folks developed and excelled in and hence the relevance of their researches to the modern world that is becoming increasingly more hermeneutic. 

But there is another distinctiveness of the Tamil  Hermeneutic Sciences which may account for the emergence of Civajnaana Bootam in the Tamil mind that had kept alive this ancient hermeneutic spirit in their higher culture. 

Attempts to found the hermeneutic sciences and explicate their rational foundations such as that of Deetz et al, appear to be inadequate in an important way. They appear to have failed to accomodate in their reflections the enormous importance of Temporal Analytics, the immense relevance of the notion of TIME, of TEMPORALITY in hermeneutic investigations and how it is related to Ontology, an investigation into the meaning of Being that Heidegger has articulated in his Being & Time and later writings and thereby brought back the whole of Western Philosophy to existential analytics from which it has strayed from the times of Plato and Aristotle. What we have in Meykandar’s Civajnaana Bootam, is this Temporal analytics of understanding, and answering the question of meaning of Being with taking Temporality as KuRippu Kaalam and Physical Time as Vinainilai Kaalam, all on the basis of analysis of the syntactic structure of language both in speech and written discourse (Vazakku and CeyyuL). Tirumuular (7th century A.D.) goes further and articulates for the first time that human understanding is cat-acat i.e. something Temporal AND Atemporal and hence man is unique in that in his understanding he comprehends both the temporical and atemporical, the historical and ahistorical, the worldly and the heavenly and so forth. 

The hermeneutics that had such ancient origins but which comes to be articulated as such for the first time in Marapiyal of Tolkaappiyam, we shall term Pedagogic Hermeneutics for reasons that will become clear later. What we want to mention here is that Civajnaana BOtam has not only Pedagogic Hermeneutics as its methodological foundations but also that it is the most rigorous text with a LOGIC consistent with this methodology. And therefore it is NOT simply a philosophical text in which a man erects a vast conceptual system purely by efforts of his imagination but rather a hermeneutic scientific TEXT that articulates TRUTHS and nothing else but TRUTHS. It does not simply present a picture, a model, a magnificent magical castle of words but rather explicates with scientific astuteness what existence is. It demands by this merit assent and compliance and not mere indulgence by anyone who reads it. It seeks to light up, illumine any man in search of answers for the most basic questions in life taking Temporality as its clue to answering them. And unlike the works of Heidegger, it does not remain unfinished. It not only raises the fundamental questions but also answers them adequately indicating thereby how one OUGHT to live, what authentic existence is - the primordial question of all Metaphysics. 

Thirumular, Meykandar, Arunandi and many others belonging to the philosophic tradition of Saiva Siddhanta, have to combat not only the positivism of the brilliant Buddhist logicians such as Dignaga, Dharmakirti and so forth but also the idealism of Gaudapada, Sankara and numerous other Vedantic philosophers who reinterpreted the Upanisadicmmahavakiyas along monistic and idealistic lines thereby generating a suspicion and distrust for the worldly. The situation is not unlike that in the West now that has occassioned the emergence of Hermeneutics as a force to counter the excessive claims of idealism, positivism, neopositivism and so forth. The project of Unified Science (Russel, Whitehead, Carnap etc), an attempt to include within the language of the physical sciences also the psychological and social is essentially reductionistic. It is man’s ego at its most arrogant excess trying to comprehend the whole of nature, including the psychical within constructs emerging from his own mind, tested of course for its descriptive validity and objectivity in the realms of the physical. The attempt to reduce the whole of existence into something explicable in terms of a set of universal laws, in the vein of Euclidean geometry, an impulse that has characterised the West from the times of Greeks, becomes the monstrous ambition of the neopositivists and which along with its birth also has necessitated the birth of Hermeneutics as a science in which a man does not impose his own conceptual constructions but rather lets things speak for themselves, allows them to disclose themselves as to what they are from within themselves, as Heidegger has put it. In such an attitude towards philosophical activity - remaining OPEN to receive whatever disclosures, illuminations comes to be available and understanding existence through such disclosures - Heidegger not only meets the Taoism of Lao Tzu but also the Metaphysica Universalis of Meykandar. There is a breathtaking convergence of thought among these philosphical giants, with Meykandar however going somewhat deeper than others with a penetration and rigour peculiarly his own, as the TEXT made available in English now would amply testify it. 

This attempt is also quite distinct from a recent attempt of Otto Apel (1972, 1980) to comprehend both the positive and hermeneutic sciences within a philosophic framework that he calls Cognitive-Anthropology. For here too the Temporal Analytics that unifies Heidegger and Meykandar appears to be absent. Another peculiarity of Meykandar must also be mentioned here. What he takes for hermeneutic analysis to unravel the fundamental metaphysical questions is what he calls `cuddaRivu’ or `cuddu uNarvu’, understanding that is finite, temporical-spatial, always with an Other, directed always towards something that stands as an Other and hence always the-tic. Though he does not, like Heidegger raise the question of the meaning of Being directly, nevertheless in taking `finite understanding’ as that which ought to be interrogated, he is already analysing what Heidegger calls Dasein, Being-in-the-world of man. But Meykandar’s direction of enquiry takes a route quite different from that of Heidegger and because of which he appears to succeed in areas where Heidegger still appears cloudy, uncertain, ambiguous and supremely indecisive particularly in Fundamental Ontology. 

While for Heidegger it appears that understanding is projective and there is SEEING only because there is projection and interpretation, for Meykandar there is SEEING only because there is SHOWING. Man sees only because something is SHOWN and he is not only equipped to see in the most general sense but also LED TO SEE. This view of seeing because of some showing by forces that remain for the most part concealed, and the pedagogical nature of this showing makes the hermeneutics of Meykandar, Pedagogic Hermeneutics as we have already mentioned earlier. The World and the various processes are there for pedagogical purposes, to inform the creatures, to instruct them ,to illumine them and thereby destroy the ignorance in which they are already in. Now if understanding is finite - temporal, historical, thetic, particularistic etc - it is so only because the seeing of man is delimited. And this inherent finititude of understanding cannot be overcome unless the circumscribed nature of the seeing itself is overcome. And to overcome that and SEE in the most comprehensive manner, without an Other and hence non-interpretively is the possibility that provides the FOR-WHICH existence is, the MOKSA that the Indian philosophies have laboured for so long. Each way of SEEING and hence understanding the world precipitates a philosophical system for which reason it is termed a `darsana’ - a seeing. Understanding proceeds by gaining visions after visions and when we look at the movement of these darsanas, we can note a hidden and a deeper undercurrent underlying it. Only when the deepest of these undercurrents agitating the human mind making it produce philosophies, religions and cultures are unearthed that we really understand man, his existence. Such an understanding is what is furnished by Meykandar and for which reason his philosophy is termed Siddhanta - the end point in philosophical inquiry, the attainment of Metaphysica Universalis, the limiting point of all philosophical enterprises. It is not a darsana among darsanas, a religion among religions, a cult among cults but rather something that penetrates to the deepest undercurrents that fashions all these mental products and thereby make them intelligible. In terms of this Siddhanta we do not repudiate merely by criticizing other philosophies - we LEARN to see where such a philosophy belongs to in the world of philosophies and hence SEE them for what they in fact are. It is philosophy of philosophies that speaks from the point of `camaya-atiitam’, a point of transcendence of all religions and philosophies and hence Metaphysica Universalis in the true sense of the word. 

In view of the enormous importance of these notions for understanding this text, we provide below a more detailed account of its essences, delineating simultaneously the LOGIC that constitutes its rationality with references to the Western philosophers where relevant. 

ULLAGANAR


( above is the introduction of the magnificient text 'Civajnaana Botam' by Meykandar , beautifully translated into English by Ullaganar.)