15 Apr 2023
In his introduction to The Nyaya Sutras of Gotama (1913), Satisa Chandra Vidyabhusana discusses the etymological meaning of Naya sutra, its authorship, and its strained reception in the vedic tradition of scriptural authority. He finds that Panini, famous Sanskrit grammarian from 350 BC, explained the term “Nyaya” as a derivative of the root “i” meaning “gam” or “to go.” In this sense, Vidyabhusana points, “‘Nyaya’ as signifying logic is etymologically identitcal with ‘nigama’ the conclusion of a syllogism” (I). He finds that Panini, famous Sanskrit grammarian from 350 BC, explained the term “Nyaya” as a derivative of the root “i” meaning “gam” or “to go.” In this sense, Vidyabhusana points, “‘Nyaya’ as signifying logic is etymologically identitcal with ‘nigama’ the conclusion of a syllogism” (i). Bhivusana pointa that, though Naya is the earliest work in Nyaya philosophy, the concept of logic has been referred to Sanskrit tradition by the terms like
- Hetu-vidya or Hetu-Sastra–the scince of causes
- Anviksiki–the scicne of inquiry
- Pramana-Sastra–teh science of corrent knowledge
- Tatta-Sastra–the science of categories
- Takra-vidya–the science of reasoning
- Vadartha–the science of discussion
- Phakkika-Sastra–the science of sophism (i)
Vidyabhusana writes that the Gautama or Gotama Aksapada or Dirggatapas was credited as the teh founding sage of Nyaya or logic. Aksapada and Dirghatapas refer to Gotama’s “meditative habit and practice of long penance” (ii).
By looking at the numerous mentions of sage Gotama or Gautama in Vedic samhitas to the Upanishads, to Puranast to Epics, and to historical records in Mithila, Vidyabhusana conjectures that Gotama, “the founder of Nyaya Philosophy, lived about the year 550 B.C.” (ix).
Vidhyabhusana also points that when Gotama came up with “a rational system of philosophy called ‘Nyaya’,” initially it had no connection to the “topics of the Vedic Samhitas and Barhmana” (xii). It means Nyaya began as a pure logic devoid of any scriptural beliefs and it was based on what Gotama galled four means of valid knowledge:
- perception
- inference
- comparision
- word of which the last signinfied knowledge derived through any reliable assertion (xii)
But Nyaya’s call for rational inquiry received a strong resistance from the community of “orthodox Brahmanas” like Jaimini, Manu, Valimiki, and Vyasa among others.
- Sage Jaimini who propounded Mimiamsa-Sutra emphasized on the prescriptive rituals and ignored the other parts of Veda.
- Manu, in Mansmiriti, enjoined that the twiceborn members of the coummiunity be excommunicated if they ignore Veda and Dharma-satras and rely upon Hetu-Shastra or Logic.
- Valmiki, in his Ramayana, considered Avnisiki or the science of lgoic as perverse frivorlty and diregarded the people who pursue it at the cost of edicts of Dharma-sastra.
- Vyasa, in Mahabharata’s Santiparva, tells the story of a Brahman who, being additcted to Tarkavidya or logic and detached from faith in Veda, got punished to be reborn as a jackle. Vyasa warned the followers of Vedanta philsophy not to share their doctrines with the followers of Naiyayika or Logic. Vidyabhusana found that Vyasa does not even “review the Nyaya system in the Brahman-sutra seeing that it has not been recoginsed by any worthy sage” (xii).
Suuch stories of pubishment of the puruser of loigc are numerous in scriptures. For instance, in Naisadha-carita, Kali chastizes Gotama the founder of Nyaya “the ‘most bovine’ among the sages” (xii).
Consequently, instead of entirley relying on the rational frame, Nyaya started incoporating the element of trust on the authority of Vdeas (Vidhyabhusana xiv). Later on, it got included in other philosophical systemts like Vaisesika, Yoga, Mimamsa, and Samkhya (xiv). Thus, Nyaya was accepted as a branch of knowledge.
Reference:
Gotama, Aksapada. The Nyaya Sutras of Gotama. Translated by Satisa Chandra Vidyabhusana, Allahabad: The Panini Panini Ofice, 1913.
14 Apr 2023
South Asians celebrate B. R. Ambedkar’s birthday, April 14, as equity day to pay tribute to his unmatched contribution to uplift and inspire the dalits in India and beyond. On this occasion, I want to look into an instance of transnational understanding and solidarity Ambedkar and Du Bois tried to forge between the USA and South Asia to fight race and caste discrimiation. In 1946, Ambedkar wrote a letter to W. E.B. Du Bois poiting out similarity between the US Racism and Indian casteism.
There is so much similarity between the positions of the Untouchables in India and the Negroes in America that the study of the latter is not only natural but necessary.
Ambedkar seems to carry on the legacy of Jyotirao Phule who didicated his 1873 book Gulamgiri aka Slavery to the good American people who took ground for the liberty of the enslaved blacks. Phule urged his fellow dalit people in India to draw an inspiration from the American to fight the oppressions of Brahminism. Amebdkar also wanted to follow or adapt the strategeis for justice used by Du Bois for the cause of blacks in the USA for the dalits in India.
At that time, Negros of America had filed a petition to UNO and Ambedkar was consering similar move on behalf of the dalits of India. He wrote:
I was very much interested to read that the Negroes of America have filed a petition to the U. N. O. The Untouchables of India are also thinking of follwing suit. Will you be so good to secure for me two or three copies of this representation by the Negroes and sed them to my address. I need hardly say hwo very greatful I shall be for your toubles in this behalf.
On July 31, 1946, Du Bois replied to Ambedkar’s letter. Du Bois wrote that he was enclosing the statement made by the National Negro Congress with the letter. He added that a much more comprehensive pttiton “will be laid to the United Nations by teh National Association for the Advancement of Colored Poeple.” He promiesed to send a copy of the peition once it was placed. Du bois futher wrote:
I have often heard of your name and work and of course have every sympathy with the Untouchables of India. I shall be glad to be of any service I can render if possible in future.
07 Apr 2023
Warner opens his introduction to his 2002 book Publics and Counterpublics by referring to publics as “queer creatures” who have become unavoidable in the “social landscape” as if they are “pavement” (7). In our increasingly “media-saturated forms of life” the texts and artifacts are, in one way or the other, “intrinsically oriented to publics,” and people’s “attention is everywhere solicited by artifacts that say, before anything else, Hello, public!” (7). Though individuals do not recognize all the members of a society, they forge a sense of relationship and participation to “addressable social entities” based on common sense or imagination. Therefore, as Warner puts, Publics are “a kind of [practical] fiction, that has taken on life, and very potent life at that.” Warner’s notion of public as imaginary construct is in line with what Benedict Anderson’s says of nation as “imagined communities.” The idea of public and counterpublic is fundamental to understand the nature of rhetorical circulation in our media and social media saturated digital town squares.
19 Aug 2018
I remember the day when I was just 10 and was in the nearby pasture with my friends, mostly from Tamang family, herding our cows. Niraj, one of my friends, shouted with joy as if he spotted a hidden treasure behind a bush. It was the serendipitous gems of creamy white puffy balls of countless mushroom studded on the green ground. He started plucking them up and filling the fold of his t-shirt end. I followed him and filled mine with those soft balls. Elated, I was anticipating a fresh delicious mushroom dish for the dinner. On the way home with my cows, one of my neighboring aunts inquired about the big bulging end of my shirt. With a sense of pride, I showed her the content and expected a compliment. Her frown and remark—“How dare you bring mushroom being a kid of Brahmin?” made me crestfallen.
Her words injected a shearing sense of guilt and raised a big question mark on my Brahmanness. For immediate course correction from my imminent ‘fall,’ I freed the tightly held end of my shirt. All the mushroom balls hit the ground. Erstwhile treasure of delicacy became the most abominable thing that almost adulterated my sense of self.
Food and power
Back in those days, when there was no mushroom farming and reliable way of testing the toxicity of mushroom, perhaps the safest way for Brahmins was complete abstinence from this impure food. But this logic is an alibi not to acknowledge Brahman’s ignorance and the other ethnic people’s ability to exploit the nutritional value of mushroom. The discourse of the eater and non-eater and corresponding sense of self suggests the power dynamics of the society. With changes in technology, organized farming, scientific identification of nutritional benefits and gradual democratization of social values, earlier non-eaters also became the producers as well as consumers of mushroom to a great extent.
The same aunt offered me a hot bowl of mushroom soup when I visited her last winter. In course of time, the ‘field of meaning,’ to use Welsh cultural materialist Raymond Williams’ phrase, of mushroom has changed from the cuisine of curse for Brahmins to the potent source of protein.
A food item’s value primarily lies in its edibility and physiological utility. Williams, in his 1981 book The Sociology of Culture, enunciates that food lies at the lowest rung of signifying hierarchy. However, the food items we consume, as New Historicists assume, are very potent cultural symbols with multilayered cultural valences. Politico-ideological signifying practices surround the food items and these valences are spatially and temporally situated. That mushroom episode of my childhood day is a testimony to how a food item is associated with the sense of self and politics in a society. Thus food stuff, apparently a biological need, acquires a tremendous cultural signifying baggage based on who consumes or avoids it, for what reason, where and how it is consumed.
Another item shunned as kuanna or bad cereal is millet, kodo. Allegedly upper caste people carefully avoid it during the festivals and rituals. Though they eat millet pancake and dhindo and appreciate its nutritional value, its exclusion from their sacred ritual, festivals and communal feast continues. But the ethnic communities of Gurung, Magar, Rai, and Limbu use millet as an important comestible in their rituals. However, people prefer to grow millet as a cash crop or to exchange it with rice. Compared to rice, neither its plantation nor its harvest gets much fanfare. More often than not, its fermentation to make local alcohol has rendered its status as tamasik food, a matter of abjection, though some celebrate the same. Therefore the eater of the millet, usually a member of certain ethnic community, is often derogatively called kode implying that the eater necessarily imbibes its abominable tamasik qualities. Thus the pejoration attached with millet is used as an effective tool of social hierarchy marker. Even in literary imagination millet has rarely got space in comparison to its overrated cousin rice, which even graces the coat of arms of the New Nepal.
As people are more aware of its rich nutrients, millet and its powder are now available in the superstores of metropolises at home and abroad.
Infamy of rice
Unlike the mushroom and millet which show a movement from pejoration toward amelioration, rice, being a staple food of Nepali, entertains prestigious position in our community to the same degree the wheat has received privilege in Eucharistic societies. From its plantation to the harvest, various rituals accompany it. Rice grain is always a symbol of fruitfulness and prosperity.
Karnali region’s poverty is by and large associated with the low production of rice, whereas prosperity of Tarai has to do with high yield of rice. Nepal’s Hill-to-Tarai migration was triggered by the abundance of rice yielding fields. Of course, there is hierarchy within the types of rice. Consumption of certain type entails certain class status: Basmati, Anadi, Masinao hold high class status whereas Mota holds the lower class irrespective of the nutritional value. Though the agrarian blessing ‘timro mukhama bubu-mam’ (literally, ‘milk and rice in your mouth’) has gradually lost its edge with urbanization and modernity, one humble genus of OryzaSativa has left behind all other food stuffs of Nepali culinary culture: the now-notorious Jumli Marshi. Its fateful presence in the dish of delicacy savored by Prime Minister K P Oli and Pushpa Kamal Dahal at business tycoon Durga Prasai’s place marks this alpine cereal’s radical spatial shift from Himalayan plateau down to the dining table of metropolis.
Now it has acquired ironic political baggage of meaning and has now become a part of folklore repertoire. The spatial shift of consumption of Jumli Marshi and its nexus, maybe inadvertent, with profiteering Medical Education and Dr Govinda KC’s fifteenth hunger strike to reform medical sector metamorphosed it into a sinister symbol of corruption and corny capitalism. The nutritional potency of alpine red rice in a way diluted the redness of the top brass of Nepal Communist Party. Thus mired in Marshi they are likely to have tough time to brush up their image.
“Culture begins and ends on a plate,” writes G Murphy Donovan, a former USAF Intelligence officer and Vietnam veteran. The field of meaning of the plate and its content keep changing acquiring different cultural and political meaning. Mushroom, millet and Marshi testify this inexorable process of transformation that goes well beyond the gastronomical etiquette and acquires quality of multilayered metaphors.
Note: This artilce was was originally published in My Republica on August 19, 2018. https://myrepublica.nagariknetwork.com/news/socio-economy-of-food