102. What Preceded Our Current Bodies of Knowledge?
- 3 days ago
- 3 min read
Updated: 3 days ago
The modern human’s bodies of knowledge as recorded(!) in history, perhaps starts 3500-4000 years ago with languages, politics and philosophy leading at that time. Some rudimentary form of health care was also there. The rest of the indicators of knowledge are roughly associated to the pre-historic discoveries – but not as an organized form of new knowledge but as indicators of some form of ancient civilization or , interestingly as some form of ancient histories/fables(!).
Philosophy was followed by Maths, Psychology, Biology, new age science leading to medical breakthroughs, engineering, technology and IT.
What we are forgetting is that many ancient scriptures (the bible, the Vedas and other religious texts) point to – super flooding events and other major cataclysmic events. Massive earthquakes and earth-shattering meteorites’ hits might have happened. With no written records, or new cost-effective scientific capabilities and with exception to some geological/palaeontological efforts, we are not in a position to predict ancient past of this earth and this cosmos.
There are scriptures that talk about not one but several biblical-scale flooding events. The Vedas go to the extent of declaring these floodings as pralayas and further go on to describe that there at least 3 types of them – Aavantara Pralaya, Maha Pralaya and Kaamika Pralaya (where is love is dead).
These biblical scale flooding events wiped out not just humanity – but entire life on earth! Hence there has been, perhaps, regenerations several times in the past for which we do not hold any records!
These massive forces of nature might have redrawn the landscape as many times as there had been floodings, earthquakes and meteor hits! Without knowing what got buried/destroyed, we cannot arrive to quick conclusions based on superficial analysis of the earths crusts in some parts of the world!
So, to get any clue about the past, we have to go to our sources of knowledge that perhaps preceded the recorded 3500-4000 years of history and the corresponding development of various bodies of knowledge.
There are no contemporary sources (I am sure there may be many that I am not aware do to my limited exposure) that I know of except for the Vedas, the Upanishads and the Puranas. Several great saints like Adi Shankara have written about these sources of knowledge commonly known as Maha Bashyas around the first millennium.
In nutshell,
The Vedas – are in classic and ancient poetic form
The Upanishads - - are more like delving deep into the philosophical essence of Vedas and
The Puranas – are records of the ancient history and may also contain stories that touch upon the philosophical essences of the Vedas/Upanishads. (There are at least 18 of them mentioned in the Sanatana Dharma or Hinduism).
Please refer to the first link in references that blogs about different pre-historic system of knowledges. It is surprising to know that the aim of these systems of knowledge is to discover the nature of this world and cosmos (more like the explorations of science)!! Some of them are based on Vedic texts (Aastika) and some are not (Nastika). One of the first areas to ger explored is the human consciousness/mind-body complex. And some other explores the process of knowledge and the understanding of reality and Prakruti! If we explore a bit more, we receive a pleasant shock to know about the efforts made to understand the nature of Prakruthi as applicable to the human consciousness consciousness (which itself is a subject of study). This is definitely some very advanced bodies of knowledge proceeding the time of the ancient Greek philosophers.
The Vaisesika philosophy (said to be advocated by Sage Kanada in prehistoric setting), for example talks about the following 24 basic gunas (or attributes) of the world:
1. Rupa – Colour
2. Rasa – Taste
3. Gandha – Smell
4. Sparsha – Touch
5. Sabdha – Sound
(The 5 above corresponds to our Gnanendriyas or sense organs (eye, tongue, )
6. Sankhya – Number
7. Parimana- Magnitude
8. Prthaktva – Distinctness
9. Samyoga – Conjunction
10. Vibhaga – Disjunction
11. Paratva – Remoteness
12. Aparatva – Nearness
13. Buddhi – Cognition
14. Sukha – Pleasure
15. Dukha – Pain
16. Iccha – Desire
17. Dvesha – Aversion
18. Prayatna – Effort
19. Gurutva – Heaviness
20. Dravatva- Fluidity
21. Sneha – Viscidity
22. Samskara – Tendency
23. Dharma – Merit or righteousness or virtue
24. Adharma – Demerit or vice
These early psyche explorers – or psychonauts (like astronauts), explored more and came up with the concepts around Panchakoshanas, Panchabhootas etc besides identifying the knowledge acquiring mechanisms like perception (Pratyaksa), inference (Anumana), comparison (Upamana) and testimony (Shabda). Most of the meta-physical concepts identified is also seen in the Lalitha Sahasranama Stotram - found in one of the 18 puranas called – Branhmanda Purana!
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