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Presidential Address
thought, of course, without essentially changing them. Let me illustrate my meaning by a few examples.
Amongst the Brāhmaṇa Darśanas it is a subject of serious discussion between the Naiyāyikas and the Mimāņsakas whether the Veda has an author. The former hold that it has an author, and that a Divine Author. The latter deny the existence of God and maintain that the Veda is eternal. The Vedāntins intercede between these warring schools and effect a compromise by holding that the Veda has no author, that it has been eternally existing, only it is recited by God at the beginning of every cycle of creation. Apparently, the whole controversy is foolish. But it becomes quite a different proposition if you go deeper and perceive that the 'Veda' means knowledge or thought, so that the question at issue is: Is truth made by God? or is it eternal ? or is it simply revealed by God? To recall the question discussed by the English Platonists of the seventeenth century, are mathemetical or necessary truths—such as two and two make four-willed by God or are they independent of His Will? In other words, do two and two make four because such is God's will or is it a truth which God has simply to record ?-a problem which sounds curious but not at all absurd, and yet it is essentially the same as that discussed by Indian schoolmen. Be it noted that the meaning of "Veda" as here given, viz, the thought or idea appears to be the only natural and possible meaning of the word when we remember that it has been elsewhere rightly described as stuff from which God has made this world (" ut avotsfaci grata faha"). This inter
