________________
94 / Jijñāsā
14. Västu-Tantra or Puruşa-Tantra? Rereading Sankara on Knowledge
Daniel Raveh
I met Prof. Govind Chandra Pande (hencedforth GCP) only once, when I was introduced to him briefly at a seminar on Indian and Chinese perspectives of knowledge. Nevertheless I frequently communicate with him through his writings. Whenever a question arises in my mind regarding Sankara, Buddhist thought or other issues in Indian philosophy, religion and culture, I open one of his numerous books and articles to benefit from his wide-ranged scholarship. Nowadays, when thinkers develop specialty in ultra-specific fields, sarva-jäänis such as, GCP, Prof. D.P. Chattopadhyaya and the greatly missed Prof. Daya Krishna have become a rare species. Their panoramic interdisciplinary all-embracing outlook creates depth of a different kind. They engage a philosophical problem vis-a-vis numerous related problems. An extra dimension is always illuminated through their broad scope. I am extremely honored to submit this short paper as a tribute to GCP.
In the following lines I would like to rethink Sankara's notion of knowledge focusing on the tension between västu-tantra and purușa-tantra, 'objectivrity' and 'subjectivity' in his thought. I will offer a close reading of several passages from the Brahmasūtra-bhāṣya, followed by a concise reassessment of the role and place of knowledge, epistemology and in effect philosophy in the Advaitin's teaching. I will argue that Sankara's loyalty toward and interest in philosophy is as powerful as his concern with mokṣa. I will take issue with GCP and suggest that in Sankara's case it is not 'reason' bounded by 'faith', as he puts it, but an independent epistemological agenda negotiating with soteriological considerations and experiential measures.
In Brahmasutra-bhāṣya (1.1.4) Śankara writes: But, it will be said here, knowledge itself is an activity of the mind. By no means, we reply; since the two are of different nature. An action is that which is enjoined as being independent of the nature of existing things and dependent of the energy of some person's mind... Meditation and reflection are indeed mental, but as they depend on the person they may either be performed or not be performed or modified, Knowledge on the other hand, is the result of the different means of (right) knowledge, and those have for their object existing things; knowledge can therefore, not be either made or not made or modified, but depends entirely on existing things, and not either on vedic statements or on the mind of man. Although mental it thus widely differs from meditation and the like.?
Sankara distinguishes between knowledge (jñāna) and meditation (dhyana), between knowledge and mental activity (cintana). For him, meditation as a specific case of mental activity belongs to the 'action' rubric. According to him, a person can act or not-act mentally, or substitute one mental
