Sanskrit is the ancient Indian language which has survived time gap of thousands of years – between the time when it was in common use, and today. The attacks from foreign invaders resulted into massive destruction of Sanskrit literature and hence what we find today may be much less than even one percent of, what actually existed in ancient time.
It is common saying that ancient Indians preferred to speak and not write down anything about the knowledge they possessed. The knowledge transfer thus used to take place from the teacher to the student. It is only when they realized that such a transfer was losing its efficiency, that they started writing and thus transfer of knowledge started taking place in writing after this realization. The resulting collection of written knowledge suffered massive destruction when foreign invaders burnt the Indian libraries which were housing such a knowledge. Besides this, the people who possessed such written literature or knowledge burnt the same themselves, as they felt that the knowledge collected by them for thousands of years, if passed on to wrong hands could do more harm than good to the society.
What is available today, is thus only a pointer to the vast amount of knowledge that was once available with an ancient Indian civilization. This knowledge should be treated as ‘invaluable messages’ from a civilization, which perhaps tells us what happened when almost all life forms on our planet earth, had gone through a major extinction termed as ‘Pralay’ and is available to us as ‘Manusmriti’ . Sanskrit thus provides a ‘window’ to today’s civilization, about whatever human beings have faced, right from the time various life forms came out of that massive destruction which is mentioned in ‘manusmriti’.
It is important for us to utilize the ‘cues’ which come out of whatever is available in Sanskrit literature and without caring for establishing its authenticity through today’s limited scientific means, and utilize it for the benefit of humanity. Thus many concepts found in ancient Indian Sanskrit literature can be evaluated, debated and the useful part of it utilized. Some such concepts are as follows.
1) ‘Eko Aham Bahu Syam’ is the precise sentence/Shloka which talks of how the universe/ creation began. It mentions that ‘Bramhan’ had a ‘sankalp’ to multiply itself and this was the origin of the universe. This ‘sankalp’ is not a material or a thought. It goes beyond even thought and is perhaps, what triggers the thought process itself. This cue can lead us to look beyond the origin of universe, which we always try to visualize in its present ‘material form’ from the- form which triggered the thought process itself.
2) Ancient Indians have demarcated the ‘existence’ into two levels namely ‘body’ , mind and soul or ‘Atma’. Scientific means available today have attempted to study the mind beyond the body. When we try to understand the fact that things are dramatically different when we attempt to see them at the level of body and mind, it leads us to imagining, that they would be still more dramatic and different when we try to think of the ‘existence’ beyond mind at the level of Atma. This is available in many Indian literatures. One of them, called ‘Yoga vasishtha’ is actually a collection of what was taught to Rama by his teacher ‘Vasishtha’. The concept is presented again, in a different way, of course, in ‘Gita’ which again, is a collection of what was taught to ‘Arjuna’ by Krishna.
It is ‘myopic’ and the bad luck of today’s scientific thinking, which instead of making use of this concept, which has potential for a major revolution for humanity, questions the very existence, of Ram and Krishna. The vital question is have today’s scientific means, to prove the existence of Rama and Krishna reached the level of perfection, which can confirm for sure, that they did not exist because we cannot prove it today. However leaving this debate behind us, we can scientifically try to explore our own existence at the levels of body, the mind and Atma.
3) ‘Yatha Pinde tatha brahmande’ is another small sentence which perhaps indicates that as our bodies exist at three level, the universe also exists at three levels. This concept can act as a ‘cue’ for the scientific exploration of universe with an altogether different vision. This however, needs to be done with this concept in view, but without getting biased by it.
4) ‘Prakriti trigunatmika’ is a small sentence found in ancient Indian literature called ‘Durga saptshati’ which perhaps is a ‘philosophical sum up’ on nature. This literature proposed that nature is like a ‘mother’ to all the life forms including human beings . If we honestly accepts this concept, we would learn to treat nature like a ‘parent’ and not do what we have been doing with ‘mother nature’. it is perhaps this ‘kind mother’ now ‘reacting back’ in the form of symptoms like ‘Global warming’. This literature suggests that mother nature can also retaliate and that would be fatal for the humanity. Is anybody there to listen to such messages from a civilization that once lived in this great country thousands of years back? This literature also proposes that whatever is emanating from nature has three dimension attached to it. For easy understanding, it means anything can be ‘right’ (one extreme) or wrong (another extreme’) and also the infinite combinations of the right and wrong which forms a continuum.This concept can help us think and understand beyond our conventional thinking of visualizing everything in terms of either right or wrong.
The above concepts can help our civilization to explore more and more with today’s scientific ways and means. However, till such a scientific exploration can confirm whether what has been said has a great potential, try to make use of these concepts in our day to day life. Although such concepts cannot be visualized in a narrow ‘frame’, some of their interpretation for our benefit are as follows :
a) We become what we want to be. The sankalp or the very beginning of the thought process has lead us to become what we are today. Hence knowing what is right for an individual or the society and having a sankalp to do so is important.
b) Scientific analysis of existence on three levels i.e. body mind and ‘Atma’ can open up new frontiers for humanity. For example acceptance of ‘Atma’ opens up door for continuity of life after death in various life forms. This further opens up the door to karmic theory which says that ‘what we get is the result of reaction of what we do’. This also makes us understand that we should be good to the entire humanity and even extend this concept further to peaceful co-existence into all known and unknown life forms – the ancient Indian concept of ‘Vasudhev Katumbkam ‘
c) The above concept extended to the universe can make us scientifically explore whether there is something beyond what our senses, with the help of even the most modern scientific means have or will be able to find out .
d) The mere acceptance that most of the things, people, situations- virtually everything should not be viewed as right or wrong but rather somewhere in before a continuum between these two extremes can provide an altogether different approach to what we have been tuned to. For example – the western approach of seeing everything as either win or lose can be modified to an approach which can see somewhere between winning or losing. The fact remains, that none wins or loses, if we can visualize the situation on a ‘wider horizon’. This can make us think of beyond today’s thinking of either winning or losing - which may take us nearer the next world war – which will perhaps end this ‘chapter’ of present human civilization. This is a very small portion of what is happening in the universe - the physical manifestation of Brahman which has been termed by ancient Indians as ‘Prakriti’ or mother nature.
The above are only a few concepts of the ancient Indian civilization for which Sanskrit can act as a ‘window’. There is much more, but the need is to accept that we are ready to ‘listen’ this after reviewing our so called scientific thinking which suggests that what cannot be proved scientifically is not true.
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