Approaches (Darshanä)
DURING THE AGE OF THE SHAIVA REVIVAL, WHICH CORresponds to the beginning of the Christian era, the age in which the historical and religious texts of Shaivism were published, we see the reappearance of philosophical, cosmological, and scientific concepts, the legacy, long kept a secret, of the learning of the ancient world.
Apart from technical treatises, astronomy, mathematics, medicine, architecture, and so forth, philosophical and cosmological thought is grouped into six major systems called the Points of View or Approaches (Darshanä[s]).
It is thanks to the contrasts and contradictions resulting from a diversity of approaches that we can evaluate and criticize the value of the information given by the senses. The main approaches by which we can attempt to understand the nature of the world are arranged in pairs, each pair consisting of an experimental method and a method of intellectual rationalization. The first two methods concern the impermanent world (ksharä), that is, the visible world: these are Vaïsheshikä (study of the specific), or scientific observation, and its counterpart, reasoning, or Nyâyä (logic). Then comes Sâmkhyä (cosmology) and Yogä (introspection), whose object is the study of the permanent aspects (aksharä) of the world, the universal laws that govern the cosmic world and the world of life. Sâmkhyä concerns the macrocosm, nature, and the universe, and Yogä the microcosm, the internal world of the living being.
These two methods are strictly coordinated and interdependent. They are the instruments of higher knowledge by which man is distinguished from other living beings. Yogä is the exploration of ourselves, this special body, this abode, in which our consciousness resides. Yogä seeks to analyze the structures of our interior universe, to study and develop the powers latent in it, and eventually to go beyond the barriers of the senses, the limitations of relative time and space that imprison us. The Sâmkhyä enables us to transpose the elements of Yogä to the universal plane and to establish correspondences between the macrocosm and the microcosm, between Universal Man (purushä) and individual man (jivä).
The last two Darshanä(s) are called Mîmânsâ (profound intuition). Their object is the hierarchy of creation, the relationships between the different levels of beings, between men, spirits, and gods. Every religious approach, whether ritual or mystic, is part of Mîmânsâ. Two sorts of Mîmânsâ are distinguished: the first, called Pûrvä Mîmânsâ (preliminary intuition), is, in a certain way, experimental. It concerns the efficacy of rites and the technical means, including invocation and prayer, which allow us to establish a contact with the celestial world and to influence it. We can judge their effectiveness according to the results obtained.
The second Mîmânsâ is called Uttarä Mîmânsâ (higher intuition). It includes cosmogony, theology, the study of the celestial hierarchies, and the description of the invisible world of spirits and gods. Included in the Mîmânsâ are the intuition of mystics, the supranormal perception of mediums, and all the relations between man and what is, to him, the supernatural.
By coordination of the basic ideas of the different approaches, or Darshanä(s), observations of the visible world linked with the extrasensory perceptions gained through Yogä, it has been possible to establish a general theory regarding the world and man, as well as the history of the universe and its destiny. The importance of the Darshanä(s) rests in their contrasts. It is because of their divergences, contrasts, and incompatibilities that we have some idea of the nature of the world. The transcendent or divine reality of the world is defined as "that in which opposites coexist."
The pre-Aryan theory of the Darshanä(s), whose concepts we can see showing through in all stages of Indian civilization, was not pieced together again in the Sanskrit language until after the decline of Buddhism and Vedism, at the time of the Shaïvä revival. We have a first summary of it in Dravidian language (ancient Tamil) in the Manimekhalaï", a novel of the fourth century which expounds both the materialistic and atheistic theory, Lokâyatä, attributed to the mythical sage, Brihaspati, and his commentator, Chârvâkä, as well as the philosophical theories of jaïnism and Buddhism. In this text Buddhism is considered to be derived from jaïnism.
For the Manimekhalaï" (book 27) "the six systems of philosophy are Lokâyatä (materialism) taught by Brihaspati; Buddha or Buddhism originating from jaïnism (jinä); Sâmkhyä (cosmology) codified by Kapilä; Nyâyä (logic) taught by Akshapâdä (alias Gautamä—not the Gautamä who founded Buddhism); Vaisheshikä (physics) codified by Kanadä; and Mîmânsâ (metaphysics) taught by jaimini. These people all lived before the writing of Sanskrit.
