Indological Knowledge and its Syllogism

Abstract

The study of ancient and medieval history, culture, customs, art and science, languages and socio-economic knowledge of India is known as Indology. Ranganathan proposes Indology as an area study with above features. Indological knowledge system is vast and encompasses many areas of study, contrary to the knowledge systems of the West. Bacon, Kant, Hegel and Pearson identified only two or three categories of knowledge of their times, while the ancient Indian sources have enlisted as many as 64 Vidyas. The knowledge treasure of India made the foreign traveller Huen Tsang take back loads of writings on return home. Not speaking about 4 Vedas, 112 Upanishads, 6 Vedangas, Shastras and 18 Puranas which are still referred to as cues and that depict the holistic horizon of India’s knowledge treasure. Max Muller a German scholar compiled 50 books entitled “Sacred Works of the East”. A living example of one of India’s famous treatise, is the ‘Kautilya’s Arthasastra’ which dates back to 2nd Century BCE the MSS available in the Oriental Research Institute, Mysore was translated into English by Shamasastry, the then Curator of the Institute. One of the well known Oriental historian Basham lists 11 areas of knowledge attributed to well known Indian scholars like Aryabhata and Panini. The paper examines the vast knowledge treasure of India nested in Vedas and other numerous sources of the times immemorial. It primarily desires to focus more on the aspects of Space and Time knowledge and their implications in knowledge organisation.