E-Learning Courses
A Deeper Appreciation of Śāstric Concepts (ADAS)
Course Focus :
Power of abstraction is an index of intellectual maturity/advancement and Śāstra have perfected the art of abstraction of the content of diverse domains. The knowledge structures concerning cognitive studies related to language and human expression of experiences are relevant in solving many issues in the realm of communication. Śāstrik literature in Sanskrit contains exhaustive treatment of the various aspects of knowledge, per se, and attempts to systematise its study. This course is focused on such type of knowledge structures like Nyāya, Vyākaraṇam, Mīmāṃsā and Vēdāntaḥ.
Description : The work of the very early Indian grammarians has been lost. The Sanskrit grammatical tradition of Vyākaraṇa is one of the six Vēdāṅga disciplines. It has its roots in Vēdic texts, and includes the famous work, Aṣṭādhyāyī of Pāṇinī. Pāṇinī’s extensive analysis of the processes of phonology, morphology and syntax was amazingly formal and his production rules for deriving complex structures and sentences represent modern finite state machines.
Description : While contemporary traditions continue to maintain Vedic rituals (Śrauta, Mīmāṃsā), Vedanta renounces rituals and re-interprets the notion of "Vēda" in higher philosophical terms. In Sanskrit 'Vedānta' refers to the Upanishads, the most evolved and philosophical views of the Vedic texts.
Description :
Nyāya Sutra-s of sage Gautama, an Upāṅga, dealing with sensory perception, Inference, Analogy, Verbal Testimony, various aspects of polemics, debate, syllogism, fallacies etc. in all describing 16 entities 'worth knowing about for realising the ultimate'. The Nyāya sutra deals with Ontological classification of things and proceeds to enumerate, define and verify their essential and typical characteristics. Instruments and objects of knowledge are dealt with in detail. The process of 'human understanding' is described and theories of valid knowledge, error, word-meaning relations, cognition, validity/fallibility etc. are postulated. The linguistic, Psychological, Ontological, Logical and Philosophical issues are elaborated besides covering the inference in great detail.
Description : The Mīmāṃsā Śāstra is primarily meant to devise methods for interpretation of vēdic texts, including Upaniṣad's, and does so mainly at discourse level. Theories of the process of cohering of word-meanings at sentence level are a hall-mark of this śāstra, which has applications in all other shastras as well. It is a science of judicial interpretation of the sacrificial portion (Karma Kāṇḍa ) of the Vēdaḥ just as Vēdānta is that of jñānakāṇḍa. This śāstra discourses about the Sources and Instruments of knowledge, sentence, coherence, semantics, pragmatics, sense-disambiguation maxims etc.