The Divine Language

While working on “ Science and Culture”, fundamental problem I faced was concerning the Almighty God, the First Cause of Creation. Even if Lord existed, by very definition He could not contribute anything to the field of Knowledge. Because the entire work-area of knowing rests into Human Brain and that Knowledge is totally a human activity which includes mathematics.

For the believers in Him, however, it is essential that He, who made the world and us –must also be the first and final authority ( possessor) of all that we Know, act and create in order to live on the planet Earth.

Gautam Buddha was the first philosopher who questioned the divine origin of Knowledge by denying the existence of God. Historically, his followers turned him into a deity but the Buddha himself was the agnostic thinker who questioned the divine source of Knowledge. Still the Buddha, the Enlightened One is not the Messenger of God. Nor is he called the Son of God. According to the Buddhist philosophy there is no First Cause because the Creation is in Flux, constantly changing, It is Shunya, like the post-modern Black-hole theory of Stephan Hawking.

Nonetheless, in Indian intellectual history, the Vedas were revered as the Books of Ultimate Knowledge, and Final Proof that contained in the four volumes: Rig-Veda, Yajur-Veda, Sam-Veda, and Atharv-Veda. These are the most venerated collections of wise description of natural forces and good-wishes in mantra metre in poetry composed by the ancient Rishis ( scientists). References to the Vedic literature however are scanty in the post-Buddhist period of Indian history ( 500 BC to 1500 AD). Indian classic literature, Kalidasa, e.g, hardly mentions any Vedic studies. But In the post-Islamic and particularly in the post-European ( 17-19th) there is revival of the Vedic heritage. The Vedas were restored as the original words of divine wisdom.

In the 1860—(?) it was Professor Max Mueller who edited and published the first edition of the Rig Veda, and following the technical and scientific discoveries by the Europeans, the 19th century Indian reformer Swami Dayanand Saraswati gave the call “Go back to the Vedas”. In face of Christian ( modern) criticism of the decadent Hindu ritualistic social and cultural practices, Dayanand responded by condemning the caste system, denounced the icon worship, and sati. He advocated the widow marriages and education of the women as practiced in the Vedic –Aryan Age.

Dayanand noticed that Gayatri a female rishi was the author of the Vedic mantra. Women’s unequal status and the caste system were not found in Vedas. The violent introduction of Islam must have made otherwise tolerant people conservative and inward looking.

Dayanand propounded Ten Rules for Aryan ( Hindus) in response to the Ten Commandments of the Christians. He condemned Hindu worship of stones, multi- headed gods an goddesses, and ask his followers to live by practicing Ten Principles of good human being. But one of the Rules says:
The Vedas are Source of all true knowledge and it is the ultimate duty of all Aryans to read and teach the books of the Vedas.

Dayanand’s another rule says: (As a true Indian/Aryan) one must always be ready to accept a true proposition, and to give up untrue one.” And he claimed that since the Vedas were divine they contained all true knowledge and wisdom.

Around this time Telegraph was invented by Marconi.
Believing that the west had stolen the formula of science and technology from the Vedas, Dayanand in his book titled “Satyartha Prakash” ( Literally: Light of Truth) wrote that “taru taram” Telegraph had been mentioned in the Vedas. Following the great modern reformer of Hindustan, modern day chauvinists had been claiming that all modern science were known to the Vedic Indians. Several workshops and conferences had been organized to propagate the idea of the Vedic Science on the lines of the Christian Science and the organizations of the Islamic Science.

Once I was invited to such a conference. I posed two problems: Is Almighty God just or Unjust? A Just Father must treat all His children equally. So He could not deprive pre-Aryan people of His Wisdom who as we know lived before the Vedic Age. Besides, if the Vedas were divine, what about the Christian Commandments and the Holy Koran? Was the Perfect Divine knowledge distributed in instalments? If so, no one Holy Book could be Total Truth.

How could the Almighty pass out less-total wisdom? Being Perfect He could not create imperfect Knowledge? So, the Hindus and other claimers to the Holy Books must decipher the language in which the Almighty wants to speak to ? And to tell to whom and why?

We must know what was the mother-tongue of the Almighty Allah? And what necessity did the Almighty felt to communicate? With us sinners condemned to be born in this hellish planet Earth?

As a true Arya Samaji we must follow the Swami Dayanand’s commandment that “we must always be ready to accept the Truth and ready to give up untruth.”
But the philosophical problems is that the cleaver Swami had already established the paradigm that says “ the Vedas are body of all true Knowledge”.

If the Vedas, Bible and Koran etc., are True and Total knowledge, then, nothing beyond you can know and/or create. The Holy Books are the final authority, and no more proof is required. That is the theological or fundamentalist way of reasoning.

In Philosophy and Science no claim is made to final truth. We reason and draw conclusions on the basis of facts as and when we find them. In view of new data we correct our position and accept the revision of knowledge. But in this human activity of knowledge enterprise, then, I find no scope for the Divine intervention.

I was never invited again to the Vedic Science Conference.