So, we saw a quick definition of IKS, Indian Knowledge Systems. Let us also quickly look at a broad level what it contains. Let us quickly go over it.
If you look at the IKS corpus, we can broadly divide them into two as I was already mentioning. One literary part and the other is the non-literary part. That's one way we can first start dividing this corpus. Now if you look at the literary part, one major chunk is what I may call it as Sanatana Dharma corpus. And in that, even in that Sanatana Dharma corpus, we have certain subdivisions we can think of.
The first thing is The core Sanatana Dharma literature which has the Veda and Vedangas, because that is a fundamental building block of Sanatana Dharma. So that basic text, I call it as core scriptures. Then in Sanatana Dharma corpus, the other part is where we have a lot of interesting things.
You know, you have mathematics, you have astronomy, you have aesthetics for example, engineering and technology, so many things are there. And they are all, I call it as Sanatana Dharma other division, because they may all be aligned to the principles of Sanatana Dharma. Just to give you an example, in mathematics, when they talk, in astronomy, they talk about year and so on. They will align to the ideas of Yuga cycle and all that which is there in Sanatana Dharma. So it all draws from there.
So that I call it as the other set of corpus. And then you have what I call it as other than the Sanatana Dharma, there are other literature knowledge in this country, which if I call it as non-Sanatana Dharmic or other Dharmic, if I were to call it, I think two significant elements of them are Buddha and Jaina. I have some interesting material also on mathematics and things like that.
So that is the other possibility. And then... In all these, there is... So far, when I say Sanatana Dharma, by and large, they are written in Sanskrit. That has been the primary medium of communication.
As English we use as an official language today, at that time, Sanskrit was the official language for transacting things, so Sanatana Dharma literature was mostly in Sanskrit. But there is a voluminous corpus in regional languages, which have... Either they, you know, retell the ideas in Sanatana Dharma literature, improvise it, contextualize it and so on.
So that's another big chunk of corpus that we have and all these form the literary element of IKS. Then you have the non-literary element which is called oral traditions and as I was telling earlier in one of the earlier videos, the oral traditions are in, you know, you have health traditions, you have something on art forms. You have 64 Kalas and many more.
So this is the other part of the IKS Karpath. So we will very quickly go through a bit of it. If you take the Sanathana Dharma other literature, then you have ideas on basic and applied sciences.
You have mathematics, astronomy, plant sciences, Vriksha, Ayurveda and so on. You have ideas on engineering and technology, metal working technology, ship building, dams and watershed management. Alchemy was one big area. There was always this fixation of converting any metal into gold. That's where alchemy came actually.
Then cosmetics, perfumes, dyes, town planning and architecture, all these are there. Health, wellness and psychology, you know, in terms of Ayurveda, there are these three important works, Ayurveda, Charaka Samhita, Sushruta Samhita and Ashtanga Hridaya. They provide a wealth of information on health and wellness.
You have the philosophical systems. such as yoga and Sankhya etc., Upanishads, Vedanta etc., they all talk about psychology. You have Niti Shastras, which informs the society of good code of behavior. You have Raja Niti and Samanya Niti, you know, things of that kind.
The Samanya Niti deals with elements of good living, ethics and morality and so on. On the other hand, Raja Niti deals with public administration and governance. Of course, we have literature in Sanatana Dharma on aesthetics, kavyas and performing arts. It's a very voluminous literature. I don't have time to talk about it.
to say there is a rich contribution there. Whereas if you take Buddhist literature and the Jain literature, they have contributed significantly from 500 BCE, from the 5th millennia of the, you know, before the common era. Of course, there are a lot of religious and philosophical part of the literature which is based on the respective tenets and so on.
But the other literature has applications in areas of science, technology and others. For example, Buddhist works have mathematical concepts, maritime activities, shipbuilding, alchemy, all those are part of good literature is available in Buddhist works. Similarly, in the Jain literature, you know, you have, for example, you know, in the Buddhist literature, just to, you know, give you an example, the work of Naharjuna called Rasa Ratnakara in the first century CE is a very early contribution alchemy. as I told you mathematical concepts and so on. Whereas if you take Jain works, of course Jain have their sacred literature of canonical texts, but mathematics was an integral part of many of them.
It is called Ganita Anioga, a portion of their literature is dedicated to mathematics. I remember, you know, the 6th century BCE, I think, there is a number of 2 power 96, when they tried to establish the number of species in the earth and so on. You have Tattvartha Sutra composed by Umaswati during the 2nd and 3rd century CE, which is a very important Jain literature. But in addition to all these, Jain texts also deal with mathematics.
Things like Aniyogadhvara Sutra, Vivahara Sutra and Surya Prajnapati and so on. There is a very famous mathematician called Madhavacharya. His work on Ganita Sara Sangraha in the 9th century CE is a very significant contribution in the field of mathematics in India.
So, this is how the literature that you see. If you look at the core Sanatana literature, you know our Vedas and so on, there is a beautiful classification scheme there called Chatur Dasha Vidyastana. Chatur Dasha is 14. So, Chatur Dasha Vidyastana is a 14-part classification of that literature. that's also available the way it works is the four Vedas and of course there are Upaveda's and all that form four components six Vedangas are there so four plus six it becomes ten then the next classification is called Puranas and of course Itihasas are also part of it that makes it eleven then Dharma Sutra Shastras and Smritis are one chunk which is the you know twelfth one Then Nyaya in its detailed form, which means Nyaya and Vaisheshika. We will see all of them as we go along, a little bit detail.
So that is the 13th component. And Mimamsa, which means Purva Mimamsa and Uttara Mimamsa, which are all nice philosophical texts. So all these make up this 14-part classification called Chatur Darsha Vidyastana.
Let me conclude this talk with a very nice comparison of Chatur Darsha Vidyastana with a modern idea. so that we understand how this classification system has been thought about. Let us take Income Tax Act 1961 as an example, or the Constitution of India, also similar examples we can take.
If we take Income Tax Act, the BAR Act will be only just about a few pages. Simply section 1, section 1.1, section 1, simply it will write only the Act, it's called BAR Act. It will run to maybe 40, 50 pages, 60 pages. Now, there will be a second text called Guide to the Income Tax Act. Because we don't know how to apply a section, section 80G.
I don't know how to apply it. So, it will say, it will detail it out. When will you get exemption?
What are all the documentation you should do? How do you apply for it? All those have to be written down.
So, that is the second part. That will run to a few thousand pages, you know, maybe three thousand pages. Because it has to give all the explanatory notes and so on.
That's called the Guide to the Income Tax Act. There is a growing literature. called case laws because even with so much of written literature when you actually apply it sometimes you don't know you will have to need to get it clarified so you go to the court the court will actually clarify this has to be done like this and so on so you have a rich repository of case laws now you see exactly the equivalent in the chaturdasha vidyastana equivalent of the is the vedas the vedas are the core text for this country you The equivalent of the Guide to the Income Tax Act is Smritis and Dharma Shastras and so on and so forth because they actually detail out how to actually use the Vedic ideas of injunctions, how do you put it to your daily life and practice and so on. And equivalent to the case laws that you see in modern parlance is Puranas and Itiyazas because they actually explain how people actually tried it and what happened to them. That way it clarifies how things happen.
So I thought I will just share this. Because these classification schemes are very interesting, they map very much to what we are doing today. So with this brief introduction, I think we need to move on.
All that I want to do to complete this discussion is to also tell you the historicity of Indian knowledge systems to the extent we know. I will do it in the next video, we will see it in some detail. Thank you.