![]() Tradition mentions 18 major vidyas, or theoretical disciplines and 64 kalas, applied or vocational disciplines, crafts. In each of these, a continuous and cumulative series of texts continues to be available despite the widespread loss and historically recorded destruction. Indian disciplinary formations include fields as diverse as philosophy, architecture, grammar, mathematics, astronomy, metrics, sociology ( dharmasastra), economy and polity ( arthaśāstra), ethics ( nitishastra), geography, logic, military science, weaponry, agriculture, mining, trade and commerce, metallurgy, mining, shipbuilding, medicine, poetics, biology, and veterinary science. Over time, knowledge of different domains has been institutionalised into disciplines, or vidya and crafts, or kala. Accordingly, a distinction is made between jnana and vijnana, the knowledge of facts of the perceptible world. The entire body of organised knowledge is divided into two sets in the Mundakopanisad - pars vidya and apara vidya (Mundakopanisad, 1.1.4), knowledge of the ultimate principle, paramatma or Brahman i.e., the metaphysical domain, and knowledge that is secondary to how one grasps aksara-Brahman i.e., worldly knowledge. India’s knowledge tradition is ancient and uninterrupted like the flow of the river Ganga, from the Vedas (Upanishads) to Sri Aurobindo, knowledge has been at the centre of all inquiry. ![]() In Srimad Bhagavad Gita, 4.33,37-38, Lord Krishna tells Arjuna that knowledge is the great purifier and liberator of the self. Indian civilisation has accorded immense importance to knowledge - its amazingly vast body of intellectual texts, the world’s largest collection of manuscripts, its attested tradition of texts, thinkers, and schools in so many domains of knowledge. Without which most modern scientific discoveries would have been impossible” ~ Albert Einstein ![]() “We owe a lot to the ancient Indians, teaching us how to count.
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