Economies

of Knowledge in Asian, Western and African Thought

Implications of Publishing and Cognitive Strategies

in Scholarship on India Exemplified by the Work of

Bimal Krishna Matilal

Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju

Compcros
Comparative Cognitive Processes and Systems
Exploring Every Corner of the Cosmos in Search of Knowledge"

Purpose and Method

This essay explores the implications of the relationship between
the publishing history with Oxford University Press of the collected
essays of Bimal Krishna Matilal on Indian philosophy in relation to
the epistemic range of this philosophy, from interpreting mythic
narratives to conceptual analysis, in the context of varied
deployments of forms of knowledge, from the rationcinative to the
imaginative, in Asian, African and Western thought.

Correlations Between Publishing History and Epistemic Range
of Matilals Collected Essays

On 18th June 2015, the India branch of Oxford University Press
reissued two books by Bimal Krishna Matilal earlier published by
the Press in 2002, Mind, Language and World : The Collected
Essays of Bimal Krishna Matilal Volume I and Ethics and Epics :
The Collected Essays of Bimal Krishna Matilal Volume II, both
edited by Jornadon Ganeri.
In terms of orientation, the second volume, Ethics and Epics, the
title of which reflects Matilal's explorations of the relationships
between Indian epics such as the Mahabharata and philosophical
subjects, is fruitfully considered alongside another venture by
Matilal on the same subject, a volume edited by him, Moral
Dilemmas in the Mahabharata, published in 1989 by the Indian
Institute of Advanced Study, reissued in 2014 by a publisher in
India with a remarkable list of publications on Indian culture,
Motilal Banarsidass.
The physical form of the earlier publications by Oxford UP of the
collected essays by Matilal and the work on the Mahabharata
represent a strategy adopted in India to achieve rapid development
of a book publication culture serving both the national reading
public and the export market. The books are bound in sturdy
hardback but with obviously lower quality than is conventionally
used by Oxford University Press for its works issued by its
branches in the US and England.
The volumes are cheaper than Oxford UP publications normally
are and can be exported from India to buyers in other parts of the
world. That was how I bought my copies of the books, exported to
me in England from India. The same books can be sold on the

international online market at the same time as their versions

published in the West, the lower prices and differences in quality
of paper marking out those from India from those from the West.
The State University of New York Press has issued some fantastic
works on the school of Indian thought known as Tantra and its sub
school of Kashmir Saivism and demonstrates a similar strategy
with its books on Indian thought also republished by other
publishers in India.
The earlier editions of the Oxford UP books are now out of print,
leaving the newer editions. The new editions sacrifice the
sturdiness of hardback, which invariably translates into
significantly higher prices, particularly for academic books by
Western publishers, for what seems a sturdy paperback and
an upgrading in terms of cover design, and most likely of quality of
paper, going by the pictures of the latest editions as shown in this
essay.
The strategy of educational, economic and industrial development
represented by the earlier physical forms and costs of the books is
correlative with the mission of Matilal's work and my purpose in
responding to that work in this brief essay- the goal of expanding
access to the various streams of understanding represented by
Indian thought and expression and the significance for various
cultures of the scope of resources employed by Matilal in this
quest.
Matilal's work, as superbly summed up by Ganeri in his
introductory essay to Mind, Language and World : The Collected
Essays of Bimal Krishna Matilal Volume I, demonstrates the
scope of Indian philosophy as covering various forms of discourse
in Indian culture, a scope unreplicated in Western philosophy, for
example. Ganeri foregrounds Matilal's emphasis on rationality in
his discussions of Indian thought, from mysticism to literature to
philosophies of language and grammar.
Matilal, formally trained in both classical Indian discourse, in
India, as well as in Western philosophy in the US and England, and
eventually professor of philosophy at Oxford, is able, therefore, to
present the full scope of Indian thought as grounded in various
forms of rationality, from the ratiocinative to the imaginative and
the ineffable. In achieving this scope of philosophical exploration,
Matilal indirectly foregrounds opportunities for other discursive
cultures, those of the West and Africa, for example.

Conjunctions and Disjunctions of Religion, Philosophy

and Science in Western Thought
The Mahabharata and the Ramayana, epics that are
foundational to Indian religious and philosophical culture, have
the Bible as their equivalent in the West. Biblical scholarship,
however, and the study of literature generally, are not seen as
fundamental in Western philosophy after the Middle Ages. Biblical
scholarship, however, and the study of literature generally, are not
seen as fundamental in Western philosophy after the Middle Ages.
Apart from the ever resonant works of Augustine of Hippo,
theology, specifically Christian theology, the most influential
theological form in Western history, since the 20th century also
seems to have ceased to have influence beyond its own circles.
A fuller grasp of the thought of Immanuel Kant and Rene
Descartes, founders of modern Western philosophy, and of Martin
Heidegger, a seminal figure in Western philosophy since the 20th
century, is aided by both a knowledge of the Bible and of efforts by
theologians and philosophers to come to grips with the Bible and
Christianity. There are distinct conceptual and stylistic parallels
between Kant's discussion of mind and cosmos in the concluding
section of The Critique of Practical Reason, the famous passages
that begin, in translation, " Two things fill the mind with ever
newer and ever increasing admiration and awe, the more often and
the more steadily they are reflected upon, the starry heavens above
me and moral law within me" and the Biblical Psalm 139,
convergences possibly emerging from Kant's Pietist upbringing.
Engaging with the significance of belief in God is also central to
Kant's philosophical quest.These orientations are derived from the
Christian milieu which has shaped the West since Christianity
became its dominant religion.
Descartes and key representatives of Western hermeneutics, of
whom Friedrich Schleiermacher and Paul Ricoeur are
representative, all struggle with the implications of the Bible and
Christianity, this heritage being the informing ground of those
thinkers understood to span the religious and secular worlds in
Western thought, such as Augustine and Thomas Aquinas.
Descartes and key representatives of Western hermeneutics, of
whom Friedrich Schleiermacher and Paul Ricouer, are
representative, all struggle with the implications of the Bible and
Christianity, this heritage being the informing ground of those

thinkers understood to span the religious and secular worlds in

Western thought, such as Augustine and Thomas Aquinas.
Beyond the historical influence of Christian theology, this stream
of thought, from its earliest period to the present, is one of the
world's richest cognitive progressions, demonstrating potent
efforts to engage with the tension between human finitude and the
aspiration to possibilities that transcend materiality as these
reverberate in every aspect of existence, approaches that may
enrich even those who do not identify with Christianity, a
possibility for cognitive expansion that all theologies provide in
the variety of perspectives they project.
An integrated understanding of Western culture in any of its major
expressions, from literature, to philosophy to science, is
impossible without an understanding of the influence of forms of
spirituality, both esoteric and exoteric, the latter represented by
Christianity and its central text, the Bible. This fact is
demonstrated, for example, by the development of science as
represented by Newton's Principia Mathematica, Mathematical
Principles of Natural Philosophy in which he lays foundations of
modern science by employing ratiocination, philosophical
speculation and religious belief in building a world picture. Also
demonstrative of this development is Tian Yu Cao's summation, in
his Conceptual Developments of Twentieth Century Field
Theories,of the convergence of Western esotericism -itself derived
from African, Jewish and Western elements and various forms of
rationality- in enabling the emergence of modern science, as
described by the pioneering work of Frances Yates in Giordano
Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition, among other books.
Cao also develops a spellbinding exploration of the concept of the
Quantum Nothing, a scientific interpretation of the origins of the
cosmos, in a manner that recalls various religious ideas of
relationships between the cosmos and a void before cosmogenesis
in Ontology and Scientific Explanation in Explanations : Styles
of Explanation in Science edited by John Cornwell, the concept of
nothingness being very significant in contemporary scientific
cosmology, as demonstrated by Frank Close's Nothing : A Very
Short Introduction. The idea of nothingness or voidness is also
vital to Buddhism and to the Jewish and Hermetic Kabbalah as
indicating the fecundative void that enables being.

The Hermeneutics of the Forest in African Thought

Matilal's example and its associative possibilities is correlative with
my conviction that it is fruitful to approach African thought in
terms of the various forms of rationality demonstrated by its scope
of expressions-in the sciences, the arts, the social sciences and
other disciplines. A rich body of ideas exists that may serve this
purpose, ideas often expressed in terms of a structure of concepts
in African literature originally written in Western languages,
African literature in African languages, and in discourses on
African art, along with the more conventional province of
philosophical discussion in African philosophy.
Emblematic of this literary realization of philosophical value are
the conversations between Densu and Damfo in Ayi Kwei Armah's
novel The Healers, being among the richest presentations I have
come across of what I describe as the hermeneutics of the forest,
the interpretation of the significance of forest space beyond its
biological values, correlating this significance with principles of
individual and social existence in the world as a whole. Armah, in a
personal communication, describes these dialogues as inspired by
his exploration of Akan thought. Forest hermeneutics is
demonstrated by various African peoples, inspired by the luxuriant
vegetation of their tropical environment, as is evident in African
Sacred Groves: Ecological Dynamics and Social Change edited
by Michael J. Sheridan and Celia Nyamweru, part 3 of this book
being described as exploring "The symbol of forests [drawing] on
three West African case studies (Cte d'Ivoire, Benin, Ghana) to
explore the meaning and symbolism of sacred forests".
In my essay " Hermeneutics of Space : Soyinka, Irele, Armah"
referencing Alma Gottlieb's essay in that book, "Loggers vs Spirits
in the Beng Forest,Coite d'Ivoire : Competing Models", comparing
it with Abiola Irele's " Tradition and the Yoruba Writer : D.O.
Fagunwa, Amos Tutuola, Wole Soyinka, Wole Soyinkas "Morality
and Aesthetics in the Ritual Archetype"from his Myth, Literature
and the African World and Armahs The Healers, in relation to
other texts from various disciplines and cultures, I point out the
closeness between the descriptions of the cosmographic conception
of the forest in Beng society and Irele on the classical Yoruba
conception of the forest as evident in Ijala,Yoruba hunters' poetry,
stating that, in the accounts of Beng and Ijala thought , "the human
relationship with the forest is understood as a microcosm of the
human relationship with the metaphysical structure of existence"

correlating these insights with cosmographic mappings in various

contexts. Comparing my further explorations of Irele's expositions
on Yoruba forest hermeneutics , Forest as Cosmos: Abiola Irele
on Classical Yoruba Philosophy of Nature and Bush Wen Become
World Wetin Abiola Irele Write About how Yoruba Tink World Be (
in Nigerian Pidgin English) with my other studies of Ireles
cosmographic thought Epistemological, Metaphysical, Aesthetic
and Social Vision of Negritude as Presented by Abiola Irele : Global
Significance and Abiola Irele and Negritude Aesthetics : Rhythm
as a Metaphysical Principle : Transcultural and Scientific
Implications a conception begins to emerge for me of how to unify
classical African cosmologies in terms of the motifs of cosmic force,
also central to the Irele essays, and the forest as metaphor of
existence, an approach foreshadowed by my
expanded
examination of cosmographies of landscape in Cosmogeographic
Explorations: Metaphysical Mapping of Landscape at the Oshun
Forest and Glastonbury.