14 The Upaniṣadic episteme

Jonardon Ganeri

The Upaniṣads are a polymorphous collection of anecdotes, parables, and

dialogues. The earliest date from around or before the sixth century B C E , later
ones written for many centuries afterwards. The two oldest Upaniṣads, the
Bṛhadāraṇyaka and Chāndogya, were both composed before the time of the
Buddha. They are symbolic, evocative and inspirational, plastic in meaning
and, as with all canonical scriptures, hermeneutically pliable. Their function is
to stimulate and to challenge, but they should not be taken as models of close
conceptual analysis or theoretical system-building. There is, nevertheless, a
broad theme and the elements of a common vision in the Upaniṣads. The fun-
damental idea of the Upaniṣads is that there are hidden connections between
things, and that knowing what these connections are is a profound source of
insight. Indeed, the term upaniṣad means a hidden connection, or possibly a
secret teaching. As Joel Brereton puts it very well:

Each Upaniṣadic teaching creates an integrative vision, a view of the

whole which draws together the separate elements of the world and of
human experience and compresses them into a single form. To one who
has this larger vision of things, the world is not a set of diverse and dis-
organised objects and living beings, but rather forms a totality with a
distinct shape and character.
(Brereton 1990: 118)

This order-inducing totality is what I will term “the Upaniṣadic episteme.”

Remember how Michel Foucault begins The Order of Things (Foucault 1970).
He refers, and is perhaps the first contemporary writer to do so, to a short
essay written by Jorge Luis Borges in 1942, the essay called “John Wilkins’
Analytical Language” (Borges 1999: 231) in which Borges introduces what he
describes as “a certain Chinese dictionary entitled The Celestial Emporium
of Benevolent Knowledge.” Of The Order of Things Foucault comments that:

This book first arose out of a passage in Borges, out of the laugh-
ter that, as I read the passage, shattered all the familiar landmarks of
my thought … breaking up all the ordered surfaces and all the planes

9781138795051_pi-418.indd 146 6/27/2017 9:54:04 AM

 The Upaniṣadic episteme 147
with which we are accustomed to tame the wild profusion of exist-
ing things …. This passage quotes a “certain Chinese encyclopaedia in
which it is written that animals can be divided into (a) those belonging
belonging to the Emperor, (b) those that are embalmed, (c) those that
are tame, (d)  suckling pigs, (e)  sirens, (f)  imaginary animals, (g)  wild
dogs, (h) those included in the present classification, (i) those that are
crazy-acting, (j)  those that are uncountable, (k)  those painted with a
fine brush made of camel hair, (l) miscellaneous, (m) those which have
just broken a vase, (n) those which, from a distance, look like flies.” In
the wonderment of this taxonomy, the thing we apprehend in one great
leap, the thing that, by means of the fable, is demonstrated as the exotic
charm of another system of thought, is the limitation of our own, the
stark impossibility of thinking that.
(Foucault 1970: xv).

Why is this taxonomy from a “certain Chinese encyclopaedia” (no doubt

an invention of Borges himself) impossible? Is it that it is alien and
strange, belonging to another “system of thought,” one that organises the
things of the world in ways quite foreign and alien to us? Is it that this
scheme of classification groups together objects where we see no resem-
blance, and divides objects where we see no relevant distinction? A system
of thought is an ordering of things under relations of resemblance (a fact
already known to the ancients, as Brian Smith has shown in his brilliant
study of Vedic thought; Smith 1989), and the relations of resemblance
underpinning the Chinese taxonomy are so different from the relations
that underpin our own classifications that we find it impossible to under-
stand. Or is there a more fundamental reason why this Celestial Emporium
represents an impossibility? Foucault comments that this taxonomy has a
“monstrous quality” (1970: xvi). It is monstrous because there is no single
relation of resemblance, no common site, for all the categories in the list.
Each category presupposes a different way of classifying objects; thus,
Foucault:  “What transgresses the boundaries … of all possible thought
is simply that alphabetical series (a, b, c, d, …) which links each of those
categories to all the others” (1970: xvi). The moral Foucault draws is that
underneath any possible system of thought is what he calls a “table” or a
“primary grid.” The primary grid fixes a domain of object-sites and a set
of possible orderings. Think of it as like the chessboard, which defines
both the possible piece-positions and the possible types of move (along a
diagonal, along a file, etc.). This primary grid is “the hidden network that
determines the way things confront one another.” It is the episteme: “By
episteme we mean … the total set of relations that unite, at a given period,
the discursive practices that give rise to epistemological figures, sciences,
and possibly formalized systems” (1972:  191). The episteme prescribes
what can be known, experienced or spoken of. It is the condition for the
possibility of knowledge, thought, and language. Why so? Because the

9781138795051_pi-418.indd 147 6/27/2017 9:54:04 AM

 148 J. Ganeri
episteme qua grid constitutes the domain of possible objects of know-
ledge. Foucault again:

In these fields of initial differentiation, in the distances, the discontinui-

ties, and the thresholds that appear within it, discourse finds a way of
limiting its domain, of defining what it is talking about, of giving it the
status of an object – and therefore of making it manifest, nameable, and
describable.
(1972: 41)

Foucault thus draws a distinction between two meanings of the English

term “knowledge.” There is the explicit knowledge that it is possible to have
within a particular system of thought; this is what he takes the French con-
naissance to denote. Then there is the “preknowledge” – he uses the French
term savoir  – that is the basis or precondition for such explicit knowledge.
Think of it as like one’s implicit or tacit knowledge (savoir) of the rules of
grammar for a language the sentences of which one knows (connaisance) the
meaning. Foucault also calls this the “positive unconscious” of knowledge.
Notice that the primary grid is not itself a possible object of connaissance,
any more than the chessboard is a possible piece. The chessboard is the set of
possible piece places, and so does not itself have a place. The episteme deter-
mines the set of possible objects of explicit knowledge, and so is not itself a
possible object of explicit knowledge. What one may have is “preknowledge”
of the grid, in so far as it provides the objects for our explicit knowledge.
Likewise, since the episteme determines what is expressible within a discourse,
it is not itself expressible within that discourse: “It is not possible for us to
describe our own archive [= episteme], since it is from within these rules that
we speak …” (1972: 130).
Foucault’s archaeological method (Foucault 1972) excavates the primary
grid that is buried beneath a system of thought. Foucauldian archaeology is
the method by which the preknowledge (savoir) of a past or alien epoche is
made into an object of explicit knowledge (connaissance) for us now. What
I propose to investigate is whether we might turn the archaeological method
upon the Upaniṣads and discover the “positive unconscious” of ancient
Indian thought. The “integrative vision” of the Upaniṣads is the Upaniṣadic
system of thought, the totality of connaissance, and what underpins it, the
episteme, has the label brahman. As Brereton continues,

The Upaniṣads create an integrative vision by identifying a single, com-

prehensive and fundamental principle which shapes the world … For
later followers of the Vedānta, the brahman has a particular definition
and a specific character, but for the Upaniṣads, the brahman remains
an open concept. It is simply the designation given to whatever prin-
ciple or power a sage believes to lie behind the world and to make the
world explicable. It is the reality sought by the householder who asks

9781138795051_pi-418.indd 148 6/27/2017 9:54:04 AM

 The Upaniṣadic episteme 149
a sage:  Through knowing what, sir, does this whole world become known
(Muṇḍaka 1.13).
(1990: 118)

There is perhaps an echo of the distinction between connaissance and savoir

in the Upaniṣadic use of the terms vijñāna and prajñā.
Two sorts of hidden connection (bandhu) are prominent in the Upaniṣads.
Both can clearly be seen in the oldest of the Upaniṣads, the Bṛhadāranyaka
Upaniṣad. The first is the use of the ritual space as template. The idea is that
the world as a whole is ordered in the same arrangment as the sacrificial object.
This is supposed to explain the efficacy of sacrificial rites: By means of ritual,
human beings can effect a re-ordering and even a repair of the world. That is
because the cosmos stands in an isomorphic relation with the objects that are
in the ritual domain. The most prominent example occurs at the beginning
of this Upaniṣad, connecting the cosmos itself with the sacrificial horse (all
translations are from Olivelle 1996):

The head of the sacrificial horse, clearly, is the dawn – its sight is the sun;
its breath is the wind; and its gaping mouth is the fire common to all
men. The body of the sacrificial horse is the year – its back is the sky; its
abdomen is the intermediate region; its underbelly is the earth; its flanks
are the quarters; its joints are the months and fortnights; its feet are the
days and nights; its bones are the stars; its flesh is the clouds; its stomach
contents are the sand; its intestines are the rivers; its liver and lungs are
the hills; its body hairs are the plants and trees; its forequarter is the rising
sun; and its hindquarter is the setting sun.
(BU 1.1)

The second, related, idea is the idea that the human body is a sort of cosmo-
logical map. Here is an example from the Bṛhadāraṇyaka (BU 2.5):

speech fire
sight the sun
breath the wind
mind the moon
hearing the quarters
body earth
self space
hair plants
blood, semen water

This taxonomy is certainly very strange and alien, but it is not monstrous.
There is an underlying grid of correspondences between bodily parts and
vital functions, on the one hand, and the primary elements and celestial
bodies on the other. Something familiar is used as a map or template,

9781138795051_pi-418.indd 149 6/27/2017 9:54:04 AM

 150 J. Ganeri
to understand what is unfamiliar and unknown. As the Upaniṣadic sage
Uddālaka Āruṇi puts it in Chāndogya Upaniṣad:  “You must surely have
asked about that rule of substitution by which one hears what has not been
heard before, thinks of what has not been thought of before, and perceives
what has not been perceived before” (CU 6.1.3). Kaṭha Upaniṣad (KU
3) introduces another network of correlations, this time between a person
(self, senses, body) and a charioteer reining a chariot pulled by horses. Nor
is there anything monstrous in the nevertheless surprising list of transi-
tional appearances: “Mist, smoke, sun, wind, fire, fireflies, lightning, crystal,
moon—these are the apparitions that, within yogic practice, precede and
pave the way to the full manifestation of brahman” (Śvetāśvatara U. 2.11).
Foucault defines the episteme of an epoch as whatever it is that fixes what
can be thought, known or spoken of, and what, by that same fact, cannot be
known or described from within the epoch. This primary grid is precisely the
role of the concept of brahman in the Upaniṣads, the unifying cosmic prin-
ciple, something that is made very clear in the Kena Upaniṣad:

That which is the hearing behind hearing,

the thinking behind thinking,
the speech behind speech,
the sight behind sight –
It is also the breathing behind breathing –
Freed completely from these,
the wise become immortal,
when they depart from this world. (KU 1.2)
Which one cannot see with one’s sight,
by which one sees the sight itself –
Learn that that alone is brahman,
and not what they here venerate (KU 1.6)

We find here again the same taxonony of breath, speech, hearing, sight, and
thought. We find here too the idea that brahman is inexpressible because it
is that in virtue of which we speak, and that brahman is unthinkable because
it is that in virtue of which we think. As the sage Yājñavalkya is keen to
emphasise, there is, in Foucault’s terminology, no connaissance of brah-
man: “You can’t see the seer who does the seeing; you can’t hear the hearer
who does the hearing; you can’t think of the thinker who does the thinking;
and you can’t perceive the perceiver who does the perceiving” (BU 3.4.2).
According to Yājñavalkya, savoir is indeed to be had, but only in a state
of dreamless sleep (BU 4.3.21). Yet that view is not universally shared, and
in the Māṇḍūkya Upaniṣad, for example, one must look beyond the empty
content of dreamless sleep to what is called only “the fourth” (turīya) state,
a state of consciousness underneath and behind waking, dreaming, and
dreamlessness.

9781138795051_pi-418.indd 150 6/27/2017 9:54:04 AM

 The Upaniṣadic episteme 151
The final dramatic move in Upaniṣadic thought is to identify brahman, this
primary grid, with one’s true self, the ātman: “In which are established the
various groups of five, together with space; I take that to be the self – I who
have the knowledge, I who am immortal, I take that to be the brahman, the
immortal” (BU 4.4.17). Like the primary grid, this is what determines what
is known and what isn’t: “This self of yours who is present within … he is the
inner controller” (BU 3.7). As Signe Cohen observes, “the sacrifice becomes
a metaphor for the universe in late Vedic thought, and by extension, the hid-
den power behind the sacrifice is also seen as the hidden force behind the
universe itself:  brahman” (Cohen 2008: 47). Perhaps what we should under-
stand is that the order of things, the division of things into classifications in
accordance with an underlying network of correspondences (the “primary
grid”) is itself in a correspondence with the order of our mental worlds. If
self and world are organised along fundamentally analogous lines, then self-
control and self-understanding become methods for controlling and under-
standing the world:

Sir, teach me the hidden connection. You have been taught the hidden
connection – indeed, we have taught you the hidden connection relating
to brahman itself. Of this hidden connection, austerity, self-control and
rites are the foundation, the Vedas are all the limbs, and truth is the abode.
(KU 4.7)

There is a broad theme and the elements of a common vision in the

Upaniṣads. It is the belief in a unified explanation of the world and of our
experience. It is the belief in an all-encompassing complete conception. The
peculiar twist which the Upaniṣads give to this is that the single reality behind
the multiple aspects of the world is also the reality of the individual subject.
The Upaniṣads seem to tell us that there is no hope of forming a unified con-
ception of the world while leaving out the self, that a conception of the nature
of the self is the key to a conception of the nature of the world. Wittgenstein’s
remark that “the spirit of the snake … is your spirit for it is only from your-
self that you are acquainted with spirit at all’ ” (Notebooks, 85e) has been
claimed by some to reveal a distinct reverberation of this Upaniṣadic insight.
In the Chāndogya dialogue, the sage Uddālaka promises his son Śvetaketu the
knowledge that will account for everything, the knowledge of the totality. He
tells him to fetch the fruit of a banyan tree, to cut it open and find the seed,
and then to cut open the seed. Śvetaketu finds nothing there, but Uddālaka
tells him that within the seed is the finest essence on account of which the
banyan tree stands here now, the essence “that constitutes the self of this
whole world; that is the truth; that is the self ” (CU 6.12). A single essence, an
essence within an essence, unifies, integrates, and explains the whole. And it
is a crucial Upaniṣadic doctrine that the self has five sheaths (food, breath,
mind, intellect, and bliss)  – five levels of description yielding progressively
deeper notions of the person, drawing us gradually away from superficial

9781138795051_pi-418.indd 151 6/27/2017 9:54:04 AM

 152 J. Ganeri
appearances towards a deep understanding of the place of the subjective in
an objective view.
The Upaniṣads are allegories, fables, dialogues, and parables. They admit
different interpretations and different systematisations. There is a philosoph-
ical common theme  – the possibility of an integrative vision  – expressed
through paradigm, metaphor, and imagery. They speak of the hidden con-
nections that relate the three spaces, of ritual, of cosmos, and of human self,
and they refer to the primary grid that makes knowledge of those hidden
connections possible, to which they give the name brahman. As such brah-
man is the Upaniṣadic episteme, something underneath all knowledge, and
indeed, all consciousness, something hardly knowable within the Upaniṣadic
system of thought itself and yet something which makes Upaniṣadic know-
ledge possible.

References
Black, Brian 2007. The Character of the Self in Ancient India:  Priests, Kings, and
Women in the Early Upaniṣads. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press.
Borges, Jorge Luis 1999. “John Wilkins’ Analytical Language” in Eliot Weinberger
(ed.) Selected Nonfictions. New York: Penguin Books.
Brereton, Joel 1990. “The Upaniṣads” in Wm. T. de Bary and I. Bloom (eds.)
Approaches to the Asian Classics. New York: Columbia University Press, 115–135.
Cohen, Signe 2008. Text and Authority in the Older Upaniṣads. Leiden: Brill.
Foucault, Michel 1970. The Order of Things. London: Routledge.
Foucault, Michel 1972. The Archaeology of Knowledge. London: Routledge.
Olivelle, Patrick 1996. Upaniṣads. Oxford: World Classics.
Smith, Brian 1989. Reflections on Resemblance, Ritual and Religion. New York: Oxford
University Press.

9781138795051_pi-418.indd 152 6/27/2017 9:54:04 AM