The Upaniadic Episteme

Routledge Handbook on The Upaniads, edited by Signe Cohen

Jonardon Ganeri

The Upaniads are a polymorphous collection of anecdotes, parables and dialogues. The
earliest date from around or before the 6th century BCE, later ones written for many
centuries afterwards. The two oldest Upaniads, the Bhadrayaka and Chndogya, 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 Upaniads. The fundamental
idea of the Upaniads is that there are hidden connections between things, and that
knowing what these connections are is a profound source of insight. Indeed, the term
upaniad means a hidden connection, or possibly a secret teaching. As Joel Brereton puts
it very well, Each Upaniadic 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 disorganised 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 Upaniadic 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 (Borge 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:

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This book first arose out of a passage in Borges, out of the laughter that, as I read
the passage, shattered all the familiar landmarks of my thought breaking up all
the ordered surfaces and all the planes with which we are accustomed to tame the
wild profusion of existing 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. (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
resemblance, 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 understand.
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 chess-board, which
defines both the possible piece-positions and the possible types of move (along a
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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 episteme qua
grid constitutes the domain of possible objects of knowledge. Foucault again: In these
fields of initial differentiation, in the distances, the discontinuities, 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 connaissance to denote. Then there is the
preknowledgehe uses the French term savoirthat 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 determines 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 Upaniads and discover the 'positive
unconscious' of ancient Indian thought. The integrative vision of the Upaniads is the
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Upaniadic system of thought, the totality of connaissance, and what underpins it, the
episteme, has the label brahman. As Brereton continues, The Upaniads create an
integrative vision by identifying a single, comprehensive and fundamental principle which
shapes the worldFor later followers of the Vednta, the brahman has a particular
definition and a specific character, but for the Upaniads, the brahman remains an open
concept. It is simply the designation given to whatever principle 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 a sage: Through knowing what, sir, does this whole world become
known (Muaka 1.13) (1990: 118). There is perhaps an echo of the distinction between
connaissance and savoir in the Upaniadic use of the terms vijna and praj.
Two sorts of hidden connection (bandhu) are prominent in the Upaniads. Both can clearly
be seen in the oldest of the Upaniads, the Bhadranyaka Upaniad. 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 Upaniad, connecting the cosmos itself with the sacrificial horse: The head of the
sacrificial horse, clearly, is the dawnits 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 cosmological map. Here
is an example from the Bhadrayaka (BU 2.5):
speech

fire

sight

the sun

breath

the wind

mind

the moon

hearing

the quarters
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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, to understand what is unfamiliar and unknown. As the
Upaniadic sage Uddlaka rui puts it in Chndogya Upaniad: "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). Kaha Upaniad (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 transitional
appearances: Mist, smoke, sun, wind, fire, fireflies, lightning, crystal, moonthese are the
apparitions that, within yogic practice, precede and pave the way to the full manifestation
of brahman (vetvatara 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
Upaniads, the unifying cosmic principle, something that is made very clear in the Kena
Upaniad:
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,
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when they depart from this world. (KU 1.2)

Which one cannot see with ones 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 Yjavalkya is keen to emphases, there is, in Foucaults terminology, no
connaissance of brahman: You cant see the seer who does the seeing; you cant hear the
hearer who does the hearing; you cant think of the thinker who does the thinking; and you
cant perceive the perceiver who does the perceiving (BU 3.4.2). According to
Yjavalkya, 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 Mkya Upaniad, for example, one
must look beyond the empty content of dreamless sleep to what is called only the
fourth (turya) state, a state of consciousness underneath and behind waking, dreaming,
and dreamlessness.
The final dramatic move in Upaniadic thought is to identify brahman, this primary grid,
with ones true self, the tman: In which are established the various groups of five,
together with space; I take that to be the selfI 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 isnt: This self of yours who is present
withinhe 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 hidden
power behind the sacrifice is also seen as the hidden force behind the universe itself:
brahman (Cohen 2008: 47). Perhaps what we should understand 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 understanding the
world: Sir, teach me the hidden connection. You have been taught the hidden connection
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 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 Upaniads. 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 Upaniads give to this is that the single reality behind the multiple aspects
of the world is also the reality of the individual subject. The Upaniads seem to tell us that
there is no hope of forming a unified conception 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.
Wittgensteins remark that the spirit of the snake ... is your spirit for it is only from yourself
that you are acquainted with spirit at all (Notebooks, 85e) has been claimed by some to
reveal a distinct reverberation of this Upaniadic insight. In the Chndogya dialogue, the
sage Uddlaka promises his son vetaketu 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. vetaketu finds nothing
there, but Uddlaka 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 Upaniadic 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 appearances towards a deep understanding of the place of the
subjective in an objective view.
The Upaniads are allegories, fables, dialogues and parables. They admit different
interpretations and different systematizations. There is a philosophical common theme
the possibility of an integrative vision expressed through paradigm, metaphor and
imagery. They speak of the hidden connections 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
brahman is the Upaniadic episteme, something underneath all knowledge, and indeed, all
consciousness, something hardly knowable within the Upaniadic system of thought itself
and yet something which makes Upaniadic knowledge possible.

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REFERENCES
Brian Black, The Character of the Self in Ancient India: Priests, Kings, and Women in the
Early Upaniads (State University of New York Press, 2007).
Borges, Jorge Luis (1999). John Wilkins Analytical Language, in Eliot Weinberger ed.
Selected Nonfictions (Penguin Books).
Brereton, Joel (1990). "The Upaniads", in Wm. T. de Bary and I. Bloom (eds.),
Approaches to the Asian Classics (New York: Columbia University Press, 1990), pp.
115135.
Cohen, Signe (2008). Text and Authority in the Older Upaniads (Brill 2008)
Foucault, Michel (1970). The Order of Things (London: Routledge).
Foucault, Michel (1972). The Archaeology of Knowledge (London: Routledge).
Olivelle, Patrick (1996). Upaniads (Oxford World Classics, 1996).
Smith, Brian (1989). Reflections on Resemblance, Ritual and Religion (New York: OUP).

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