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SrI:
SrImatE rAmAnujAya nama:
SrI krishNa parabrahmaNE nama:

dear vaishNavAs,

The following is a good article about the self
authentication vEdAs published in sapthagiri magazine
of TTD.

dAsOham,
SrIperumbUdUru vEnkaTa vinOd.
-------------------------------------------------------

VERACITY OF THE VEDAS
L. Srinivasan

Knowledge, to be reliable has to be derived from
impeccable and unimpeachable sources. Hence,
epistemology is at the very root of all philosophy.
Visishtadvaita relies primarly on the Vedas, ending
with and inclusive of the Upanishads, for its
authenticity. Hence, the question naturally arises how
far its source of knowledge is trustworthy. 
Means of Knowledge

The various schools of thought have, by and large,
agreed on three sources of knowledge, viz., Pratyaksha
or direct sense perception, Anumana or inference which
is based on past experiences of sense perception, and
sabda or reliable verbal testimony, other minor
pramanas being subsumed under the above three. Among
the sources falling under the head sabda, the Vedas
are the most important. According to sage Apastambha,
Veda is so called because it imparts knowledge not
obtainable from the other two means of perception and
inference.

Certain basic principles determine the attitude of
Visishtadvaita towards the scriptures, which are now
examined in detail.

The Doctrine of Svatah Pramanya or self-validity of
all knowledge :-

Visishtadvaita adopts the theory established by the
Mimamsakas with great acumen, that all knowledge is
intrinsically valid. That is, it is natural and
inherent to thought to be true. No adventitious
support or evidence, no alien quality of excellence,
is needed to vest knowledge with truth. Only falsity
is brought about and cognized through such
adventitious circumstances. Thought, when pure, is in
rapport with reality. That is the basis of all knowing
and all claim to the apprenhension of reality. But
when thought is sullied or distored by falsifying
adjuncts, it misses the truth. Such falsification is
made evident by it being contradicted by the rest of
the body of knowledge. This principle implies, in
relation to spiritual knowledge, that it necessarily
carries validity unless it is subject to
contradiction. This is a general epistemological
principle developed and defended on a free and
independent philosophical basis and rests on no
dogmatic belief.

Illustration

Let us take two words, for instance, "this" and
"silver". By themselves each is incapable of imparting
any false knowledge, but when an object which is not
silver is pointed out and it is said, "this is
silver", there is false information'. The reason for
the falsity does not lie with the words themselves,
but with the user of the words.

Human Frailties

Why should a person try to give wrong information ?
There can be several reasons like bhrama (error,
delusion or misperception), pramada (negligence or
inadvertence), Upralipsa (desire to deceive), physical
defects etc. Such are the frailties that human beings
suffer from.

Misperception

A person may mistake one thing for another, say a rope
for a snake, and shout "Snake, Snake !" If the words
related to a real snake, there would be no fault, but
because of misperception, mistaking a rope for a
snake, the same words convey false information to the
hearers.

Inadvertence

While identifying a rope as such, the person may,
through a slip of the tongue declare "Here is a
snake". Though it is due to negligence or inadvertence
it results in disseminating false knowledge.

Deceit

Desiring to deceive another playfully or wilfully, one
may declare a rope to be a snake.

Physical Defects

While recognizing a conch, a person with a jaundiced
eye mistakes its pure white hue to be yellow because
of a defective eye.

Impersonal character of Vedas

An objection

The claim that Vedas are reliable because they are
revelations, they have not been composed by any
purusha or person and hence they are called
Apaurushaya, may be contested thus.

Sabda, after all, is sound emanating from parts within
the body. Veda being a collection of such sounds, it
must also have been the product of sounds emanating
from a person or persons, and hence the claim that it
is non- personal is untenable.

Reply

Let us take two examples, say Kalidasa's Raghuvamsa
and the Yajur Veda. White the former starts with
vagarthau, the latter begins with "ishe tva". What is
the difference between the two ? The words in
Raghuvamsa were not created by Kalidasa. All that he
did was to string together certain existing words in
his stanza in a particular order to express the idea
that he had in mind.

Now, who, in the case of the Yajur Veda, performed a
similar office of putting together the words in the
beginning, or for that matter, the whole of that Veda
? If there were any, their names would have been
known. The authors of all important works like
Ramayana, not to speak of even minor works, have come
down to us through long generations, but in the case
of the greatest of all writings, the Veda no one has
ever known or heard of its author or authors. The
absence of such vital information forces us to the
conclusion that it is self-born and authorless, a
revelation.

Unbroken Continuity

The Vedas have been transmitted from time immemorial
orally from Guru to Sishya, through a long chain, up
to the present day. There are very strict rules as to
who are eligible to learn and recite it. It has to be
learnt only from the Acharya in the prescribed manner
and certain expiations have to be undergone if the
rules are transgressed.

The unbroken continuity and absence of authorship show
that the function of speech or communication is
natural and intrinsic to the Veda.
Even God is not the Author

Sri Ramanuja does not take the Vedas as springing from
God. That position is possible for the Nyaya school
which claims to have established the existence of God
on speculative grounds. But in Visishtadvaita, and all
Vedantic schools in general, which altogether base
their idea of the supreme on the Vedas, such
attribution of authorship to God would imply a logical
see-saw in this form, "God exists because that is the
verdict of the Vedas, and the Vedas are to be admitted
because they are revelations from God."

Spiritual Speech

Spiritual speech is primeval and original, while
ordinary discourse is derivative and secondary.
Understanding through such spiritual verbal testimony
can also not be reduced to inference.

Eternality of the Vedas

The Vedas are claimed to be eternal, but the Veda
itself says (Svetasvatara Upanishad 6-18) that at the
beginning of creation, the Lord created the four faced
Brahma and imparted the Vedas to him. So earlier they
must have been non-existent. Then, how are they
eternal ?

The answer to this is that the Lord retains within
Himself the Vedas during the periods of Pralaya and
reveals them again at the beginning of every creation.

Objection of the Scripture

The deliverance of the scripture, on the principle of
svatah pramanya adumbrated earlier, possesses
objectivity, it has to be clearly understood, only on
the condition that it is free from contradiction. Now
contradiction can be of two kinds, internal and
external. The utterance may be self-contradictory or
may be in conflict with unimpeachable facts
ascertained by observations and reasoning. The Vedas
fulfil both these conditions.

Absence of Internal Contradictions

Following the Brahma Sutras, Sri Ramanuja devotes the
whole of the first chapter of his Sri Bhashya to the
removal of the apparent and alleged contradictions in
the Upanishads. He points to the essentially coherent
structure of the philosophy that is embodied in them.
In the Vedartha sangraha also there is a systematic
analysis of the various types of Upanishadic
intention, and their coherence and inner harmony is
exhibited.

Absence of External Contradictions

In the second chapter of Sri Bhashya in the first,
third and fourth padas, there is a resolute effort to
answer all objections to the philosophy of Vedanta
presented in the Brahma Sutras. The objections based
on supposed or real facts of experience and
considerations of logic are squarely faced and the
principle of non-contradiction from the rest of
knowledge is established.

Thus, non-contradiction, both internal and external,
is assured to the thought of Vedanta.
The doctrine of self-validity, strictly speaking,
needs no further intellectual demonstration of the
truth of the scriptures. However, Sri Ramanuja does
not stop here.

Positive Coherence

He goes a step further and examines all the current
doctrines that claim to make out a coherent
philosophical system independently of the upanishads.
This extension, in fact, is necessary because
non-contradiction does not mean merely freedom from
contradiction but positive coherence. It is necessary
to demonstrate that the rejection of the doctrine of
the Upanishads lands all thought and life in sheer
self-contradiction.

Limitations of Reason

(i) Reason cannot prove God
There is another foremost argument. There are certain
ultimate metaphysical questions to which empirical
thought can offer no decisive answer. The fundamental
question of that kind is about the existence of God.
Empirical intelligence can offer no conclusive proof
for the existence of God. Sri Ramanuja has powerfully
argued out this point in his interpretation of Br.
Sutra 1-1-3.
(ii) Reason cannot disprove God
Again, empirical intelligence can offer no conclusive
refutation of theism. Sri Ramanuja has brought this
out with equal power in his criticism of sankhya
system in Sri Bhashya in the second pada of the second
chapter of the Brahma Sutra.
The significance of this impasse is that God is
neither to be based on empirical reason, nor to be
discredited on that ground. Reason is powerless to
prove and equally powerless to disprove God. This is a
decisive proof of the limitations of the empirical
stand point and pure reason seeking to discover
reality in its own light.

Validity of Vedanta

Thus, while the scriptures are free from self-
contradiction and contradiction from the rest of
assured knowledge, other pathways of philosophy are
riddled with contradictions, and the nature of
observation and reason (Pratyaksha and Anumana) are
such that they cannot furnish satisfactory and
conclusive answers to certain fundamental and
irrespressible questions. Hence, the scriptures, the
Vedas inclusive of and eulminating in Vedanta, have to
be acknowledged as valid.

Scripture is neither superfluous nor false
If scripture merely reiterated other modes of thought,
it will be superfluous. If it stood in conflict with
the deliverances of perception and inference, when the
latter are valid, it would be false. As it is neither
reiterative of, nor in opposition to them, it has to
be accorded acceptance as a valid mode of thought.

In case of conflict

In case of conflict between scripture and perception,
or between scripture and reason, it is definitely
contended by Sri Ramanuja that scripture is not always
to be preferred. Such conflicts are not natural and
are the result of some trespass either by the one or
the other of the pramanas. That pramana has to be set
aside whose trespass engenders the conflect. Sri
Ramanuja enunciates the fundamental principle that,
even for supporting the sruti, what is against reason
and is contradictory of the evidences should not be
postulated.

Scripture satisfies empirical standards
The supremacy of the scripture, its role as the
revelation of the supreme, is itself based upon its
satisfactory fulfilment of the criterion of truth and
validity settled by empirical intelligence. It
satisfies its claim to truth by conforming to a
standard that is not set up by itself.

Impersonality and Eternality of the Vedas
The impersonality and eternality of the Vedas have
been mentioned earlier, but there is another important
point added here.

The Vedas are no doubt, intuited by the seers, but
they intuited only pre-existent truths. The knowledge
that they thus acquired was there externally, and they
only rediscovered this ancient treasure.
This eternality relates not only to the knowledge
enshrined in the Vedas, but also to the actual words
and the order of the words constituting the Vedic
composition. The knowledge that is ever existent must
have an ideal mode and that can be no less eternal
than the knowledge that it embodies.
Fluctuation in self-expression is a mark of finite
intelligence. Vedas constitute eternal knowledge
embodied in an eternal form. Thus, the form and the
thought of the Vedas are coterminous with the supreme
reality that they reveal. In effect, all spiritual
apprehension is a revelation or a communication.

The importance of Svatah-pramanya

It is important to emphasize here that the validity of
the Vedas mainly rests not on their impersonality or
eternality, but it flows from the principle of
svatah-pramanya and the manifold application of the
criterion of coherence. The impersonality and
eternality of the Vedas just ensure their freedom from
the defects of human composition, and such freedom
leaves their svatah - pramanya or self-valdity secure.
Their validity is also supported by the inadequacy of
empirical thought and the unreasonableness of
rejecting knowledge that at once transcends empirical
knowledge and is free from contradictions. It has been
well said that the most, reasonable thing that reason
can do is not to reason about things beyond reason.

Further, the rejection of the body of knowledge
provided by the Vedas, as demonstrated in the polemics
against non-Vedic schools, would land all philosophy
in chaos and confusion.

Simha - avalokana

After traversing some distance, the lion is said to
look back at the tract that it has covered. This is
called simha-avalokana. In that manner, we may now
look at the tract covered so far, thus by summing up
what has been said so far.
The Vedas are valid authority because of ...
1.      being svatah-pramana or self-valid; 
2.      imparting, knowledge not available from other
sources; 
3.      absence of internal contradictions; 
4.      absence of external contraditions; 
5.      positive coherence and internal harmony; 
6.      absence of such coherence and harmony in non-Vedic
schools; 
7.      absence of human defects of composition; 
8.      unbroken continuity from time immemorial; 
9.      satisfying empirical standards; 
10.     not having reiterative of other modes of thought; 
11.     the limitations of reason which can neither prove
nor disprove God; and 
12.     the unreasonable rejection of the transcendental -
knowledge of the Vedas resulting in sheer
self-contradiction. 

------------------------------------------------------------


                
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