Importance of IKS
Outcomes
- Understand and appreciate the importance of acient knowledge to society
- Understand the term IKS
- Familiarize with key components of IKS
- Develop some appreciation of IKS historicity
- Lot of knowledge has been accumulated over, atleast, 5000 years of Indian Civilization. Not all knowledge has originated from the west (recent civilization), as is popularly believed.
Examples:
- Damscus steel or wootz steel in metallurgy
- Astronomical theories in calendar making- predicting eclipses, wobble of earth's axis, etc
- Super fine fabric in textile industry
- Ship-building and navigation
- Pertaining questions to be answered
- Where has that accumulated knowledge go?
- Is the available knowledge of ancient india useless for present?
- Is there a sudden loss of continuity?
- Possible reasons for loss of this knowledge
- Oral parampara of Guru-Sishya lineage is the basic mechanism for transmission of knowledge. Sometimes the guru-sishyas are the father-son or family lineage. Only limited amount of this oral traditions are captured in palm leaves or print form
- Deliberate and forced changes in educational systems disrupted this parampara knowledge. The British educational system, continued even after independence, gave minimal consideration and support to ancient knowledge.
To preserve, protect and pass-on the knowledge, present in formal and informal traditions, we should understand the importance of this knowledge
- Identity: This knowledge defines the context for several aspects of the social practices and norms, thereby helping in the continuity of, atleast, the living traditions. This preserves the identity of the diverse communities along with the underlying unifying knowledge
- Culture: If the underlying knowledge systems are abruptly withdrawn from society, the cultural (society level identity) practices will be rudely jolted. It may create distortions and discontinuities in the societal progress.
- Received wisdom: Without the history of the knowledge that is accumulated, we miss the continuity and end up trying to take take leads from others' progress. For example, instead of innovating, Indian researchers try to redo what others have already done elsewhere.
- Economic Value: When we donot claim our knowledge, others will claim it as theirs and register patents on such applications. We end up paying huge royalties for using our own knowledge. For example, the use of turmeric, spices, etc will be patented by western countries and then sell the same in different forms to us back at disproportionately high prices
All these four aspects can be understood using the case of using turmeric. Our identity is linked to use of kumkum or tilak, which is made from turmeric by adding lemon juice. If we do not know this chemical reaction, we will lose the culture of putting tilak. We will also not try to do research on the specific health benefits of using turmeric in various activites of our life, as received from our ancestors. Instead, our medical and biotechnology research will try to imitate some western methods of developing medicines. We also end up paying lots of money to pharmaceutical patents.
Definition/ Scope of Indian Knowledge System:
IKS covers practically everything about India. Especially, literature, culture & social practices, historical evidences, and other knowledge assets available in all Indian languages, dialects, and geographical regions fall under the ambit of IKS.
- Indian: This refers to the undivided Indian subcontinent (Akhanda Bharata) spanning from Burma on the east to modern Afghanistan in the west, Himalayas in the North to Indian Ocean in the South. This whole region is unified under the umbrella of social practices, and not by political unity. All knowledge synthesized, codified, and made available by 'Indians' in considered as IKS.
- Knowledge: The knowledge refers to all the codified wisdom obtained by insights gained either through the personal experiences with life situations, facing problems, analysing them and solving them, or through intense observation of events, experimentation, conjecturing, and analysis.
- System: It refers to structured methodology and classification scheme to access the available corpus knowledge. Knowledge is accessed through interest, purpose, and/or capacity of the seeker. To make it easy for accessing the knowledge for these various groups of seekers, the knowledge is to be collected, grouped, and arranged logically.
Dating of Indian literature (knowledge) is a major challenge for today's researchers because of the following reasons
- Indian Knowledge repository pre-dates the western civilizational knowledge repository by several millennia. While the western knowledge sources originated mostly in the common era, especially in the last millinia, while the Indian Knowledge belongs to the BCE and attributed to 500 BCE or before!! Applying our contemporary methods of dating the knowledge to such old knowledge sources can pose serious limitations.
- Most of the knowledge repositories in the BCE are oral. Contemporary researchers only consider temple inscriptions and palm leaf manuscripts as reliable. But, these can be much latter than the original sources. Also, with availability of more and more inscriptions can resolve some of the confusions of the westerner scholars.
- Astronomical time tags can be used to date back the literatures. But, it requires use of modern software like skymap Pro.
Inspite of these limitation, the available information is presented in the following eras
- Before 3000 BCE
The main contributions include Vedas, Puranas, and the Itihasas. The earlier estimates of their dates are being proven erroneous with advent of more new evidences (such as discovery of underwater Dwaraka) and new methods of dating (like new planetarium software). Culturally, it is believed that these texts belong to much older periods in other forms.
- 3000 BCE to 500 CE
Significant contributions were made in the areas of linguistics, literature, health, mathematics and code of living. This indicates the vibrancy of society and its receptiveness to new ideas and methods of improving the quality of life.
- 500 CE to 1800 CE
During this period, Indians have made great strides in the area of mathematics, astronomy, philosophy and spirituality. With strong foundations in mathematics, several allied areas have also grown, notable among them are architecture and technology. For example, best temple complexes, rust-free iron pillars in the open ground, floating pillars, musical pillars, etc withstood the on-slaught of time and bear testimony to these skills even today.
