6 minutes

The three kinds of knowing

Siddhanta accepts three means of valid knowledge: seeing, reasoning and a trustworthy word. Each has its own reach, and none replaces another.

Every teaching on this hill says something is true: that the soul is bound, that Siva helps, that grace frees. A careful seeker may fairly ask, "How do we know?" Siddhanta does not brush that question aside. Its great books stop to answer it before they teach anything else. The answer is the pramanas, the means of valid knowledge, which the Tamil books call alavai, measures. There are three.

✦Seeing: kandal

Perception knows what is directly present, when it is free of doubt and error.

Kandal, seeing, is perception: knowing what is directly before us through the senses. It is the first and most familiar way of knowing. Yet not every seeing is knowing. At dusk a coil of rope can look like a snake; a distant shape can leave us unsure whether it is a post or a person. Siddhanta's measure of true perception is that it is clear: without doubt, and without mistaking one thing for another.

✦Reasoning: karudal

Inference reaches what is not seen through a sign firmly joined to it.

Karudal, reasoning, is inference: knowing what is not seen through something that is. Smoke rising from the hillside tells us of a fire we cannot see, because smoke and fire are firmly joined. That firm connection is the heart of it. Seeing two things together once does not prove that one always comes with the other; the connection has to be established.

This is how much of Siddhanta's teaching proceeds. Sivagnana Bodham begins with an inference: the world we see comes into being, lasts and is withdrawn, so it is something brought about, and it needs One who brings it about. Its third sutra reasons in the same way towards the soul, from the knowing and acting that the body alone cannot explain.

✦A trustworthy word: urai

Testimony gives knowledge through a reliable word; sacred teaching reveals what the other two cannot reach.

Urai, the word, is testimony: knowledge received from someone who knows and speaks truly. Much of what we know comes this way, from teachers, parents and books we have good reason to trust. Its highest form is sacred teaching: the Agamas and the words of the realised. They reveal what no eye can see and no reasoning can fully reach: Siva's nature, the soul's bondage and the way of release.

A trustworthy word does not cancel the other two. Scripture does not ask us to call a rope a snake, or to accept an argument that does not follow. Each means of knowing has its own field, and a sound teaching respects all three.

✦Why the books begin here

Arulnandi sets out the three before his first sutra, so that every claim after can be weighed.

Before he unfolds a single sutra, Arulnandi gives the measures of knowing in the opening verses of Sivagnana Siddhiyar. One verse states what each does:

A teacher might put it simply: the world we chiefly know by seeing; the soul we know by reasoning from what it does; Siva we know through the sacred word, and fully only by His grace. The philosophy guide gathers the three as one step of its map; the rest of this round builds on them.

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