ABSTRACT
Indian philosophical literature abounds with lists, enumerations, catalogues and classifications. There are lists of the different means of knowing, of the categories of knowable things, of the variety of psychological and physical constituents of a person, and, generally, of the modes, realms and states of existence. Our interest is in the rationale behind these classifications. What function do the classifications serve? What are the criteria underpinning them? Wilhelm Halbfass1 says that these lists answer ‘the question of being’ in India, so that a list of the different kinds of being tells us what it is to ‘be’. Taxonomies are cheap – there are many ways of dividing objects into groups – and the choice of one particular way of dividing from the others is the selection of an ontology. One approach to the Indian categories, indeed the traditional approach, has therefore been to explore the reasons for choosing one way of classifying rather than another. I think a fresh approach is needed. Remembering that the classifications are given rather than chosen for all but the original compilers of the sutra-texts (and perhaps not even for them), the real interest is in the methods of rationalisation – how a predetermined list is made sense of, and in the methods of revision – how the list is modified in accordance with the principles by which it is rationalised.
