Daya Krishna

Daya Krishna (1924–2007) was an Indian philosopher. He was Pro Vice Chancellor of Rajasthan University and editor of the Journal of Indian Council of Philosophical Research for over three decades. He has published works in the fields of Indian philosophy, Western philosophy and aesthetics. His doctoral thesis published as The Nature of Philosophy is said to have been acclaimed by the British philosopher, Gilbert Ryle, as an outstanding work. His work explores the possibility of looking at Indian traditions through resources drawn from Indian concepts and categories. He has attempted to bring about "a dialogue between traditional Pundits, thinking and writing in Sanskrit, and scholars who “do” Indian philosophy in English".

Quotes

• It is not only that a very large number of Mantras from the Rgveda are repeated in the other Vedas, but that there are substantial repetitions in the Rgveda itself. (p.86)
  • Indian Philosophy, quoted in An Indian sceptic, 2012

• In fact, the very large proliferation of the shakhas [‘branches’, channels of transmission], at least as mentioned in the tradition, testifies to the fact that the Rishis of those days treated their Vedic patrimony with a degree of freedom that seems sacrilegious when viewed in the perspective of attitudes with which the Vedas have been traditionally looked at for a long time. (…) the Vedas were regarded in a totally different way in Vedic times. (p.84)
  • Indian Philosophy, quoted in An Indian sceptic, 2012

• If, for example, one chooses the second century AD, one would discover that ‘the major systems extant at that time – Samkhya, Mimansa, Nyaya and Vaisesika, Jainism, the several schools of Buddhism, and Carvaka – are none of them theistic’. But ‘if one slices instead at, say, the fourteenth century AD, one finds that Nyaya-Vaisesika has become pronouncedly theistic, that Buddhism and Carvaka had disappeared, and that several varieties of theistic Vedanta have come into prominence.’ (p.40) I
  • Indian Philosophy, quoted in An Indian sceptic, 2012

About

• Briefly, Daya Krishna was a Hindu philosopher who knew his classics very well, and who took a questioning position. He was not a secularist, the kind who know next to nothing of their tradition yet condemn it out of hand anyway. But he was not a believer either, aware as he was of the contradiction between the common beliefs about Vedic literature and what the Vedas themselves say.
  • quoted in An Indian sceptic, 2012

• Daya Krishna (1924-2007) had been a member of the Changers’ Club, the debating circle of friends at Delhi University, featuring the later journalist Girilal Jain, economists Ram Swarup and Raj Krishna and historian Sita Ram Goel.
  • quoted in An Indian sceptic, 2012