Are the Elements and the Panchabhuta the Same (Thing)? Epistemic Objects between Science, Religion, and Philosophy in Colonial North India, c.1920

• In Event: Colonial Chemical Translations: South Asia and the Modern Chemical Sciences, 1850–1980

English Abstract

What are things made from? If elements are the foundational matters of fact in global chemopolitics, what happens to elementary conceptions of life and world when new concepts challenge existing ontologies? My paper examines an early twentieth century debate about the status of the panchabhuta, also called the panchatattva, a concept foundational to Hindu ontology and authority. In British India, these “five Hindu elements” were described by European orientalists, Sanskrit scholars, emerging Indian scientists and philosophers, and lay readers. The tattva presented significant difficulties in linguistic, conceptual, and material translation. While prithvi, jal, and vayu were easily rendered as earth, water, and air, the two other tattva – tej and akash – proved less pliable. Is tej fire or energy? Is akash ether? As the Sanskrit scholar Chandrashekhar Shastri asked in the Hindi-language popular science monthly Vigyan in 1920, “are the elements and the panchabhuta the same (thing)?” In the subsequent debate, Vigyan’s authors drew on ancient Sanskrit knowledge alongside the history of European chemistry. They evaluated the tattva in light of phlogiston and caloric and new theories of chemical structure, and also cited traditional theories on the nature of things associated with the Vaisheshika, one of the six schools of Hindu philosophy. The views of the legendary seer Kanada, Antoine Lavoisier, and John Dalton were all cannily deployed. Thinking about elements and tattva as epistemic objects, this paper brings into view the complex mediations by which vernacular readers identified these objects with reference to and through the intercalation of two distinct standards: Vaisheshika philosophy and European chemical writings.

Author

• Charu Singh, University of Cambridge