Investigating by means of reasons, good and evil in the Vedic religion, profit and
loss in the field of trade and agriculture, and prudent and imprudent policy in
political administration, as well as their relative strengths and weaknesses, the
study of critical inquiry (a ̄nvı ̄ks.ikı ̄) confers benefit on people, keeps their minds
steady in adversity and in prosperity, and produces adeptness of understanding,
speech and action.He reiterates an old couplet (1.2.12):
The study of critical inquiry is always thought of as a lampfor all branches of
knowledge, a meansin all activities, and a supportfor all religious and social duty.Shortly after the rediscovery and publication of the Treatise on Gains in 1909,
Hermann Jacobi wrote an article arguing that Kaut.ilya had to all extents
distinguished and defined “philosophy” in India.^3 Kaut.ilya’s separation of a
study of “critical inquiry” (a ̄nvı ̄ks.ikı ̄) from theological studies was enough, he
conjectured, to justify the identification of “critical inquiry” with philosophy.
This rather important conjecture has been strongly disputed, on the grounds
that critical inquiry as described by Kaut.ilya consists simply in the art of inves-
tigating by reasons, and this is something that is practiced in allbranches of
learning. Paul Hacker^4 makes the point that this “critical inquiry” is not neces-
sarily an independent system of thought, but is sometimes rather a method. In
the same vein, it has very plausibly been conjectured^5 that the early references
tosa ̄m.khya,yoga, and loka ̄yata are not to well-defined schools of philosophical
speculation, but reflect instead a methodological division. Thus sa ̄m.khyalabels
the methods of inquiry that rest on the intellectual enumeration of basic prin-
ciples,yoga the methods of spiritual practice, and loka ̄yata the methods of
worldly or empirical investigation.
We can agree with these conjectures without having to identify philosophy
as a discipline with the having or inventing of a system of thought. Philosophy
is circumscribed by adherence to a certain methodology and body of problems.
Broadly, it is the a priori analysis of the interconnections and distinctions
between groups of concepts to do with the nature of value, thought, existence,
and meaning. It is indeed possible to hear in Kaut.ilya’s remark about “investi-
gating...good and evil in the Vedic religion, profit and loss in the field of trade
and agriculture, and prudent and imprudent policy in political administration”
a suggestion that a reasoned investigation is an inquiry into the nature of the
distinction between good and evil, the proper goals of political institutions, and
so on. But the intended domain of application for critical inquiry seems to be
much wider than that. It encompasses any situation in which one sets about
achieving one’s aims in a reasoned way. There is a reasoned way to go about
making a profit, a reasoned way to rule a country. The study of what such
reasoning consists in is one thing, the philosophicalinvestigation of the nature
of profit or rule quite another. So a ̄nvı ̄ks.ikı ̄in Kaut.ilya’s sense is a study of the
generic concept of rationality, as that concept features in questions about how
rationally to think, how rationally to act, and how rationally to speak.
hinduism and the proper work of reason 413