Natural philosophy and epistemology of taste in India: Vaiśeṣika and Buddhism

Abstract

The article explores the key ideas about taste and its perception in the Vaiśeṣika text Praśastapāda-bhāṣya of Praśastapāda (fl.6th century C.E) and the Buddhist text Abhidharmakoshabhāṣya of Vasubandhu (fl. 4th to 5th century CE). These two texts share atomistic ideas about the nature of the primary elements (earth, water, etc.). However their approaches radically differed in the interpretation of substance and subject of perception. Vaiśeṣika followed the metaphysical notion of substances (dravya) consisting of atoms, endowed with properties and movements, and, a natural-philosophical scheme of “body-organ-object” in the analysis of primary elements. Vaiśeṣika’s concept of taste perception was guided by the doctrine of the ātman (the immutable soul) being the subject of cognition. In the Buddhist natural philosophy, based on the rejection of immutable substances, atoms are considered rather as phenomenal properties. As Buddhists denied the concept of ātman, the subject of taste perception is a taste-consciousness (jihva-vijñāna). The organ of taste is proportioned to its objects by the number of atoms. By this, the very possibility for the gustatory consciousness to perceive tastes is explained. Taste as such, according to Buddhism, is a source of attachment to pleasures that hampers spiritual progress. It corresponds to the level of experience characteristic of the “world of desires” (kāma-dhātu), which the adept is called upon to overcome. Although both schools embed their teachings in the soteriological perspective (achieving liberation from saṃsāra), the Vaiśeṣika approach relies more on metaphysics (third person perspective), while the Abhidharma Buddhism is more focused on the systematic introspection and classification of factors of experience contributing to suffering in order to neutralize and overcome them (first person perspective).