Where is the word Bhakti in the Vedas?

[shivsomashekhar]

Namaste,

Well maybe it depends of what Nastika and Astika meant during the Sankhya and Memansa times, but these categorizations are not something new of the 17th century, this was my only point (unless you did not mean this, then my appollogies). The requirements may have changed, so for nowadays maybe the Abrahamic religions can be classified as Astika? who knows

Dhanyavad

The usage of astika and nastika has been in use from the time of Panini - at least. His usage was as simple as astika = one who believes and nastika = one who does not believe. The earliest specialization of this was applied to mean as belief in paraloka vs. non-belief in paraloka. Later, it was applied to belief/non-belief in Ishwara and belief/non-belief in the Veda (Manu Smriti, etc.,). There were other applications too (by Jains, etc.,).

As I was saying earlier, there are several doxographies since the 5th Century CE. But the prevailing doxography of nine darshanas (6 astika, 3 nastika) is not dated before the 17th Century CE. Most doxographies are authored by Buddhists, Jains and Advaitins. It should be noted that *none* of them consider their own school as nastika - for they all apply their own definitions to the term.

Some quick samples -
Manimegalai (Buddhist) - Lokayata, Buddhism, Sankhya, Nyaya, Vaisesika, Mimamsa
Bhaviveka (Buddhist) - Hinayana, Yogachara, Sankhya, Vaisesika, Vedanta, Mimamsa
Haribhadra (Jain) - Buddhism, Nyaya, Sankhya, Jain, Vaisesika, Mimamsa
Jayantha (Nyaya) - Buddhism, Nyaya, Sankhya, Jain, Lokayata, Mimamsa
The Sarva-darshana-sangraha lists 16 darshanas.

There are more, but this should help explain that there was no uniform standard here - though people like to think and believe that there was one.

 

[Aupmanyav]

Excellent post, Shiva. New information. Thanks.

 

[Satyamavejayanti]

"shivsomashekhar, post: 4810287, member: 56157"

The usage of astika and nastika has been in use from the time of Panini - at least.

Agree, many seem to think the Astika/Nastika terms and categorization of different views is modern, don't know why.

As I was saying earlier, there are several doxographies since the 5th Century CE. But the prevailing doxography of nine darshanas (6 astika, 3 nastika) is not dated before the 17th Century CE.

Ahh, now i know what you mean, not the system but the prevalent doxographies cannot be dated before 17th century, I assumed you were talking about the terms themselves.

There are more, but this should help explain that there was no uniform standard here - though people like to think and believe that there was one.

Agree, many Darshans claimed to be Astika while calling the opposing camp Nastik, this can only be possible if the terms themselves are not rigid but extremely contextual and have more of a open meaning, for example group A can term themselves as Astika because of reasons 1234, and any group not part of this 1234 reasoning is termed as Nastika, well this is my take on these terms.