पुराणमित्येव न साधु सर्वं (purANamityEva na sAdhu sarvam) - Not all things ancient are excellent / proper just by virtue of their vintage

In my quest for my spiritual roots, I have been digging into what is understood to be ancient wisdom. But is all ancient wisdom correct or appropriate? Is something new to be rejected if it runs contrary established viewpoints? And in a quaintly ironic way, what if we were to look to this ancient wisdom, and see what it has to say about the validity of well, ancient wisdom? 

Let us turn to a person we celebrate as arguably India’s greatest ever poet & dramatist. We hold him up as an example of how great our ancients were and bemoan how there has been a steady degradation in quality across all fields, particluarly literature. 

We turn to mahAkavi Kalidasa. What does Kalidasa himself say about this blind celebration of all things old and disparaging of anything new? But before we go there, what does the word kavi mean, since we call Kalidasa a mahAkavi, or a great kavi?

Of course, the most common meaning of the word kavi is poet. Someone of boundless imagination, who can span the temporal, elemental world around us and the ephemeral, sublime world of fantasy. But kavi is also a term used for the exceptionally wise and knowledgeable, a true seer.

Getting back to Kalidasa. For context, mAlavikAgnimitram was Kalidasa’s first play; he was an unknown entity at that time, trying to establish himself. 

Before the main play starts, he presents a conversation between the narrator and one of the lead actors of the play. The actor asks why they are performing a work of some parvenu called Kalidasa, when grand old plays of people like Bhasa or Saumilla are available? Kalidasa’s anguish and anger are both on full display when he speaks through the voice of the narrator

पुराणमित्येव न साधु सर्वं (purANamityEva na sAdhu sarvam)

न चापि काव्यं नवमित्यवद्यम्। (na CApi kAvyam navaityavadhyam )

“Just because it’s old does not make anything excellent / proper

Nor should a poem be rejected (literally killed) just because it is new”

kAvyam is the work of a kavi. It means a poem at its most obvious level, but also means wisdom in a broader sense. Kalidasa is clearly questioning the tendency of people to accept any old view as true, and to disparage anything new as pretentious or worse, wrong. And to drive home his point, he continues

सन्त: परीक्ष्यान्यतरद्भजन्ते (santah parIkSyAntarbhajantE)

मूढः परप्रत्ययनेयबुद्धिः॥ (mUDhah parapratyayanEyabuddhih)

“The wise praise (anything) after duly testing (for themselves) its merits

While fools blindly accept the opinions of others”

How far sighted was Kalidasa! How often are we told - this is “accepted” wisdom, and should not be questioned? This is true across fields, with organized religion probably the most obvious and egregious of the lot, but even supposedly secular and forward looking fields, say manangement science, suffer from this malady. 

This philosophy solidifies into action in practice. In any organization, the clinching argument to settle any dispute is usually “that’s the way its always been done!” In my world of consulting, a pithy aphorism goes “No CIO ever got fired for buying IBM / Cisco”, when faced with a difficult choice between an established large brand and an upcoming challenger. 

In the classic British political satire Yes, Minister, bureaucrat Sir Humphrey (who represents an infallible belief in set ways) makes a telling statement “Many things must be done, but nothing must be done for the first time!” 

Even law (atleast common law) emphasizes precedence to add weight to any judgment. And even when a path breaking judgment is pronounced, many a time the judge will write a caveat “this judgment may not be quoted as precendent in future cases”. 

A change from the past is never easy. If not, Change Management would not be a field of management science, and Change Management consulting would not be a multi-billion dollar industry.

A parting thought. How many supposed pillars of tradition (at least what is seen as tradition today) were actually path breaking iconoclasts in their own time? My submission - pretty much everyone of them, across fields. Kalidasa, that bastion of all things Sanskrit, merely called the bluff.