snippety snip

excellent points by nagarjuna, janani and gora. nagarjuna: you're right about classical brahminism being an earlier incarnation of a proprietary knowledge model. janani you mention what appears to be a BSD-style attribution-style in some indic literature, and then go on to mention pure folk knowledge without attribution, that lives in the public domain.

well, as i said earlier, i have been privately researching all this since about two years. have come across the approaches you mention, and a few more not mentioned. knowledge as a secret never to be revealed was one. authoring works on commission for kings and emperors is well-known, too.

would like to share two asepcts i came across:

01. emperor akbar asks tansen how great would tansen's master be as a singer, given that tansen himself is truly great? akbar expresses a wish to listen to tansen's master. tansen cuttingly replies that his master is a great musician, because he never sings for an emperor's court or for crowds, but only for his own bliss, as well as not for commerce. so if akbar wishes to listen to him, he must hide and wait for whenever the master sings. thus it happened.

the point here is the age-old debate on traded goods and services, versus 'work as worship'. in our popular context: tansen will sing his music so it can be sold for iPods, whether with drm or not is a minor issue. tansen's master won't. in face he won't sing for anyone, except the divine. similar anecdotes can be found across all cultures.

02. obfuscation: indian mystics discovered very early that knowledge in the hands of the unrefined mind can be deadly. the same dilemma that troubled einstien. those that believed the birth of the atomic age would solve all of mankind's problems [energy, medicine, other specific application at least], and would lead to a better world, must be facing disillusionment at the chaos of the world. thus, a lot of indian knowledge got obfuscated. hidden in plain view. patanjali's yoga sutra is a prime example. here is a scripture so misunderstood since the entire knowledge is expressed in allegories that are obfuscating. the sufi tradition of the world also expresses its knowledge in obfuscated terms, with a book that has atleast 7 interpretations, depending on the growing awareness of the disciple.

in today's example: we do impose self-censorship or state-sponsored censorship on certain aspects of knowledge, such as on how to build deadly dirty nuclear weapons.

i would not be suprised if in a few decades we discover between proprietory knowledge, and freely-available-knowledge, emerges the third: hidden in plain view knowledge. the how and why would also be clear as time goes by....

gora, yes, i read the divine declaration of you as god. how come no one else has discovered you ;-)

:-) niyam