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Dear friends,

One of the 'nAmA-s' in the Sahasranamam that I'm always intrigued by
is the name "shoonyah" given to Vishnu and as it apppears in shlOka
no: 79 --

suvarna-varna hEmAngO varAngas-chandanAngadI
veeraha vishamah shoonyO grutAshI-rachala-chalah

The Sanskrit word "soonya" means "zero", "nullity", "cipher",
"emptiness". 

It would strike anyone as extremely odd that the Sahasranamam should
choose to call Lord Vishnu as 'Zero'! You can understand God being
called "ekah", the One Supreme Being. The essence of all monistic
theism lies in the belief that God is One (the Upanishad says,
"sayaschAyam pUrUshE; yaschAsAvA'dityE; sa ekah"). 

You can understand too God being addressed as "anantah", the
Infinite, as in the Sahasranamam stanza--- 

kAma devah kAmapAlah kaamI kAntah krutAgamah
anirdEshyavapu-vishnur-vIrO' anantah dhananjayah (stanza 70)

Since God is Immeasurable it seems plainly alright to name Him
"anantah", the Infinite. But how is one to explain hailing the
Almighty as 'shoonyah', the Cipher? 

There is a view that "If Infinity is immeasurable, so is Zero".
Mathematically speaking, one could define 'zero' to be
'anti-infinity'. If 'Infinity' is immeasurable plenitude, 'Zero' is
immeasurable emptiness. If you were to imagine, say, an interminable
series of values, from zero to infinity, floating somewhere out there
in endless space, then, surely, Zero would be at one end of it while
Infinity would be found at the other end... wherever, that is, the
two ends may be found, if at all. And if you reflect upon it deeply,
that would make out 'Zero' and 'Infinity' to be two sides of the same
un-graspable coin. 

By the same logic, you might say the Sanskrit "anantah" and "shoonya"
might seem antonymous but in reality they mean the same thing.
Hailing God Almighty as 'Lord Infinity' is hence no different from
hailing Him 'Lord Zero'.

Incredible logic notwithstanding, we know for a fact however that the
'Infinite' and the 'Cipher' are never really the same thing. None of
us would be willing to exchange one for the other if it came to a
real choice between the two. If I go up, for instance, to a venerable
'achArya' or 'guru' and prostrate at his feet, I would expect him to
shower his benediction upon me saying, "May you be blessed in life,
my son, with God's infinite Grace!". If instead the man were to say,
"May God's zero grace be thine in life!", the blessing would stand
transformed into a vicious curse, wouldn't it? 

*******

So then, why is God, who is Infinite Being, being called "shoonya", a
Zero -- the very opposite of infinity? The traditional commentators
of the Vishnu-Sahasranamam offer us some explanation in their
respective "bhAshyA-s".

Let's take up Adi Sankara's "sahasranamam bhAshyA" first. 

In his commentary, Sri Sankara (6th CE) explains "shoonya" as an apt
'nAmA' for God, the Supreme Brahman, who is "nirguNa" -- i.e. the
Being who is totally devoid of any qualities or attributes. In other
words, according to Sankara's school of metaphysics, God is "guNa
shoonyan".

According to this explanation, God transcends all attributes. His
qualities like omnipotence, omniscience etc. only serve to help us in
ascertaining His reality but they do not 'per se' define Him. The
truth of God's existence cannot be grasped by us with reference to
His qualities or 'guNA' alone, says Sankara. Brahman is to be
apprehended as an Absolute Being who stands far apart from and quite
beyond any of His infinitely ("anantah") great qualities -- i.e. He
is 'nirguNa-brahman', a Being without qualities, a Being with 'zero'
qualities. Hence it is fit to call Him "shoonyah".

Let's turn to the other explanation found in the commentary of Sri
Parashara Bhattar (11th CE) on the Vishnu Sahasranamam titled
"bhagavadh-guNa-darpaNam". 

Bhattar explains "shoonyah" in the typical way of the school of
VisishtAdvaita theology. According to this school, God is the Supreme
Abode of all auspicious attributes. The Almighty is full of
innumerable good qualities like "gnyAna", "bala", "aiswarya",
"vIrya", "shakti" and "tejas". In VisishtAdvaita, God is
"ananta-kalyANa-guna-gaNaan" (to use a famous expression of Sri
RamanujAchArya) -- i.e. Brahman is Being with infinite number of
happy and wholesome attributes. The theology next states that God, by
corollary, is also totally devoid of inauspicious, un-wholesome or
negative qualities. 

According to Bhattar, in so far as, Brahman is replete with
infinitely good attributes, He is to be known as "anantah". And in so
far as He is absolutely bereft of defective qualities, He is to be
known as the God of "zero-defects" -- in other words, He is
"shoonyah".

>From a purely theological standpoint both explanations above are
equally valid and wholly satisfying (depending, of course, upon
which school of Vedanta -- Sankara's or Ramanuja's -- one is
predisposed towards). All the same, for one who is not steeped in the
various nuances and niceties of Vedantic theology, (especially for
one who cannot really appreciate the technical difference between the
metaphysical "nirguNa-" and "savisesha-" Brahman), the explanations
of AdiSankara and Parashara Bhattar for "shoonya" might only seem to
resemble the case of the proverbial bottle that got described as
"half-empty" by one and "half-full" by another. 

---------------

Even leaving theological considerations aside, one can still regard
Zero to be a remarkably apt 'nAma' for the Almighty. Common knowledge
of the world around us reveals how all-powerful the concept of Zero,
"shoonya", truly is. When we look at the history of Zero, we realize
why 'shoonya' is almighty indeed!

Until about 1500 years ago nobody in the world outside India could
count numbers beyond 9 without enormous difficulty. The entire
Graeco-Roman Western world knew nothing about the Hindu-Arabic system
of numerals that prevails in the entire world today. The Romans
depended upon alphabets to denote numbers -- such as I, X and C or
with V, L and D. In their system the number 32 had to be written, for
example, as XXXII but writing a number like 3200 or 32000 for the
Greeks and Romans presented a huge, often insurmountable problem! For
several centuries the Graeco-Roman civilization struggled with this
cumbersome system of numbering. It was the principal reason why for
almost a thousand years Western mathematics hardly advanced beyond
being a method of elementary counting and mensuration using crude
devices like the abacus. The Greeks and Romans had no knowledge of
how to deal with large numbers, ratios, series, complex algebraic
functions and calculations -- all child's play for any high-school
student today. Western thought simply stagnated for ages since it
could just not grapple with the mathematical problem of large numbers
and calculations. 

Somewhere between 1000 and 1200 AD, the Western world came in contact
with the Arab world and that was when the Hindu-Arabic system of
numerals opened the eyes of the Europeans to a whole new world of
mathematical thought. 

The Arabs had for long borrowed and been using the Hindu system of
numerals that had been in use in ancient India for more than a
thousand years earlier. The Hindu system did not use alphabets but a
simple but versatile scheme of numeric symbols starting from "Zero"
-- the famous 'shoonya' -- and ending with 9. These symbolic numerals
made it so easy to represent and calculate numerate values anywhere
from zero to infinity in quick time. They enabled complex functions
and calculations. They made it possible to represent the most
formidable series of values by a mere formula which in turn
facilitated further complex mathematical functions! The Western world
realized -- for the first time ever -- the power of the Hindu numeral
system: a power that became the inspiration for all the mathematical
advancements to later come out of Europe: algebra, ratios, surds,
functions such as squares, cube and root, series and progressions,
logarithmic tables, quadratic equations... and so on and so forth. 

It was the power of Zero, "shoonya", indeed that made the European
Renaissance possible --- the Renaissance that eventually gave birth
to all the wonderful discoveries of modern mathematics such as
Fabionacci series, Pascal's Probability theory and even Newton's
Calculus! "The concept of Zero unleashed something more profound than
just an enhanced method of counting and calculating". Zero
revolutionized the old modes of human thought. It meant firstly
people could use only ten digits, from 0 to 9, to perform every
conceivable calculation and to write any conceivable number.
Secondly, it opened up a whole new world of possibilities for
abstract human thinking that had been simply unthinkable before!

********************

How did the ancient Hindus discover such a powerful concept as
"shoonya" while the rest of the world remained ignorant of 'Zero' for
ages?

To grasp the concept of "shoonya" required a very high level of
intellectual and spiritual advancement as what prevailed in India
during and after the Vedic period. As the English philosopher,
A.N.Whitehead wrote: "The point about zero is that we do not need to
use it in the operations of daily life. No one goes out to buy zero
fish or eggs. [But] It is in a way the most civilized of all the
cardinals, and its use is only forced on us by the needs of
cultivated modes of thought". Vedic mathematics and astronomy of
those ancient times clearly bear evidence to the highly sophisticated
conceptual and ideological skills that our Indian forbears possessed.
There was no doubt at all that the ancient Vedic Indians who gave to
the whole world the idea of "shoonya" were indeed masters of the most
civilized and "cultivated modes of thought".

*************************

There was a great mathematician in India who lived in the 10th
century CE, He was BhAskarAchArya. He wrote several pioneering
treatises (Sanskrit) on Vedic mathematics. In one of the treatises,
it is said, he wrote a small dedication : "To the Supreme Brahman,
who is Infinity, I offer my salutation". BhAskarAchArya used the
Sanskrit word "khAhara" to denote God as 'Infinity' in the
dedication. It is derived from "kham" which means 'Zero' and "hara"
meaning "divided". The word "khAhara" was meant to indicate that God
who is Infinity is related to Zero.

BhAskarAchArya was the first mathematician to reveal to the world the
intimate relationship between "shoonya" and "anantah", between Zero
and Infinity. Any quantity divided by "shoonya" is equal to Infinity,
he said. Take a value like 16 and divide it ("harah") with
progressively decreasing divisors. What happens? The quotient
progressively enlarges. For e.g. 16 divided by 4 = 4; and 16 divided
by 2 = 8; and eventually when 16 is divided by 0 it equals
'Infinity'! Every quantity, every value in the world, when divided by
"shoonya", results in the same quotient or result viz. Infinity,
"anantah". 

Such is the mighty power of Zero that it can raise and relate all
values on earth to the exalted state of Infinity -- that very same
state in which God Almighty, the Vishnu of the sacred 'Sahasranama',
is said to eternally reside and rule! 

Regards,
dAsan,
Sudarshan


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