The quest for Being has shaped the whole tradition of Western philosophy, starting from the Greeks. In his Metaphysics, for example, Aristotle investigates the science of "the things that are, qua being." Compared to this tradition, Indian thinking appears to be rooted in a completely different background. The origin and the usage of terminology also differ here from the West. However, while no one will find in Indian philosophy an equivalent to the Aristotelian project of a "science of being qua being" and, therefore, no "ontology" in a strict Western sense of the word, the question of being has been debated over the centuries by many competing schools of Hinduism and Buddhism. The Indian parallel to the word being is "sat," which is often found in mythical and theological contexts and is more of cultural and historical rather than philosophical interest. Ancient Indian scriptures can hardly be reduced to several undisputable "basic outlines." Moreover, in some of them, like Vedas and Upanishads, "sat" and "a-sat" (being and non-being) are, in turn, subordinated to a more fundamental principle such as atman and/or brahman.
It seems to me that a more productive way of relating Indian thought to the developments in the West is to analyze the problem of Being in the light of the concept of substance, as Aristotle himself did. In this video presentation, I will connect the quest for Being with Vaiśeṣika concepts of substance and guna. In this context, I will also discuss the Ñyāya and Buddhist notions of universals and how the two competing conceptions of universals entail differing visions of ontology and semantics.
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