Princeton freshman's 'Panch Kanya' ties philosophy to fiction

The history of human thought often seems like a monologue passed down through Western men. Plato, Augustine, Kant, Sartrethese men have shaped our thought and extended our notions of humanity. Yet in limiting our study to this canon, we often forget that philosophy does not solely belong to the West or to academia. It is the province of humanitya subject joined to every other and one that everyone has the right (and, perhaps, duty) to explore. An energizing reminder of this is "Panch Kanya," a metafictional novel that explores the history of philosophy in India.

"Panch Kanya" was written by Ritu Kamal '07, a current Princeton engineering student, during her adolescence in Bombay. She began the novel at 13 and continued until she was 16. As she explains in the preface, Kamal decided after finishing her work not to edit its earlier parts "because writing 'Panch Kanya' was a process of growth for me."

Because of this, the novel's language and complexity of thought evolves over the story's course from that of an advanced 13 year-old to more sophisticated levels. Oddly, this suits the novel's subject; in the same way study and introspection make one's thoughts more articulate and complex over time, the novel's voice becomes more articulate and complex as it moves deeper into its subject.

The novel begins with Shruti Subramanyam, a Tamil girl who receives a letter from a mysterious philosopher promising to send a correspondence course in Indian philosophy. Course packets addressed to Shruti shortly begin to appear in strange places. Shruti's efforts to understand the lessons, and her quest to discover the sender's identity, form the initial framework of the book.

Yet Eastern philosophy also differs from Western philosophy in its emphasis on unity and the integration of knowledge. It is, therefore,e fitting that Shruti discovers four other girls receiving similar letters. The mystery grows to why the girls have been chosen, who their correspondents are and for what goal their lessons are meant to prepare them.

Interwoven with this plot are the texts of the letters themselves. Kamal is an avid scientist as well as a philosopher, and she investigates each subject of her curiosity. Throughout the book, the reader encounters subjects as diverse as the six systems of Indian philosophy, poetic structural laws, the arithmetic concept of zero, linguistics, genetic coding and astronomy.

Many concepts are supported with illustrations, diagrams and analogies. A debate on linguistics is presented in the form of a chess game, with arguments and counterarguments as board moves. The theological terms shruti and smriti, describing revealed and unrevealed law, are explained through the principles of DNA.

Despite the numerous learning aids, concepts familiar to Eastern readersthe contents of the Upanishads, for instance, and the meanings of foreign wordsare left unexplained. Western readers will likely find the book as obscure in some places as illuminating in others.

The reader may wonder why the novel features five girls when in "Sophie's World," a Norwegian novel about Western philosophy, one girl fills a similar role just as well. Yet as a symbolic construct, Kamal's greater character list makes sense. Western philosophy has often been the story of the lone man searching for truth. Eastern philosophy, however, tends to favor the integration of diverse parts into a whole– hence the joining of five truth-seekers, one from each corner (and one from the center) of India.

Although "Panch Kanya" is at times simple in its storyline and dense in its science, it more than makes up for its flaws with the ambition of its reach, its love of discovery and the number of subjects it investigates. Kamal writes that philosophy is "like a multifaceted diamond, which is expanding, like our Universe, and revealing its beauty to be better each time." And the more faces a diamond has, the more beautiful it is.