Brain-Mind-Body-Sign-World: Crossing the Borders

Abstract

The paper discusses the possible meeting areas between oriental studies, archaeology, and cognitive linguistics. The point of departure is study of Chris Gosden (2008) in which he shows a possible cooperation between archaeology and neuroscience when the interactions among brain-body-world are taken into account. On the example of a sword from the Iron Age, he shows the mutual influences of the brain-body-culture complex on the one hand, and the materials used in craft. I will follow his line of reasoning and show the use of the concept of gold processing in thinking about cognition as it is attested in the early Indian texts. The example analyzed in the paper is a description of a Buddhist meditation attested in the Pāli Canon (c. 4th-1st centuries BCE). With the use of cognitive linguistics models of mental processes, I will show how the triangle brain-bodyworld can be enlarged with two more elements, namely, the mind and signs.