Ahankára: ‘Sum, ergo cogito, sentio’

Here is the remarkable Horace Hayman Wilson [1786-1860], first European translator of the Rig Veda and the first occupant of the Boden chair for Sanskrit at Oxford.

Here he explains the Sanskrit term: Ahankára, which in its current use roughly translates to ‘Hubris, Conceit, Pride’.’

‘The sense of Ahankára cannot be very well rendered by any European term. It means the principle of individual existence, that which appropriates perceptions, and on which depend the notions, I think, I feel, I am.

It might be expressed by the proposition of Descartes reversed; ‘Sum, ergo cogito, sentio,’.