As human beings march in their journey towards progress, through newer developments, they need to be guided by a core set of ideals and principle of living. In today’s context, these paradigms of living are stemming from recent ideas originating from the western world. While we have been making progress there is also a wide-spread understanding that for every new solution and idea that we discover, we introduce more and more challenges and problems arising out of them. This potentially raises the need to look for alternative paradigms for the emerging world order.  Indian Knowledge Systems (IKS) can potentially offer ideas for developing new paradigms for the world order. A knowledge of IKS is the first step in this process. The Chinmaya University addresses this requirement through a two-part foundational course. 

IKS constitute a vast majority of literature spanning across multiple perspectives. This includes ideas on fundamental premises related to one’s living as laid out in the Vedas, components of knowledge that help us develop a correct understanding of the Vedic literature, Purāṇas, Darśaṇas, Smṛtis, Upa Vedas and many more. This is typically referred to as Caturdaśa-vidyāsthānam. This course outline covers one part of this knowledge tradition and the rest is covered in the second course.