Ahankára

Here is an excerpt from the translation of the Vishnu Purāṇa [1840] by the remarkable Horace Hayman Wilson [1786-1860], first translator of the Rig Veda and the first occupant of the Boden chair for Sanskrit at Oxford:

‘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,”

Cogito ergo sum. Sum, ergo cogito, sentio.

Both stop-short of True-Nothing.