A History of Indian Philosophy Part 5
The names of the [emailprotected]; Non-Brahmanic influence.
The [emailprotected] are also known by another name Vedanta, as they are believed to be the last portions of the Vedas (_veda-anta_, end); it is by this name that the philosophy of the [emailprotected], the Vedanta philosophy, is so familiar to us. A modern student knows that in language the [emailprotected] approach the cla.s.sical Sanskrit; the ideas preached also show that they are the culmination of the intellectual achievement of a great epoch. As they thus formed the concluding parts of the Vedas they retained their Vedic names which they took from the name of the different schools or branches (_s'akha_) among which the Vedas were studied [Footnote ref 2]. Thus the [emailprotected] attached to the [emailprotected] of the Aitareya and [emailprotected] schools are called respectively Aitareya and [emailprotected] [emailprotected] Those of the [emailprotected]@dins and Talavakaras of the Sama-veda are called the Chandogya and Talavakara (or Kena) [emailprotected] Those of the Taittirya school of the Yajurveda
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[Footnote 1: This is what is called the difference of fitness (_adhikaribheda_). Those who perform the sacrifices are not fit to hear the [emailprotected] and those who are fit to hear the [emailprotected] have no longer any necessity to perform the sacrificial duties.]
[Footnote 2: When the [emailprotected] texts had become substantially fixed, they were committed to memory in different parts of the country and transmitted from teacher to pupil along with directions for the practical performance of sacrificial duties. The latter formed the matter of prose compositions, the [emailprotected] These however were gradually liable to diverse kinds of modifications according to the special tendencies and needs of the people among which they were recited.
Thus after a time there occurred a great divergence in the readings of the texts of the [emailprotected] even of the same Veda among different people.
These different schools were known by the name of particular S'akhas (e.g. Aitareya, [emailprotected]) with which the [emailprotected] were a.s.sociated or named. According to the divergence of the [emailprotected] of the different S'akhas there occurred the divergences of content and the length of the [emailprotected] a.s.sociated with them.]
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form the Taittiriya and [emailprotected], of the [emailprotected] school the [emailprotected], of the [emailprotected] school the [emailprotected] The [emailprotected]@nyaka [emailprotected] forms part of the S'atapatha [emailprotected] of the Vajasaneyi schools. The is'a [emailprotected] also belongs to the latter school. But the school to which the S'vetas'vatara belongs cannot be traced, and has probably been lost. The presumption with regard to these [emailprotected] is that they represent the enlightened views of the particular schools among which they flourished, and under whose names they pa.s.sed. A large number of [emailprotected] of a comparatively later age were attached to the Atharva-Veda, most of which were named not according to the Vedic schools but according to the subject-matter with which they dealt [Footnote ref 1].
It may not be out of place here to mention that from the frequent episodes in the [emailprotected] in which the Brahmins are described as having gone to the [emailprotected] for the highest knowledge of philosophy, as well as from the disparateness of the [emailprotected] teachings from that of the general doctrines of the [emailprotected] and from the allusions to the existence of philosophical speculations amongst the people in Pali works, it may be inferred that among the [emailprotected] in general there existed earnest philosophic enquiries which must be regarded as having exerted an important influence in the formation of the [emailprotected] doctrines.
There is thus some probability in the supposition that though the [emailprotected] are found directly incorporated with the [emailprotected] it was not the production of the growth of Brahmanic dogmas alone, but that non-Brahmanic thought as well must have either set the [emailprotected] doctrines afoot, or have rendered fruitful a.s.sistance to their formulation and cultivation, though they achieved their culmination in the hands of the Brahmins.
[emailprotected] and the Early [emailprotected]
The pa.s.sage of the Indian mind from the Brahmanic to the [emailprotected] thought is probably the most remarkable event in the history of philosophic thought. We know that in the later Vedic hymns some monotheistic conceptions of great excellence were developed, but these differ in their nature from the absolutism of the [emailprotected] as much as the Ptolemaic and the Copernican
_
[Footnote 1: Garbha [emailprotected], atman [emailprotected], Pras'na [emailprotected], etc.
There were however some exceptions such as the [emailprotected]@dukya, Jabala, [emailprotected], S'aunaka, etc.]
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systems in astronomy. The direct translation of Vis'vakarman or [emailprotected] into the atman and the Brahman of the [emailprotected] seems to me to be very improbable, though I am quite willing to admit that these conceptions were swallowed up by the atman doctrine when it had developed to a proper extent. Throughout the earlier [emailprotected] no mention is to be found of Vis'vakarman, [emailprotected] or [emailprotected] and no reference of such a nature is to be found as can justify us in connecting the [emailprotected] ideas with those conceptions [Footnote ref l]. The word [emailprotected] no doubt occurs frequently in the [emailprotected], but the sense and the a.s.sociation that come along with it are widely different from that of the [emailprotected] of the [emailprotected] of the @Rg-Veda.
When the @Rg-Veda describes Vis'vakarman it describes him as a creator from outside, a controller of mundane events, to whom they pray for worldly benefits. "What was the position, which and whence was the principle, from which the all-seeing Vis'vakarman produced the earth, and disclosed the sky by his might? The one G.o.d, who has on every side eyes, on every side a face, on every side arms, on every side feet, when producing the sky and earth, shapes them with his arms and with his wings....Do thou, Vis'vakarman, grant to thy friends those thy abodes which are the highest, and the lowest, and the middle...may a generous son remain here to us [Footnote ref 2]"; again in R.V.X. 82 we find "Vis'vakarman is wise, energetic, the creator, the disposer, and the highest object of intuition....He who is our father, our creator, disposer, who knows all spheres and creatures, who alone a.s.signs to the G.o.ds their names, to him the other creatures resort for instruction [Footnote ref 3]."
Again about [emailprotected] we find in R.V.I. 121, "[emailprotected] arose in the beginning; born, he was the one lord of things existing. He established the earth and this sky; to what G.o.d shall we offer our oblation?... May he not injure us, he who is the generator of the earth, who ruling by fixed ordinances, produced the heavens, who produced the great and brilliant waters!--to what G.o.d, etc.? Praj.a.pati, no other than thou is lord over all these created things: may we obtain that, through desire of which we have invoked thee; may we become masters of riches [Footnote ref 4]." Speaking of the [emailprotected] the @Rg-Veda
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[Footnote 1: The name Vis'vakarma appears in S'vet. IV. 17.
[emailprotected] appears in S'vet. III. 4 and IV. 12, but only as the first created being. The phrase Sarvahammani [emailprotected] which Deussen refers to occurs only in the later [emailprotected]@[emailprotected] 9. The word [emailprotected] does not occur at all in the [emailprotected]]
[Footnote 2: Muir's _Sanskrit Texts_, vol. IV. pp. 6, 7.]
[Footnote 3: _Ibid._ p, 7.]
[Footnote 4: _Ibid._ pp. 16, 17.]
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says "Purusha has a thousand heads...a thousand eyes, and a thousand feet. On every side enveloping the earth he transcended [it]
by a s.p.a.ce of ten fingers....He formed those aerial creatures, and the animals, both wild and tame [Footnote ref 1]," etc. Even that famous hymn (R.V.x. 129) which begins with "There was then neither being nor non-being, there was no air nor sky above" ends with saying "From whence this creation came into being, whether it was created or not--he who is in the highest sky, its ruler, probably knows or does not know."
In the [emailprotected] however, the position is entirely changed, and the centre of interest there is not in a creator from outside but in the self: the natural development of the monotheistic position of the Vedas could have grown into some form of developed theism, but not into the doctrine that the self was the only reality and that everything else was far below it. There is no relation here of the worshipper and the worshipped and no prayers are offered to it, but the whole quest is of the highest truth, and the true self of man is discovered as the greatest reality. This change of philosophical position seems to me to be a matter of great interest.
This change of the mind from the objective to the subjective does not carry with it in the [emailprotected] any elaborate philosophical discussions, or subtle a.n.a.lysis of mind. It comes there as a matter of direct perception, and the conviction with which the truth has been grasped cannot fail to impress the readers. That out of the apparently meaningless speculations of the [emailprotected] this doctrine could have developed, might indeed appear to be too improbable to be believed.
On the strength of the stories of Balaki Ga'rgya and Ajatas'atru ([emailprotected] II. i), S'vetaketu and [emailprotected] Jaibali (Cha. V. 3 and [emailprotected]
VI. 2) and [emailprotected] and As'vapati Kaikeya (Cha. V. 11) Garbe thinks "that it can be proven that the Brahman's profoundest wisdom, the doctrine of All-one, which has exercised an unmistakable influence on the intellectual life even of our time, did not have its origin in the circle of Brahmans at all [Footnote ref 2]" and that "it took its rise in the ranks of the warrior caste [Footnote ref 3]." This if true would of course lead the development of the [emailprotected] away from the influence of the Veda, [emailprotected] and the [emailprotected] But do the facts prove this? Let us briefly examine the evidences that Garbe himself
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[Footnote 1: Muir's _Sanskrit Texts_, vol. v. pp. 368, 371.]
[Footnote 2: Garbe's article, "_Hindu Monism_," p. 68.]
[Footnote 3: _Ibid._ p. 78.
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self has produced. In the story of Balaki Gargya and Ajatas'atru ([emailprotected] II. 1) referred to by him, Balaki Gargya is a boastful man who wants to teach the [emailprotected] Ajatas'atru the true Brahman, but fails and then wants it to be taught by him. To this Ajatas'atru replies (following Garbe's own translation) "it is contrary to the natural order that a Brahman receive instruction from a warrior and expect the latter to declare the Brahman to him [Footnote ref l]." Does this not imply that in the natural order of things a Brahmin always taught the knowledge of Brahman to the [emailprotected], and that it was unusual to find a Brahmin asking a [emailprotected] about the true knowledge of Brahman? At the beginning of the conversation, Ajatas'atru had promised to pay Balaki one thousand coins if he could tell him about Brahman, since all people used to run to Janaka to speak about Brahman [Footnote ref 2]. The second story of S'vetaketu and [emailprotected] Jaibali seems to be fairly conclusive with regard to the fact that the transmigration doctrines, the way of the G.o.ds (_devayana_) and the way of the fathers ([emailprotected]_) had originated among the [emailprotected], but it is without any relevancy with regard to the origin of the superior knowledge of Brahman as the true self.
The third story of [emailprotected] and As'vapati Kaikeya (Cha. V. 11) is hardly more convincing, for here five Brahmins wishing to know what the Brahman and the self were, went to Uddalaka [emailprotected]; but as he did not know sufficiently about it he accompanied them to the [emailprotected] king As'vapati Kaikeya who was studying the subject. But As'vapati ends the conversation by giving them certain instructions about the fire doctrine (_vaisvanara agni_) and the import of its sacrifices. He does not say anything about the true self as Brahman. We ought also to consider that there are only the few exceptional cases where [emailprotected] kings were instructing the Brahmins. But in all other cases the Brahmins were discussing and instructing the atman knowledge. I am thus led to think that Garbe owing to his bitterness of feeling against the Brahmins as expressed in the earlier part of the essay had been too hasty in his judgment. The opinion of Garbe seems to have been shared to some extent by Winternitz also, and the references given by him to the [emailprotected] pa.s.sages are also the same as we
[Footnote 1: Garbe's article, "_Hindu Monism_," p. 74.]
[Footnote 2: [emailprotected] II., compare also [emailprotected] IV. 3, how Yajnavalkya speaks to Janaka about the _brahmavidya_.]
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just examined [Footnote ref 1]. The truth seems to me to be this, that the [emailprotected] and even some women took interest in the religio-philosophical quest manifested in