A History of Indian Philosophy Part 5

The names of the [email protected]; Non-Brahmanic influence.

The [email protected] 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 [email protected], the Vedanta philosophy, is so familiar to us. A modern student knows that in language the [email protected] 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 [email protected] attached to the [email protected] of the Aitareya and [email protected] schools are called respectively Aitareya and [email protected] [email protected] Those of the [email protected]@dins and Talavakaras of the Sama-veda are called the Chandogya and Talavakara (or Kena) [email protected] 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 [email protected] and those who are fit to hear the [email protected] have no longer any necessity to perform the sacrificial duties.]

[Footnote 2: When the [email protected] 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 [email protected] 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 [email protected] even of the same Veda among different people.

These different schools were known by the name of particular S'akhas (e.g. Aitareya, [email protected]) with which the [email protected] were a.s.sociated or named. According to the divergence of the [email protected] of the different S'akhas there occurred the divergences of content and the length of the [email protected] a.s.sociated with them.]

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form the Taittiriya and [email protected], of the [email protected] school the [email protected], of the [email protected] school the [email protected] The [email protected]@nyaka [email protected] forms part of the S'atapatha [email protected] of the Vajasaneyi schools. The is'a [email protected] 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 [email protected] 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 [email protected] 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 [email protected] in which the Brahmins are described as having gone to the [email protected] for the highest knowledge of philosophy, as well as from the disparateness of the [email protected] teachings from that of the general doctrines of the [email protected] and from the allusions to the existence of philosophical speculations amongst the people in Pali works, it may be inferred that among the [email protected] in general there existed earnest philosophic enquiries which must be regarded as having exerted an important influence in the formation of the [email protected] doctrines.

There is thus some probability in the supposition that though the [email protected] are found directly incorporated with the [email protected] it was not the production of the growth of Brahmanic dogmas alone, but that non-Brahmanic thought as well must have either set the [email protected] 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.

[email protected] and the Early [email protected]

The pa.s.sage of the Indian mind from the Brahmanic to the [email protected] 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 [email protected] as much as the Ptolemaic and the Copernican

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[Footnote 1: Garbha [email protected], atman [email protected], Pras'na [email protected], etc.

There were however some exceptions such as the [email protected]@dukya, Jabala, [email protected], S'aunaka, etc.]

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systems in astronomy. The direct translation of Vis'vakarman or [email protected] into the atman and the Brahman of the [email protected] 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 [email protected] no mention is to be found of Vis'vakarman, [email protected] or [email protected] and no reference of such a nature is to be found as can justify us in connecting the [email protected] ideas with those conceptions [Footnote ref l]. The word [email protected] no doubt occurs frequently in the [email protected], but the sense and the a.s.sociation that come along with it are widely different from that of the [email protected] of the [email protected] 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 [email protected] we find in R.V.I. 121, "[email protected] 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 [email protected] the @Rg-Veda

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[Footnote 1: The name Vis'vakarma appears in S'vet. IV. 17.

[email protected] appears in S'vet. III. 4 and IV. 12, but only as the first created being. The phrase Sarvahammani [email protected] which Deussen refers to occurs only in the later [email protected]@[email protected] 9. The word [email protected] does not occur at all in the [email protected]]

[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 [email protected] 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 [email protected] 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 [email protected] 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 ([email protected] II. i), S'vetaketu and [email protected] Jaibali (Cha. V. 3 and [email protected]

VI. 2) and [email protected] 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 [email protected] away from the influence of the Veda, [email protected] and the [email protected] 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 ([email protected] II. 1) referred to by him, Balaki Gargya is a boastful man who wants to teach the [email protected] 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 [email protected], and that it was unusual to find a Brahmin asking a [email protected] 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 [email protected] 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 ([email protected]_) had originated among the [email protected], 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 [email protected] 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 [email protected]; but as he did not know sufficiently about it he accompanied them to the [email protected] 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 [email protected] 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 [email protected] pa.s.sages are also the same as we

[Footnote 1: Garbe's article, "_Hindu Monism_," p. 74.]

[Footnote 2: [email protected] II., compare also [email protected] 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 [email protected] and even some women took interest in the religio-philosophical quest manifested in