Hinduism and Buddhism, An Historical Sketch Volume II Part 33

It is interesting to find that Jaimini was accused of atheism and defended by k.u.marila Bhat?t?a. The defence is probably just, for Jaimini does not so much deny G.o.d as ignore him. But what is truly extraordinary, though characteristic of much Indian literature about ritual, is that a work dealing with the general theory of religious worship should treat the deity as an irrelevant topic. The Purva-mimam?sa discusses ceremonies prescribed by an eternal self-existing Veda. The reward of sacrifice is not given by G.o.d. When the result of an act does not appear at once, Jaimini teaches that there is all the same produced a supersensuous principle called _apurva_, which bears fruit at a later time, and thus a sacrifice leads the offerer to heaven. This theory is really tantamount to placing magic on a philosophic basis.

Badarayan?a's sutras, which represent the other branch of the Mimam?sa, show a type of thought more advanced and profound than Jaimini's. They consist of 555 aphorisms--less than a fifth of Jaimini's voluminous work--and represent the outcome of considerable discussion posterior to the Upanishads, for they cite the opinions of seven other teachers and also refer to Badarayan?a himself by name.

Hence they may be a compendium of his teaching made by his pupils.

Their date is unknown but San?kara evidently regards them as ancient and there were several commentators before him.[772] Like most sutras these aphorisms are often obscure and are hardly intended to be more than a mnemotechnic summary of the doctrine, to be supplemented by oral instruction or a commentary. Hence it is difficult to define the teaching of Badarayan?a as distinguished from that of the Upanishads on the one hand, and that of his commentators on the other, or to say exactly what stage he marks in the development of thought, except that it is the stage of attempted synthesis.[773] He teaches that Brahman is the origin of the world and that with him should all knowledge, religion and effort be concerned. By meditation on him, the soul is released and somehow a.s.sociated with him. But it is not clear that we have any warrant for finding in the sutras (as does San?kara) the distinction between the higher and lower Brahman, or the doctrine of the unreality of the world (Maya) or the absolute ident.i.ty of the individual soul with Brahman. We are told that the state of the released soul is non-separation (avibhaga) from Brahman, but this is variously explained by the commentators according to their views.

Though the sutras are the acknowledged text-book of Vedantism, their utterances are in practice less important than subsequent explanations of them. As often happens in India, the comment has overgrown and superseded the text.

The most important of these commentators is Sankaracarya.[774] Had he been a European philosopher anxious that his ideas should bear his name, or a reformer like the Buddha with little respect for antiquity, he would doubtless have taken his place in history as one of the most original teachers of Asia. But since his whole object was to revive the traditions of the past and suppress his originality by attempting to prove that his ideas are those of Badarayan?a and the Upanishads, the magnitude of his contribution to Indian thought is often under-rated. We need not suppose that he was the inventor of all the ideas in his works of which we find no previous expression. He doubtless (like the Buddha) summarized and stereotyped an existing mode of thought but his summary bears the unmistakeable mark of his own personality.

San?kara's teaching is known as Advaita or absolute monism. Nothing exists except the one existence called Brahman or Paramatman, the Highest Self. Brahman is pure being and thought (the two being regarded as identical), without qualities. Brahman is not intelligent but is intelligence itself. The human soul (jiva) is identical with the Highest Self, not merely as a part of it, but as being itself the whole universal indivisible Brahman. This must not be misunderstood as a blasphemous a.s.sertion that man is equal to G.o.d. The soul is identical with Brahman only in so far as it forgets its separate human existence, and all that we call self and individuality. A man who has any pride in himself is _ipso facto_ differentiated from Brahman as much as is possible. Yet in the world in which we move we see not only differentiation and multiplicity but also a plurality of individual souls apparently distinct from one another and from Brahman. This appearance is due to the principle of Maya which is a.s.sociated with Brahman and is the cause of the phenomenal world. If Maya is translated by illusion it must be remembered that its meaning is not so much that the world and individual existences are illusory in the strict sense of the word, as phenomenal. The only true reality is self-conscious thought without an object. When the mind attains to that, it ceases to be human and individual: it _is_ Brahman. But whenever it thinks of particular objects neither the thoughts nor the objects of the thoughts are real in the same sense. They are appearances, phenomena. This universe of phenomena includes not only all our emotions and all our perceptions of the external world, but also what might be supposed to be the deepest truths of religion, such as the personality of the Creator and the wanderings of the soul in the maze of transmigration. In the same sense that we suffer pain and pleasure, it is true that there is a personal G.o.d (isvara) who emits and reabsorbs the world at regular intervals, and that the soul is a limited existence pa.s.sing from body to body. In this sense the soul, as in the San?khya philosophy, is surrounded by the _upadhis_, certain limiting conditions or disguises, which form a permanent psychical equipment with which it remains invested in all its innumerable bodies. But though these doctrines may be true for those who are in the world, for those souls who are agents, enjoyers and sufferers, they cease to be true for the soul which takes the path of knowledge and sees its own ident.i.ty with Brahman. It is by this means only that emanc.i.p.ation is attained, for good works bring a reward in kind, and hence inevitably lead to new embodiments, new creations of Maya. And even in knowledge we must distinguish between the knowledge of the lower Brahman or personal Deity (isvara) and of the higher indescribable Brahman.[775] For the orthodox Hindu this distinction is of great importance, for it enables him to reconcile pa.s.sages in the scriptures which otherwise are contradictory. Worship and meditation which make isvara their object do not lead directly to emanc.i.p.ation.

They lead to the heavenly world of isvara, in which the soul, though glorified, is still a separate individual existence. But for him who meditates on the Highest Brahman and knows that his true self is that Brahman, Maya and its works cease to exist. When he dies nothing differentiates him from that Brahman who alone is bliss and no new individual existence arises.

The crux of this doctrine is in the theory of Maya. If Maya appertains to Brahman, if it exists by his will, then why is it an evil, why is release to be desired? Ought not the individual souls to serve Brahman's purpose, and would not it be better served by living gladly in the phenomenal world than by pa.s.sing beyond it? But such an idea has rarely satisfied Indian thinkers. If, on the other hand, Maya is an evil or at least an imperfection, if it is like rust on a blade or dimness in a mirror, if, so to speak, the edges of Brahman are weak and break into fragments which are prevented by their own feebleness from realizing the unity of the whole, then the mind wonders uneasily if, in spite of all a.s.surances to the contrary, this does not imply that Brahman is subject to some external law, to some even more mysterious Beyond. But San?kara and the Brahma-sutras will not tolerate such doubts. According to them, Brahman in making the world is not actuated by a motive in the ordinary sense, for that would imply human action and pa.s.sion, but by a sportive impulse:[776] "We see in every-day life," says San?kara, "that certain doings of princes, who have no desires left unfulfilled, have no reference to any extraneous purpose but proceed from mere sportfulness. We further see that the process of inhalation and exhalation is going on without reference to any extraneous purpose, merely following the law of its own nature. a.n.a.logously, the activity of the Lord also may be supposed to be mere sport, proceeding from his own nature without reference to any purpose."[777] This is no worse than many other explanations of the scheme of things and the origin of evil but it is not really an explanation. It means that the Advaita is so engrossed in ecstatic contemplation of the omnipresent Brahman that it pays no attention to a mere by-product like the physical universe. How or why that universe with all its imperfections comes to exist, it does not explain.

Yet the boldness and ample sweep of San?kara's thought have in them something greater than logic,[778] something recalling the grandeur of plains and seas limited only by the horizon, nay rather those abysses of s.p.a.ce wherein on clear nights worlds and suns innumerable are scattered like sparks by what he would call G.o.d's playfulness.

European thought attains to these alt.i.tudes but cannot live in them for long: it demands and fancies for itself just what San?kara will not grant, the motive of Brahman, the idea that he is working for some consummation, not that he was, is and will be eternally complete, unaffected by the drama of the universe and yet identical with souls that know him.

Even in India the austere and impersonal character of San?kara's system provoked dissent: He was accused of being a Buddhist in disguise and the accusation raises an interesting question[779] in the history of Indian philosophy to which I have referred in a previous chapter. The affinity existing between the Madhyamika form of Buddhist metaphysics and the earlier Vedanta can hardly be disputed and the only question is which borrowed from the other. Such questions are exceedingly difficult to decide, for from time to time new ideas arose in India, permeated the common intellectual atmosphere, and were worked up by all sects into the forms that suited each best. In the present instance all that can be said is that certain ideas about the unreality of the world and about absolute and relative truth appear in several treatises both Brahmanic and Buddhist, such as the works of San?kara and Nagarjuna and the Gaud?a-padakarikas, and of these the works attributed to Nagarjuna seem to be the oldest. It must also be remembered that according to Chinese accounts Bodhidharma preached at Nanking in 520 a doctrine very similar to the _advaita_ of San?kara though expressed in Buddhist phraseology.

Of other forms of Vedantism, the best known is the system of Ramanuja generally called Visisht?advaita.[780] It is an evidence of the position held by the Vedanta philosophy that religious leaders made a commentary on the Sutras of Badarayan?a the vehicle of their most important views. Unlike San?kara, Ramanuja is sectarian and identifies his supreme deity with Vishn?u or Narayan?a, but this is little more than a matter of nomenclature. His interpretation is modern in the sense that it pursues the line of thought which leads up to the modern sects. But that line of thought has ancient roots. Ramanuja followed a commentator named Bodhayan?a who was anterior to San?kara, and in the opinion of so competent a judge as Thibaut he gives the meaning of Badarayan?a in many points more exactly than his great rival. On the other hand his interpretation often strains the most important utterances of the Upanishads.

Ramanuja admits no distinction between Brahman and isvara, but the distinction is abolished at the expense of abolishing the idea of the Higher Brahman, for his Brahman is practically the isvara of San?kara.

Brahman is not without attributes but possessed of all imaginable good attributes, and though nothing exists apart from him, like the ant.i.thesis of _Purusha_ and _Prakr?iti_ in the San?khya, yet the world is not as in San?kara's system merely Maya. Matter and souls (_cit_ and _acit_) form the body of Brahman who both comprises and pervades all things, which are merely modes of his existence.[781] He is the inner ruler (antaryamin) who is in all elements and all human souls.[782] The texts which speak of Brahman as being one only without a second are explained as referring to the state of pralaya or absorption which occurs at the end of each Kalpa. At the conclusion of the period of pralaya he re-emits the world and individual souls by an act of volition and the souls begin the round of transmigration.

Salvation or release from this round is obtained not by good works but by knowledge and meditation on the Lord a.s.sisted by his grace. The released soul is not identified with the Lord but enjoys near him a personal existence of eternal bliss and peace. This is more like European theism than the other doctrines which we have been considering. The difference is that G.o.d is not regarded as the creator of matter and souls. Matter and souls consist of his substance. But for all that he is a personal deity who can be loved and worshipped and whereas San?kara was a religious philosopher, Ramanuja was rather a philosophic theologian and founder of a church. I have already spoken of his activity in this sphere.

4

The epics and Puran?as contain philosophical discussions of considerable length which make little attempt at consistency. Yet the line of thought in them all is the same. The chief tenets of the theistic San?khya-Yoga are a.s.sumed: matter, soul and G.o.d are separate existences: the soul wishes to move towards G.o.d and away from matter.

Yet when Indian writers glorify the deity they rarely abstain from identifying him with the universe. In the Bhagavad-gita and other philosophical cantos of the Mahabharata the contradiction is usually left without an attempt at solution. Thus it is stated categorically[783] that the world consists of the perishable and imperishable, _i.e._, matter and soul, but that the supreme spirit is distinct from both. Yet in the same poem we pa.s.s from this ant.i.thesis to the monism which declares that the deity is all things and "the self seated in the heart of man." We have then attained the Vedantist point of view. Nearly all the modern sects, whether Sivaite or Vishnuite, admit the same contradiction into their teaching, for they reject both the atheism of the San?khya and the immaterialism of the Advaita (since it is impossible for a practical religion to deny the existence of either G.o.d or the world), while the irresistible tendency of Indian thought makes them describe their deity in pantheistic language. All strive to find some metaphysical or theological formula which will reconcile these discrepant ideas, and nearly all Vishnuites profess some special variety of the Vedanta called by such names as Visisht?advaita, Dvaitadvaita, Suddhadvaita and so on. They differ chiefly in their definition of the relation existing between the soul and G.o.d. Only the Madhvas entirely discard monism and profess duality (Dvaita) and even Madhva thought it necessary to write a commentary on the Brahma-sutras to prove that they support his doctrine and the Sivaites too have a commentator, Nilakant??h?a, who interprets them in harmony with the Saiva Siddhanta. There is also a modern commentary by Somanaradittyar which expounds this much twisted text agreeably to the doctrines of the Lingayat sect.

In most fundamental principles the Sivaite and Saktist schools agree with the Visisht?advaita but their nomenclature is different and their scope is theological rather than philosophical. In all of them are felt the two tendencies, one wishing to distinguish G.o.d, soul and matter and to adjust their relations for the purposes of practical religion, the other holding more or less that G.o.d is all or at least that all things come from G.o.d and return to him. But there is one difference between the schools of sectarian philosophy and the Advaita of San?kara which goes to the root of the matter. San?kara holds that the world and individual existences are due to illusion, ignorance and misconception: they vanish in the light of true knowledge. Other schools, while agreeing that in some sense G.o.d is all, yet hold that the universe is not an illusion or false presentment of him but a process of manifestation or of evolution starting from him.[784] It is not precisely evolution in the European sense, but rather a rhythmic movement, of duration and extent inexpressible in figures, in which the Supreme Spirit alternately emits and reabsorbs the universe. As a rule the higher religious life aims at some form of union or close a.s.sociation with the deity, beyond the sphere of this process. In the evolutionary process the Vaishn?avas interpolate between the Supreme Spirit and the phenomenal world the phases of conditioned spirit known as San?karshan?a, etc.; in the same way the Sivaite schools increase the twenty-four _tattvas_ of the Sankhya to thirty-six.[785] The first of these _tattvas_ or principles is Siva, corresponding to the highest Brahman. The next phase is Sadasiva in which differentiation commences owing to the movement of Sakti, the active or female principle. Siva in this phase is thought of as having a body composed of _mantras_.

Sakti, also known as Bindu or Suddhamaya, is sometimes regarded as a separate _tattva_ but more generally as inseparably united with Siva.

The third _tattva_ is isvara, or Siva in the form of a lord or personal deity, and the fourth is Suddhavidya or true knowledge, explained as the principle of correlation between the experiencer and that which is experienced. It is only after these that we come to Maya, meaning not so much illusion as the substratum in which Karma inheres or the protoplasm from which all things grow. Between Maya and Purusha come five more _tattvas_, called envelopes. Their effect is to enclose and limit, thus turning the divine spirit into a human soul.

Saktist accounts of the evolutionary process give greater prominence to the part played by Sakti and are usually metaphysiological, if the word may be pardoned, inasmuch as they regard the cosmic process as the growth of an embryo, an idea which is as old as the Vedas.[786] It is impossible to describe even in outline these manifold cosmologies but they generally speak of Sakti, who in one sense is identical with Siva and merely his active form but in another sense is identified with Prakr?iti, coming into contact with the form of Siva called Prakasa or light and then solidifying into a drop (Bindu) or germ which divides. At some point in this process arise Nada or sound, and Sabda-brahman, the sound-Brahman, which manifests itself in various energies and a.s.sumes in the human body the form of the mysterious coiled force called Kun?d?alini.[787] Some of the older Vishnuite writings use similar language of Sakti, under the name of Lakshmi, but in the Visisht?advaita of Ramanuja and subsequent teachers there is little disposition to dwell on any feminine energy in discussing the process of evolution.

Of all the Darsanas the most extraordinary is that called Rasesvara or the mercurial system.[788] According to it quicksilver, if eaten or otherwise applied, not only preserves the body from decay but delivers from transmigration the soul which inhabits this glorified body.

Quicksilver is even a.s.serted to be identical with the supreme self.

This curious Darsana is represented as revealed by Siva to Sakti and it is only an extreme example of the tantric doctrine that spiritual results can be obtained by physical means. The practice of taking mercury to secure health and long life must have been prevalent in medieval India for it is mentioned by both Marco Polo and Bernier.[789]

5

A people among whom the Vedanta could obtain a large following must have been p.r.o.ne to think little of the things which we see compared with the unseen of which they are the manifestation. It is, therefore, not surprising if materialism met with small sympathy or success among them. In India the extravagances of asceticism and of mystic sensualism alike find devotees, but the simple philosophy of Let us eat and drink for to-morrow we die, does not commend itself.

Nevertheless it is not wholly absent and was known as the doctrine of Brihaspati. Those who professed it were also called Carvakas and Lokayatikas.[790] Brihaspati was the preceptor of the G.o.ds and his connection with this sensualistic philosophy goes back to a legend found in the Upanishads[791] that he taught the demons false knowledge whose "reward lasts only as long as the pleasure lasts" in order to compa.s.s their destruction. This is similar to the legend found in the Puran?as that Vishn?u became incarnate as Buddha in order to lead astray the Daityas. But though such words as Carvaka and Nastika are used in later literature as terms of learned abuse, the former seems to denote a definite school, although we cannot connect its history with dates, places or personalities. The Carvakas are the first system examined in the Sarva-darsana-san?graha, which is written from the Vedantist standpoint, and beginning from the worst systems of philosophy ascends to those which are relatively correct. This account contains most of what we know about their doctrines,[792] but is obviously bia.s.sed: it represents them as cynical voluptuaries holding that the only end of man is sensual enjoyment. We are told that they admitted only one source of knowledge, namely perception, and four elements, earth, water, fire and air, and that they held the soul to be identical with the body. Such a phrase as _my body_ they considered to be metaphorical, as apart from the body there was no ego who owned it. The soul was supposed to be a physical product of the four elements, just as sugar combined with a ferment and other ingredients produces an intoxicating liquor. Among verses described as "said by Brihaspati" occur the following remarkable lines:

"There is no heaven, no liberation, nor any soul in another world, Nor do the acts of the asramas or castes produce any reward.

If the animal slain in the Jyotishtoma sacrifice will go to heaven, Why does not the sacrificer immolate his own father?

While life remains let a man live happily: let him feed on b.u.t.ter even if he runs into debt.

When once the body becomes ashes, how can it ever return?"

The author of the Dabistan, who lived in the seventeenth century, also mentions the Carvakas in somewhat similar terms.[793]

Brahmanical authors often couple the Carvakas and Buddhists. This lumping together of offensively heretical sects may be merely theological animus, but still it is possible that there may be a connection between the Carvakas and the extreme forms of Mahayanist nihilism. Schrader[794] in a.n.a.lysing a singular work, called the Svasam?vedyopanishad, says it is "inspired by the Mahayanist doctrine of vacuity (_sunya-vada_) and proclaims a most radical agnosticism by a.s.serting in four chapters (_a_) that there is no reincarnation (existence being bubble-like), no G.o.d, no world: that all traditional literature (_Sruti_ and _Sm?riti_) is the work of conceited fools; (_b_) that Time the destroyer and Nature the originator are the rulers of all existence and not good and bad deeds, and that there is neither h.e.l.l nor heaven; (_c_) that people deluded by flowery speech cling to G.o.ds, sacred places, teachers, though there is in reality no difference at all between Vishn?u and a dog; (_d_) that though all words are untrue and all ideas mere illusions, yet liberation is possible by a thorough realization of _Bhavadvaita_." But for this rather sudden concession to Hindu sentiment, namely that deliverance is possible, this doctrine resembles the tenets attributed to the Carvakas.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 736: In the Sarva-darsana-san?graha, the best known compendium of Indian philosophy.]

[Footnote 737: J.C. Chatterji's definition of Indian philosophy (in his _Indian Realism_, p. 1) is interesting. "By Hindu philosophy I mean that branch of the ancient learning of the Hindus which demonstrates by reasoning propositions with regard to (_a_) what a man ought to do in order to gain true happiness ... or (_b_) what he ought to realize by direct experience in order to be radically and absolutely freed from suffering and to be absolutely independent, such propositions being already given and lines of reasoning in their support being established by duly qualified authorities."]

[Footnote 738: See Chatterji's work above cited.]

[Footnote 739: It is this idea which disposes educated Hindus to believe in the magical or sacramental power of mystic syllables and letters, though the use of such spells seems to Europeans incredible folly.]

[Footnote 740: See especially Garbe, _Die San?khya Philosophie_, 1894; and Keith, _The San?khya System_, 1919, which however reached me too late for me to make any use of it.]

[Footnote 741: _E.g._ in the Bhagavad-gita and Svetasvatara Upanishads.

According to tradition Kapila taught Asuri and he, Pancasikha, who made the system celebrated. Garbe thinks Pancasikha may be a.s.signed to the first century A.D.]

[Footnote 742: This appears to be the real t.i.tle of the Sutras edited and translated by Ballantyne as "The San?khya Aphorisms of Kapila."]

[Footnote 743: Or topics. It is difficult to find any one English word which covers the twenty-five tattvas, for they include both general and special ideas, mind and matter on the one hand; special organs on the other.]

[Footnote 744: San?kh. Pravac. I. 96.]

[Footnote 745: Garbe, _Die San?khya Philosophie_, p. 222. He considers that it spread thence to other schools. This involves the a.s.sumption that the San?khya is prior to Buddhism and Jainism.]

[Footnote 746: Ears, skin, eyes, tongue and nose.]

[Footnote 747: Voice, hands, feet, organs of excretion and generation.]

[Footnote 748: Verse 40.]

[Footnote 749: Cf. the Buddhist Sankharas.]

[Footnote 750: San?kh. Kar. 62.]

[Footnote 751: San?kh. Kar. 59-61.]

[Footnote 752: San?kh. Pravac. I. 92-95.]

[Footnote 753: San?kh. Pravac. V. 2-12.]

[Footnote 754: Thus San?kh. Pravac. V. 46, says Tatkartuh?