A History of Indian Philosophy, Vol. 1 by Surendranath Dasgupta (desktop ebook reader txt) 📕

49

world is his body, yet he is the soul within. "He creates all, wills all, smells all, tastes all, he has pervaded all, silent and unaffected [Footnote ref 1]." He is below, above, in the back, in front, in the south and in the north, he is all this [Footnote ref 2]." These rivers in the east and in the west originating from the ocean, return back into it and become the ocean themselves, though they do not know that they are so. So also all these people coming into being from the Being do not know that they have come from the Being…That which is the subtlest that is the self, that is all this, the truth, that self thou art O S'vetaketu [Footnote ref 3]." "Brahman," as Deussen points out, "was regarded as the cause antecedent in time, and the universe as the effect proceeding from it; the inner dependence of the universe on Brahman and its essential identity with him was represented as a creation of the universe by and out of Brahman." Thus it is said in Mund. I.I. 7:

  As a spider ejects and retracts (the threads),
  As the plants shoot forth on the earth,
  As the hairs on the head and body of the living man,
  So from the imperishable all that is here.
  As the sparks from the well-kindled fire,
  In nature akin to it, spring forth in their thousands,
  So, my dear sir, from the imperishable
  Living beings of many kinds go forth,
  And again return into him [Footnote ref 4].

Yet this world principle is the dearest to us and the highest teaching of the Upani@sads is "That art thou."

Again the growth of the doctrine that Brahman is the "inner controller" in all the parts and forces of nature and of mankind as the âtman thereof, and that all the effects of the universe are the result of his commands which no one can outstep, gave rise to a theistic current of thought in which Brahman is held as standing aloof as God and controlling the world. It is by his ordaining, it is said, that the sun and moon are held together, and the sky and earth stand held together [Footnote ref 5]. God and soul are distinguished again in the famous verse of S'vetâs'vatara [Footnote ref 6]:

  Two bright-feathered bosom friends
  Flit around one and the same tree;
  One of them tastes the sweet berries,
  The other without eating merely gazes down.

______________________________________________________________

[Footnote 1: Châ. III. 14. 4.]

[Footnote 2: Ibid. VII. 25. i; also Mu@n@daka II. 2. ii.]

[Footnote 3: Châ. VI. 10.]

[Footnote 4: Deussen's translation in Philosophy of the Upanishads, p. 164.]

[Footnote 5: B@rh. III. 8. i.]

[Footnote 6: S'vetâs'vatara IV. 6, and Mu@n@daka III. i, 1, also Deussen's translation in Philosophy of the Upanishads, p. 177.]

50

But in spite of this apparent theistic tendency and the occasional use of the word Îs'a or Îs'âna, there seems to be no doubt that theism in its true sense was never prominent, and this acknowledgement of a supreme Lord was also an offshoot of the exalted position of the âtman as the supreme principle. Thus we read in Kau@sîtaki Upani@sad 3. 9, "He is not great by good deeds nor low by evil deeds, but it is he makes one do good deeds whom he wants to raise, and makes him commit bad deeds whom he wants to lower down. He is the protector of the universe, he is the master of the world and the lord of all; he is my soul (âtman)." Thus the lord in spite of his greatness is still my soul. There are again other passages which regard Brahman as being at once immanent and transcendent. Thus it is said that there is that eternally existing tree whose roots grow upward and whose branches grow downward. All the universes are supported in it and no one can transcend it. This is that, "…from its fear the fire burns, the sun shines, and from its fear Indra, Vâyu and Death the fifth (with the other two) run on [Footnote ref 1]."

If we overlook the different shades in the development of the conception of Brahman in the Upani@sads and look to the main currents, we find that the strongest current of thought which has found expression in the majority of the texts is this that the Âtman or the Brahman is the only reality and that besides this everything else is unreal. The other current of thought which is to be found in many of the texts is the pantheistic creed that identifies the universe with the Âtman or Brahman. The third current is that of theism which looks upon Brahman as the Lord controlling the world. It is because these ideas were still in the melting pot, in which none of them were systematically worked out, that the later exponents of Vedânta, S'a@nkara, Râmânuja, and others quarrelled over the meanings of texts in order to develop a consistent systematic philosophy out of them. Thus it is that the doctrine of Mâyâ which is slightly hinted at once in B@rhadâra@nyaka and thrice in S'vetâs'vatara, becomes the foundation of S'a@nkara's philosophy of the Vedânta in which Brahman alone is real and all else beside him is unreal [Footnote ref 2].

_________________________________________________________________

[Footnote 1: Ka@tha II. 6. 1 and 3.]

[Footnote 2: B@rh. II. 5. 19, S'vet. I. 10, IV. 9, 10.]

51

The World.

We have already seen that the universe has come out of Brahman, has its essence in Brahman, and will also return back to it. But in spite of its existence as Brahman its character as represented to experience could not be denied. S'a@nkara held that the Upani@sads referred to the external world and accorded a reality to it consciously with the purpose of treating it as merely relatively real, which will eventually appear as unreal as soon as the ultimate truth, the Brahman, is known. This however remains to be modified to this extent that the sages had not probably any conscious purpose of according a relative reality to the phenomenal world, but in spite of regarding Brahman as the highest reality they could not ignore the claims of the exterior world, and had to accord a reality to it. The inconsistency of this reality of the phenomenal world with the ultimate and only reality of Brahman was attempted to be reconciled by holding that this world is not beside him but it has come out of him, it is maintained in him and it will return back to him.

The world is sometimes spoken of in its twofold aspect, the organic and the inorganic. All organic things, whether plants, animals or men, have souls [Footnote ref 1]. Brahman desiring to be many created fire (tejas), water (ap) and earth (k@siti). Then the self-existent Brahman entered into these three, and it is by their combination that all other bodies are formed [Footnote ref 2]. So all other things are produced as a result of an alloying or compounding of the parts of these three together. In this theory of the threefold division of the primitive elements lies the earliest germ of the later distinction (especially in the Sâ@mkhya school) of pure infinitesimal substances (tanmâtra) and gross elements, and the theory that each gross substance is composed of the atoms of the primary elements. And in Pras'na IV. 8 we find the gross elements distinguished from their subtler natures, e.g. earth (p@rthivî), and the subtler state of earth (p@rthivîmâtra). In the Taittirîya, II. 1, however, ether (âkâs'a) is also described as proceeding from Brahman, and the other elements, air, fire, water, and earth, are described as each proceeding directly from the one which directly preceded it.

____________________________________________________________________

[Footnote 1: Châ. VI.11.]

[Footnote 2: ibid. VI.2,3,4.]

52

The World-Soul.

The conception of a world-soul related to the universe as the soul of man to his body is found for the first time in R.V.X. 121. I, where he is said to have sprung forth as the firstborn of creation from the primeval waters. This being has twice been referred to in the S'vetâs'vatara, in III. 4 and IV. 12. It is indeed very strange that this being is not referred to in any of the earlier Upani@sads. In the two passages in which he has been spoken of, his mythical character is apparent. He is regarded as one of the earlier products in the process of cosmic creation, but his importance from the point of view of the development of the theory of Brahman or Âtman is almost nothing. The fact that neither the Puru@sa, nor the Vis'vakarma, nor the Hira@nyagarbha played an important part in the earlier development of the Upani@sads leads me to think that the Upani@sad doctrines were not directly developed from the monotheistic tendencies of the later @Rg-Veda speculations. The passages in S'vetâs'vatara clearly show how from the supreme eminence that he had in R.V.X. 121, Hira@nyagarbha had been brought to the level of one of the created beings. Deussen in explaining the philosophical significance of the Hira@nyagarbha doctrine of the Upani@sads says that the "entire objective universe is possible only in so far as it is sustained by a knowing subject. This subject as a sustainer of the objective universe is manifested in all individual objects but is by no means identical with them. For the individual objects pass away but the objective universe continues to exist without them; there exists therefore the eternal knowing subject also (hira@nyagarbha) by whom it is sustained. Space and time are derived from this subject. It is itself accordingly not in space and does not belong to time, and therefore from an empirical point of view it is in general non-existent; it has no empirical but only a metaphysical reality [Footnote ref 1]." This however seems to me to be wholly irrelevant, since the Hira@nyagarbha doctrine cannot be supposed to have any philosophical importance in the Upani@sads.

The Theory of Causation.

There was practically no systematic theory of causation in the Upani@sads. S'a@nkara, the later exponent of Vedânta philosophy, always tried to show that the Upani@sads looked upon the cause

___________________________________________________________________

[Footnote 1: Deussen's Philosophy of the Upanishads, p. 201.]

53

as mere ground of change which though unchanged in itself in reality had only an appearance of suffering change. This he did on the strength of a series of examples in the Chândogya Upani@sad (VI. 1) in which the material cause, e.g. the clay, is spoken of as the only reality in all its transformations as the pot, the jug or the plate. It is said that though there are so many diversities of appearance that one is called the plate, the other the pot, and the other the jug, yet these are only empty distinctions of name and form, for the only thing real in them is the earth which in its essence remains ever the same whether you call it the pot, plate, or Jug. So it is that the ultimate cause, the unchangeable Brahman, remains ever constant, though it may appear to suffer change as the manifold world outside. This world is thus only an unsubstantial appearance, a mirage imposed upon Brahman, the real par excellence.

It seems however that though such a view may be regarded as having been expounded in the Upani@sads in an imperfect manner, there is also side by side the other view which looks upon the effect as the product of a real change wrought in the cause itself through the action and combination of the elements of diversity in it. Thus when the different objects of nature have been spoken of in one place as the product of the combination of the three elements fire, water and earth, the effect signifies a real change produced by their compounding. This is in germ (as we shall see hereafter) the Pari@nâma theory of causation advocated by the Sâ@mkhya school [Footnote ref 1].

Doctrine of Transmigration.

When the Vedic people witnessed the burning of a dead body they supposed that the eye of the man went to the sun, his breath to the wind, his speech to the fire, his limbs to the different parts of the universe. They also believed as we have already seen in the recompense of good and bad actions in worlds other than our own, and though we hear of such things as the passage of the human soul into trees, etc., the tendency towards transmigration had but little developed at the time.

In the Upani@sads however we find a clear development in the direction of transmigration in two distinct stages. In the one the Vedic idea of a recompense in the other world is combined with

____________________________________________________________________

[Footnote 1: Châ. VI. 2-4.]

54

the doctrine of transmigration, whereas in the other the doctrine of transmigration comes to the forefront