If, now, I am shortly to sum up the results of the preceding enquiry as
to the teaching of the Sutras, I must give it as my opinion that they do
not set forth the distinction of a higher and lower knowledge of
Brahman; that they do not acknowledge the distinction of Brahman and
I/s/vara in /S/a@nkara's sense; that they do not hold the doctrine of
the unreality of the world; and that they do not, with /S/a@nkara,
proclaim the absolute identity of the individual and the highest Self. I
do not wish to advance for the present beyond these negative results.
Upon Ramanuja's mode of interpretation--although I accept it without
reserve in some important details--I look on the whole as more useful in
providing us with a powerful means of criticising /S/a@nkara's
explanations than in guiding us throughout to the right understanding of
the text. The author of the Sutras may have held views about the nature
of Brahman, the world, and the soul differing from those of /S/a@nkara,
and yet not agreeing in all points with those of Ramanuja. If, however,
the negative conclusions stated above should be well founded, it would
follow even from them that the system of Badaraya/n/a had greater
affinities with that of the Bhagavatas and Ramanuja than with the one of
which the /S/a@nkara-bhashya is the classical exponent.
It appears from the above review of the teaching of the Sutras that only
a comparatively very small proportion of them contribute matter enabling
us to form a judgment as to the nature of the philosophical doctrine
advocated by Badaraya/n/a. The reason of this is that the greater part
of the work is taken up with matters which, according to /S/a@nkara's
terminology, form part of the so-called lower knowledge, and throw no
light upon philosophical questions in the stricter sense of the word.
This circumstance is not without significance. In later works belonging
to /S/a@nkara's school in which the distinction of a higher and lower
vidya is clearly recognised, the topics constituting the latter are
treated with great shortness; and rightly so, for they are unable to
accomplish the highest aim of man, i.e. final release. When we
therefore, on the other hand, find that the subjects of the so-called
lower vidya are treated very fully in the Vedanta-sutras, when we
observe, for instance, the almost tedious length to which the
investigation of the unity of vidyas (most of which are so-called
sagu/n/a, i.e. lower vidyas) is carried in the third adhyaya, or the
fact of almost the whole fourth adhyaya being devoted to the ultimate
fate of the possessor of the lower vidya; we certainly feel ourselves
confirmed in our conclusion that what /S/a@nkara looked upon as
comparatively unimportant formed in Badaraya/n/a's opinion part of that
knowledge higher than which there is none, and which therefore is
entitled to the fullest and most detailed exposition.
The question as to what kind of system is represented by the
Vedanta-sutras may be approached in another way also. While hitherto we
have attempted to penetrate to the meaning of the Sutras by means of the
different commentaries, we might try the opposite road, and, in the
first place, attempt to ascertain independently of the Sutras what
doctrine is set forth in the Upanishads, whose teaching the Sutras
doubtless aim at systematising. If, it might be urged, the Upanishads
can be convincingly shown to embody a certain settled doctrine, we must
consider it at the least highly probable that that very same
doctrine--of whatever special nature it may be--is hidden in the
enigmatical aphorisms of Badaraya/n/a.[24]
I do not, however, consider this line of argumentation a safe one. Even
if it could be shown that the teaching of all the chief Upanishads
agrees in all essential points (a subject to which some attention will
be paid later on), we should not on that account be entitled
unhesitatingly to assume that the Sutras set forth the same doctrine.
Whatever the true philosophy of the Upanishads may be, there remains the
undeniable fact that there exist and have existed since very ancient
times not one but several essentially differing systems, all of which
lay claim to the distinction of being the true representatives of the
teaching of the Upanishads as well as of the Sutras. Let us suppose, for
argument's sake, that, for instance, the doctrine of Maya is distinctly
enunciated in the Upanishads; nevertheless Ramanuja and, for all we know
to the contrary, the whole series of more ancient commentators on whom
he looked as authorities in the interpretation of the Sutras, denied
that the Upanishads teach Maya, and it is hence by no means impossible
that Badaraya/n/a should have done the same. The a priori style of
reasoning as to the teaching of the Sutras is therefore without much
force.
But apart from any intention of arriving thereby at the meaning of the
Sutras there, of course, remains for us the all-important question as to
the true teaching of the Upanishads, a question which a translator of
the Sutras and /S/a@nkara cannot afford to pass over in silence,
especially after reason has been shown for the conclusion that the
Sutras and the /S/a@nkara-bhashya do not agree concerning most important
points of Vedantic doctrine. The Sutras as well as the later
commentaries claim, in the first place, to be nothing more than
systematisations of the Upanishads, and for us a considerable part at
least of their value and interest lies in this their nature. Hence the
further question presents itself by whom the teaching of the Upanishads
has been most adequately systematised, whether by Badaraya/n/a, or
/S/a@nkara, or Ramanuja, or some other commentator. This question
requires to be kept altogether separate from the enquiry as to which
commentator most faithfully renders the contents of the Sutras, and it
is by no means impossible that /S/a@nkara, for instance, should in the
end have to be declared a more trustworthy guide with regard to the
teaching of the Upanishads than concerning the meaning of the Sutras.
We must remark here at once that, whatever commentator may be found to
deserve preference on the whole, it appears fairly certain already at
the outset that none of the systems which Indian ingenuity has succeeded
in erecting on the basis of the Upanishads can be accepted in its
entirety. The reason for this lies in the nature of the Upanishads
themselves. To the Hindu commentator and philosopher the Upanishads came
down as a body of revealed truth whose teaching had, somehow or other,
to be shown to be thoroughly consistent and free from contradictions; a
system had to be devised in which a suitable place could be allotted to
every one of the multitudinous statements which they make on the various
points of Vedantic doctrine. But to the European scholar, or in fact to
any one whose mind is not bound by the doctrine of /S/ruti, it will
certainly appear that all such attempts stand self-condemned. If
anything is evident even on a cursory review of the Upanishads--and the
impression so created is only strengthened by a more careful
investigation--it is that they do not constitute a systematic whole.
They themselves, especially the older ones, give the most unmistakable
indications on that point. Not only are the doctrines expounded in the
different Upanishads ascribed to different teachers, but even the
separate sections of one and the same Upanishad are assigned to
different authorities. It would be superfluous to quote examples of what
a mere look at the Chandogya Upanishad, for instance, suffices to prove.
It is of course not impossible that even a multitude of teachers should
agree in imparting precisely the same doctrine; but in the case of the
Upanishads that is certainly not antecedently probable. For, in the
first place, the teachers who are credited with the doctrines of the
Upanishads manifestly belonged to different sections of Brahminical
society, to different Vedic /s/akhas; nay, some of them the tradition
makes out to have been kshattriyas. And, in the second place, the
period, whose mental activity is represented in the Upanishads, was a
creative one, and as such cannot be judged according to the analogy of
later periods of Indian philosophic development. The later philosophic
schools as, for instance, the one of which /S/a@nkara is the great
representative, were no longer free in their speculations, but strictly
bound by a traditional body of texts considered sacred, which could not
be changed or added to, but merely systematised and commented upon.
Hence the rigorous uniformity of doctrine characteristic of those
schools. But there had been a time when, what later writers received as
a sacred legacy, determining and confining the whole course of their
speculations, first sprang from the minds of creative thinkers not
fettered by the tradition of any school, but freely following the
promptings of their own heads and hearts. By the absence of school
traditions, I do not indeed mean that the great teachers who appear in
the Upanishads were free to make an entirely new start, and to assign to
their speculations any direction they chose; for nothing can be more
certain than that, at the period as the outcome of whose philosophical
activity the Upanishads have to be considered, there were in circulation
certain broad speculative ideas overshadowing the mind of every member
of Brahminical society. But those ideas were neither very definite nor
worked out in detail, and hence allowed themselves to be handled and
fashioned in different ways by different individuals. With whom the few
leading conceptions traceable in the teaching of all Upanishads first
originated, is a point on which those writings themselves do not
enlighten us, and which we have no other means for settling; most
probably they are to be viewed not as the creation of any individual
mind, but as the gradual outcome of speculations carried on by
generations of Vedic theologians. In the Upanishads themselves, at any
rate, they appear as floating mental possessions which may be seized and
moulded into new forms by any one who feels within himself the required
inspiration. A certain vague knowledge of Brahman, the great hidden
being in which all this manifold world is one, seems to be spread
everywhere, and often issues from the most unexpected sources.
/S/vetaketu receives instruction from his father Uddalaka; the proud
Gargya has to become the pupil of Ajata/s/atru, the king of Ka/s/i;
Bhujyu Sahyayani receives answers to his questions from a Gandharva
possessing a maiden; Satyakama learns what Brahman is from the bull of
the herd he is tending, from Agni and from a flamingo; and Upako/s/ala
is taught by the sacred fires in his teacher's house. All this is of
course legend, not history; but the fact that the philosophic and
theological doctrines of the Upanishads are clothed in this legendary
garb certainly does not strengthen the expectation of finding in them a
rigidly systematic doctrine.
And a closer investigation of the contents of the Upanishads amply
confirms this preliminary impression. If we avail ourselves, for
instance, of M. Paul Regnaud's Materiaux pour servir a l'Histoire de la
Philosophie de l'Inde, in which the philosophical lucubrations of the
different Upanishads are arranged systematically according to topics, we
can see with ease how, together with a certain uniformity of general
leading conceptions, there runs throughout divergence in details, and
very often not unimportant details. A look, for instance, at the
collection of passages relative to the origination of the world from the
primitive being, suffices to show that the task of demonstrating that
whatever the Upanishads teach on that point can be made to fit into a
homogeneous system is an altogether hopeless one. The accounts there
given of the creation belong, beyond all doubt to different stages of
philosophic and theological development or else to different sections of
priestly society. None but an Indian commentator would, I suppose, be
inclined and sufficiently courageous to attempt the proof that, for
instance, the legend of the atman purushavidha, the Self in the shape of
a person which is as large as man and woman together, and then splits
itself into two halves from which cows, horses, asses, goats, &c. are
produced in succession (B/ri/. Up. I, 1, 4), can be reconciled with the
account given of the creation in the Chandogya Upanishad, where it is
said that in the beginning there existed nothing but the sat, 'that
which is,' and that feeling a desire of being many it emitted out of
itself ether, and then all the other elements in due succession. The
former is a primitive cosmogonic myth, which in its details shows
striking analogies with the cosmogonic myths of other nations; the
latter account is fairly developed Vedanta (although not Vedanta
implying the Maya doctrine). We may admit that both accounts show a
certain fundamental similarity in so far as they derive the manifold
world from one original being; but to go beyond this and to maintain, as
/S/a@nkara does, that the atman purushavidha of the B/ri/hadara/n/yaka
is the so-called Virag of the latter Vedanta--implying thereby that that
section consciously aims at describing only the activity of one special
form of I/s/vara, and not simply the whole process of creation--is the
ingenious shift of an orthodox commentator in difficulties, but nothing
more.
How all those more or less conflicting texts came to be preserved and
handed down to posterity, is not difficult to understand. As mentioned
above, each of the great sections of Brahminical priesthood had its own
sacred texts, and again in each of those sections there existed more
ancient texts which it was impossible to discard when deeper and more
advanced speculations began in their turn to be embodied in literary
compositions, which in the course of time likewise came to be looked
upon as sacred. When the creative period had reached its termination,
and the task of collecting and arranging was taken in hand, older and
newer pieces were combined into wholes, and thus there arose collections
of such heterogeneous character as the Chandogya and B/ri/hadara/n/yaka
Upanishads. On later generations, to which the whole body of texts came
down as revealed truth, there consequently devolved the inevitable task
of establishing systems on which no exception could be taken to any of
the texts; but that the task was, strictly speaking, an impossible one,
i.e. one which it was impossible to accomplish fairly and honestly,
there really is no reason to deny.
For a comprehensive criticism of the methods which the different
commentators employ in systematizing the contents of the Upanishads
there is no room in this place. In order, however, to illustrate what is
meant by the 'impossibility,' above alluded to, of combining the various
doctrines of the Upanishads into a whole without doing violence to a
certain number of texts, it will be as well to analyse in detail some
few at least of /S/a@nkara's interpretations, and to render clear the
considerations by which he is guided.
We begin with a case which has already engaged our attention when
discussing the meaning of the Sutras, viz. the question concerning the
ultimate fate of those who have attained the knowledge of Brahman. As we
have seen, /S/a@nkara teaches that the soul of him who has risen to an
insight into the nature of the higher Brahman does not, at the moment of
death, pass out of the body, but is directly merged in Brahman by a
process from which all departing and moving, in fact all considerations
of space, are altogether excluded. The soul of him, on the other hand,
who has not risen above the knowledge of the lower qualified Brahman
departs from the body by means of the artery called sushum/n/a, and
following the so-called devayana, the path of the gods, mounts up to the
world of Brahman. A review of the chief Upanishad texts on which
/S/a@nkara founds this distinction will show how far it is justified.
In a considerable number of passages the Upanishads contrast the fate of
two classes of men, viz. of those who perform sacrifices and meritorious
works only, and of those who in addition possess a certain kind of
knowledge. Men of the former kind ascend after death to the moon, where
they live for a certain time, and then return to the earth into new
forms of embodiment; persons of the latter kind proceed on the path of
the gods--on which the sun forms one stage--up to the world of Brahman,
from which there is no return. The chief passages to that effect are Ch.
Up. V, 10; Kaush. Up. I, 2 ff.; Mu/nd/. Up. I, 2, 9 ff.; B/ri/. Up. VI,
2, 15 ff.; Pra/s/na Up. I, 9 ff.--In other passages only the latter of
the two paths is referred to, cp. Ch. Up. IV, 15; VIII 6, 5; Taitt. Up.
I, 6; B/ri/. Up. IV, 4, 8, 9; V, 10; Maitr. Up. VI, 30, to mention only
the more important ones.
Now an impartial consideration of those passages shows I think, beyond
any doubt, that what is meant there by the knowledge which leads through
the sun to the world of Brahman is the highest knowledge of which the
devotee is capable, and that the world of Brahman to which his knowledge
enables him to proceed denotes the highest state which he can ever
reach, the state of final release, if we choose to call it by that
name.--Ch. Up. V, 10 says, 'Those who know this (viz. the doctrine of
the five fires), and those who in the forest follow faith and
austerities go to light,' &c.--Ch. Up. IV, 15 is manifestly intended to
convey the true knowledge of Brahman; Upako/s/ala's teacher himself
represents the instruction given by him as superior to the teaching of
the sacred fires.--Ch. Up. VIII, 6, 5 quotes the old /s/loka which says
that the man moving upwards by the artery penetrating the crown of the
head reaches the Immortal.--Kaush. Up. I, 2--which gives the most
detailed account of the ascent of the soul--contains no intimation
whatever of the knowledge of Brahman, which leads up to the Brahman
world, being of an inferior nature.--Mu/nd/. Up. I, 2, 9 agrees with the
Chandogya in saying that 'Those who practise penance and faith in the
forest, tranquil, wise, and living on alms, depart free from passion,
through the sun, to where that immortal Person dwells whose nature is
imperishable,' and nothing whatever in the context countenances the
assumption that not the highest knowledge and the highest Person are
there referred to.--B/ri/. Up. IV, 4, 8 quotes old /s/lokas clearly
referring to the road of the gods ('the small old path'), on which
'sages who know Brahman move on to the svargaloka and thence higher on
as entirely free.--That path was found by Brahman, and on it goes
whoever knows Brahman.'--B/ri/. Up. VI, 2, 15 is another version of the
Pa/nk/agnividya, with the variation, 'Those who know this, and those who
in the forest worship faith and the True, go to light,' &c.--Pra/s/na
Up. 1, 10 says, 'Those who have sought the Self by penance, abstinence,
faith, and knowledge gain by the northern path Aditya, the sun. There is
the home of the spirits, the immortal free from danger, the highest.
From thence they do not return, for it is the end.'--Maitr. Up. VI, 30
quotes /s/lokas, 'One of them (the arteries) leads upwards, piercing the
solar orb: by it, having stepped beyond the world of Brahman, they go to
the highest path.'
All these passages are as clear as can be desired. The soul of the sage
who knows Brahman passes out by the sushum/n/a, and ascends by the path
of the gods to the world of Brahman, there to remain for ever in some
blissful state. But, according to /S/a@nkara, all these texts are meant
to set forth the result of a certain inferior knowledge only, of the
knowledge of the conditioned Brahman. Even in a passage apparently so
entirely incapable of more than one interpretation as B/ri/. Up. VI, 2,
15, the 'True,' which the holy hermits in the forest are said to
worship, is not to be the highest Brahman, but only
Hira/n/yagarbha!--And why?--Only because the system so demands it, the
system which teaches that those who know the highest Brahman become on
their death one with it, without having to resort to any other place.
The passage on which this latter tenet is chiefly based is B/ri/. Up.
IV, 4, 6, 7, where, with the fate of him who at his death has desires,
and whose soul therefore enters a new body after having departed from
the old one, accompanied by all the pra/n/as, there is contrasted the
fate of the sage free from all desires. 'But as to the man who does not
desire, who not desiring, freed from desires is satisfied in his
desires, or desires the Self only, the vital spirits of him (tasya) do
not depart--being Brahman he goes to Brahman.'
We have seen above (p. lxxx) that this passage is referred to in the
important Sutras on whose right interpretation it, in the first place,
depends whether or not we must admit the Sutrakara to have acknowledged
the distinction of a para and an apara vidya. Here the passage interests
us as throwing light on the way in which /S/a@nkara systematises. He
looks on the preceding part of the chapter as describing what happens to
the souls of all those who do not know the highest Brahman, inclusive of
those who know the lower Brahman only. They pass out of the old bodies
followed by all pra/n/as and enter new bodies. He, on the other hand,
section 6 continues, who knows the true Brahman, does not pass out of
the body, but becomes one with Brahman then and there. This
interpretation of the purport of the entire chapter is not impossibly
right, although I am rather inclined to think that the chapter aims at
setting forth in its earlier part the future of him who does not know
Brahman at all, while the latter part of section 6 passes on to him who
does know Brahman (i.e. Brahman pure and simple, the text knowing of no
distinction of the so-called lower and higher Brahman). In explaining
section 6 /S/a@nkara lays stress upon the clause 'na tasya pra/n/a
utkramanti,' 'his vital spirits do not pass out,' taking this to signify
that the soul with the vital spirits does not move at all, and thus does
not ascend to the world of Brahman; while the purport of the clause may
simply be that the soul and vital spirits do not go anywhere else, i.e.
do not enter a new body, but are united, somehow or other, with Brahman.
On /S/a@nkara's interpretation there immediately arises a new
difficulty. In the /s/lokas, quoted under sections 8 and 9, the
description of the small old path which leads to the svargaloka and
higher on clearly refers--as noticed already above--to the path through
the veins, primarily the sushum/n/a, on which, according to so many
other passages, the soul of the wise mounts upwards. But that path is,
according to /S/a@nkara, followed by him only who has not risen above
the lower knowledge, and yet the /s/lokas have manifestly to be
connected with what is said in the latter half of 6 about the owner of
the para vidya. Hence /S/a@nkara sees himself driven to explain the
/s/lokas in 8 and 9 (of which a faithful translation is given in
Professor Max Muller's version) as follows:
8. 'The subtle old path (i.e. the path of knowledge on which final
release is reached; which path is subtle, i.e. difficult to know, and
old, i.e. to be known from the eternal Veda) has been obtained and fully
reached by me. On it the sages who know Brahman reach final release
(svargaloka/s/abda/h/ samnihitaprakara/n/at mokshabhidhayaka/h/).
9. 'On that path they say that there is white or blue or yellow or green
or red (i.e. others maintain that the path to final release is, in
accordance with the colour of the arteries, either white or blue, &c.;
but that is false, for the paths through the arteries lead at the best
to the world of Brahman, which itself forms part of the sa/m/sara); that
path (i.e. the only path to release, viz. the path of true knowledge) is
found by Brahman, i.e. by such Brahma/n/as as through true knowledge
have become like Brahman,' &c.
A significant instance in truth of the straits to which thorough-going
systematisers of the Upanishads see themselves reduced occasionally!
But we return to the point which just now chiefly interests us. Whether
/S/a@nkara's interpretation of the chapter, and especially of section 6,
be right or wrong, so much is certain that we are not entitled to view
all those texts which speak of the soul going to the world of Brahman as
belonging to the so-called lower knowledge, because a few other passages
declare that the sage does not go to Brahman. The text which declares
the sage free from desires to become one with Brahman could not, without
due discrimination, be used to define and limit the meaning of other
passages met with in the same Upanishad even--for as we have remarked
above the B/ri/hadara/n/yaka contains pieces manifestly belonging to
different stages of development;--much less does it entitle us to put
arbitrary constructions on passages forming part of other Upanishads.
Historically the disagreement of the various accounts is easy to
understand. The older notion was that the soul of the wise man proceeds
along the path of the gods to Brahman's abode. A later--and, if we like,
more philosophic--conception is that, as Brahman already is a man's
Self, there is no need of any motion on man's part to reach Brahman. We
may even apply to those two views the terms apara and para--lower and
higher--knowledge. But we must not allow any commentator to induce us to
believe that what he from his advanced standpoint looks upon as an
inferior kind of cognition, was viewed in the same light by the authors
of the Upanishads.
We turn to another Upanishad text likewise touching upon the point
considered in what precedes, viz. the second Brahma/n/a of the third
adhyaya of the B/ri/hadara/n/yaka. The discussion there first turns upon
the grahas and atigrahas, i.e. the senses and organs and their objects,
and Yajnavalkya thereupon explains that death, by which everything is
overcome, is itself overcome by water; for death is fire. The colloquy
then turns to what we must consider an altogether new topic, Artabhaga
asking, 'When this man (ayam purusha) dies, do the vital spirits depart
from him or not?' and Yajnavalkya answering, 'No, they are gathered up
in him; he swells, he is inflated; inflated the dead (body) is
lying.'--Now this is for /S/a@nkara an important passage, as we have
already seen above (p. lxxxi); for he employs it, in his comment on
Ved.-sutra IV, 2, 13, for the purpose of proving that the passage B/ri/.
Up. IV, 4, 6 really means that the vital spirits do not, at the moment
of death, depart from the true sage. Hence the present passage also must
refer to him who possesses the highest knowledge; hence the 'ayam
purusha' must be 'that man,' i.e. the man who possesses the highest
knowledge, and the highest knowledge then must be found in the preceding
clause which says that death itself may be conquered by water. But, as
Ramanuja also remarks, neither does the context favour the assumption
that the highest knowledge is referred to, nor do the words of section
11 contain any indication that what is meant is the merging of the Self
of the true Sage in Brahman. With the interpretation given by Ramanuja
himself, viz. that the pra/n/as do not depart from the jiva of the dying
man, but accompany it into a new body, I can agree as little (although
he no doubt rightly explains the 'ayam purusha' by 'man' in general),
and am unable to see in the passage anything more than a crude attempt
to account for the fact that a dead body appears swollen and
inflated.--A little further on (section 13) Artabhaga asks what becomes
of this man (ayam purusha) when his speech has entered into the fire,
his breath into the air, his eye into the sun, &c. So much here is clear
that we have no right to understand by the 'ayam purusha' of section 13
anybody different from the 'ayam purusha' of the two preceding sections;
in spite of this /S/a@nkara--according to whose system the organs of the
true sage do not enter into the elements, but are directly merged in
Brahman--explains the 'ayam purusha' of section 13 to be the
'asa/m/yagdar/s/in,' i.e. the person who has not risen to the cognition
of the highest Brahman. And still a further limiting interpretation is
required by the system. The asa/m/yagdar/s/in also--who as such has to
remain in the sa/m/sara--cannot do without the organs, since his jiva
when passing out of the old body into a new one is invested with the
subtle body; hence section 13 cannot be taken as saying what it clearly
does say, viz. that at death the different organs pass into the
different elements, but as merely indicating that the organs are
abandoned by the divinities which, during lifetime, presided over them!
The whole third adhyaya indeed of the B/ri/hadara/n/yaka affords ample
proof of the artificial character of /S/a@nkara's attempts to show that
the teaching of the Upanishads follows a definite system. The eighth
brahma/n/a, for instance, is said to convey the doctrine of the highest
non-related Brahman, while the preceding brahma/n/as had treated only of
I/s/vara in his various aspects. But, as a matter of fact, brahma/n/a 8,
after having, in section 8, represented Brahman as destitute of all
qualities, proceeds, in the next section, to describe that very same
Brahman as the ruler of the world, 'By the command of that Imperishable
sun and moon stand apart,' &c.; a clear indication that the author of
the Upanishad does not distinguish a higher and lower Brahman
in--/S/a@nkara's sense.--The preceding brahma/n/a (7) treats of the
antaryamin, i.e. Brahman viewed as the internal ruler of everything.
This, according to /S/a@nkara, is the lower form of Brahman called
I/s/vara; but we observe that the antaryamin as well as the so-called
highest Brahman described in section 8 is, at the termination of the two
sections, characterised by means of the very same terms (7, 23: Unseen
but seeing, unheard but hearing, &c. There is no other seer but he,
there is no other hearer but he, &c.; and 8, 11: That Brahman is unseen
but seeing, unheard but hearing, &c. There is nothing that sees but it,
nothing that hears but it, &c.).--Nothing can be clearer than that all
these sections aim at describing one and the same being, and know
nothing of the distinctions made by the developed Vedanta, however valid
the latter may be from a purely philosophic point of view.
We may refer to one more similar instance from the Chandogya Upanishad.
We there meet in III, 14 with one of the most famous vidyas describing
the nature of Brahman, called after its reputed author the
Sa/nd/ilya-vidya. This small vidya is decidedly one of the finest and
most characteristic texts; it would be difficult to point out another
passage setting forth with greater force and eloquence and in an equally
short compass the central doctrine of the Upanishads. Yet this text,
which, beyond doubt, gives utterance to the highest conception of
Brahman's nature that Sa/nd/ilya's thought was able to reach, is by
/S/a@nkara and his school again declared to form part of the lower vidya
only, because it represents Brahman as possessing qualities. It is,
according to their terminology, not j/n/ana, i.e. knowledge, but the
injunction of a mere upasana, a devout meditation on Brahman in so far
as possessing certain definite attributes such as having light for its
form, having true thoughts, and so on. The Ramanujas, on the other hand,
quote this text with preference as clearly describing the nature of
their highest, i.e. their one Brahman. We again allow that /S/a@nkara is
free to deny that any text which ascribes qualities to Brahman embodies
absolute truth; but we also again remark that there is no reason
whatever for supposing that Sa/nd/ilya, or whoever may have been the
author of that vidya, looked upon it as anything else but a statement of
the highest truth accessible to man.
We return to the question as to the true philosophy of the Upanishads,
apart from the systems of the commentators.--From what precedes it will
appear with sufficient distinctness that, if we understand by philosophy
a philosophical system coherent in all its parts, free from all
contradictions and allowing room for all the different statements made
in all the chief Upanishads, a philosophy of the Upanishads cannot even
be spoken of. The various lucubrations on Brahman, the world, and the
human soul of which the Upanishads consist do not allow themselves to be
systematised simply because they were never meant to form a system.
/S/a/nd/ilya's views as to the nature of Brahman did not in all details
agree with those of Yaj/n/avalkya, and Uddalaka differed from both. In
this there is nothing to wonder at, and the burden of proof rests
altogether with those who maintain that a large number of detached
philosophic and theological dissertations, ascribed to different
authors, doubtless belonging to different periods, and not seldom
manifestly contradicting each other, admit of being combined into a
perfectly consistent whole.
The question, however, assumes a different aspect, if we take the terms
'philosophy' and 'philosophical system,' not in the strict sense in
which /S/a@nkara and other commentators are not afraid of taking them,
but as implying merely an agreement in certain fundamental features. In
this latter sense we may indeed undertake to indicate the outlines of a
philosophy of the Upanishads, only keeping in view that precision in
details is not to be aimed at. And here we finally see ourselves driven
back altogether on the texts themselves, and have to acknowledge that
the help we receive from commentators, to whatever school they may
belong, is very inconsiderable. Fortunately it cannot be asserted that
the texts on the whole oppose very serious difficulties to a right
understanding, however obscure the details often are. Concerning the
latter we occasionally depend entirely on the explanations vouchsafed by
the scholiasts, but as far as the general drift and spirit of the texts
are concerned, we are quite able to judge by ourselves, and are even
specially qualified to do so by having no particular system to advocate.
The point we will first touch upon is the same from which we started
when examining the doctrine of the Sutras, viz. the question whether the
Upanishads acknowledge a higher and lower knowledge in /S/a@nkara's
sense, i.e. a knowledge of a higher and a lower Brahman. Now this we
find not to be the case. Knowledge is in the Upanishads frequently
opposed to avidya, by which latter term we have to understand ignorance
as to Brahman, absence of philosophic knowledge; and, again, in several
places we find the knowledge of the sacrificial part of the Veda with
its supplementary disciplines contrasted as inferior with the knowledge
of the Self; to which latter distinction the Mu/nd/aka Up. (I, 4)
applies the terms apara and para vidya. But a formal recognition of the
essential difference of Brahman being viewed, on the one hand, as
possessing distinctive attributes, and, on the other hand, as devoid of
all such attributes is not to be met with anywhere. Brahman is indeed
sometimes described as sagu/n/a and sometimes as nirgu/n/a (to use later
terms); but it is nowhere said that thereon rests a distinction of two
different kinds of knowledge leading to altogether different results.
The knowledge of Brahman is one, under whatever aspects it is viewed;
hence the circumstance (already exemplified above) that in the same
vidyas it is spoken of as sagu/n/a as well as nirgu/n/a. When the mind
of the writer dwells on the fact that Brahman is that from which all
this world originates, and in which it rests, he naturally applies to it
distinctive attributes pointing at its relation to the world; Brahman,
then, is called the Self and life of all, the inward ruler, the
omniscient Lord, and so on. When, on the other hand, the author follows
out the idea that Brahman may be viewed in itself as the mysterious
reality of which the whole expanse of the world is only an outward
manifestation, then it strikes him that no idea or term derived from
sensible experience can rightly be applied to it, that nothing more may
be predicated of it but that it is neither this nor that. But these are
only two aspects of the cognition of one and the same entity.
Closely connected with the question as to the double nature of the
Brahman of the Upanishads is the question as to their teaching
Maya.--From Colebrooke downwards the majority of European writers have
inclined towards the opinion that the doctrine of Maya, i.e. of the
unreal illusory character of the sensible world, does not constitute a
feature of the primitive philosophy of the Upanishads, but was
introduced into the system at some later period, whether by Badaraya/n/a
or /S/a@nkara or somebody else. The opposite view, viz. that the
doctrine of Maya forms an integral element of the teaching of the
Upanishads, is implied in them everywhere, and enunciated more or less
distinctly in more than one place, has in recent times been advocated
with much force by Mr. Gough in the ninth chapter of his Philosophy of
the Upanishads.
In his Materiaux, &c. M. Paul Regnaud remarks that 'the doctrine of
Maya, although implied in the teaching of the Upanishads, could hardly
become clear and explicit before the system had reached a stage of
development necessitating a choice between admitting two co-existent
eternal principles (which became the basis of the Sa@nkhya philosophy),
and accepting the predominance of the intellectual principle, which in
the end necessarily led to the negation of the opposite principle.'--To
the two alternatives here referred to as possible we, however, have to
add a third one, viz. that form of the Vedanta of which the theory of
the Bhagavatas or Ramanujas is the most eminent type, and according to
which Brahman carries within its own nature an element from which the
material universe originates; an element which indeed is not an
independent entity like the pradhana of the Sa@nkhyas, but which at the
same time is not an unreal Maya but quite as real as any other part of
Brahman's nature. That a doctrine of this character actually developed
itself on the basis of the Upanishads, is a circumstance which we
clearly must not lose sight of, when attempting to determine what the
Upanishads themselves are teaching concerning the character of the
world.
In enquiring whether the Upanishads maintain the Maya doctrine or not,
we must proceed with the same caution as regards other parts of the
system, i.e. we must refrain from using unhesitatingly, and without
careful consideration of the merits of each individual case, the
teaching--direct or inferred--of any one passage to the end of
determining the drift of the teaching of other passages. We may admit
that some passages, notably of the B/ri/hadara/n/yaka, contain at any
rate the germ of the later developed Maya doctrine[25], and thus render
it quite intelligible that a system like /S/a@nkara's should evolve
itself, among others, out of the Upanishads; but that affords no valid
reason for interpreting Maya into other texts which give a very
satisfactory sense without that doctrine, or are even clearly repugnant
to it. This remark applies in the very first place to all the accounts
of the creation of the physical universe. There, if anywhere, the
illusional character of the world should have been hinted at, at least,
had that theory been held by the authors of those accounts; but not a
word to that effect is met with anywhere. The most important of those
accounts--the one given in the sixth chapter of the Chandogya
Upanishad--forms no exception. There is absolutely no reason to assume
that the 'sending forth' of the elements from the primitive Sat, which
is there described at length, was by the writer of that passage meant to
represent a vivarta rather than a pari/n/ama that the process of the
origination of the physical universe has to be conceived as anything
else but a real manifestation of real powers hidden in the primeval
Self. The introductory words, addressed to /S/vetaketu by Uddalaka,
which are generally appealed to as intimating the unreal character of
the evolution about to be described, do not, if viewed impartially,
intimate any such thing[26]. For what is capable of being proved, and
manifestly meant to be proved, by the illustrative instances of the lump
of clay and the nugget of gold, through which there are known all things
made of clay and gold? Merely that this whole world has Brahman for its
causal substance, just as clay is the causal matter of every earthen
pot, and gold of every golden ornament, but not that the process through
which any causal substance becomes an effect is an unreal one.
We--including Uddalaka--may surely say that all earthen pots are in
reality nothing but earth--the earthen pot being merely a special
modification (vikara) of clay which has a name of its own--without
thereby committing ourselves to the doctrine that the change of form,
which a lump of clay undergoes when being fashioned into a pot, is not
real but a mere baseless illusion.
In the same light we have to view numerous other passages which set
forth the successive emanations proceeding from the first principle.
When, for instance, we meet in the Ka/th/a Up. I, 3, 10, in the serial
enumeration of the forms of existence intervening between the gross
material world and the highest Self (the Person), with the
'avyak/ri/ta,' the Undeveloped, immediately below the purusha; and when
again the Mu/nd/aka Up. II, 1, 2, speaks of the 'high Imperishable'
higher than which is the heavenly Person; there is no reason whatever to
see in that 'Undeveloped' and that 'high Imperishable' anything but that
real element in Brahman from which, as in the Ramanuja system, the
material universe springs by a process of real development. We must of
course render it quite clear to ourselves in what sense the terms 'real'
and 'unreal' have to be understood. The Upanishads no doubt teach
emphatically that the material world does not owe its existence to any
principle independent from the Lord like the pradhana of the Sa@nkhyas;
the world is nothing but a manifestation of the Lord's wonderful power,
and hence is unsubstantial, if we take the term 'substance' in its
strict sense. And, again, everything material is immeasurably inferior
in nature to the highest spiritual principle from which it has emanated,
and which it now hides from the individual soul. But neither
unsubstantiality nor inferiority of the kind mentioned constitutes
unreality in the sense in which the Maya of /S/a@nkara is unreal.
According to the latter the whole world is nothing but an erroneous
appearance, as unreal as the snake, for which a piece of rope is
mistaken by the belated traveller, and disappearing just as the imagined
snake does as soon as the light of true knowledge has risen. But this is
certainly not the impression left on the mind by a comprehensive review
of the Upanishads which dwells on their general scope, and does not
confine itself to the undue urging of what may be implied in some
detached passages. The Upanishads do not call upon us to look upon the
whole world as a baseless illusion to be destroyed by knowledge; the
great error which they admonish us to relinquish is rather that things
have a separate individual existence, and are not tied together by the
bond of being all of them effects of Brahman, or Brahman itself. They do
not say that true knowledge sublates this false world, as /S/a@nkara
says, but that it enables the sage to extricate himself from the
world--the inferior murta rupa of Brahman, to use an expression of the
B/ri/hadara/n/yaka--and to become one with Brahman in its highest form.
'We are to see everything in Brahman, and Brahman in everything;' the
natural meaning of this is, 'we are to look upon this whole world as a
true manifestation of Brahman, as sprung from it and animated by it.'
The mayavadin has indeed appropriated the above saying also, and
interpreted it so as to fall in with his theory; but he is able to do so
only by perverting its manifest sense. For him it would be appropriate
to say, not that everything we see is in Brahman, but rather that
everything we see is out of Brahman, viz. as a false appearance spread
over it and hiding it from us.
Stress has been laid[27] upon certain passages of the B/ri/hadara/n/yaka
which seem to hint at the unreality of this world by qualifying terms,
indicative of duality or plurality of existence, by means of an added
'iva,' i.e. 'as it were' (yatranyad iva syat; yatra dvaitam iva bhavati;
atma dhyayativa lelayativa). Those passages no doubt readily lend
themselves to Maya interpretations, and it is by no means impossible
that in their author's mind there was something like an undeveloped Maya
doctrine. I must, however, remark that they, on the other hand, also
admit of easy interpretations not in any way presupposing the theory of
the unreality of the world. If Yaj/n/avalkya refers to the latter as
that 'where there is something else as it were, where there is duality
as it were,' he may simply mean to indicate that the ordinary opinion,
according to which the individual forms of existence of the world are
opposed to each other as altogether separate, is a mistaken one, all
things being one in so far as they spring from--and are parts
of--Brahman. This would in no way involve duality or plurality being
unreal in /S/a@nkara's sense, not any more than, for instance, the modes
of Spinoza are unreal because, according to that philosopher, there is
only one universal substance. And with regard to the clause 'the Self
thinks as it were' it has to be noted that according to the commentators
the 'as it were' is meant to indicate that truly not the Self is
thinking, but the upadhis, i.e. especially the manas with which the Self
is connected. But whether these upadhis are the mere offspring of Maya,
as /S/a@nkara thinks, or real forms of existence, as Ramanuja teaches,
is an altogether different question.
I do not wish, however, to urge these last observations, and am ready to
admit that not impossibly those iva's indicate that the thought of the
writer who employed them was darkly labouring with a conception akin
to--although much less explicit than--the Maya of /S/a@nkara. But what I
object to is, that conclusions drawn from a few passages of, after all,
doubtful import should be employed for introducing the Maya doctrine
into other passages which do not even hint at it, and are fully
intelligible without it.[28]
The last important point in the teaching of the Upanishads we have to
touch upon is the relation of the jivas, the individual souls to the
highest Self. The special views regarding that point held by /S/a@nkara
and Ramanuja, as have been stated before. Confronting their theories
with the texts of the Upanishads we must, I think, admit without
hesitation, that /S/a@nkara's doctrine faithfully represents the
prevailing teaching of the Upanishads in one important point at least,
viz. therein that the soul or Self of the sage--whatever its original
relation to Brahman may be--is in the end completely merged and
indistinguishably lost in the universal Self. A distinction, repeatedly
alluded to before, has indeed to be kept in view here also. Certain
texts of the Upanishads describe the soul's going upwards, on the path
of the gods, to the world of Brahman, where it dwells for unnumbered
years, i.e. for ever. Those texts, as a type of which we may take, the
passage Kaushit. Up. I--the fundamental text of the Ramanujas concerning
the soul's fate after death--belong to an earlier stage of philosophic
development; they manifestly ascribe to the soul a continued individual
existence. But mixed with texts of this class there are others in which
the final absolute identification of the individual Self with the
universal Self is indicated in terms of unmistakable plainness. 'He who
knows Brahman and becomes Brahman;' 'he who knows Brahman becomes all
this;' 'as the flowing rivers disappear in the sea losing their name and
form, thus a wise man goes to the divine person.' And if we look to the
whole, to the prevailing spirit of the Upanishads, we may call the
doctrine embodied in passages of the latter nature the doctrine of the
Upanishads. It is, moreover, supported by the frequently and clearly
stated theory of the individual souls being merged in Brahman in the
state of deep dreamless sleep.
It is much more difficult to indicate the precise teaching of the
Upanishads concerning the original relation of the individual soul to
the highest Self, although there can be no doubt that it has to be
viewed as proceeding from the latter, and somehow forming a part of it.
Negatively we are entitled to say that the doctrine, according to which
the soul is merely brahma bhrantam or brahma mayopadhikam, is in no way
countenanced by the majority of the passages bearing on the question. If
the emission of the elements, described in the Chandogya and referred to
above, is a real process--of which we saw no reason to doubt--the jiva
atman with which the highest Self enters into the emitted elements is
equally real, a true part or emanation of Brahman itself.
After having in this way shortly reviewed the chief elements of Vedantic
doctrine according to the Upanishads, we may briefly consider
/S/a@nkara's system and mode of interpretation--with whose details we
had frequent opportunities of finding fault--as a whole. It has been
said before that the task of reducing the teaching of the whole of the
Upanishads to a system consistent and free from contradictions is an
intrinsically impossible one. But the task once being given, we are
quite ready to admit that /S/a@nkara's system is most probably the best
which can be devised. While unable to allow that the Upanishads
recognise a lower and higher knowledge of Brahman, in fact the
distinction of a lower and higher Brahman, we yet acknowledge that the
adoption of that distinction furnishes the interpreter with an
instrument of extraordinary power for reducing to an orderly whole the
heterogeneous material presented by the old theosophic treatises. This
becomes very manifest as soon as we compare /S/a@nkara's system with
that of Ramanuja. The latter recognises only one Brahman which is, as we
should say, a personal God, and he therefore lays stress on all those
passages of the Upanishads which ascribe to Brahman the attributes of a
personal God, such as omniscience and omnipotence. Those passages, on
the other hand, whose decided tendency it is to represent Brahman as
transcending all qualities, as one undifferenced mass of impersonal
intelligence, Ramanuja is unable to accept frankly and fairly, and has
to misinterpret them more or less to make them fall in with his system.
The same remark holds good with regard to those texts which represent
the individual soul as finally identifying itself with Brahman; Ramanuja
cannot allow a complete identification but merely an assimilation
carried as far as possible. /S/a@nkara, on the other hand, by skilfully
ringing the changes on a higher and a lower doctrine, somehow manages to
find room for whatever the Upanishads have to say. Where the text speaks
of Brahman as transcending all attributes, the highest doctrine is set
forth. Where Brahman is called the All-knowing ruler of the world, the
author means to propound the lower knowledge of the Lord only. And where
the legends about the primary being and its way of creating the world
become somewhat crude and gross, Hira/n/yagarbha and Viraj are summoned
forth and charged with the responsibility. Of Viraj Mr. Gough remarks
(p. 55) that in him a place is provided by the poets of the Upanishads
for the purusha of the ancient /ri/shis, the divine being out of whom
the visible and tangible world proceeded. This is quite true if only we
substitute for the 'poets of the Upanishads' the framers of the orthodox
Vedanta system--for the Upanishads give no indication whatever that by
their purusha they understand not the simple old purusha but the Viraj
occupying a definite position in a highly elaborate system;--but the
mere phrase, 'providing a place' intimates with sufficient clearness the
nature of the work in which systematisers of the Vedantic doctrine are
engaged.
/S/a@nkara's method thus enables him in a certain way to do justice to
different stages of historical development, to recognise clearly
existing differences which other systematisers are intent on
obliterating. And there has yet to be made a further and even more
important admission in favour of his system. It is not only more
pliable, more capable of amalgamating heterogeneous material than other
systems, but its fundamental doctrines are manifestly in greater harmony
with the essential teaching of the Upanishads than those of other
Vedantic systems. Above we were unable to allow that the distinction
made by /S/a@nkara between Brahman and I/s/vara is known to the
Upanishads; but we must now admit that if, for the purpose of
determining the nature of the highest being, a choice has to be made
between those texts which represent Brahman as nirgu/n/a, and those
which ascribe to it personal attributes, /S/a@nkara is right in giving
preference to texts of the former kind. The Brahman of the old
Upanishads, from which the souls spring to enjoy individual
consciousness in their waking state, and into which they sink back
temporarily in the state of deep dreamless sleep and permanently in
death, is certainly not represented adequately by the strictly personal
I/s/vara of Ramanuja, who rules the world in wisdom and mercy. The older
Upanishads, at any rate, lay very little stress upon personal attributes
of their highest being, and hence /S/a@nkara is right in so far as he
assigns to his hypostatised personal I/s/vara[29] a lower place than to
his absolute Brahman. That he also faithfully represents the prevailing
spirit of the Upanishads in his theory of the ultimate fate of the soul,
we have already remarked above. And although the Maya doctrine cannot,
in my opinion, be said to form part of the teaching of the Upanishads,
it cannot yet be asserted to contradict it openly, because the very
point which it is meant to elucidate, viz. the mode in which the
physical universe and the multiplicity of individual souls originate, is
left by the Upanishads very much in the dark. The later growth of the
Maya doctrine on the basis of the Upanishads is therefore quite
intelligible, and I fully agree with Mr. Gough when he says regarding it
that there has been no addition to the system from without but only a
development from within, no graft but only growth. The lines of thought
which finally led to the elaboration of the full-blown Maya theory may
be traced with considerable certainty. In the first place, deepening
speculation on Brahman tended to the notion of advaita being taken in a
more and more strict sense, as implying not only the exclusion of any
second principle external to Brahman, but also the absence of any
elements of duality or plurality in the nature of the one universal
being itself; a tendency agreeing with the spirit of a certain set of
texts from the Upanishads. And as the fact of the appearance of a
manifold world cannot be denied, the only way open to thoroughly
consistent speculation was to deny at any rate its reality, and to call
it a mere illusion due to an unreal principle, with which Brahman is
indeed associated, but which is unable to break the unity of Brahman's
nature just on account of its own unreality. And, in the second place, a
more thorough following out of the conception that the union with
Brahman is to be reached through true knowledge only, not unnaturally
led to the conclusion that what separates us in our unenlightened state
from Brahman is such as to allow itself to be completely sublated by an
act of knowledge; is, in other words, nothing else but an erroneous
notion, an illusion.--A further circumstance which may not impossibly have co-operated to further the development of the theory of the world's unreality will be referred to later on.[30] |
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