The Vedanta-Sutras with the Commentary by Sankaracarya Part 6

do not enter a new body, but are united, somehow or other, with Brahman.

On /S/[email protected]'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 pa.s.sages, the soul of the wise mounts upwards. But that path is, according to /S/[email protected], 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/[email protected] 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/[email protected]'s interpretation of the chapter, and especially of section 6, be right or wrong, so much is certain that we are not ent.i.tled 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 pa.s.sages 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 pa.s.sages 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 ent.i.tle us to put arbitrary constructions on pa.s.sages 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 G.o.ds 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/[email protected] an important pa.s.sage, as we have already seen above (p. lx.x.xi); for he employs it, in his comment on Ved.-sutra IV, 2, 13, for the purpose of proving that the pa.s.sage 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 pa.s.sage 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 a.s.sumption 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 pa.s.sage 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/[email protected] 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 pa.s.sing 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 pa.s.s 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/[email protected]'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 dest.i.tute 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/[email protected]'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/[email protected], 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 pa.s.sage setting forth with greater force and eloquence and in an equally short compa.s.s 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/[email protected] 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/[email protected] 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, a.s.sumes a different aspect, if we take the terms 'philosophy' and 'philosophical system,' not in the strict sense in which /S/[email protected] 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 a.s.serted 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/[email protected]'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 circ.u.mstance (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 ent.i.ty.

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 const.i.tute 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/[email protected] 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 [email protected] 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 ent.i.ty like the pradhana of the [email protected], 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 circ.u.mstance 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 pa.s.sage to the end of determining the drift of the teaching of other pa.s.sages. We may admit that some pa.s.sages, 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/[email protected]'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 a.s.sume that the 'sending forth' of the elements from the primitive Sat, which is there described at length, was by the writer of that pa.s.sage 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 ill.u.s.trative 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 fas.h.i.+oned into a pot, is not real but a mere baseless illusion.

In the same light we have to view numerous other pa.s.sages 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 [email protected]; 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 const.i.tutes unreality in the sense in which the Maya of /S/[email protected] 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 pa.s.sages. 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/[email protected] 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 pa.s.sages 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 pa.s.sages 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/[email protected]'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/[email protected] 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/[email protected] But what I object to is, that conclusions drawn from a few pa.s.sages of, after all, doubtful import should be employed for introducing the Maya doctrine into other pa.s.sages 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/[email protected] 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/[email protected]'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 G.o.ds, 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 pa.s.sage Kaus.h.i.+t. 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 cla.s.s 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 pa.s.sages 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 ent.i.tled 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 pa.s.sages 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/[email protected]'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/[email protected]'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/[email protected]'s system with that of Ramanuja. The latter recognises only one Brahman which is, as we should say, a personal G.o.d, and he therefore lays stress on all those pa.s.sages of the Upanishads which ascribe to Brahman the attributes of a personal G.o.d, such as omniscience and omnipotence. Those pa.s.sages, on the other hand, whose decided tendency it is to represent Brahman as transcending all qualities, as one undifferenced ma.s.s 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 a.s.similation carried as far as possible. /S/[email protected], 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/s.h.i.+s, the divine being out of whom the visible and tangible world proceeded. This is quite true if only we subst.i.tute 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/[email protected]'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/[email protected] 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/[email protected] 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/[email protected] is right in so far as he a.s.signs 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 a.s.serted 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 a.s.sociated, 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 circ.u.mstance 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]

We have above been obliged to leave it an open question what kind of Vedanta is represented by the Vedanta-sutras, although reason was shown for the supposition that in some important points their teaching is more closely related to the system of Ramanuja than to that of /S/[email protected] If so, the philosophy of /S/[email protected] would on the whole stand nearer to the teaching of the Upanishads than the Sutras of Badaraya/n/a. This would indeed be a somewhat unexpected conclusion--for, judging a priori, we should be more inclined to a.s.sume a direct propagation of the true doctrine of the Upanishads through Badaraya/n/a to /S/[email protected] a priori considerations have of course no weight against positive evidence to the contrary. There are, moreover, other facts in the history of Indian philosophy and theology which help us better to appreciate the possibility of Badaraya/n/a's Sutras already setting forth a doctrine that lays greater stress on the personal character of the highest being than is in agreement with the prevailing tendency of the Upanishads.

That the pure doctrine of those ancient Brahminical treatises underwent at a rather early period amalgamations with beliefs which most probably had sprung up in altogether different--priestly or non-priestly--communities is a well-known circ.u.mstance; it suffices for our purposes to refer to the most eminent of the early literary monuments in which an amalgamation of the kind mentioned is observable, viz. the Bhagavadgita. The doctrine of the Bhagavadgita represents a fusion of the Brahman theory of the Upanishads with the belief in a personal highest being--K/ri/sh/n/a or Vish/n/u--which in many respects approximates very closely to the system of the Bhagavatas; the attempts of a certain set of Indian commentators to explain it as setting forth pure Vedanta, i.e. the pure doctrine of the Upanishads, may simply be set aside. But this same Bhagavadgita is quoted in Badaraya/n/a's Sutras (at least according to the unanimous explanations of the most eminent scholiasts of different schools) as inferior to /S/ruti only in authority. The Sutras, moreover, refer in different places to certain Vedantic portions of the Mahabharata, especially the twelfth book, several of which represent forms of Vedanta distinctly differing from /S/[email protected]'s teaching, and closely related to the system of the Bhagavatas.

Facts of this nature--from entering into the details of which we are prevented by want of s.p.a.ce--tend to mitigate the prima facie strangeness of the a.s.sumption that the Vedanta-sutras, which occupy an intermediate position between the Upanishads and /S/[email protected], should yet diverge in their teaching from both. The Vedanta of Gau/d/apada and /S/[email protected] would in that case mark a strictly orthodox reaction against all combinations of non-Vedic elements of belief and doctrine with the teaching of the Upanishads. But although this form of doctrine has ever since /S/[email protected]'s time been the one most generally accepted by Brahminic students of philosophy, it has never had any wide-reaching influence on the ma.s.ses of India. It is too little in sympathy with the wants of the human heart, which, after all, are not so very different in India from what they are elsewhere. Comparatively few, even in India, are those who rejoice in the idea of a universal non-personal essence in which their own individuality is to be merged and lost for ever, who think it sweet 'to be wrecked on the ocean of the Infinite.'[31] The only forms of Vedantic philosophy which are--and can at any time have been--really popular, are those in which the Brahman of the Upanishads has somehow transformed itself into a being, between which and the devotee there can exist a personal relation, love and faith on the part of man, justice tempered by mercy on the part of the divinity. The only religious books of widespread influence are such as the Ramayan of Tulsidas, which lay no stress on the distinction between an absolute Brahman inaccessible to all human wants and sympathies, and a shadowy Lord whose very conception depends on the illusory principle of Maya, but love to dwell on the delights of devotion to one all-wise and merciful ruler, who is able and willing to lend a gracious ear to the supplication of the wors.h.i.+pper.

The present translation of the Vedanta-sutras does not aim at rendering that sense which their author may have aimed at conveying, but strictly follows /S/[email protected]'s interpretation. The question as to how far the latter agrees with the views held by Badaraya/n/a has been discussed above, with the result that for the present it must, on the whole, be left an open one. In any case it would not be feasible to combine a translation of /S/[email protected]'s commentary with an independent version of the Sutras which it explains. Similar considerations have determined the method followed in rendering the pa.s.sages of the Upanishads referred to in the Sutras and discussed at length by /S/[email protected] There also the views of the commentator have to be followed closely; otherwise much of the comment would appear devoid of meaning. Hence, while of course following on the whole the critical translation published by Professor Max Muller in the earlier volumes of this Series, I had, in a not inconsiderable number of cases, to modify it so as to render intelligible /S/[email protected]'s explanations and reasonings. I hope to find s.p.a.ce in the introduction to the second volume of this translation for making some general remarks on the method to be followed in translating the Upanishads.

I regret that want of s.p.a.ce has prevented me from extracting fuller notes from later scholiasts. The notes given are based, most of them, on the /t/ikas composed by anandagiri and Govindananda (the former of which is unpublished as yet, so far as I know), and on the Bhamati.

My best thanks are due to Pa/nd/its Rama Mi/s/ra /S/astrin and [email protected] /S/astrin of the Benares Sanskrit College, whom I have consulted on several difficult pa.s.sages. Greater still are my obligations to Pa/nd/it Ke/s/ava /S/astrin, of the same inst.i.tution, who most kindly undertook to read a proof of the whole of the present volume, and whose advice has enabled me to render my version of more than one pa.s.sage more definite or correct.

Notes:

[Footnote 19: Nanu vidusho z pi setikartavyatakopasananirv/ri/ttaye v/ri/shyannadiphalanish/t/any eva katha/m/ tesha/m/ virodhad vina/s/a u/k/yate. Tatraha pate tv iti. /S/arirapate tu tesha/m/ vina/s/a/h/ /s/arirapatad urdhv/m/ tu vidyanugu/n/ad/ri/sh/t/aphalani suk/ri/tani na/s/yant.i.ty artha/h/.]

[Footnote 20: Upalabhyate hi devayanena pantha ga/kkh/ato vidushas tam pratibruuyat satyam bruyad iti /k/andramasa sa/m/vadava/k/anena /s/arirasadbhava/h/, ata/h/ sukshma/s/ariram anuvartate.]

[Footnote 21: When the jiva has pa.s.sed out of the body and ascends to the world of Brahman, it remains enveloped by the subtle body until it reaches the river Vijara. There it divests itself of the subtle body, and the latter is merged in Brahman.].

[Footnote 22: Kim aya/m/ para/m/, yotir upasampanna/h/ saivabandhavinirmukta/h/ pratyagatma svatmana/m/ paramatmana/h/ p/rit/hagbhutam anubhavati uta tatpraharataya tadavibhaktam iti visnye so, /s/nate sarvan kaman saha brahma/n/a vipas/k/ita pasya/h/ pasyate rukmavar/n/a/m/ kartaram sa/m/ purusha/m/ brahmayoni/m/ tada vidvin pu/n/yapape vidhuya nirangana/h/ parama/m/ samyam upaiti ida/m/ jnanam upasritya mama sadharinyam agata/h/ sarve, punopajayante pralayena vyathanti /k/etyadysruysm/nt/ibhyo muktasta pare/n/a sahityasamyasadharmyavagamat p/ri/thagbhutam anubhavatiu prapte u/k/yate. Avibhageneti. Parasmad brahmana/h/ svatmanam avibhagenanubhavati mukta/h/. Kuta/h/. D/ri/shtatvat. Para/m/ brahmopasampadya niv/ri/ttavidyanrodhanasya yathatathyena svatamano d/ri/sh/ta/tvat. Svatmana/h/ ssvarupa/m/ hi tat tvam asy ayam atma brahma aitadatmyam ida/m/ sarva/m/ sarva/m/ khalv ida/m/ brahnetyadisamanadhikara/n/yanirdesai/h/ ya atmani tishtan atmano ntaro yam atma na veda yastatma sarira/m/ ya atmanam antaro yamayati atmantaryamy am/ri/tah anta/h/ pravishta/h/ sasta ananam ityadibhis /k/a paramatmatmaka/m/ ta/kk/haritataya tatprakatabhutam iti pratipaditam avas.h.i.+tei iti kasak/ri/stnety atrato vibhagenaha/m/ brahmasmity cvanubhavati.]

[Footnote 23: /S/'s favourite ill.u.s.trative instance of the magician producing illusive sights is--significantly enough--not known to the Sutras.]

[Footnote 24: Cp. Gough's Philosophy of the Upanishads, pp. 240 ff.]

[Footnote 25: It is well known that, with the exception of the /S/vitasvatara and Maitrayaniya, none of the chief Upanishads exhibits the word 'maya.' The term indeed occurs in one place in the B/ri/hadara/n/yaka; but that pa.s.sage is a quotation from the /Ri/k Sa/m/bita in which maya means 'creative power.' Cp. P. Regnaud, La Maya, in the Revue de l'Histoire des Religions, tome xii, No. 3, 1885.]

[Footnote 26: As is demonstrated very satisfactorily by Ramanuja.]

[Footnote 27: Gough, Philosophy of the Upanishads pp. 213 ff.]

[Footnote 28: I cannot discuss in this place the Maya pa.s.sages of the Svetasvatara and the Maitrayaniya Upanishads. Reasons which want of s.p.a.ce prevents me from setting forth in detail induce me to believe that neither of those two treatises deserves to be considered by us when wis.h.i.+ng to ascertain the true immixed doctrine of the Upanishads.]

[Footnote 29: The i/s/vara who allots to the individual souls their new forms of embodiment in strict accordance with their merit or demerit cannot be called anything else but a personal G.o.d. That this personal conscious being is at the same time identified with the totality of the individual souls in the unconscious state of deep dreamless sleep, is one of those extraordinary contradictions which thorough-going systematisers of Vedantic doctrine are apparently unable to avoid altogether.]

[Footnote 30: That section of the introduction in which the point referred to in the text is touched upon will I hope form part of the second volume of the translation. The same remark applies to a point concerning which further information had been promised above on page v.]

[Footnote 31:

Cos tra questa Immensita s'annega il pensier mio, E il naufrago m' e dolce in qnesto mare.