A History of Sanskrit Literature Part 15

The Upanishads of the Samaveda start from the saman or chant, just as those of the Rigveda from the uktha or hymn recited by the Hotri priest, in order, by interpreting it allegorically, to arrive at a knowledge of the Atman or Brahma. The fact that the Upanishads have the same basis, which is, moreover, largely treated in a similar manner, leads to the conclusion that the various Vedic schools found a common body of oral tradition which they shaped into dogmatic texts-books or Upanishads in their own way.

Thus the Chhandogya, which is equal in importance, and only slightly inferior in extent, to the Brihadaranyaka, bears clear traces, like the latter, of being made up of collections of floating materials. Each of its eight chapters forms an independent whole, followed by supplementary pieces often but slightly connected with the main subject-matter.

The first two chapters consist of mystical interpretations of the saman and its chief part, called Udgitha ("loud song"). A supplement to the second chapter treats, among other subjects, of the origin of the syllable om, and of the three stages of religious life, those of the Brahman pupil, the householder, and the ascetic (to which later the religious mendicant was added as a fourth). The third chapter in the main deals with Brahma as the sun of the universe, the natural sun being its manifestation. The infinite Brahma is further described as dwelling, whole and undivided, in the heart of man. The way in which Brahma is to be attained is then described, and the great fundamental dogma of the ident.i.ty of Brahma with the Atman (or, as we might say, of G.o.d and Soul) is declared. The chapter concludes with a myth which forms a connecting link between the cosmogonic conceptions of the Rigveda and those of the law-book of Manu. The fourth chapter, containing discussions about wind, breath, and other phenomena connected with Brahma, also teaches how the soul makes its way to Brahma after death.

The first half of chapter v. is almost identical with the beginning of chapter vi. of the Brihadaranyaka. It is chiefly noteworthy for the theory of transmigration which it contains. The second half of the chapter is important as the earliest statement of the doctrine that the manifold world is unreal. The sat by desire produced from itself the three primary elements, heat, water, food (the later number being five--ether, air, fire, water, earth). As individual soul (jiva-atman) it entered into these, which, by certain partial combinations called "triplication," became various products (vikara) or phenomena. But the latter are a mere name. Sat is the only reality, it is the Atman: "Thou art that." Chapter vii. enumerates sixteen forms in which Brahma may be adored, rising by gradation from naman, "name," to bhuman, "infinity," which is the all-in-all and the Atman within us. The first half of the last chapter discusses the Atman in the heart and the universe, as well as how to attain it. The concluding portion of the chapter distinguishes the false from the true Atman, ill.u.s.trated by the three stages in which it appears--in the material body, in dreaming, and in sound sleep. In the latter stage we have the true Atman, in which the distinction between subject and object has disappeared.

To the Samaveda also belongs a very short treatise which was long called the Talavakara Upanishad, from the school to which it was attached, but later, when it became separated from that school, received the name of Kena, from its initial word. It consists of two distinct parts. The second, composed in prose and much older, describes the relation of the Vedic G.o.ds to Brahma, representing them as deriving their power from and entirely dependent on the latter. The first part, which is metrical and belongs to the period of fully developed Vedanta doctrine, distinguishes from the qualified Brahma, which is an object of wors.h.i.+p, the unqualified Brahma, which is unknowable:--

To it no eye can penetrate, Nor speech nor thought can ever reach: It rests unknown; we cannot see How any one may teach it us.

The various Upanishads of the Black Yajurveda all bear the stamp of lateness. The Maitrayana is a prose work of considerable extent, in which occasional stanzas are interspersed. It consists of seven chapters, the seventh and the concluding eight sections of the sixth forming a supplement. The fact that it retains the orthographical and euphonic peculiarities of the Maitrayana school, gives this Upanishad an archaic appearance. But its many quotations from other Upanishads, the occurrence of several late words, the developed Sankhya doctrine presupposed by it, distinct references to anti-Vedic heretical schools, all combine to render the late character of this work undoubted. It is, in fact, a summing up of the old Upanishad doctrines with an admixture of ideas derived from the Sankhya system and from Buddhism. The main body of the treatise expounds the nature of the Atman, communicated to King Brihadratha of the race of Ikshvaku (probably identical with the king of that name mentioned in the Ramayana), who declaims at some length on the misery and transitoriness of earthly existence. Though pessimism is not unknown to the old Upanishads, it is much more p.r.o.nounced here, doubtless in consequence of Sankhya and Buddhistic influence.

The subject is treated in the form of three questions. The answer to the first, how the Atman enters the body, is that Praj.a.pati enters in the form of the five vital airs in order to animate the lifeless bodies created by him. The second question is, How does the supreme soul become the individual soul (bhutatman)? This is answered rather in accordance with the Sankhya than the Vedanta doctrine. Overcome by the three qualities of matter (prakriti), the Atman, forgetting its real nature, becomes involved in self-consciousness and transmigration. The third question is, How is deliverance from this state of misery possible? This is answered in conformity with neither Vedanta nor Sankhya doctrine, but in a reactionary spirit. Only those who observe the old requirements of Brahmanism, the rules of caste and the religious orders (acramas), are declared capable of attaining salvation by knowledge, penance, and meditation on Brahma. The chief G.o.ds, that is to say, the triad of the Brahmana period, Fire, Wind, Sun, the three abstractions, Time, Breath, Food, and the three popular G.o.ds, Brahma, Rudra (i.e. civa), and Vishnu are explained as manifestations of Brahma.

The remainder of this Upanishad is supplementary, but contains several pa.s.sages of considerable interest. We have here a cosmogonic myth, like those of the Brahmanas, in which the three qualities of matter, Tamas, Rajas, Sattva, are connected with Rudra, Brahma, and Vishnu, and which is in other respects very remarkable as a connecting link between the philosophy of the Rigveda and the later Sankhya system. The sun is further represented as the external, and prana (breath) as the internal, symbol of the Atman, their wors.h.i.+p being recommended by means of the sacred syllable om, the three "utterances" (vyahritis) bhur, bhuvah, svar, and the famous Savitri stanza. As a means of attaining Brahma we find a recommendation of Yoga or the ascetic practices leading to a state of mental concentration and bordering on trance. The information we here receive of these practices is still undeveloped compared with the later system. In addition to the three conditions of Brahma, waking, dreaming, and deep sleep, mention is made of a fourth (turiya) and highest stage. The Upanishad concludes with the declaration that the Atman entered the world of duality because it wished to taste both truth and illusion.

Older than the Maitrayana, which borrows from them, are two other Upanishads of the Black Yajurveda, the Kathaka and the cvetacvatara. The former contains some 120 and the latter some 110 stanzas.

The Kathaka deals with the legend of Nachiketas, which is told in the Kathaka portion of the Taittiriya Brahmana, and a knowledge of which it presupposes. This is indicated by the fact that it begins with the same words as the Brahmana story. The treatise appears to have consisted originally of the first only of its two chapters. For the second, with its more developed notions about Yoga and its much more p.r.o.nounced view as to the unreality of phenomena, looks like a later addition. The first contains an introductory narrative, an account of the Atman, of its embodiment and final return by means of Yoga. The second chapter, though less well arranged, on the whole corresponds in matter with the first. Its fourth section, while discussing the nature of the Atman, identifies both soul (purusha) and matter (prakriti) with it. The fifth section deals with the manifestation of the Atman in the world, and especially in man. The way in which it at the same time remains outside them in its full integrity and is not affected by the suffering of living beings, is strikingly ill.u.s.trated by the a.n.a.logy of both light and air, which pervade s.p.a.ce and yet embrace every object, and of the sun, the eye of the universe, which remains free from the blemishes of all other eyes outside of it. In the last section Yoga is taught to be the means of attaining the highest goal. The gradation of mental faculties here described is of great interest for the history of the Sankhya and Yoga system. An unconscious contradiction runs through this discussion, inasmuch as though the Atman is regarded as the all-in-all, a sharp contrast is drawn between soul and matter. It is the contradiction between the later Vedanta and the Sankhya-Yoga systems of philosophy.

According to its own statement, the cvetacvatara Upanishad derives its name from an individual author, and the tradition which attributes it to one of the schools of the Black Yajurveda hardly seems to have a sufficient foundation. Its confused arrangement, the irregularities and arbitrary changes of its metres, the number of interpolated quotations which it contains, make the a.s.sumption likely that the work in its present form is not the work of a single author. In its present form it is certainly later than the Kathaka, since it contains several pa.s.sages which must be referred to that work, besides many stanzas borrowed from it with or without variation. Its lateness is further indicated by the developed theory of Yoga which it contains, besides the more or less definite form in which it exhibits various Vedanta doctrines either unknown to or only foreshadowed in the earlier Upanishads. Among these may be mentioned the destruction of the world by Brahma at the end of a cosmic age (kalpa), as well as its periodic renewal out of Brahma, and especially the explanation of the world as an illusion (maya) produced by Brahma. At the same time the author shows a strange predilection for the personified forms of Brahma as Savitri, Icana, or Rudra. Though civa has not yet become the name of Rudra, its frequent use as an adjective connected with the latter shows that it is in course of becoming fixed as the proper name of the highest G.o.d. In this Upanishad we meet with a number of the terms and fundamental notions of the Sankhya, though the point of view is thoroughly Vedantist; matter (prakriti), for instance, being represented as an illusion produced by Brahma.

To the White Yajurveda is attached the longest, and, beside the Chhandogya, the most important of the Upanishads. It bears even clearer traces than that work of being a conglomerate of what must originally have been separate treatises. It is divided into three parts, each containing two chapters. The last part is designated, even in the tradition of the commentaries, as a supplement (Khila-kanda), a statement fully borne out by the contents. That the first and second parts were also originally independent of each other is sufficiently proved by both containing the legend of Yajnavalkya and his two wives in almost identical words throughout. To each of these parts (as well as to Book x. of the catapatha Brahmana) a successive list (vamca) of teachers is attached. A comparison of these lists seems to justify the conclusion that the first part (called Madhukanda) and the second (Yajnavalkya-kanda) existed during nine generations as independent Upanishads within the school of the White Yajurveda, and were then combined by a teacher named Agnivecya; the third part, which consists of all kinds of supplementary matter, being subsequently added. These lists further make the conclusion probable that the leading teachers of the ritual tradition (Brahmanas) were different from those of the philosophical tradition (Upanishads).

Beginning with an allegorical interpretation of the most important sacrifice, the Acvamedha (horse-sacrifice), as the universe, the first chapter proceeds to deal with prana (breath) as a symbol of soul, and then with the creation of the world out of the Atman or Brahma, insisting on the dependence of all existence on the Supreme Soul, which appears in every individual as his self. The polemical att.i.tude adopted against the wors.h.i.+p of the G.o.ds is characteristic, showing that the pa.s.sage belongs to an early period, in which the doctrine of the superiority of the Atman to the G.o.ds was still a.s.serting itself. The next chapter deals with the nature of the Atman and its manifestations, purusha and prana.

The second part of the Upanishad consists of four philosophical discussions, in which Yajnavalkya is the chief speaker. The first (iii. 1-9) is a great disputation, in which the sage proves his superiority to nine successive interlocutors. One of the most interesting conclusions here arrived at is that Brahma is theoretically unknowable, but can be comprehended practically. The second discourse is a dialogue between King Janaka and Yajnavalkya, in which the latter shows the untenableness of six definitions set up by other teachers as to the nature of Brahma; for instance, that it is identical with Breath or Mind. He finally declares that the Atman can only be described negatively, being intangible, indestructible, independent, immovable.

The third discourse (iv. 3-4) is another dialogue between Janaka and Yajnavalkya. It presents a picture of the soul in the conditions of waking, dreaming, deep sleep, dying, transmigration, and salvation. For wealth of ill.u.s.tration, fervour of conviction, beauty and elevation of thought, this piece is unequalled in the Upanishads or any other work of Indian literature. Its literary effect is heightened by the numerous stanzas with which it is interspersed. These are, however, doubtless later additions. The dreaming soul is thus described:--

Leaving its lower nest in breath's protection, And upward from that nest, immortal, soaring, Where'er it lists it roves about immortal, The golden-pinioned only swan of spirit (IV. iii. 13).

It roves in dream condition up and downward, Divinely many shapes and forms a.s.suming (ib. 14).

Then follows an account of the dreamless state of the soul:--

As a falcon or an eagle, having flown about in the air, exhausted folds together its wings and prepares to alight, so the spirit hastes to that condition in which, asleep, it feels no desire and sees no dream (19).

This is its essential form, in which it rises above desire, is free from evil and without fear. For as one embraced by a beloved woman wots not of anything without or within, so also the soul embraced by the cognitional Self wots not of anything without or within (21).

With regard to the souls of those who are not saved, the view of the writer appears to be that after death they enter a new body immediately and without any intervening retribution in the other world, in exact accordance with their intellectual and moral quality.

As a caterpillar, when it has reached the point of a leaf, makes a new beginning and draws itself across, so the soul, after casting off the body and letting go ignorance, makes a new beginning and draws itself across (IV. iv. 3).

As a goldsmith takes the material of an image and hammers out of it another newer and more beautiful form, so also the soul after casting off the body and letting go ignorance, creates for itself another newer and more beautiful form, either that of the Fathers or the Gandharvas or the G.o.ds, or Praj.a.pati or Brahma, or other beings (IV. iv. 4).

But the vital airs of him who is saved, who knows himself to be identical with Brahma, do not depart, for he is absorbed in Brahma and is Brahma.

As a serpent's skin, dead and cast off, lies upon an ant-hill, so his body then lies; but that which is bodiless and immortal, the life, is pure Brahma, is pure light (IV. iv. 7).

The fourth discourse is a dialogue between Yajnavalkya and his wife Maitreyi, before the former, about to renounce the world, retires to the solitude of the forest. There are several indications that it is a secondary recension of the same conversation occurring in a previous chapter (II. iv.).

The first chapter of the third or supplementary part consists of fifteen sections, which are often quite short, are mostly unconnected in matter, and appear to be of very different age. The second chapter, however, forms a long and important treatise (identical with that found in the Chhandogya) on the doctrine of transmigration. The views here expressed are so much at variance with those of Yajnavalkya that this text must have originated in another Vedic school, and have been loosely attached to this Upanishad owing to the peculiar importance of its contents. The preceding and following section, which are connected with it, and are also found in the Chhandogya, must have been added at the same time.

Not only is the longest Upanishad attached to the White Yajurveda, but also one of the very shortest, consisting of only eighteen stanzas. This is the Ica, which is so called from its initial word. Though forming the last chapter of the Vajasaneyi Samhita, it belongs to a rather late period. It is about contemporaneous with the latest parts of the Brihadaranyaka, is more developed in many points than the Kathaka, but seems to be older than the cvetacvatara. Its leading motive is to contrast him who knows himself to be the same as the Atman with him who does not possess true knowledge. It affords an excellent survey of the fundamental doctrines of the Vedanta philosophy.

A large and indefinite number of Upanishads is attributed to the Atharva-veda, but the most authoritative list recognises twenty-seven altogether. They are for the most part of very late origin, being post-Vedic, and, all but three, contemporaneous with the Puranas. One of them is actually a Muhammadan treatise ent.i.tled the Alla Upanishad! The older Upanishads which belong to the first three Vedas were, with a few exceptions like the cvetacvatara, the dogmatic text-books of actual Vedic schools, and received their names from those schools, being connected with and supplementary to the ritual Brahmanas. The Upanishads of the Atharva-veda, on the other hand, are with few exceptions like the Mandukya and the Jabala, no longer connected with Vedic schools, but derive their names from their subject-matter or some other circ.u.mstance. They appear for the most part to represent the views of theosophic, mystic, ascetic, or sectarian a.s.sociations, who wished to have an Upanishad of their own in imitation of the old Vedic schools. They became attached to the Atharva-veda not from any internal connection, but partly because the followers of the Atharva-veda desired to become possessed of dogmatic text-books of their own, and partly because the fourth Veda was not protected from the intrusion of foreign elements by the watchfulness of religious guilds like the old Vedic schools.

The fundamental doctrine common to all the Upanishads of the Atharva-veda is developed by most of them in various special directions. They may accordingly be divided into four categories which run chronologically parallel with one another, each containing relatively old and late productions. The first group, as directly investigating the nature of the Atman, has a scope similar to that of the Upanishads of the other Vedas, and goes no further than the latter in developing its main thesis. The next group, taking the fundamental doctrine for granted, treats of absorption in the Atman through ascetic meditation (yoga) based on the component parts of the sacred syllable om. These Upanishads are almost without exception composed in verse and are quite short, consisting on the average of about twenty stanzas. In the third category the life of the religious mendicant (sannyasin), as a practical consequence of the Upanishad doctrine, is recommended and described. These Upanishads, too, are short, but are written in prose, though with an admixture of verse. The last group is sectarian in character, interpreting the popular G.o.ds civa (under various names, such as Icana, Mahecvara, Mahadeva) and Vishnu (as Narayana and Nrisimha or "Man-lion") as personifications of the Atman. The different Avatars of Vishnu are here regarded as human manifestations of the Atman.

The oldest and most important of these Atharvan Upanishads, as representing the Vedanta doctrine most faithfully, are the Mundaka, the Pracna, and to a less degree the Mandukya. The first two come nearest to the Upanishads of the older Vedas, and are much quoted by Badarayana and cankara, the great authorities of the later Vedanta philosophy. They are the only original and legitimate Upanishads of the Atharva. The Mundaka derives its name from being the Upanishad of the tonsured (munda), an a.s.sociation of ascetics who shaved their heads, as the Buddhist monks did later. It is one of the most popular of the Upanishads, not owing to the originality of its contents, which are for the most part derived from older texts, but owing to the purity with which it reproduces the old Vedanta doctrine, and the beauty of the stanzas in which it is composed. It presupposes, above all, the Chhandogya Upanishad, and in all probability the Brihadaranyaka, the Taittiriya, and the Kathaka. Having several important pa.s.sages in common with the cvetacvatara and the Brihannarayana of the Black Yajurveda, it probably belongs to the same epoch, coming between the two in order of time. It consists of three parts, which, speaking generally, deal respectively with the preparations for the knowledge of Brahma, the doctrine of Brahma, and the way to Brahma.

The Pracna Upanishad, written in prose and apparently belonging to the Pippalada recension of the Atharva-veda, is so called because it treats, in the form of questions (pracna) addressed by six students of Brahma to the sage Pippalada, six main points of the Vedanta doctrine. These questions concern the origin of matter and life (prana) from Praj.a.pati; the superiority of life (prana) above the other vital powers; the nature and divisions of the vital powers; dreaming and dreamless sleep; meditation on the syllable om; and the sixteen parts of man.

The Mandukya is a very short prose Upanishad, which would hardly fill two pages of the present book. Though bearing the name of a half-forgotten school of the Rigveda, it is reckoned among the Upanishads of the Atharva-veda. It must date from a considerably later time than the prose Upanishads of the three older Vedas, with the unmethodical treatment and prolixity of which its precision and conciseness are in marked contrast. It has many points of contact with the Maitrayana Upanishad, to which it seems to be posterior. It appears, however, to be older than the rest of the treatises which form the fourth cla.s.s of the Upanishads of the Atharva-veda. Thus it distinguishes only three morae in the syllable om, and not yet three and a half. The fundamental idea of this Upanishad is that the sacred syllable is an expression of the universe. It is somewhat remarkable that this work is not quoted by cankara; nevertheless, it not only exercised a great influence on several Upanishads of the Atharva-veda, but was used more than any other Upanishad by the author of the well-known later epitome of the Vedanta doctrine, the Vedanta-sara.

It is, however, chiefly important as having given rise to one of the most remarkable products of Indian philosophy, the Karika of Gaudapada. This work consists of more than 200 stanzas divided into four parts, the first of which includes the Mandukya Upanishad. The esteem in which the Karika was held is indicated by the fact that its parts are reckoned as four Upanishads. There is much probability in the a.s.sumption that its author is identical with Gaudapada, the teacher of Govinda, whose pupil was the great Vedantist commentator, cankara (800 A.D.). The point of view of the latter is the same essentially as that of the author of the Karika, and many of the thoughts and figures which begin to appear in the earlier work are in common use in cankara's commentaries. cankara may, in fact, be said to have reduced the doctrines of Gaudapada to a system, as did Plato those of Parmenides. Indeed, the two leading ideas which pervade the Indian poem, viz., that there is no duality (advaita) and no becoming (ajati), are, as Professor Deussen points out, identical with those of the Greek philosopher.

The first part of the Karika is practically a metrical paraphrase of the Mandukya Upanishad. Peculiar to it is the statement that the world is not an illusion or a development in any sense, but the very nature or essence (svabhava) of Brahma, just as the rays, which are all the same (i.e. light), are not different from the sun. The remainder of the poem is independent of the Upanishad and goes far beyond its doctrines. The second part has the special t.i.tle of Vaitathya or the "Falseness" of the doctrine of reality. Just as a rope is in the dark mistaken for a snake, so the Atman in the darkness of ignorance is mistaken for the world. Every attempt to imagine the Atman under empirical forms is futile, for every one's idea of it is dependent on his experience of the world.

The third part is ent.i.tled Advaita, "Non-duality." The ident.i.ty of the Supreme Soul (Atman) with the individual soul (jiva) is ill.u.s.trated by comparison with s.p.a.ce, and that part of it which is contained in a jar. Arguing against the theory of genesis and plurality, the poet lays down the axiom that nothing can become different from its own nature. The production of the existent (sato janma) is impossible, for that would be produced which already exists. The production of the non-existent (asato janma) is also impossible, for the non-existent is never produced, any more than the son of a barren woman. The last part is ent.i.tled Alata-canti, or "Extinction of the firebrand (circle),"

so called from an ingenious comparison made to explain how plurality and genesis seem to exist in the world. If a stick which is glowing at one end is waved about, fiery lines or circles are produced without anything being added to or issuing from the single burning point. The fiery line or circle exists only in the consciousness (vijnana). So, too, the many phenomena of the world are merely the vibrations of the consciousness, which is one.

CHAPTER IX

THE SUTRAS

(Circa 500-200 B.C.)

As the Upanishads were a development of the speculative side of the Brahmanas and const.i.tuted the textbooks of Vedic dogma, so the crauta Sutras form the continuation of their ritual side, though they are not, like the Upanishads, regarded as a part of revelation. A sacred character was never attributed to them, probably because they were felt to be treatises compiled, with the help of oral priestly tradition, from the contents of the Brahmanas solely to meet practical needs. The oldest of them seem to go back to about the time when Buddhism came into being. Indeed it is quite possible that the rise of the rival religion gave the first impetus to the composition of systematic manuals of Brahmanic wors.h.i.+p. The Buddhists in their turn must have come to regard Sutras as the type of treatise best adapted for the expression of religious doctrine, for the earliest Pali texts are works of this character. The term Kalpa Sutra is used to designate the whole body of Sutras concerned with religion which belonged to a particular Vedic school. Where such a complete collection has been preserved, the crauta Sutra forms its first and most extensive portion.