1. Philosophy of The Upanishads Edward Gough

fCULATE

LIBRARY OF

WELLESLEY COLLEGE

PRESENTED BY

Prof. E. Horsford

35008

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THE INDIAN EMPIRE :

ITS PEOPLE, HISTORY, AND PRODUCTS.

By the Hon. Sir W. W. HUNTER, K.C.S.I., C.S.I., C.I.E., LL.D.,

Member of the Viceroy's Legislative Council,

Director-General of Statistics to the Government of India.

Being a Revised Edition, brought up to date, and incorporating the general results of the Census of 1881.

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THE FOLLOWING WORKS HAVE ALREADY APPEARED:-

Third Edition, post 8vo, cloth, pp. xvi.—428, price 16s.

ESSAYS ON THE SACRED LANGUAGE, WRITINGS,

AND RELIGION OF THE PARSIS.

By MARTIN HAUG, Ph.D.,

Late of the Universities of Tübingen, Göttingen, and Bonn ; Superintendut

of Sanskrit Studies, and Professor of Sanskrit in the Poona College.

EDITED AND ENLARGED BY DR. E. W. WEST.

To which is added a Biographical Memoir of the late Dr. Haug

by Prof. E. P. EVANS.

I. History of the Researches into the Sacred Writings and Religion of the

Parsis, from the Earliest Times down to the Present.

II. Languages of the Parsi Scriptures.

III. The Zend-Avesta, or the Scripture of the Parsis.

IV. The Zoroastrian Religion, as to its Origin and Development.

" 'Essays on the Sacred Language, Writings, and Religion of the Parsis,' by the

late Dr. Martin Haug, edited by Dr. E. W. West. The author intended, on his return

from India, to expand the materials contained in this work into a comprehensive

account of the Zoroastrian religion, but the design was frustrated by his untimely

death. We have, however, in a concise and readable form, a history of the researches

into the sacred writings and religion of the Parsis from the earliest times down to

the present—a dissertation on the languages of the Parsi Scriptures, a translation

of the Zend-Avesta, or the Scripture of the Parsis, and a dissertation on the Zoroas-

trian religion, with especial reference to its origin and development."—Times.

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TEXTS FROM THE BUDDHIST CANON

COMMONLY KNOWN AS “DHAMMAPADA.”

With Accompanying Narratives.

Translated from the Chinese by S. BEAL, B.A., Professor of Chinese,

University College, London.

The Dhammapada, as hitherto known by the Páli Text Edition, as edited

by Fausböll, by Max Müller's English, and Albrecht Weber's German

translations, consists only of twenty-six chapters or sections, whilst the

Chinese version, or rather recension, as now translated by Mr. Beal, con-

sists of thirty-nine sections. The students of Páli who possess Fausböll's

text, or either of the above-named translations, will therefore need

Mr. Beal's English rendering of the Chinese version ; the thirteen above-

named additional sections not being accessible to them in any other form ;

for, even if they understand Chinese, the Chinese original would be un-

obtainable by them.

" Mr. Beal's rendering of the Chinese translation is a most valuable aid to the

critical study of the work. It contains authentic texts gathered from ancient

canonical books, and generally connected with some incident in the history of

Buddha. Their great interest, however, consists in the light which they throw upon

everyday life in India at the remote period at which they were written, and upon

the method of teaching adopted by the founder of the religion. The method

employed was principally parable, and the simplicity hold which they have retained upon

the minds of millions of people, make them a very remarkable study."—Times.

" Mr. Beal, by making it accessible in an English dress, has added to the great ser-

vices he has already rendered to the eomparative study of religious history."—Acodemy.

" Valuable as exhibiting the doctrine of the Buddhists in its purest, least adul-

terated form, it brings the modern reader face to face with that simple creed and rule

of conduct which won its way over the minds of myriads, and which is now nominally

professed by 145 millions, who have overlaid its austere simplicity with innumerable

ceremonies, forgotten its maxims, perverted its teaching, and so inverted its leading

prineiple that a religion whose founder denied a God, now worships that founder as

a god himself."—Scotsman.

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THE HISTORY OF INDIAN LITERATURE.

By ALBRECHT WEBER.

Translated from the Second German Edition by JOHN MANN, M.A., and

THÉODOR ZACHARIAE, Ph.D., with the sanction of the Author.

Dr. BUHLER, Inspector of Schools in India, writes:—“When I was Professor of Oriental Languages in Elphinstone College, I frequently felt the want of such a work to which I could refer the students.”

Professor COWELL, of Cambridge, writes :—“It will be especially useful to the students in our Indian colleges and universities. I used to long for such a book when I was teaching in Calcutta. Hindu students are intensely interested in the history of Sanskrit literature, and this volume will supply them with all they want on the subject.”

Professor WHITNEY, Yale College, Newhaven, Conn., U.S.A., writes :—“I was one of the class to whom the work was originally given in the form of academic lectures. At their first appearance they were by far the most learned and able treatment of their subject ; and with their recent additions they still maintain decidedly the same rank.”

“Is perhaps the most comprehensive and lucid survey of Sanskrit literature extant. The essays contained in the volume were originally delivered as academic lectures, and at the time of their first publication were acknowledged to be by far the most learned and able treatment of the subject. They have now been brought up to date by the addition of all the most important results of recent research.”—Times.

Post 8vo, cloth, pp. xii.—198, accompanied by Two Language Maps, price 7s. 6d.

A SKETCH OF

THE MODERN LANGUAGES OF THE EAST INDIES.

By ROBERT N. CUST.

The Author has attempted to fill up a vacuum, the inconvenience of which pressed itself on his notice. Much had been written about the languages of the East Indies, but the extent of our present knowledge had not even been brought to a focus. It occurred to him that it might be of use to others to publish in an arranged form the notes which he had collected for his own edification.

“Supplies a deficiency which has long been felt.”—Times.

“The book before us is then a valuable contribution to philological science. It passes under review a vast number of languages, and it gives, or professes to give, in every case the sum and substance of the opinions and judgments of the best-informed writers.”—Saturday Review.

Second Corrected Edition, post 8vo, pp. xii.—116, cloth, price 5s.

THE BIRTH OF THE WAR-GOD.

A Poem. By KÁLIDÁSA.

Translated from the Sanskrit into English Verse by

RALPH T. H. GRIFFITH, M.A.

“A very spirited rendering of the Kumárasambhava, which was first published twenty-six years ago, and which we are glad to see made once more accessible.”—Times.

“Mr. Griffith's very spirited rendering is well known to most who are at all interested in Indian literature, or enjoy the tenderness of feeling and rich creative imagination of its author.”—Indian Antiquary.

“We are very glad to welcome a second edition of Professor Griffith's admirable translation. Few translations deserve a second edition better.”—Atheneum.

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A CLASSICAL DICTIONARY OF HINDU MYTHOLOGY AND RELIGION, GEOGRAPHY, HISTORY, AND LITERATURE.

By JOHN DOWSON, M.R.A.S.,

Late Professor of Hindustani, Staff College.

"This not only forms an indispensable book of reference to students of Indian literature, but is also of great general interest, as it gives in a concise and easily accessible form all that need be known about the personages of Hindu mythology whose names are so familiar, but of whom so little is known outside the limited circle of savants."—Times.

"It is no slight gain when such subjects are treated fairly and fully in a moderate space; and we need only add that the few wants which we may hope to see supplied in new editions detract but little from the general excellence of Mr. Dowson's work."—Saturday Review.

Post 8vo, with View of Mecca, pp. cxii.—172. cloth, price 9s.

SELECTIONS FROM THE KORAN.

By EDWARD WILLIAM LANE,

Translator of "The Thousand and One Nights;" &c., &c.

A New Edition, Revised and Enlarged, with an Introduction by Stanley Lane Poole.

" . . . Has been long esteemed in this country as the compilation of one of the greatest Arabic scholars of the time, the late Mr. Lane, the well-known translator of the 'Arabian Nights.' . . . The present editor has enhanced the value of his relative's work by divesting the text of a great deal of extraneous matter introduced by way of comment, and prefixing an introduction."—Times.

"Mr. Poole is both a generous and a learned biographer. . . . Mr. Poole tells us the facts . . . so far as it is possible for industry and criticism to ascertain them, and for literary skill to present them in a condensed and readable form."—Englishman, Calcutta.

Post 8vo, pp. vi.—368, cloth, price 14s.

MODERN INDIA AND THE INDIANS,

BEING A SERIES OF IMPRESSIONS, NOTES, AND ESSAYS.

By MONIER WILLIAMS, D.C.L.,

Hon. LL.D. of the University of Calcutta, Hon. Member of the Bombay Asiatic Society, Boden Professor of Sanskrit in the University of Oxford.

Third Edition, revised and augmented by considerable Additions, with Illustrations and a Map.

"In this volume we have the thoughtful impressions of a thoughtful man on some of the most important questions connected with our Indian Empire. . . . An enlightened observant man, travelling among an enlightened observant people, Professor Monier Williams has brought before the public in a pleasant form more of the manners and customs of the Queen's Indian subjects than we ever remember to have seen in any work. He not only deserves the thanks of every Englishman for this able contribution to the study of Modern India—a subject with which we should be specially familiar—but it deserves the thanks of every Indian, Parsee or Hindu, Buddhist and Moslem, for his clear exposition of their manners, their creeds, and their necessities."—Times.

Post 8vo, pp. xliv.—376. cloth, price 14s.

METRICAL TRANSLATIONS FROM SANSKRIT WRITERS.

With an Introduction, many Prose Versions, and Parallel Passages from Classical Authors.

By J. MUIR, C.I.E., D.C.L., LL.D., Ph.D.

" . . . An agreeable introduction to Hindu poetry."—Times.

" . . . A volume which may be taken as a fair illustration alike of the religions and moral sentiments and of the legendary lore of the best Sanskrit writers."—Edinburgh Daily Review.

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Second Edition, post 8vo, pp. xxvi.—244, cloth, price 10s. 6d.

T H E G U L I S T A N ;

OR, ROSE GARDEN OF SHIKH MUSHLİU'D-DIN SADI OF SHIRAZ.

Translated for the First Time into Prose and Verse, with an Introductory

Preface, and a Life of the Author, from the Atish Kadah,

By EDWARD B. EASTWICK, C.B., M.A., F.R.S., M.R.A.S.

" It is a very fair rendering of the original."—Times.

" The new edition has long been desired, and will be welcomed by all who take

any interest in Oriental poetry. The Gulistan is a typical Persian verse-book of the

highest order. Mr. Eastwick's rhymed translation . . . has long established itself in

a secure position as the best version of Sadi's finest work."—Academy.

" It is both faithfully and gracefully executed."—Tablet.

In Two Volumes, post 8vo, pp. viii.—403 and viii.—348, cloth, price 28s.

MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS RELATING TO INDIAN

SUBJECTS.

By BRIAN HOUGHTON HODGSON, Esq., F.R.S.,

Late of the Bengal Civil Service ; Corresponding Member of the Institute; Chevalier

of the Legion of Honour ; late British Minister at the Court of Nepal, &c., &c.

CONTENTS OF VOL. I.

Section I.—On the Kocch, Bódo, and Dhimál Tribes.—Part I. Vocabulary.—

Part II. Grammar.—Part III. Their Origin, Location, Numbers, Creed, Customs,

Character, and Condition, with a General Description of the Climate they dwell in.

—Appendix.

Section II.—On Himalayan Ethnology.—I. Comparative Vocabulary of the Lan-

guages of the Broken Tribes of Népál.—II. Vocabulary of the Dialects of the Kiranti

Language.—III. Grammatical Analysis of the Váyu Language. The Váyu Grammar.

—IV. Analysis of the Báhing Dialect of the Kiranti Language. The Báhing Gram-

mar.—V. On the Váyu or Hayu Tribe of the Central Himaláya.—VI. On the Kiranti

Tribe of the Central Himaláya.

CONTENTS OF VOL. II.

Section III.—On the Aborigines of North-Eastern India. Comparative Vocabulary

of the Tibetau, Bódó, and Gáro Tongues.

Section IV.—Aborigines of the North-Eastern Frontier.

Section V.—Aborigines of the Eastern Frontier.

Section VI.—The Indo-Chinese Borderers, and their connexion with the Hima-

layans and Tibetans. Comparative Vocabulary of Indo-Chinese Borderers in Arakan.

Comparative Vocabulary of Indo-Chinese Borderers in Tenasserim.

Section VII.—The Mongolian Affinities of the Caucasians.—Comparison and Ana-

lysis of Caucasian and Mongolian Words.

Section VIII.—Physical Type of Tibetans.

Section IX.—The Aborigines of Central India.—Comparative Vocabulary of the

Aboriginal Languages of Central India.—Aborigines of the Eastern Ghats.—Vocabu-

lary of some of the Dialects of the Hill and Wandering Tribes in the Northern Sircars.

—Aborigines of the Nilgiris, with Remarks on their Affinities.—Supplement to the

Nilgirian Vocabularies.—The Aborigines of Southern India and Ceylon.

Section X.—Route of Nepále-se Mission to Pekin, with Remarks on the Water-

shed and Plateau of Tibet.

Section XI.—Route from Káthmándú, the Capital of Népál, to Darjeeling in

Sikim.—Memorandum relative to the Seven Cosis of Népál.

Section XII.—Some Accounts of the Systems of Law and Police as recognised in

the State of Nepál.

Section XIII.—The Native Method of making the Paper denominated Hindustan,

Népáleśe.

Section XIV.—Pre-eminence of the Vernaculars; or, the Anglicists Answered ;

Being Letters on the Education of the People of India.

" For the study of the less-known races of India Mr. Brian Hodgson's ' Miscellane-

ous Essays ' will be found very valuable both to the philologist and the ethnologist."

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Third Edition, Two Vols., post 8vo, pp. viii.—263 and viii.—326, cloth, price 21s.

THE LIFE OR LEGEND OF GAUDAMA,

THE BUDDHA OF THE BURMESE. With Annotations.

The Ways to Neiban, and Notice on the Phongyies or Burmese Monks.

By the Right Rev. P. BIGANDET

Bishop of Ramatha, Vicar-Apostolic of Ava and Pegu.

"The work is furnished with copious notes, wnich not only illustrate the subject-matter, but form a perfect encyclopædia of Buddhist lore."—Times.

"A work which will furnish European students of Buddhism with a most valuable help in the prosecution of their investigations."—Edinburgh Daily Review.

"Bishop Bigandet's invaluable work."—Indian Antiquary.

"Viewed in this light, its importance is sufficient to place students of the subject under a deep obligation to its author."—Calcutta Review.

"This work is one of the greatest authorities upon Buddhism."—Dublin Review.

Post 8vo, pp. xxiv.—420, cloth, price 18s.

CHINESE BUDDHISM.

A VOLUME OF SKETCHES, HISTORICAL AND CRITICAL.

By J. EDKINS, D.D.

Author of "China's Place in Philology," "Religion in China," &c., &c.

"It contains a vast deal of important information on the subject, such as is only to be gained by long-continued study on the spot."—Atheneum.

"Upon the whole, we know of no work comparable to it for the extent of its original research, and the simplicity with which this complicated system of philosopy, religion, literature, and ritual is set forth."—British Quarterly Review.

"The whole volume is replete with learning. . . . It deserves most careful study from all interested in the history of the religions of the world, and expressly of those who are concerned in the propagation of Christianity. Dr. Edkins notices in terms of just condemnation the exaggerated praise bestowed upon Buddhism by recent English writers."—Record.

Post 8vo, pp. 496, cloth, price 10s. 6d.

LINGUISTIC AND ORIENTAL ESSAYS.

WRITTEN FROM THE YEAR 1846 TO 1878.

By ROBERT NEEDHAM CUST,

Late Member of Her Majesty's Indian Civil Service; Hon. Secretary to the Royal Asiatic Society;

and Author of "The Modern Languages of the East Indies."

"We know none who has described Indian life, especially the life of the natives, with so much learning, sympathy, and literary talent."—Academy.

"They seem to us to be full of suggestive and original remarks."—St. James's Gazette.

"His book contains a vast amount of information. The result of thirty-five years of inquiry, reflection, and speculation, and that on subjects as full of fascination as of food for thought."—Tablet.

"Exhibit such a thorough acquaintance with the history and antiquities of India as to entitle him to speak as one having authority."—Edinburgh Daily Review.

"The author speaks with the authority of personal experience. . . . It is this constant association with the country and the people which gives such a vividness to many of the pages."—Atheneum.

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BUDDHIST BIRTH STORIES; or, Jataka Tales.

The Oldest Collection of Folk-lore Extant :

BEING THE JATAKATTHAVANNANA,

For the first time Edited iu the original Pāli.

By V. FAUSBOLL ;

And Translated by T. W. RHYS DAVIDS.

Translation. Volume I.

" These are tales supposed to have been told by the Buddha of what he had seen

and heard in his previous births. They are probably the nearest representatives

of the original Aryan stories from which sprang the folk-lore of Europe as well as

India. The introduction coutains a most interesting disquisition on the migrations

of these fables, tracing their reappearance in the various groups of folk-lore legends.

Among other old friends, we meet with a version of the Judgment of Solomon."—Times.

" It is now some years since Mr. Rhys Davids asserted his right to be heard on

this subject by his able article on Buddhism in the new edition of the 'Encyclopædia

Britannica.'"—Leeds Mercury.

" All who are interested in Buddhist literature ought to feel deeply indebted to

Mr. Rhys Davids. His well-established reputation as a Pāli scholar is a sufficient

guarantee for the fidelity of his version, and the style of his translations is deserving

of high praise."—Academy.

" No more competent expositor of Buddhism could be found than Mr. Rhys Davids.

In the Jātaka book we have, then, a priceless record of the earliest imaginative

literature of our race; and it presents to us a nearly complete picture of the

social life and customs and popular beliefs of the common people ot Aryan tribes,

closely related to ourselves, just as they were passing through the first stages of

civilisation."—St. James's Gazette.

Post 8vo, pp. xxviii.—362, cloth, price 14s.

A TALMUDIC MISCELLANY;

Or, A THOUSAND AND ONE EXTRACTS FROM THE TALMUD,

THE MIDRASHIM, AND THE KABBALAH.

Compiled and Translated by PAUL ISAAC HERSHON,

Author of " Genesis According to the Talmud," &c.

With Notes and Copious Indexes.

" To obtain in so concise and handy a form as this volume a general idea of the

Talmud is a boon to Christians at least."—Times.

" Its peculiar and popular character will make it attractive to general readers.

Mr. Hershon is a very competent scholar. . . . Contains samples of the good, bad,

and indifferent, and especially. extracts that throw light upon the Scriptures."

British Quarterly Review.

" Will convey to English readers a more complete and truthful notion of the

Talmud than any other work that has yet appeared."—Daily News.

" Without overlooking in the slightest the several attractions of the previous

volumes of the 'Oriental Series.' we have no hesitation in saying that this surpasses

them all in interest."—Edinburgh Daily Review.

" Mr. Hershon has . . . thus given English readers what is, we believe, a fair set

of specimens which they can test for themselves."—The Record.

" This book is by far the best fitted in the present state of knowledge to enable the

general reader to gain a fair and unbiassed conception of the multifarious contents

of the wonderful miscellany which can only be truly understood—so Jewish pride

asserts—by the life-long devotion of scholars of the Chosen People."—Inquirer.

" The value and importance of this volume consist in the fact that scarcely a single

extract is given in its pages but throws some light, direct or refracted, upon those

Scriptures which are the common heritage of Jew and Christian alike."—John Bull.

" It is a capital specimen of Hebrew scholarship; a monument of learned, loving,

light-giving labour."—Jewish Herald.

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Post 8vo, pp. xii.—228, cloth, price 7s. 6d.

THE CLASSICAL POETRY OF THE JAPANESE.

By BASIL HALL CHAMBERLAIN,

Author of “Yeigo Heñkaku Shirañ.”

“A very curious volume. The author has manifestly devoted much labour to the task of studying the poetical literature of the Japanese, and rendering characteristic specimens into English verse.”—Daily News.

“Mr. Chamberlain's volume is, so far as we are aware, the first attempt which has been made to interpret the literature of the Japanese to the Western world. It is to the classical poetry of Old Japan that we must turn for indigenous Japanese thought, and in the volume before us we have a selection from that poetry rendered into graceful English verse.”—Tablet.

“It is undoubtedly one of the best translations of lyric literature which has appeared during the close of the last year.”—Celestial Empire.

“Mr. Chamberlain set himself a difficult task when he undertook to reproduce Japanese poetry in an English form. But he has evidently laboured con amore, and his efforts are successful to a degree.”—London and China Express.

Post 8vo, pp. xii.—164, cloth, price 10s. 6d.

THE HISTORY OF ESARHADDON (Son of Sennacherib),

KING OF ASSYRIA, B.C. 681-668.

Translated from the Cuneiform Inscriptions upon Cylinders and Tablets in the British Museum Collection; together with a Grammatical Analysis of each Word, Explanations of the Ideographs by Extracts from the Bi-Lingual Syllabaries, and List of Eponyms, &c.

By ERNEST A. BUDGE, B.A., M.R.A.S.,

Assyrian Exhibitioner, Christ's College, Cambridge.

“Students of scriptural archæology will also appreciate the ‘History of Esar-haddon.’”—Times.

“There is much to attract the scholar in this volume. It does not pretend to popularise studies which are yet in their infancy. Its primary object is to translate, but it does not assume to be more than tentative, and it offers both to the professed Assyriologist and to the ordinary non-Assyriological Semitic scholar the means of controlling its results.”—Academy.

“Mr. Budge's book is, of course, mainly addressed to Assyrian scholars and students. They are not, it is to be feared, a very numerous class. But the more thanks are due to him on that account for the way in which he has acquitted himself in his laborious task.”—Tablet.

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THE MESNEVI

(Usually known as The Mesneviyi Sherif, or Holy Mesnevi)

OF

MEVLANA (OUR LORD) JELALU 'D-DIN MUHAMMED ER-RUMI.

Book the First.

Together with some Account of the Life and Acts of the Author,

of his Ancestors, and of his Descendants.

Illustrated by a Selection of Characteristic Anecdotes, as Collected

by their Historian,

Mevlana Shemsu'd-Din Ahmed, el Eflaki, el ‘Arifi.

Translated, and the Poetry Versified, in English,

By JAMES W. REDHOUSE, M. R. A. S., &c.

“A complete treasury of occult Oriental lore.”—Saturday Review.

“This book will be a very valuable help to the reader ignorant of Persia, who is desirous of obtaining an insight into a very important department of the literature extant in that language.”—Tablet.

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Post 8vo, pp. xvi.—280, cloth, price 6s.

EASTERN PROVERBS AND EMBLEMS

Illustrating Old Truths.

By Rev. J. LONG,

Member of the Bengal Asiatic Society, F.R.G.S.

"We regard the book as valuable, and wish for it a wide circulation and attentive reading."—Record.

"Altogether, it is quite a feast of good things."—Globe.

"It is full of interesting matter."—Antiquary.

Post 8vo, pp. viii.—270, cloth, price 7s. 6d.

INDIAN POETRY;

Containing a New Edition of the "Indian Song of Songs," from the Sanscrit of the "Gita Govinda" of Jayadeva; Two Books from "The Iliad of India" (Mahabharata), "Proverbial Wisdom" from the Shlokas of the Hitopadesa, and other Oriental Poems.

By EDWIN ARNOLD, C.S.I., Author of "The Light of Asia."

"In this new volume of Messrs. Trübner's Oriental Series, Mr. Edwin Arnold does good service by illustrating, through the medium of his musical English melodies, the power of Indian poetry to stir European emotions. The 'Indian Song of Songs' is not unknown to scholars. Mr. Arnold will have introduced it among popular English poems. Nothing could be more graceful and delicate than the shades by which Krishna is portrayed in the gradual process of being weaned by the love of

'Beautiful Radha, jasmine-bosomed Radha,'

from the allurements of the forest nymphs, in whom the five senses are typified."—Times.

"No other English poet has ever thrown his genius and his art so thoroughly into the work of translating Eastern ideas as Mr. Arnold has done in his splendid paraphrases of language contained in these mighty epics."—Daily Telegraph.

"The poem abounds with imagery of Eastern luxuriousness and sensuousness; the air seems laden with the spicy odours of the tropics, and the verse has a richness and a melody sufficient to captivate the senses of the dullest."—Standard.

"The translator, while producing a very enjoyable poem, has adhered with tolerable fidelity to the original text."—Overland Mail.

"We certainly wish Mr. Arnold success in his attempt 'to popularise Indian classics,' that being, as his preface tells us, the goal towards which he bends his efforts."—Allen's Indian Mail.

Post 8vo, pp. xvi.—296, cloth, price 10s. 6d.

THE MIND OF MENCIUS;

OR, POLITICAL ECONOMY FOUNDED UPON MORAL PHILOSOPHY.

A Systematic Digest of the Doctrines of the Chinese Philosopher Mencius.

Translated from the Original Text and Classified, with Comments and Explanations,

By the Rev. ERNST FABER, Rhenish Mission Society.

Translated from the German, with Additional Notes,

By the Rev. A. B. HUTCHINSON, C.M.S., Church Mission, Hong Kong.

"Mr. Faber is already well known in the field of Chinese studies by his digest of the doctrines of Confucius. The value of this work will be perceived when it is remembered that at no time since relations commenced between China and the West has the former been so powerful—we had almost said aggressive—as now. For those who will give it careful study, Mr. Faber's work is one of the most valuable of the excellent series to which it belongs."—Nature.

A 2

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THE RELIGIONS OF INDIA.

By A. BARTH.

Translated from the French with the authority and assistance of the Author.

"The author has, at the request of the publishers, considerably enlarged

the work for the translator, and has added the literature of the subject to

date ; the translation may, therefore, be looked upon as an equivalent of a

new and improved edition of the original.

"Is not only a valuable manual of the religions of India, which marks a distinct

step in the treatment of the subject, but also a useful work of reference."—Academy.

"This volume is a reproduction, with corrections and additions, of an article

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"Such a sketch M. Barth has drawn with a master-hand."—Critic (New York).

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HINDU PHILOSOPHY.

THE SĀNKHYA KĀRIKĀ OF IS'WARA KRISHNA.

An Exposition of the System of Kapila, with an Appendix on the

Nyāya and Vais'eshika Systems.

By JOHN DAVIES, M.A. (Cantab.), M.R.A.S.

The system of Kapila contains nearly all that India has produced in the

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to the mysterious questions which arise in every thoughtful mind about the origin of

the world, the nature and relations of man and his future destiny,' and in his learned

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sophy of Spinoza,' and 'the connection of the system of Kapila with that of Schopen-

hauer and Von Hartmann.'"—Foreign Church Chronicle.

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A MANUAL OF HINDU PANTHEISM. VEDÂNTASÂRA.

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TSUNI—| | GOAM :

The Supreme Being of the Khoi-Khoi.

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A COMPREHENSIVE COMMENTARY TO THE QURAN.

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THE BHAGAVAD-GÎTÂ.

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THE QUATRAINS OF OMAR KHAYYAM.

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THE QUATRAINS OF OMAR KHAYYAM.

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THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE UPANISHADS AND

ANCIENT INDIAN METAPHYSICS.

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A COMPARATIVE HISTORY OF THE EGYPTIAN AND

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Vol. I.—History of the Egyptian Religion.

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YUSUF AND ZULAIKHA.

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LINGUISTIC ESSAYS.

By CARL ABEL.

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THE SARVA-DARSANA-SAMGRAHA ;

OR, REVIEW OF THE DIFFERENT SYSTEMS OF HINDU

PHILOSOPHY.

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TIBETAN TALES DERIVED FROM INDIAN SOURCES.

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UDÂNAVARGA.

A Collection of Verses from the Buddhist Canon.

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By W. WOODVILLE ROCKHILL.

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A SKETCH OF THE MODERN LANGUAGES OF AFRICA.

By ROBERT NEEDHAM CUST,

Barrister-at-Law, and late of Her Majesty's Indian Civil Service.

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OUTLINES OF THE HISTORY OF RELIGION TO THE SPREAD OF THE UNIVERSAL RELIGIONS.

By C. P. TIELE,

Doctor of Theology, Professor of the History of Religions in the University of Leyden.

Translated from the Dutch by J. Estlin Carpenter, M.A.

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A HISTORY OF BURMA.

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the Earliest Time to the End of the First War with British India.

By Lieut.-Gen. Sir ARTHUR P. PHAYRE, G.C.M.G., K.C.S.I., and C.B.,

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de France.

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RELIGION IN CHINA.

By JOSEPH EDKINS, D.D., Peking.

Containing a Brief Account of the Three Religions of the Chinese, with

Observations on the Prospects of Christian Conversion amongst that

People.

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"from the time that it was published, been the standard authority upon the subject

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Chinese religion and language."—British Quarterly Review.

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THE LIFE OF THE BUDDHA AND THE EARLY

HISTORY OF HIS ORDER.

Derived from Tibetan Works in the Bkah-hgyur and Bstan-hgyùr.

Followed by notices on the Early History of Tibet and Khoten.

Translated by W. W. ROCKHILL, Second Secretary U.S. Legation in China.

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has consulted and tested the ancient documents bearing upon his remarkable subject."—Times.

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which have of late years taken in these Western regions so remarkable a development. Its matter possesses a special interest as being derived from ancient Tibetan

works, some portions of which, here analysed and translated, have not yet attracted

the attention of scholars. The volume is rich in ancient stories bearing upon the

world's renovation and the origin of castes, as recorded in these venerable authorities."—Daily News.

Third Edition. Post 8vo, pp. viii.—464, cloth, price 16s.

THE SANKHYA APHORISMS OF KAPILA,

With Illustrative Extracts from the Commentaries.

Translated by J. R. BALLANTYNE, LL.D., late Principal of the Benares

College.

Edited by FITZEDWARD HALL.

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BUDDHIST RECORDS OF THE WESTERN WORLD,

Translated from the Chinese of Hiuen Tsiang (A.D. 629).

By SAMUEL BEAL, B.A.,

(Trin. Coll., Camb.) ; R.N. (Retired Chaplain and N.I.) ; Professor of Chinese,

University College, London ; Rector of Wark, Northumberland, &c.

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THE ORDINANCES OF MANU.

Translated from the Sanskrit, with an Introduction.

By the late A. C. BURNELL, Ph.D., C.I.E.

Completed and Edited by E. W. HOPKINS, Ph.D.,

of Columbia College, N.Y.

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“ Few men were more competent than Burnell to give us a really good translation

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Burnell was not only an independent Sanskrit scholar, but an experienced lawyer,

and he joined to these two important qualifications the rare faculty of being able to

express his thoughts in clear and trenchant English. . . . We ought to feel very

grateful to Dr. Hopkins for having given us all that could be published of the trans-

lation left by Burnell.”—F. Max Müller in the Academy.

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THE LIFE AND WORKS OF ALEXANDER

CSOMA DE KOROS,

Between 1819 and 1842. With a Short Notice of all his Published and Un-

published Works and Essays. From Original and for most part Unpub-

lished Documents.

By THEODORE DUKA, M.D., F.R.C.S. (Eng.), Surgeon-Major

H.M.'s Bengal Medical Service, Retired, &c.

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MISCELLANEOUS PAPERS RELATING TO

INDO-CHINA.

Reprinted from "Dalrymple's Oriental Repertory," "Asiatic Researches,"

and the "Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal."

CONTENTS OF VOL. I.

I.—Some Accounts of Quedah. By Michael Topping.

II.—Report made to the Chief and Council of Balambangan, by Lieut. James Rarton, of his several Surveys.

III.—Substance of a Letter to the Court of Directors from Mr. John Jesse, dated July 20, 1775, at Borneo Proper.

IV.—Formation of the Establishment of Poolo Peenang.

V.—The Gold of Limoung. By John Macdonald.

VI.—On Three Natural Productions of Sumatra. By John Macdonald.

VII.—On the Traces of the Hindu Language and Literature extant amongst the Malays. By William Marsden.

VIII.—Some Account of the Elastic Gum Vine of Prince-Wales Island. By James Howison.

IX.—A Botanical Description of Urceola Elastica, or Caoutchouc Vine of Sumatra and Pulo-Pinang. By William Roxburgh, M.D.

X.—An Account of the Inhabitants of the Poggy, or Nassau Islands, lying off Sumatra. By John Crisp.

XI.—Remarks on the Species of Pepper which are found on Prince-Wales Island. By William Hunter, M.D.

XII.—On the Languages and Literature of the Indo-Chinese Nations. By J. Leyden, M.D.

XIII.—Some Account of an Orang-Outang of remarkable height found on the Island of Sumatra By Clarke Abel, M.D.

XIV.—Observations on the Geological Appearances and General Features of Portions of the Malayan Peninsula. By Captain James Low.

XV.—Short Sketch of the Geology of Pulo-Pinang and the Neighbouring Islands. By T. Ware.

XVI.—Climate of Singapore.

XVIII.—Inscription on the Jetty at Singapore.

XVIII.—Extract of a Letter from Colonel J. Low.

XIX.—Inscription at Singapore.

XX — An Account of Several Inscriptions found in Province Wellesley. By Lieut.-Col. James Low.

XXI.—Note on the Inscriptions from Singapore and Province Wellesley. By J. W. Laidlay.

XXII.—On an Inscription from Keddah. By Lieut.-Col. Low.

XXIII.—A Notice of the Alphabets of the Philippine Islands.

XXIV.—Succinct Review of the Observations of the Tides in the Indian Archipelago.

XXV.—Report on the Tin of the Province of Mergui. By Capt. G. B Tremenheere.

XXVI.—Report on the Manganese of Mergui Province. By Capt. G. B. Tremenheere.

XXVII.—Paragraphs to be added to Capt. G. B. Tremenheere's Report.

XXVIII.—Second Report on the Tin of Mergui. By Capt. G. B. Tremenheere.

XXIX.—Analysis of Iron Ores from Tavoy and Mergui, and of Limestone from Mergui. By Dr. A. Ure.

XXX.—Report of a Visit to the Pakchan River, and of some Tin Localities in the Southern Portion of the Tenasserim Provinces. By Capt. G. B. Tremenheere.

XXXI.—Report on a Route from the Mouth of the Pakchan to Krau, and thence across the Isthmus of Krau to the Gulf of Siam. By Capt. Al. Fraser and Capt. J. G. Forlong.

XXXII.—Report, &c., from Capt. G. B. Tremenheere on the Price of Mergui Tin Ore.

XXXIII.—Remarks on the Different Species of Orang-utan. By E. Blyth.

XXXIV.—Further Remarks. By E. Blyth.

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MISCELLANEOUS PAPERS RELATING TO INDO-CHINA—continued.

CONTENTS OF VOL. II.

XXXV.—Catalogue of Mammalia inhabiting the Malayan Peninsula and Islands.

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XXXVI.—On the Local and Relative Geology of Singapore. By J. R. Logan.

XXXVII.—Catalogue of Reptiles inhabiting the Malayan Peninsula and Islands.

By Theodore Cantor, M.D.

XXXVIII.—Some Account of the Botanical Collection brought from the Eastward,

in 1841, by Dr. Cantor. By the late W. Griffith.

XXXIX.—On the Flat-Horned Taurine Cattle of S.E. Asia. By E. Blyth.

XL.—Note, by Major-General G. B. Tremenheere.

General Index.

Index of Vernacular Terms.

Index of Zoological Genera and Sub-Genera occurring in Vol. II.

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THE SATAKAS OF BHARTRIHARI.

Translated from the Sanskrit

By the Rev. B. HALE WORTHAM, M.R.A.S.,

Rector of Eggesford, North Devon.

"A very interesting addition to Trübner's Oriental Series."—Saturday Review.

"Many of the Maxims in the book have a Biblical ring and beauty of expression."

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ANCIENT PROVERBS AND MAXIMS FROM BURMESE

SOURCES;

OR, THE NITI LITERATURE OF BURMA.

By JAMES GRAY,

Author of "Elements of Pali Grammar," "Translation of the

Dhammapada," &c.

The Sanskrit-Pâli word Niti is equivalent to "conduct" in its abstract,

and "guide" in its concrete signification. As applied to books, it is a

general term for a treatise which includes maxims, pithy sayings, and

didactic stories, intended as a guide to such matters of every-day life as

form the character of an individual and influence him in his relations to his

fellow-men. Treatises of this kind have been popular in all ages, and have

served as a most effective medium of instruction.

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MAS NAVI I MA' NAVI:

THE SPIRITUAL COUPLETS OF MAULANA JALALU-'D-DIN

MUHAMMAD I RUMI.

Translated and Abridged by E. H. WHINFIELD, M.A.,

Late of H.M. Bengal Civil Service.

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MANAVA-DHARMA-CASTRA :

THE CODE OF MANU.

Original Sanskrit Text, with Critical Notes.

By J. JOLLY, Ph.D.,

Professor of Sanskrit in the University of Wurzburg ; late Tagore Professor

of Law in the University of Calcutta.

The date assigned by Sir William Jones to this Code—the well-known

Great Law Book of the Hindus—is 1250–500 B.C., although the rules and

precepts contained in it had probably existed as tradition for countless ages

before. There has been no reliable edition of the Text for Students for

many years past, and it is believed, therefore, that Prof. Jolly's work will

supply a want long felt.

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LEAVES FROM MY CHINESE SCRAP-BOOK.

By FREDERIC HENRY BALFOUR.

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LINGUISTIC AND ORIENTAL ESSAYS.

Written from the Year 1847 to 1887. Second Series.

By ROBERT NEEDHAM CUST, LL.D.,

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Late Member of Her Majesty's Indian Civil Service.

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MISCELLANEOUS PAPERS RELATING TO

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Second Series.

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FOLK-TALES OF KASHMIR.

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(C.M.S.) Missionary to the Kashmiris.

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MEDIÆVAL RESEARCHES FROM EASTERN ASIATIC SOURCES.

Fragments Towards the Knowledge of the Geography and History

of Central and Western Asia from the Thirteenth to the

Seventeenth Century.

By E. BREITSCHNEIDER, M.D.,

Formerly Physician of the Russian Legation at Pekin.

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ALBERUNI'S INDIA:

AN ACCOUNT OF ITS RELIGION, PHILOSOPHY, LITERATURE,

GEOGRAPHY, CHRONOLOGY, ASTRONOMY, CUSTOMS, LAW,

AND ASTROLOGY (about A.D. 1031).

Translated into English.

With Notes and Indices by Prof. EDWARD SACHAU,

University of Berlin.

** The Arabic Original, with an Index of the Sanskrit Words, Edited by

Professor SACHAU, is in the press.

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THE LIFE OF HIUEN TSIANG.

By the SHAMANS HWUI LI AND YEN-TSUNG.

With a Preface containing an account of the Works of I-TSING.

By SAMUEL BEAL, B.A.

(Trin. Coll., Camb.); Professor of Chinese, University College, London;

Rector of Wark, Northumberland, &c.

Author of “Buddhist Records of the Western World,” “The Romantic

Legend of Sākya Buddha,” &c.

When the Pilgrim Hiuen Tsiang returned from his travels in India, he

took up his abode in the Temple of “Great Benevolence;” this convent had

been constructed by the Emperor in honour of the Empress, Wen-te-hau.

After Hiuen Tsiang's death, his disciple, Hwui Li, composed a work which

gave an account of his illustrious Master's travels; this work when he com-

pleted he buried, and refused to discover its place of concealment. But

previous to his death he revealed its whereabouts to Yen-tsung, by whom it

was finally revised and published. This is “The Life of Hiuen Tsiang.” It

is a valuable sequel to the Si-yu-ki, correcting and illustrating it in many

particulars.

IN PREPARATION:—

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THE

PHILOSOPHY OF THE UPANISHADS

AND

ANCIENT INDIAN METAPHYSICS.

AS EXHIBITED IN A SERIES OF ARTICLES CONTRIBUTED TO THE

CALCUTTA REVIEW.

BY

ARCHIBALD EDWARD GOUGH, M.A.

LINCOLN COLLEGE, OXFORD,

PRINCIPAL OF THE CALCUTTA MADRASA.

LONDON:

TRÜBNER & CO., LUDGATE HILL.

[All rights reserved.]

35008

BL

1120

G7

PREFACE.

I hope that this book may be more or less useful to two

classes of readers.

Those interested in the general history of philosophy

will find in it an account of a very early attempt, on

the part of thinkers of a rude age and race, to form a

cosmological theory. The real movement of philosophic

thought begins, it is true, not in India, but in Ionia;

but some degree of interest may still be expected to

attach to the procedure of the ancient Indian cosmo-

logists. The Upanishads are so many “songs before

sunrise,”—spontaneous effusions of awakening reflec-

tion, half poetical, half metaphysical, that precede the

conscious and methodical labour of the long succes-

sion of thinkers to construct a thoroughly intelligible

conception of the sum of things. For the general

reader, then, these pages may supply in detail, and

in the terms of the Sanskrit texts themselves, a treat-

ment of the topics slightly sketched in the third

chapter of Archer Butler’s first series of “ Lectures

on the History of Ancient Philosophy.” The Upani-

shads exhibit the pantheistic view of things in a naively

vi

PREFACE.

poetical expression, and at the same time in its coarsest form.1

To readers specially interested in Indian matters an introduction to the Upanishads is indispensable, and these pages will help to supply a want hitherto unsupplied. The Upanishads are an index to the intellectual peculiarities of the Indian character. The thoughts they express are the ideas that prevail throughout all subsequent Indian literature, much of which will be fully comprehensible to those only who carry with them a knowledge of these ideas to its perusal. A study of the Upanishads is the starting-point in any intelligent study of Indian philosophy. As regards religion, the philosophy of the Upanishads is the groundwork of the various forms of Hinduism, and the Upanishads have been justly characterised by Goldstücker as “the basis of the enlightened faith of India.”

The Upanishads are treatises of various length, partly poetical, partly theosophical, which close the canon of Vedic revelation. The term Upanishad imports mystic teaching, and the synonymous term Vedānta means a final instalment of the Veda. The Upanishads are also called Vedāntas, and the Aupanishadī Mīmāṃsā or philosophy of the Upanishads, in its developed form, is known as the Vedāntic system. Śruti, the Vedic revelation, consists of two parts, of a lower and a higher grade,—the Karmakaṇḍa, or portion treating of sacrifices, immemorial usages, and theogony;

1 “Wollen wir den sogenannten Pantheismus in seiner poetischen, erhabensten, oder wenn man will, krassesten Gestalt nehmen, so hat man sich dafür in den morgenländischen Dichtern umzusehen, und die breitesten Darstellungen finden sich in den Indischen.” —HEGEL.

and the Jñānakāṇḍa, or portion treating of the release

of the soul from metempsychosis, by means of a recog-

nition of its real nature as one with the characterless

and impersonal Self. This impersonal Self, Brahman,

as distinguished from the personal soul, the living,

conscious, and migrating spirit, the Jīva or Jīvātman

or Vijñānātman, is also styled the Paramātman or

highest Self. The mystic teaching in which the Vedic

revelation culminates is relative to the nature of this

highest and impersonal Self. The Karmakāṇḍa, or

ritual portion of the Veda, is contained in the Mantras

or hymns of the Ṛishis, the spontaneous effusions of

primitive Indian nature-worship, and the Brāhmaṇas

or liturgic and legendary compilations of the specialised

sacrificial functionaries. Theosophic teaching is present,

in combination with liturgic and mythologic elements,

in the Āraṇyakas, a portion of the Vedic aggregate

intimately allied to the Brāhmaṇas. This teaching

is further segregated and explicitly set forth in the

Upanishads, and forms the Jñānakāṇḍa or theosophic

portion of the Vedic revelation. As compared with the

religion of sacrifices and ancestral rites, this teaching

forms a higher religion, a more perfect way, for the

recluse of the forest—a religion which will be seen to

be largely metaphysical. Treatises bearing the name

of Upanishads are numerous. Those in highest esteem

have always been the Chhāndogya, Bṛihadāraṇyaka,

Īśa, Kena, Kaṭha, Praśna, Muṇḍaka, Māṇḍūkya, Aita-

reya, Taittirīya, Śvetāśvatara, Maitrāyaṇīya, and Kau-

shītakībrāhmaṇa Upanishads. The date of the Upani-

shads, like that of most of the ancient works of Sanskrit

literature, is altogether uncertain. Any date that may

have been assigned is purely conjectural; and all that

viii

PREFACE.

we can affirm in this regard is, that in relation to that literature they are of primitive antiquity, and the earliest

documents of Indian religious metaphysics.

The greatest of the expositors of the philosophy of the Upanishads is Śankara or Śankarāchārya. A great

part of the matter of this volume is extracted from the various writings ascribed to him. He is said to have

been a native of Kerala or Malabar, and to have flourished in the eighth century of the Christian era.

He is generally represented as having spent the greater part of his life as an itinerant philosophic disputant

and religious controversialist. The Buddhists in his time were flourishing and widely predominant in India

under the patronage of powerful Rajas, and we may presume that the great Vedāntic doctor was thoroughly

intimate with the tenets of Buddhist philosophy and religion. His exposition of some of these in his com-

mentary on the aphorisms of the Vedānta is admirably perspicuous. The teaching of Śankara himself is the

natural and legitimate interpretation of the doctrines of the Upanishads. It is known as Advaitavāda, the

theory of universal unity, abstract identity, or absolute idealism. The Advaitavādins or Indian idealists are

therefore often styled the Śankaras or followers of Śankara. They represent Indian orthodoxy in its

purest form. The commentaries on the Upanishads ascribed to Sankara are elucidated in the glosses of

Ānandajñānagiri, a writer to whom reference will be found from time to time in the following pages. The

most illustrious of the successors of Śankara, and, next to Śankara, the greatest of the Indian schoolmen, is

Mādhava or Mādhavāchārya, known also by the surname of Sāyaṇa. He will also be referred to in this

book. His great work is his series of grammatical and

exegetic commentaries on the Vedas. In philosophical

discussion his language is remarkably quaint and strik-

ing. An opponent arguing in a circle is a man

trying to stand on his own shoulders, and in refuting

another he finds himself breaking a bubble with a

thunderbolt.1 Mādhvāchārya flourished in the four-

teenth century.

This book is based upon a series of articles I con-

tributed some years ago to the Calcutta Review. The

first of these, intitled “Ancient Indian Metaphysics,”

was published in the number for October 1876. This

was followed by five articles on the “Philosophy of the

Upanishads,” the first of these appearing in January

1858, and the last in April 1880. I beg to record my

best thanks to Mr. Thomas Smith, the proprietor of the

Review, for his kind permission to me to utilise the

materials of these articles in preparing the present

work. The materials I have reproduced are for the

most part the translations. These, already containing

the most important texts of the Upanishads, were

indispensable for any new presentation of primitive

Indian metaphysics. They have in every case been

rewritten, new matter has been added, and everything

old is transformed and transposed, so that this book is

not to be regarded as a reprint, but as a new work. My

translations will be found to include the whole of the

Muṇḍaka, Kaṭha, Śvetāśvatara, and Māṇḍūkya Upani-

shads, the greater part of the Taittirīya and Brhadā-

ranyaka, and portions of the Chhāndogya and Kena,

together with extracts from the works of the Indian

schoolmen. The matter of the book has been taken in

1 Cf. “Who breaks a butterfly upon a wheel?”—POPE.

x

PREFACE.

every case at first hand from original Sanskrit sources.

Wherever the work is expository, I have studiously

avoided interpolation, the purpose being to present the

primitive Indian philosophy precisely as it is, in the

terms of the philosophers themselves, and to leave the

reader to form his own judgment about it.

The Sanskrit philologist has to work in a hard and unproductive soil, and this judgment may not perhaps be very

favourable. At any rate, I make no claim.

There is nothing that a writer on ancient thought, and particularly on ancient Oriental thought, has to be more upon

his guard against, than the vitium subreptionis, the permission to his own preconceptions to insinuate themselves among the data he has to deal with.

In every expository paragraph, therefore, every statement, every

figure, and every simile is extracted from a Sanskrit

authority. Most of these are to be found in any

Sanskrit treatise on the Vedānta.

They may all be found in the following works, which, with others, have

furnished the matter of this book,—the various Upanishads themselves, Śankara's commentaries on the

Upanishads, Ānandajñānagiri's glosses on these commentaries, Śankara's commentary on the Sāṁrakasūtra

or aphorisms of the Vedānta philosophy, Govindananda's

gloss on this commentary, the Vedāntasāra, the Vidvanmanorañjinī, the Subodhinī, the Upadeśasahasrī, the

Padayojanikā or commentary on the Upadeśasahasrī,

the Vivekachūḍāmaṇi, the Ātmabodha, the Sarvadarśanasangraha, the Sāṁkhyatattvakaumudī, and the Sāṁ-

khyapravachanabhāshya.

As this book is the outcome of a personal study of

the Sanskrit originals, I may be permitted to point out

the conclusions in regard to early Indian philosophy,

PREFACE.

xi

which, thus far, I have arrived at for myself. These are :-

First, That the earliest succession of cosmological conceptions in India was this-

(1.) Brahmavāda and Māyāvāda,the theory of the Self and the self-feigning world-fiction, afterwards developed into the Vedāntic system :

(2.) Śūnyavāda and Vijñānavāda, the theory of the aboriginal vacuum or blank, and of the sensational and fluxional nature of the world, presented in Buddhism :

(3.) Puruṣahutvavāda and Pradhānavāda, the theory of a plurality of Selves, and of the reality and independent existence of the world, presented in the doctrine of the Sāṅkhyas or “enumerative” philosophers.

Secondly, That Māyā is part and parcel of the primitive Indian cosmological conception, as exhibited in the Upanishads themselves, and not, as Colebrooke imagined, and has led his successors to imagine, a later graft upon the old Vedāntic philosophy.

Thirdly, That as regards the alleged affinity between the Indian and the Neo-platonic philosophy, it is possible that a phrase or two, a simile here and there, of the Indian sophists, may have found their way into the Alexandrian schools, and influenced the work of Ammonius, Plotinus, and their successors; but that the Neo-platonic philosophy, as a whole, has its virtual pre-

existence in the earlier constructions of Hellenic

thought, and naturally develops itself out of

them.

As regards this third conclusion, the general reader

will be able to form his own opinion. I think he will

pronounce that India had little intellectual wealth for

exportation to the Alexandrian emporium.

A. E. G.

Marsham Hall,

Norwich,

July 21, 1882.

CONTENTS.

CHAPTER I.

THE ANTECEDENTS OF INDIAN METAPHYSICS—METEMPSYCHOSIS.

PAGE

The scope of the work . 1

Indian philosophy the work of a lower race, of mixed Negrito,

Tatar, and Aryan blood . . . . 2

The Aryan infusion scanty . . . 4

Low thoughts in high words the difficulty of the Orientalist

4

Stationary and progressive order contrasted . . . 5

Indian philosophy an Oriental philosophy of inertion . 6

The social antecedents of Brahmanism and Buddhism . 7

Personification of elemental forces . . . . 8

The spiritual instinct languid. Absence of moral aspiration

10

The Vedic worship becomes mechanical . . . . 12

First beginnings of cosmologic speculation in the Vedic hymns

13

The Purushasūkta . . . . . 14

The Nāsadīyasūkta . . . . 15

Climatic, ethnological, and religious degeneration in the

Hindu pale . . . . 17

The worship of Śiva the typical Yogin . . . . 18

Self-torture, thaumaturgy, ecstasy, Yoga . . . . 18

Revival of widow-burning . . . 19

Polyandry . . . . 20

Belief in the migration of the soul and the misery of every

form of life . . . 20

No true help from the gods. Pain in paradise . . 22

The intolerable prospect of life after life and death after

death . . . . 23

The belief in metempsychosis prevalent among the lower

races of mankind . . . . 24

xiv

CONTENTS.

Current in Egypt. Adopted by Empedocles, the Pythagoreans, and Plato

25

Philosophy the release from metempsychosis in the Phædon

26

Asiatic and European pessimism

29

Hume's picture of the miseries of life

29

The similar picture of the Indian schoolmen

32

CHAPTER II.

THE QUEST OF THE REAL—BRAHMAN AND MAYA, THE SELF AND THE WORLD-FICTION.

Fixity amidst the flux of things

34

Repose and peace amidst the miseries of life

35

Unity amidst the plurality of experience

35

These found at intervals in sleep without a dream

36

Permanently in union with the characterless Self, which is the object of the name and notion I

36

Brahman the impersonal Self

37

Etymology of the word Brahman

38

Brahman infinite

38

Brahman incogitable and ineffable

39

Brahman the light that irradiates the mental modes

39

Brahman is pure thought, eternal and objectless

40

Brahman not to be confused with the personal absolute or Christian Deity

41

Brahman the pure light of characterless knowledge

42

Brahman that which being known all things are known,—the ἀρχή

43

Brahman the principle of reality. The co-eternal principle of unreality, Māyā, the world-fiction

45

Māyā the illusion in every individual soul

46

Māyā the illusion in all souls, the unreal emanatory principle of the world, co-eternal with Brahman

47

Brahman and Māyā eternally associated

48

Brahman fictitiously limited by Māyā is Īśvara, and passes into seeming plurality

49

Hierarchic emanations out of Brahman and Māyā

50

Īśvara, the Demiurgus, world-evolving deity, or cosmic soul

50

Īśvara omniscient, the giver of recompense, the internal ruler

51

Īśvara not a personal God, but the universal soul

53

CONTENTS.

Īśvara the first figment of the world-fiction . . . . 53

Hiraṇyagarbha, the spirit of dreaming senciencies . . 54

Virāj, the spirit of waking senciencies . . . . 55

Six things without beginning . . . . . . . 56

CHAPTER III.

THE RELEASE FROM METEMPSYCHOSIS.

Re-ascent to the fontal Self . . . . . . . 58

Purificatory virtues, renunciation, meditative abstraction, ecstatic vision, re-union . . . . . . . 59

The Vivekachūdāmaṇi quoted . . . . . . . 60

Liberation in this life . . . . . . . . 61

The Sāṃdilyavidyā. The soul one with the cosmic soul and with the Self . . . . . . . . 62

Renunciation, ecstasy, and liberation, as characterised in the Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upanishad . . . . . . 63

The perfect sage is subject to no moral law . . . 65

But will not therefore do evil . . . . . . 66

The mystic syllable OM as an image of Brahman . . 67

Invocation of OM in the Taittirīya Upanishad . . . 68

The Māṇḍūkya Upanishad. The import of OM. The four states of the soul . . . . . . . . 69

The waking state . . . . . . . . . . 69

The dreaming state . . . . . . . . . . 70

The state of dreamless sleep . . . . . . . 70

The state of the soul in union with pure Self . . 71

Literal analysis of OM . . . . . . . . 72

The doctrine of the five vestures of the soul as taught in the Taittirīya Upanishad . . . . . . . 73

The Brahmānandavallī, the second section of the Taittirīya Upanishad . . . . . . . . . 73

The Self within the mind, inside the heart of every living thing . . . . . . . . . . 74

The soul is the Self, but does not know itself to be the Self 75

Procession of the five elements, and their progressive concretion . . . . . . . . . . 75

The first and outermost vesture of the soul is the earthly body . . . . . . . . . . . 76

xvi

CONTENTS.

Within the earthly body is the invisible body that clothes the soul throughout its migrations . . . . . 77

The second garment, the vesture of the vital airs . . . 78

The third garment, the vesture of the common sensory . 78

The fourth garment, the mental vesture . . . . 79

The fifth and innermost garment, the vesture of beatitude.

This clothes the soul in its third state of dreamless sleep 80

Brahman becomes Īśvara and passes into seeming plurality 81

The scale of beatitudes that may be ascended by the sage . 83

The Bhriguvallī, the third section of the Taittirīya Upanishad 85

Steps to the knowledge of Brahman. First step: the earthly body is Brahman . . . . . 85

Second step : the vital air is Brahman . . . . 85

Third step : the common sensory is Brahman . . . 86

Fourth step : the mind is Brahman . . . . . 86

Fifth step : the bliss of dreamless sleep is Brahman . . 86

Outward observances of the meditating sage, and their rewards . . . . . 87

He is to meditate on the various manifestations of Brahman 87

He strips off the five garments of the soul one after another.

Acquires and exercises magical powers. Sings the song of universal unity. Is absorbed into the one and all . 88

The great text, That art thou . . . . . . 89

The dialogue of Āruni and Śvetaketu from the Chhāndogya Upanishad .

Allegory of the sweet juices and the honey . . . . 90

Allegory of the rivers and the sea . . . . . 90

Allegory of the tree and its informing life . . . . 91

Allegory of the seed of the holy fig-tree . . . . 91

Allegory of the salt in salt water . . . . . 91

Allegory of the highwayman and the blindfold traveler . 92

Gradual departure of the soul at death . . . . . 92

Allegory of the fiery ordeal . . . . . . 93

Scholastic explanation of the great text, That art thou . . 93

CHAPTER IV.

THE MUNDAKA UPANISHAD.

The religion of rites and the religion of gnosis, the inferior science and the superior science . . . . . 95

CONTENTS.

The religion of rites prolongs the migration of the soul . . . 96

The religion of gnosis frees the soul from further migration . 97

This religion or philosophy must be learned from an authorised exponent . . . . . . . . 98

Mundaka Upanishad. First Mundaka, First Section . . . 99

The δıαδοχή . . . . . . . . 99

To know the Self is to know all things . . . . . 99

Simile of the spider . . . . . . . 99

Hume's misapprehension of this simile . . . . 100

The Demiurgus and the world-fiction . . . . 100

First Mundaka, Second Section . . . . . . 101

The rewards of the prescriptive sacra transient. The sage must turn his back upon them all . . . . 102

He must repair to an accredited teacher . . . . 103

Second Mundaka, First Section . . . . . . 103

Simile of the fire and the sparks . . . . . 103

Purusha characterised as in the Purushasūkta . . . 104

The vision of the Self within the heart is the only salvation 106

Second Mundaka, Second Section . . . . . . 106

Use of the mystic syllable Om . . . . . . 106

The ties of the heart loosed by seeing the Self, the light of the world . . . . . . . 107

Third Mundaka, First Section . . . . . . 108

Allegory of the two birds on one tree . . . . 108

Mental purity required of the aspirant . . . . 109

A pure mind the only mirror that reflects the Self . . 110

Third Mundaka, Second Section . . . . . . 111

The Self manifests itself to the perfect sage . . . 111

He loses himself in it as a river loses itself in the sea . 112

Fichte quoted. Perfect peace from conscious participation in the divine life . . . . . . 113

CHAPTER V.

THE KATHA UPANISHAD.

The story of Nachiketas and the regent of the dead . . 116

Katha Upanishad, First Valli . . . . . . 117

Yama tells Nachiketas to choose three gifts . . . . 118

The first gift, that he may return to his father . . . 118

The second gift, a knowledge of the Nāchiketa fire

Disquieting doubt of awakening reflection

The third gift, a knowledge of the soul, and of its real nature

This preferable even to the pleasures that the gods enjoy

Second Vallī. The pleasurable and the good

The liturgic experts are blind leaders of the blind

The seekers of the Self are few

Renunciation and the litative abstraction the only path of safety

The mystic syllable OM must be employed

Antithetic epithets of the Self

The Self manifests itself to the purified aspirant

Third Vallī. The individual soul and the cosmic soul

Allegory of the chariot

The goal is release from metempsychosis by re-union with the Self

The path of release is fine as the edge of a razor

The liberated theosophist wakes up out of this dream-world

Fourth Vallī

The sage eludes the net of death, and has no fear

It is illusion that presents the manifold of experience

Puruşha or Brahman is pure light

Fifth Vallī. Various manifestations of Puruşha

Vedāntic proofs of the existence of the Self

What becomes of the soul at death

The Self is like a permeating fire or pervading atmosphere

Simile of the sun unsullied by the impurities it looks down upon

Everlasting peace for them only that find the light of the world in their own hearts

Sixth Vallī

The world-tree and the seed it springs from

The Self to be seen only as mirrored on the purified mind

Ecstatic vision and recovery of immortality

Apathy, vacuity, and trance the steps of access to the Self

The soul's path of egress and ascent to the courts of Brahmā

The allegory of the chariot compared with the Platonic figure in the Phædrus

CONTENTS.

CHAPTER VI.

THE BRIHADARANYAKA UPANISHAD.

PAGE

Dialogues of the Brihadāranyaka Upanishad . . . 144

Ajātaśatru and Bālāki . . . 144

Ajātaśatru teaches Bālāki the doctrine of the three states of

the soul and of the Self beyond . . . 147

Yājñavalkya and Maitreyī . . . 150

Things that are dear are dear for the sake of the Self . . . 150

It is the Self that must be seen . . . 150

All things one in the Self, as partial sounds in a total sound . 152

The Vedas an exhalation of the Self . . . 152

No more consciousness for the liberated sage . . . 153

The duality of subject and object is unreal . . . 154

The disputation at the sacrifice of Janaka . . . 155

Yājñavalkya takes the prize without waiting to dispute . . . 155

Aśvala challenges him to explain the symbolic import of the

several factors of the sacrifice . . . 156

Ārtabhāga to enumerate the elements of sensible experience . 157

The mind and senses of the liberated sage are dissolved at

death . . . . . . 158

The soul of the unphilosophic man enters a new body . . 159

Bhujyu examines him on the reward of the horse-sacrifice . . 160

Ushasta demands an ocular demonstration of the Self. The

Self is the unseen seen . . . 161

Kahola questions him about the one Self in all things living . 161

The visionary sage is the true Brāhman . . . 162

Gārgī questions him. What is the web of the world woven

over? . . . . . 162

Uddālaka questions him on the nature of the thread soul,

Hiraṇyagarbha . . . . 164

On the nature of the cosmic soul or Demiurgus . . . 165

The Demiurgus is the internal ruler or actuator. He informs

and animates the elements . . . . 166

He informs and animates all living things . . . 167

The Demiurgus is Brahman manifested in the world . . 168

Gārgī questions him. What is the web of the world-fiction

woven across? . . . . 169

It is woven over the Self, the principle that gives fixity and

order to the world . . . . 170

xx

CONTENTS.

The Self is uniform, characterless vision and thought . . 171

Vidagdha questions him. All things full of gods . . 172

Vidagdha fails to answer in turn, and perishes . . 174

Yājñavalkya's parable. Man is a forest-tree: what root does

he spring from again when cut down? . . . 174

The sum of the whole matter. Ecstatic union is the goal . 175

Yājñavalkya visit to Janaka. Their conversation. The

passage of the soul through the five vestures to the Self

beyond all fear . . . . 175

Yājñavalkya visits Janaka again. Their conference. What

is the light of man? . . . . 177

The true light is the light within the heart . . 179

The three states of the migrating soul . . . 179

In sleep the soul creates a dream-world . . . 180

Simile of the fish . . . . . 181

Simile of the falcon . . . . . 181

Liberation is perfect satisfaction, and exemption from all fear 182

All differences vanish in the unitary indifference of the Self. 182

CHAPTER VII.

THE SENSATIONAL NIHILISM OF THE BUDDHISTS—THE COSMOLOGY

OF THE SANKHYAS.

The doctrine of the blank. The original nothingness of the

Buddhists . . . . . 183

This doctrine as old as the Upanishads. It is the primitive

antithesis to the thesis of the Self and the world-fiction 185

The Buddhist teaching . . . . 185

The inner light moonshine, the Self zero . . . 186

All things momentary and fluxional. All consciousness is

sensational . . . . . 186

Śankarāchārya's statement and refutation of Buddhist nihilism 187

Śankarāchārya's statement of Buddhist sensationalism . 190

His refutation of this sensationalism . . . 192

Is he self-consistent? Relative and provisional reality of the

world . . . . . 197

The philosophy of the Sānkhyas. A real and independent

principle of emanation, Pradhāna. A plurality of Puru-

shas or Selves . . . . . 198

CONTENTS.

The Sānkhỵas pervert the plain sense of the Upanishads

PAGE

Prakṛiti in the Upanishads equivalent to Māyā or Avidyā

199

Śankarāchārya disallows the Sānkhya appeal to the Kaṭha

200

Upanishad

The "undeveloped" principle of the Kaṭha Upanishad not

201

Pradhāna, but Māyā, the cosmic body

Śankarāchārya disallows the Sānkhya appeal to the Śvetāś-

202

vatara Upanishad

The Sānkhỵas deny the existence of Īśvara, the cosmic soul,

203

or world-evolving deity

Śankarāchārya maintains against them the existence of Īśvara

204

The migrating souls, not Īśvara, to blame for the inequalities

206

of their lots

The world has had no beginning. Souls have been in migra-

207

tion from eternity

The Sānkhya doctrine of real modifications counter to the

208

Vedāntic tenet of fictitious emanations

CHAPTER VIII.

209

THE SVETASVATARA UPANISHAD.

This Upanishad teaches the same doctrines as the other

Upanishads

The Sānkhya originally a new nomenclature, not a new philo-

211

sophy

Śvetāśvatara Upanishad, First Section

All things emanate out of Īśvara's Śakti or Māyā, i.e., out of

212

213

the power or fiction of the cosmic soul

Īśvara the cycle of the universe

The river of metempsychosis

214

The triad based on Brahman

Māyā or Prakṛiti the genetrix ingenita

215

Māyā or Prakṛiti the handmaid of the Demiurgus

Meditation leads to exaltation to the courts of Brahmā, and

216

to extrication from metempsychosis

Repetition of Om reveals Brahman, as friction elicits fire

217

Second Section. Invocation of the sun-god, by the aspirant

about to practise Yoga

Fixation of the body and withdrawal of the senses

218

219

xxii

CONTENTS.

Signs of approaching ecstatic vision . . . . 219

The vision unites the soul with the world-pervading Self . 220

Third Section. Glories of Rudra, the cosmic soul . . 220

Antithetic epithets of Purusha or Brahman . . . 222

Fourth Section. The world is a manifestation of Brahman . 223

Allegory of the two birds on one tree . . . . 223

Prakriti is illusion, and Īśvara the illusionist . . 224

Īśvara, the cosmic soul, present in every heart . . 225

In the Self there is neither night nor day . . . 225

Invocation of Rudra for aid in meditation . . . 226

Fifth Section. Knowledge and illusion . . . . 226

Kapila, the founder of the Sānkhya, extolled . . . 226

Īśvara spreads the net of metempsychosis . . . 228

Sixth Section. The world is an exhibition of Īśvara's glory 230

Īśvara the divine spider . . . . 231

The Self is the light of the world . . . . 232

Knowledge alone saves from the miserics of repeated lives . 233

CHAPTER IX.

THE PRIMITIVE ANTIQUITY OF THE DOCTRINE OF MĀYĀ.

The world dissolves itself in the view of the meditating Yogin 235

The current opinion untenable, that the tenet of Māyā is an

innovation . . . . . . . 237

Colebrooke the author of this opinion . . . . 237

Māyā a vital element of the primitive Indian cosmological con-

ception . . . . . . . 238

Part of Colebrooke's statement a glaring error . . . 238

The Sūtras of the Vedānta are in themselves obscure . . 239

Texts of the Upanishads teach the unreality of the world . 240

This doctrine present in a Vedic hymn . . . . 240

Present in the Brihadāranyaka Upanishad . . . . 241

Which allows only a quasi-existence to everything else than

the Self . . . . . . . 243

Many names given in the Upanishads to the principle of

unreality . . . . . . . 244

The duality of subject and object has only a quasi-existence 245

The unreality of the world tanght in the Chhāndogya Upani-

shad . . . . . . . . 245

The Mundaka Upanishad speaks of daily life and Vedie worship as an illusion

The Kaṭha Upanishad contrasts the life of illusion with the life of knowledge

The unreality of the world implied in the sole reality of the Self

The unreality of the world taught in the aphorisms of the Vedānta

Duality only a distinction of everyday experience

The manifold only “a modification of speech, a change, a name”

The variety of life is like the variety of a dream

The migrating soul as such is a mere semblance

Śankara emphatic in proclaiming the unreality of the world

The world is as fictitious as an optical illusion

Falsity of the many, truth only of the one

The world is a dream, the sage awakes to the truth

The cosmic body and the cosmic soul alike fictitious

The source of Colebrooke's error the assertion of Vijñānabhikshu

This assertion altogether baseless

The ocean of metempsychosis reflects the sun of Self

Recapitulation. The philosophy of the Upanishads a new religion for the recluses of the jungle

The old religion left valid for the many. The three paths of the passing soul

Purificatory value of the old religion

The old religion a conformity to immemorial pieties. The new religion an effort to rise above mental and corporeal limitations to re-union with the one and all

The new religion no more spiritual than the old conformity

No aspiration towards the true and the good, but only a yearning for repose. Yet the highest product of the Indian mind

THE

PHILOSOPHY OF THE UPANISHADS.

CHAPTER I.

THE ANTECEDENTS OF INDIAN METAPHYSICS—METEMPSYCHOSIS.

"The one spirit's plastic stress

Sweeps through the dull dense world, compelling there

All new successions to the forms they wear ;

Torturing the unwilling dross that checks its flight

To its own likeness, as each mass may bear ;

And bursting in its beauty and its might,

From trees and beasts and men into the heavens' light."

—SHELLEY.

"Alors j'ai essayé de traverser la scène mobile du monde pour pénétrer jusqu'au fond immuable, au principe inépuisable de la vie universelle. Là, je l'avoue, j'ai eu un moment d'éblouissement et d'ivresse ;

j'ai cru voir Dieu. L'être en soi, l'être infini, absolu, universel, que peut-on contempler de plus sublime, de plus vaste, de plus profond ?

C'est le Dieu Pan, évoqué pour la confusion des idoles de l'imagination et de la conscience humaines. Mais ce Dieu vivant, que d'imperfections, que de misères il étale, si je regarde dans le monde,son acte incessant ! Et si je veux le voir en soi et dans son fond, je ne trouve plus que l'être en puissance, sans lumière, sans couleur, sans forme, sans essence déterminée, abîme ténébreux où l'Orient croyait contempler la suprême vérité, et où l'admirable philosophie grecque ne trouvait que chaos et non-être. Mon illusion n'a pas tenu contre l'évidence, contre la foi du genre humain. Dieu ne pouvait être où n'est pas le beau, le pur, le parfait."—VACHEROT.

IT is the purpose of the following pages to present the

earliest types of Indian thought in the terms of the

thinkers themselves, and in relation to the popular

Chap. I.

The scope of

the work.

2

THE PHILOSOPHY

Chap. I.

medium in which they had their life. The reader will be conducted along the first and only important stages of the history of Indian philosophy. The data are such that this history can only be worked out by looking at the form of the several cosmical conceptions, and finding out how they rise one out of another in the process of conflict and supersession. The earliest Indian notion of the totality of things is given in the Upanishads. These, the earliest records of Indian speculation, pound the miseries of metempsychosis, and the path of release from these miseries by recognition of the sole reality of the Self, and the unreality of the world and of all the forms of life that people it. They retain the popular religious imagery, and prescribe the purification of the mind, the renunciation of the world, the practice of rigid and insensible postures of the body, and prolonged meditative abstraction to reach the unity of characterless thought, as the several stages towards the recognition of the one and only Self, and ecstatic vision of, and re-union with it. This is the safe starting-point from which to follow the logical movement. The further progress of the history of Indian philosophy will rest on probabilities. Certainty as regards the chronological succession is beyond the reach of the Orientalist, and he has to be content with approximations to it. When everything is done, and the history of Indian philosophy has been fairly traced, the work will always remain little more than a preliminary and outlying portion of the general history of the human mind. The work will be an exhibition of the thoughts of thinkers of a lower race, of a people of stationary culture, whose intellectual growth stands almost apart from the general movement of human intelligence.

Indian philo

sophy the work of a lower race, of mixed Negrito,Tatar, and Aryan blood.

A writer on the history of Indian philosophy has to deal with the mental produce of an unprogressive portion of mankind. Negroid aborigines, Tatar hordes, and successive Aryan swarms have severally contri-

buted their blood to mould the Brāhman theosophist. Chap. I.

Like every other thinker, he is limited by the type of

nervous mechanism he has inherited, by the ancestral

conditions of his life, and by the material and spiritual

present which environs him. It is under these limita-

tions that he is to make himself what he is. As regards

the limitations of race and hereditary nature, the greatest

confusion has been introduced into the popular study

of Indian matters by the term Aryan. This word has

been fertile in every variety of fallacy, theoretical and

practical. Before the work of thought begins in India

the invading Aryan tribes have become Indo-Arians

or Hindus. They have been assimilated to and absorbed

into the earlier and ruder populations of modified Negrito

and Tatar type, whom they at first fought against as

the dark-skinned Dasyus, and made to till the soil and

drudge for them as Śūdras.

As Professor Huxley says, “The old Sanskrit litera-

ture proves that the Aryan population of India came

in from the north-west at least three thousand years

ago. In the Veda these people portray themselves

in characters that might have fitted the Gauls, the

Germans, or the Goths. Unfortunately there is no

evidence whether they were fair-haired or not. India

was already peopled by a dark-complexioned people,

most like the Australian aborigines, and speaking a

group of languages called Dravidian.” These races

were Negroid indigenes recruited with Tatar blood.

“They were fenced in,” he proceeds, “on the north by

the barrier of the Himālayas; but the Aryans poured

in from the plains of Central Asia over the Himālayas

into the great river basins of the Indus and the Ganges,

where they have been in the main absorbed into the

pre-existing population, leaving as evidence of their

immigration an extensive modification of the physi-

cal characters of the population, a language, and a

literature.”

4

THE PHILOSOPHY

CHAP. I

The Aryan infusion scanty.

Following Dr. Latham and Mr. Norris, Dr. Carpenter points out that it is only by an error that the ordinary Hindu population are supposed to be the descendants of this invading branch of the Aryan stock. “The influence and population of Northern India was very much akin to that of the Norman invasion upon those of England.”

This analogy, it must be remarked, is superficial, and fails in a most important point. The Norman invaders were not of a higher stock than the English, the Saxons, and the Anglo-Danes; the Aryan immigrants into India underwent a progressive deterioration through climatic influences and intermixture with low and melanous races akin to the Bhils, the Kols, and Sonthals of the present day. “The number of individuals of the invading race was so small in proportion to that of the indigenous population as to be speedily merged in it, not, however, without contributing to an elevation of its physical characters; a large number of new words having been in like manner introduced, without any essential change in the type of the original languages,” the various dialects of Northern India. “And thus the only distinct traces of the Aryan stock are to be found in the Brahmanical caste, which preserves, though with great corruption, the original Brahmanical religion, and keeps up the Sanskrit as its classical language. It is certain, however, that this race is far from being of pure descent, having intermingled to a considerable extent with the ordinary Hindu population.”

Low thoughts in high words the difficulty of the Orientalist.

In treating of Indian philosophy, a writer has to deal with thoughts of a lower order than the thoughts of the everyday life of Europe. Looking at the language which he inherits and the general medium of intelligence in which he lives, the thoughts of the European are rich with the substance of Hebrew, Greek, and Christian culture. It is to be noted also that such rudiments of philosophic thought as are to be found in the Indian

OF THE UPANISHADS.

5

cosmologies are embedded in masses of religious imagery

of a rude and inartistic kind. We are treading the

rock-cut temples of Ellora, not the Parthenon. The

great difficulty lies in this, that a low order of ideas

has to be expressed in a high order of terms, and that

the English words suggest a wealth of analysis and

association altogether foreign to the thoughts that are

to be reproduced. Translation from a lower to a higher

language is a process of elevation. However vigilant

he may be, a writer on Indian philosophy will find it

hard to say neither too much nor too little,—to present

the facts as he finds them without prejudice and with-

out predilection. It is all but impossible to place one-

self in the position of the ancient Indian sages,—to see

things as they saw them, and to name them in the

names they gave them. The effort is nothing less than

an endeavour to revert to a ruder type of mental struc-

ture, to put aside our hereditary culture, and to become

for the time barbarians.

It will be well to bear in mind the characters of an

Stationary and

unprogressive as contrasted with the characters of a

progressive,

variety of the human race. These are ten-

dencies engrained in the nervous system, and transmitted

from generation to generation. They are hereditary,

inborn habitudes, and no one can foresee how far they

will give way before foreign influences, or be modified

by them. The contrast between the lower and the

higher human varieties, between the stationary and the

advancing social orders, is instructively set out by the

historian Grote. “ The acquisition of habits of regular

industry, so foreign to the natural temper of man, was

brought about in Egypt and Assyria, in China and Hin-

dustan, before it had acquired any footing in Europe;

but it was purchased either by prostrate obedience to a

despotic rule, or by imprisonment within the chain of

a consecrated institution of caste. Even during the

Homeric period of Greece these countries had attained a

Chap. I.

contrasted.

6

THE PHILOSOPHY

CHAP. I. certain civilisation in mass, without the acquisition of

any high mental qualities or the development of any

individual genius. The religious and political sanction

determined for every one his mode of life, his creed, his

duties, and his place in society, without leaving any

scope for the will or reason of the agent himself."

Grote in the next place speaks of the Semitic races,

the Jews, Phœnicians, Carthaginians, of their individual

impulse and energy, as also of their strenuous ferocity

of character, and then contrasts all these races with the

" flexible, many-sided, and self-organising Greek, not

only capable of opening, both for himself and for the

human race, the highest walks of intellect and the full

creative agency of art, but also gentler by far in his

private sympathies and dealings than his contemporaries on the Euphrates, the Jordan, or the Nile." And

elsewhere he points out that in no city of historical

Greece did there prevail either human sacrifices or

deliberate mutilation, such as cutting off the nose, ears,

hands, feet, and so forth, or castration, or selling of

children into slavery, or polygamy, or the feeling of

unlimited obedience towards one man; all of these

being customs which might be pointed out as existing

among the contemporary Carthaginians, Egyptians, Per-

sians, Thracians, and other peoples.

The Orientalist will have to look in the face this

fact of the inferiority of the hereditary type of Indian

character. His work may be hard and unproductive,

but at least it is necessary to a full and complete survey

of the products of the human mind. He has much to

do and little to claim as regards the value of his labours,

and he will not demur to the judgment of Archer Butler :

" It presents a fearful contrast to observe the refine-

ment to which speculation appears to have been carried

in the philosophy of India, and the grossness of the

contemporary idolatry, paralleled in scarcely any nation

of the earth, as well as the degraded condition of the

Indian

tropical philosphy of iner-

sophy of iner-tion.

mass of the people, destitute of active energy, and for

the most part without a shadow of moral principle to animate the dull routine of a burthensome and scru-

pulous superstition. The aim of human wisdom is the

liberation of the soul from the evils attending the mortal state. This object is attempted by one modification or

other of that intense abstraction which, separating the soul from the bonds of flesh, is supposed capable of

liberating it in this life from the unworthy restrictions of earthly existence, and of introducing it in the next

to the full enjoyment of undisturbed repose, or even to the glories of a total absorption into the divine essence

itself. In all this we may detect the secret but continual influences of a climate which, indisposing the

organisation for active exertion, naturally cherished those theories which represent the true felicity of man

to consist in inward contemplation and complete quiescence."

A few words must be said about the social state that

preceded the rise of Indian philosophy. In using the

word philosophy, it is to be taken loosely, as designating a large amount of pictorial conception covering an inner

nucleus of rudimentary ideas. We are dealing with religion as well as with metaphysics. In India religion and

metaphysics have grown up in one promiscuous growth, and have never had a separate life. They cannot be

disengaged from each other, and we can seldom point to such and such an item in any structure as philosophi-

cal, and such and such another item as religious. A few words only can be given to an explanation of the

social order that preceded the rise of the Brahmanical and Buddhist forms of thought and faith, and the

reader must refer for further information, if he needs it, to the writings of Professor Max Müller and Dr.

John Muir. Let us, then, station ourselves in the communities in which the Rishis lived, the seers that saw

and fashioned the Vedic hymns. The Indian tribes

OF THE UPANISHADS.

7

Chap. I.

The social antecedents of Brahmanism and Buddhism.

8

THE PHILOSOPHY

Chap. I.

have already reached a settled state of order and prosperity. They are gathered together in farms, in huts

of sun-dried mud, and houses of stone, in hamlets and in fenced towns, under village chiefs and Rajas. The

outward aspects of their life are not unlike those of the rural India of to-day. The same villages, the same

thatched huts of the peasantry, with mud-walled yards for cattle, and the same square courts and stuccoed

garden-houses of the village chiefs and princelets. There is the same silence, broken only by the creaking

pulleys of the village well and the occasional bark of village curs, the same green mantle on the stagnant

wayside pools, the same square tank; the sunlight glinting as to-day through the delicate foliage of the

tamarind, the glossy leaves of the peepul, and the feathery tufts of the bamboo. There is the same over-

powering glare upon the surface of the earth, and there are the same liquid depths of overarching blue over-

head, but the horizon is fringed with jungle, and the levels are grassy and less arid than to-day, for the

forests are dense and widely spread, and the rainfall is more abundant. In such surroundings, for the most

part tranquil and dreamlike, but at times terrific with shocks of tropical storm and rain, the Indians of the

Vedic age till their rice and barley, irrigate their fields with watercourses, watch the increase of their flocks

and herds, and make a hard or easy livelihood as blacksmiths, wheelwrights, boat-builders, weavers, leeches,

soldiers, poets, priests. They live upon the produce of their cattle and of their fields, drink wine and moon-

plant juice, and exercise their leisure in sacrificial feasts and in games and spectacles.

Personifica-tion of ele-mental forces.

The powers of nature present themselves to them as so many personal agents. Every striking and unex-

pected change in the things around them is an extra-human volitional activity. They see God in clouds

and hear him in the wind. They impute their whole

self to all they see around them, anthropomorphising

all nature. The envirionment is a divine community,

in the midst of which the human communities have

their life. To use the words of Archer Butler, "Man's

early tendencies are constantly leading to a wide and

vague application of his whole nature, to see himself in

everything, to recognise his will, and even his sensa-

tions, in the inanimate universe. This blind analogy

is almost the first hypothesis of childhood. The child

translates the external world by himself. He perceives,

for example, successions under the law of causality, but

he adds to this causality his own consciousness of

voluntary effort. He perceives objects under the law

of extension, but he has little conception of an exten-

sion which should overpass his own power of traversing

it. The child personifies the stone that hurts him; the

childhood of superstition, whose genius is multiplicity,

personifies the laws of nature as gods; the childhood

of philosophy, whose genius is unity, makes the world

itself a living, breathing animal, whose body nature is,

and God the soul."

Thus it is that to the communities in which the Ṛishis

dwell a multitude of personalities manifest themselves,

in rain, in fire, in wind, in storms, and in the sun.

They stand above and round about the people, in

ever-varying aspects, powerful to befriend or to injure

them.

Sky and Earth are the father and mother of gods

and men. Aditi, the illimitable expanse, is the mother

of chiefs and heroes. Mitra, presiding over the day,

wakes men and bids them bestir themselves betimes,

and stands watching all things with unwinking eye.

Varuṇa, ruling the night, prepares a cool place of rest

for all that move, fashions a pathway for the sun, sends

his spies abroad in both the worlds, knows every wink

of men's eyes, cherishes truth and hates a lie, seizes the

evil-doer with his noose, and is prayed to to have mercy

10

THE PHILOSOPHY

Chap. I. on the sinful. Youthful, lustrous, and beautiful, the

Aśvins go out in their golden car before the dawn, with

health and wealth for man. Ushas, the Dawn, the

daughter of the sky, untouched with age, but bringing

age to men, dispels the darkness, drives away the

lurking enemy, visits every house, wakes the sleepers,

sends the labourers afield, and makes the birds to fly

aloft. Agni, the fire-god, of manifold birth, the off-

spring of the fire-drills, fed with sacrificial butter, bears

the oblation aloft to the gods, brings the gods to the

sacrifice, and is generally internunciary between gods

and men. Sūrya, the sun-god, proceeds through the

sky in his chariot with seven mares, seeing all things,

looking down upon the good and evil works of men.

Indra, ruling the firmament, overthrows Vritra, the

enemy that obscures the brightness of the sky, splits

up the clouds with his thunderbolt, sends down the

rain upon the earth, restores the sun to the heavens,

protects the Aryan colour, and destroys the dark and

degraded Dasyus, godless, prayerless, uninformed of

sacrificial rites. Parjanya, the thunderer, scatters

showers from his waterskin, and fills the earth and sky

with fatness. "The winds blow, the lightnings play,

plants spring up, the sky fructifies, the glebe teems

for the good of all, as Parjanya visits the earth with

moisture." The Maruts, the personified dust-storms,

armed with lightnings, clothed with rain, make dark-

ness in the day, water the earth, and mitigate the heat.

Soma, the mountain milk-weed, invigorates the gods,

exhilarates mankind, clothes the naked, heals the sick,

gives eyes to the blind. With Yama, the regent of the

dead, the departed dwell in happiness with the fore-

fathers of their tribes.

These and many others are the luminous beings that

stand around them, and require to be flattered with

hymns, to be fed with butter, to be refreshed with

soma-juice, that they may become friendly and fatherly,

The spiritual instinct languishes in the absence

of moral aspiration.

and may send rain, food, cattle, children, and length of

days to their worshippers. As yet these worshippers

feel themselves at once with the things around them;

roused to work or fight in the glare and heat of the

long bright day, by the freshness of the dawn and

the harsh notes of tropicai birds; resting as best they

may in the starlit night, seldom silent, for the most

part resonant with monotonous croakings from the

marsh, shrill with the crickets on grass and plant and

tree, and not without peril from the violence of prowling

savages from the adjacent jungle. There is little of

moral or spiritual significance in this propitiation of

the forces of nature. A sinner is for the most part

nothing else than a man that fails to pay praise, and

prayer, and sacrifice to the deities, often only the dark-

skinned savage that infests the Indo-Arian village.

The good man is he that flatters, feeds, and wins the

favour of the gods.

δῶpa θeoîs πɛîθɛι, δῶp’ aiδoíoιs βασιλῆas.

The gods eat the oblations, giving in return the good

things of life, rain to the arid fields, food, cattle, chariots,

wealth, children, health, a hundred years of life. Life

is as yet no burden to them; there is nothing of the

blank despair that came in later with the tenet of

metempsychosis and the misery of every form of sen-

tient life. Pleasures are looked for in this world; land

is to be had for the conquest; their harvests are enough

for the wants of all; their flocks and herds are many;

and pleasures are looked for again in the after-life in

the body in the kingdom of Yama. As among other

undeveloped races, the sacrifices are offered as propitia-

tory presents, as compensations for liturgic errors, and

as the necessary subsistence of the gods that enables

them to watch over the well-being of mankind. This is

the persuasion that prevailed into later times, and thus

it appears in the Bhagavadgītā: “Prajāpati of old

12

THE PHILOSOPHY

Chap. I.

created beings with their rites of sacrifice, and said,

Hereby shall you propagate yourselves: this shall be to

you the cow of plenty. Sustain with this the gods,

and let the gods sustain you: supporting each other in

turn, you shall attain the highest happiness. Fed with

sacrifice, the gods shall give you the food that you

desire. He that gives them nothing and eats the food

they give, is a thief indeed. The good who eat the

leavings of the sacrifice are loosed from their guilt, but

they that cook for themselves alone, and not for the

gods, eat sin. Living things are made of food; the food

proceeds from rain; the rain proceeds from sacrifice."

The Vedic wor-

ship becomes

mechanical.

This worship of the personified powers of nature

with a view to material benefits gradually hardened

into a series of rites to be performed by the priest-

hood. Each sacrifice came to operate in a blind and

mechanic way towards the production of a specified

result. The sequence of the fruit upon the performance

of the function presented itself as part of the fixed suc-

cession of events. Minute rules were framed for every

step of the sacrificial procedures, and explanations in-

vented to give to every implement and every act its

several symbolic import. Expiatory formulas were

provided to make up for inadvertences and omis-

sions which might otherwise frustrate the purposes of

the initiated votary and the priestly experts he em-

ployed. In this process lies the transition from the

religion of the Mantras, the hymns, the spontaneous

effusions of the primitive seers or Rishis, to the religion

of the Brāhmanas, the petrified ceremonial and formal

symbolism of the liturgists. This later form of Vedic

religion received the name of the Karmakāṇḍa, or ritual

department of the Vedas. In the course of time it

came to be held that the sacrifices performed without

knowledge of their theologic import produced their

desired effect—some material good, the birth of children,

the prolongation of life, a series of successes in tribal

feuds, and the like; leading the worshipper at the

highest by the lunar path to a sojourn in the paradise

of the deities, to be followed by a return to a fresh

embodiment. Performed with proper insight into their

theologic significance, they raised the votary after death

along the solar path into the mansion of the supreme

divinity, the sphere of Brahmā, there to reside till the

close of the passing æon.

But in the midst of this life of the primitive Hindu

in communion with the gods of nature, there are discernible the first stirrings of reflection. Questions

to the origin of earth and sky. Sometimes they said

they were made by the gods, or by one or other of the

gods, working after the fashion of a human artificer.

At other times they said the gods begot them. One of

the Rishis asks about the earth and sky, "Which of

these was first, and which was later? You wise, which

of you knows?" Another asks, "What was the forest,

that abide and wear not out, while the days and many dawns

have worn away?"1 In one hymn earth and sky are

the work of Viśvakarmán. In another it is Hiranya-

garbha, the Golden Germ, that arose in the beginning,

the lord of things that are, that establishes the sky and

the earth, that is the giver of life and breath. In

another it is Varuṇa, either alone or associated with

Mitra, who fixes the heavens, measures out the earth,

and dwells as ruler in all the worlds. Agni is some-

times the son of Earth and Sky; at other times he

is said to have stretched out the earth and sky, to

have inlaid the sky with stars, and to have made all

that flies, or walks, or stands, or moves. In other

1 Rigveda x. 31, 7. The question is answered in the Taittirīya-brāhmaṇa ii. 8, 9 : Brahman—the

Self that permeates and vitalises

all things and all forms of life—

was the forest, Self the tree from

which they cut out the earth and

sky. See Muir's Sanskrit Texts,

vol. v. p. 32.

14

THE PHILOSOPHY

Chap. I.

places it is Indra that has begotten the sun, the sky, the dawn; that has set up lights in the sky, that up-holds the two worlds, the waters, the plants, the hills, and the sky.

"What poet now, what sage of old,

The greatness of that god hath told,

Who from his body vast gave birth

To father sky and mother earth ?

Who hung the heavens in empty space,

And gave the earth a stable base,

Who framed and lighted up the sun,

And made a path for him to run."

Elsewhere it is Soma, the deified moon-plant, that generates the earth and sky, that puts light into the sun, and stretches out the atmosphere. In another hymn Aditi, the endless visible expanse, is all that is :

"Aditi is sky, Aditi is air, Aditi is mother, father, son.

Aditi is all the gods, and is the five tribes of men.

Aditi is whatever has been born, Aditi is whatever shall be born."

The five tribes of men are the Brāh-mans, Kshatriyas, and Vaiśyas, the priestly, military, and agricultural orders, more or less of Aryan extraction, the Śūdras, or indigenous serfs and slaves grafted into the Hindu communities, and the Nishādas, or tribes of unreclaimed barbarians outside the Hindu pale.

In Rigveda x. 72, 2 we read : "Brahmanaspati has forged these births of the gods, as a blacksmith fans his flame : in the primal age of the gods entity came forth out of nonentity."

The Purusha-sūkta.

In the Purushasūkta, Rigveda x. 90, the world is made,—the Rik, the Sāman, and the Yajush, the three Vedic aggregates, the Brāhman, Rājanya, Vaiśya, and Śūdra, the four orders of people in the Hindu pale, are produced,—out of Purusha, the highest deity, the personality that permeates all living things, offered up by the gods, the Sādhyas and the Rishis, as a sacrificial

1 Muir's Metrical Translations from Sanskrit Writers, p. 173.

victim. Here the idea of the emanation of the world

from a divine spirit internal to all embodied sentiencies

is presented in a form gross, obscure, and almost unin-

telligible to the modern mind. “ Purusha has a thousand

heads, a thousand eyes, a thousand feet. He compasses

the earth on every side, and stands ten fingers’ breadth

beyond. Purusha is all this; he is that which has been,

and that which is to be: the lord also of immortality,

and the lord of that which grows up with food. Such

is his greatness, and Purusha is more than this: one

quarter of him is all existing things, three-quarters

that which is immortal in the sky.” It will be hereafter

necessary to return to this hymn, as it contains a por-

tion of the mythologic imagery of the subsequent Vedic

philosophy of the Upanishads, and to exhibit its natural

interpretation in accordance with that philosophy by

Sāyaṇa, or, as he is otherwise known, the schoolman

Mādhavāchārya.

Meanwhile, to proceed to another hymn. The effu-

sions of awakening reflection reach their highest energy

in the celebrated Nāsadīyasūkta, Rigveda x. 129. It is

in this hymn that is first suggested the primitive type

of Indian thought, the thesis of all the Upanishads,

viz., the emanation of the world and of all the forms of

life that successively people it, out of the sole reality,

the Self that permeates and vitalises all things, through

the agency of the unreality that overspreads it, the self-

feigned fiction, the cosmical illusion, Māyā. “ It was

not entity, nor was it nonentity,” says the Rishi. The

cosmical illusion neither is nor is not; it is a self-feigned

fiction, a spurious semblance of being, for it is Self

alone that is. And yet it is not merely nothing, for

then the world of experience would not be here and

everywhere, for living souls to pass through. “ No air

was then, no sky above.” In the state of things in

which the various spheres of experience and the sen-

tient lives that inherit them have not yet reappeared

16

THE PHILOSOPHY

Chap. I. from their last disappearance into the fontal, spiritual

essence, in the infinite series of æons, there is as yet

nothing thinkable, nothing nameable. “What shrouded

all ? where ? in the receptacle of what ? Was it water,

the unfathomable abyss ?” Water, be it noted, became

in the later philosophy of the Brāhmans one of the

many names of the inexplicable principle of unreality,

the world-fiction. “Death was not then, nor immor-

tality.” These are things that have no meaning in the

sole life of the undifferenced Self. “There was no dis-

tinction of day or night. That One breathed without

afflation, self-determined : other than, and beyond it,

there was naught.” This one, the all, is the sole reality,

the aboriginal essence, the undifferenced Self, the Brah-

man or Ātman of the later Hindu quietist. “Darkness

there was, wrapped up in darkness. All this was un-

differenced water. That one that was void, covered with

nothingness, developed itself by the power of self-

torture. Desire first rose in it, the primal germ : this

sages seeking with the intellect have found in the heart

to be the tie of entity to nonentity.” The Self in its

earliest connection with the cosmical illusion becomes

the creative spirit, the Īśvara of the philosophy of the

Upanishads. The creative spirit is said in the Taittirīya

Upanishad to perform self-torture, to coerce itself, as

the scholiasts say, to rigorous contemplation, to a pre-

vision of the world that is to be, and this prevision is

its desire to project the spheres, and to part itself illu-

sively into all the innumerable forms of life that are

to pass through them. “The ray stretched out across

these, was it above or was it below? There were gene-

rating forces, there were mighty powers; a self-deter-

mined being on this side, an energy beyond. Who

indeed knows? who can say out of what it issued,

whence this creation? The gods are on this side of its

evolution : who then knows out of what it came into

existence ? This creation, whether any made it, or

any made it not ? He that is the overseer in the highest

heaven, he indeed knows, or haply he knows not.

Thus there is in the Vedic hymns a second line of

The hymns of movement, and this leads us to the primitive type of

Indian philosophy as it develops itself in the Upanishads.

The hymns made in generation after generation

by the Rishis, fashioned by them as a car is fashioned

by a wheelwright, or fabricated or generated by the

gods, were transmitted by memory from age to age, till

they became of inscrutable origin and authority, of no

mere personal authorship, but timeless revelations com-

ing forth afresh in each successive æon.

The period of the hymns or Mantras was followed, as has been seen,

by the period of the ritual and legendary compilations

known as the Brāhmaṇas.

Of these Brāhmaṇas, particular portions, to be repeated only by the recluses of

the forest, were styled Āraṇyakas, and to the Āraṇyakas

were attached the treatises setting forth as a hidden

wisdom the fictitious nature of the religion of rites as

part and parcel of the series of mere semblances,

the world-phantasmagory, and the sole reality of the all-

hidden wisdom, the philosophy of the Upanishads, in

contradistinction from the Karmakāṇḍa or ritual por-

tion, received the name of Jñānakāṇḍa, or gnostic por-

tion, of the Śruti, or everlasting revelation.

There were now virtually two religions, the Karmamārga, or path

of rites, for the people of the villages, living as if life

with its pleasures and pains were real, and the Jñāna-

mārga, or path of knowledge, for the sages that had

quitted the world and sought the quiet of the jungle,

renouncing the false ends and empty fictions of com-

mon life, and intent upon reunion with the sole reality,

the Self that is one in all things living.

After this brief notice of the period that preceded

the rise of philosophy in India, it will be necessary,

in the second place, to point out certain modifications of Hindu pale.

18

THE PHILOSOPHY

CHAP. I.

the primitive forms of faith, which followed the climatic degeneration of the Indo-Arian tribes, and the degra- dation of the race through intermixture with and assimilation to the melanous indigenes.

The worship of Śiva, the typical Yogin.

The worship of Śiva or Mahādeva is towards the close of this period introduced from the mountains of the north, the new deity being identified with the Rudra of the Vedic poets, the howling god of tempests, the father of the Maruts. In Hindu mythology Śiva often appears as the divine pattern of the fasting devotee, intent upon the attainment of ecstatic and magical powers through savage self-torture and self- induced vacuity, apathy, and trance. In this character he is the lord of Yogins, the great typical ascetic, living in the solitude of forest and mountain, sitting motion- less, with matted hair and body smeared with ashes, with breath suppressed, with vision withdrawn from all outward things, with every thought and feeling crushed within him. The practice of self-torture is alien to the cheerful spirit of the Vedic worshipper, aspiring to health and wealth and length of days, and an after-life in the realms of Yama amidst the fore- fathers of mankind.

Self-torture, thaumaturgy, and ecstasy, Yoga.

It was from the semi-savage races, with which they were coalescing, and which they were elevating, that they now adopted the practice of fixing the body and the limbs in statue-like repose, and inducing cataleptic rigidity and insensibility, as a higher state than the normal state of human life,—the practice known as Yoga,—union, ecstasy, the melting away of the consciousness into a state of characterless indetermination. The process seems to be accompanied with intervals of morbid nervous and cerebral exalta- tion, in which the self-torturer loses all distinction between perception and imagination, and appears to himself and others to be invested with superhuman powers. He becomes enabled to raise up the fore- fathers of the tribes before him by a mere act of will,

to animate a plurality of bodies at the same time, to control the elements, to walk through the air, to enter into the earth with the same ease as into water, to remain unhurt in fire, dry in water, and so forth.

"Among the lower races, and high above their level, morbid ecstasy, brought on by meditation, fasting, narcotics, excitement, or disease, is a state common and held in honour among the very classes specially concerned with mythic idealism."1

"Throughout the lower civilisation men believe, with the most vivid and intense belief, in the objective reality of the human spectres which they see in sickness or exhaustion, under the influence of mental excitement or of narcotic drugs. One main reason of the practices of fasting, penance, narcotising, and other means of bringing on morbid exaltation, is that the patients may obtain the sight of spectral beings, from whom they look to gain spiritual knowledge, and even worldly power."2

To the close of this period also, and through intermixture with the ruder indigenes, may probably be referred the revival of the ancient rite of burning the widow upon the funeral pile together with the corpse of the husband.

The actual incremation formed no part of the ancient Vedic ritual, which directs that the widow be placed upon the pile by the side of the deceased husband, and then led down again by the brother-in-law, by an adopted son, or by an old servant, and bidden to return to the living world.

The bow, or the sacrificial implements of the deceased, are to be burnt together with the corpse.

The fact that the widow thus ascended the pile is taken by Mr. Tylor to indicate the actual practice of the immolation of widows before the Vedic age, a practice that outlived the precept for its suppression, and came to a public revival under later influences.

With climatic degeneration, and with degradation through absorption of semi-savage

1 Tylor's Primitive Culture, vol. i. p. 277.

2 Ibid., 402.

20

THE PHILOSOPHY

CHAP. I.

blood, probably came the relapse into the primitive

Aryan rite of widow-sacrifice. Funeral human sacrifice

was a general rite of the Aryan nations while yet in a

rude and barbarous condition. "The episodes of the

Trojan captives laid with the horses and hounds on the

funeral pile of Patroklos, and of Evadne throwing her-

self into the funeral pile of her husband, and Pausanias’

narrative of the suicide of the three Messenian widows,

are among its Greek representatives. In Scandinavian

myth Baldr is burnt with his dwarf foot-page, his

horse, and saddle : Brynhild lies on the pile by her

beloved Sigurd, and men and maids follow after them

on the hell-way. Old mentions of Slavonic heathendom

describe the burning of the dead with clothing and wea-

pons, horses and hounds, and, above all, with wives."1

Polyandry.

Other marks of degradation are the polyandry of

Draupadī, the fierce blood-thirst of Bhīma, and other

savage incidents in the Mahābhārata. Polyandry is one

of the usages of the ruder races the Indo-Arians en-

croached upon, and received as serfs, as subjects, and

as neighbours, prevailing in Tibet, in the Himalayan

and sub-Himalayan regions under Tibetan influence, in

the valley of Kashmir, and in the far south of the

peninsula among the Tudas of the Nīlgiri hills, the

Coorgs of Mysore, and the Nayars of Malabar.

Beliefs in the

migration of

the soul, and

the misery of

every form of

life.

But of all the marks of this degradation of national

type, the most noteworthy is the growing belief in me-

tempsychosis, and the assertion of the misery of every

form of sentient life,—a belief and assertion with which

later Indian literature is replete to saturation. It is

this expectation of a renewal of a life of misery in body

after body, in age after age, and æon after æon, and the

feverish yearning after some means of extrication from

this black prospect, that is, as will be seen, the first

motive to Indian speculation. The sum and substance,

it may almost be said, of Indian philosophy, is from

1 Primitive Culture, vol. i. p. 419.

OF THE UPANISHADS.

21

first to last the misery of metempsychosis, and the

mode of extrication from it. Of this fact the student

of Indian philosophy should never for a moment lose

sight, or he will lose his way in what will then seem to

him a pathless jungle of abstractions.

The doctrine of transmigration formed no part of the

faith of the earlier Vedic worshipper. The ancient

poets had looked forward to a second life in the body,

among the fathers of their tribes, and in the realms of

Yama. As to punishments in a future state they are

silent. In the later period of Vedic religion,1 the period

of petrified forms already referred to, a passage of the

Śatapathabrāhmaṇa relates how Bhrigu, the son of

Varuṇa, visiting the four uttermost parts of the world,

saw men cut into pieces and eaten by others. The

eaters being asked the meaning of this by Bhrigu, said

that they were revenging upon their victims the wrongs

they had suffered at their hands in the former world.

This marks the first beginning of the expectation of

penal retribution in a future state of being. The doc-

trine of metempsychosis, a belief widely spread among

the lower races of men, coming slowly and surely to

lay hold of the Hindu mind, this penal retribution

came to be expected in a series of embodiments in

vegetal, animal, human, and extra-human shapes. Each

living soul was to pass from body to body, from grade

to grade, from sphere to sphere of life, in obedience to

a retributive operation by which suffering followed

evil-doing with the blind and fatal movement of a

natural law. As the life has been, such will the next

embodiment be in the series of lives, the present and

the future with their pains and transitory pleasures

being the outcome of what the soul has done in its

anterior embodiments. The series of lives has had no

beginning, and shall have no end, save to the perfected

sage finally resolved into the fontal essence of the uni-

1 See Muir's Sanskrit Texts, vol. v. p. 322.

22

THE PHILOSOPHY

Chap. I. verse. A life of such and such experiences follows

from works of such and such a nature, good works

sending the soul upwards in the scale of embodiments

into a life human, superhuman, or divine, and evil

works sending the soul downwards into bestial, insect,

vegetal, penal, embodiments in this world, or in a

nether world of torture. In this world, above, below,

there is no place of rest; paradises and purgatories are

but stages in the endless journey. In every state there

is nothing to expect but vanity, vexation, and misery.

Omnis creatura ingemiscit. There is nothing to look for

but grief and pain, broken at best with pleasures them-

selves fleeting, empty, and unsatisfying: nothing to

look for but sickness, decay, the loss of loved ones,

death, and the fatal recurrence of fresh birth, through

an endless succession of embodiments. Each present

suffering, intolerable as it is, is the precursor to another

and another, through lives without end. The very

No true help from the gods. Pain in paradise.

merit that wins a sojourn in a paradise or the rank of

a divinity must sooner or later be exhausted, for the

bankrupt soul to descend to a lower sphere. The plea-

sures of the paradise themselves are tainted with the

fear of their expiry, and with the inequalities of the

inmates of the paradise.

"The happier state

In heaven, which follows dignity, might draw

Envy from each inferior."

The soul floats helpless along the stream of lives, like

a gourd on the surface of a river. A stream of lives,

wave upon wave—

"Labitur et labetur in omne volubilis ævum."

There is now no longer for the Hindu the cheering

prospect of an after-life with his fathers, but the dreary

vista lies before him of death after death, to be born

that he may suffer and may die, to be born again that

he may suffer and may die again, and this to endless

ages,—to die and go he knows not whither, perhaps

into an ephemeral insect life, perhaps into penal fire,

perhaps into a higher life, but every life alike transitory,

and with another death beyond it. A fitting concomi-

tant to the practice of savage self-torture is this belief

of metempsychosis, with its attendant horror and de-

spair. “The rich, their children round them, are filled

with anguish at the hour of death, and like theirs is the

sorrow of those in a paradise upon the expiry of their

merits. At the hour of death great is the anguish of a

thriving prince, and like his is the sorrow of those in a

paradise upon the expiry of their merits. In the para-

dise itself they are dependent, and cannot help them-

selves. The sorrow of the celestial sojourners at the

loss of their merits, is like the sorrow of the rich at the

loss of their riches. In the performance of rites there

is pain, in the fruition of the recompense of those rites

there is pain, upon the expiry of the recompense there

is the direful pain of fresh birth into the world. For

what shall the living soul pass into on its return from

paradise? shall it pass into a high, a middle, or a low

embodiment, or shall it be born into a place of punish-

ment?”1 The series of lives of misery is without

beginning no less than without end, and no one knows

what he has done in the far past and laid up for the

future. Birth from works and fresh works from new

birth, as plant from seed and seed from plant, and who

shall assign the priority to either? In the never-ceas-

ing onward flow of things there is no longer anything

more than a seeming perpetuity for the gods themselves,

and many thousand Indras are said to have passed

away as æon has followed æon. The Hindu looks to

the flow of lives through which he has passed, to the

flow of lives through which he has to pass, till he can

find no fixity or stability in any kind of world. All

things are passing, and passing away; and what re-

mains? anything or nothing? Here we have, as will

1 Ātmapurāṇa xvi. 91–95.

24

THE PHILOSOPHY

Chap. I. be shortly seen, the first point of transition to the

metaphysical era. Something must be found that shall

be fixed and changeless in the midst of all this change;

some place of rest must be provided to limit this vista

of restless misery and migration.

In the Upanishads the tenet of transmigration is

already conspicuous. Thus in the Chhāindogya we

read: "Whatever these creatures are in this world,

lion, or wolf, or boar, or worm, or moth, or gnat, or

mosquito, that they become again and again." And

again: "Those whose life has been good will quickly

attain a new embodiment—embodiment as a Brāhman,

a Kshatriya, or a Vaiśya. Those whose life has been

evil will quickly pass into an evil embodiment—em-

bodiment as a dog, or a hog, or a Chandāla." In the

post-Vedic literature the nature of the retributive em-

bodiments is treated of in minute and fanciful detail.

Thus, in the twelfth book of the laws of the Mānavas,

it is said: "The greatest sinners, after passing through

terrible regions of torture for long periods of years, pass

into the following embodiments: The slayer of a Brāh-

man enters into the body of a dog, a boar, an ass, a

camel, a bull, a goat, a sheep, a stag, a bird, a Chandāla,

or a Pukkaśa, according to the proportion of his guilt;

a Brāhman that drinks strong drinks shall enter into

the body of a worm, an insect, a moth, or a fly that

feeds on ordure, or of a noxious animal. A thievish

Brāhman shall pass thousands of times into the bodies

of spiders, snakes, chameleons, crocodiles, and of malig-

nant vampires."1 And then follows a long series of

other penal states of life, proportioned to the guilt of

the agents that are to pass through them.

The belief in Mr. Tylor2 has shown how widely the belief has

metempsycho- prevailed among semi-savage tribes, of the passage of

sis prevalent the human soul into the trunks of trees and the bodies

among the of

lower races of mankind.

1 Mānavadharmaśāstra xii. 54, sqq.

2 Primitive Culture, vol. ii. pp. 6, sqq.

of animals. The Sonthals are said to believe the souls

of the good to enter into fruit-bearing trees. The

Powhattans believed the souls of their chiefs to pass

into particular wood-birds, which they therefore spared.

The Tlascatans of Mexico thought that the souls of

their nobles migrated after death into beautiful singing-

birds, and the spirits of plebeians into beetles, weasels,

and other insignificant creatures. The Zulus of South

Africa are said to believe the passage of the dead into

snakes, or into wasps and lizards. The Dayaks of

Borneo imagine themselves to find the souls of the

dead, damp and bloodlike, in the trunks of trees.

The belief in the passage of the soul into trees, and animals,

and fresh human bodies having no place in Vedic

literature prior to the Upanishads, it is reasonable to

suppose the Hindus to have taken it from the indi-

genes, in the course of their absorption of indigenous

blood.

It is well known that metempsychosis was one of

the beliefs of the ancient Egyptians in regard to the

destination of the soul. The tenet connects itself with

a belief in the fore- as well as the after-life of the

sentient and thinking principle. From the Egyptians

it is adopted at intervals into the Greek philosophy.

It first appears in the teaching of Pythagoras. Empc-

docles fancies that the blood he has shed in an earlier

form of life is crying out against him in this, and that

he is to be a fugitive and a wanderer upon the earth

for thirty thousand years. Exiled from the presence

of the gods, divine though it be, his soul is to pass

through a succession of penal embodiments, until it

regains its purity. It is to enter into the shapes of

plants and trees, of fishes and birds, and other animals,

some of these shapes being higher than others, as the

laurel among trees, the lion among the beasts. From

the Pythagoreans the doctrine is taken up by Plato,

as in unison with his belief of the pre-existence and

26

THE PHILOSOPHY

CHAP. I. post-existence of the soul, and as explanatory of the in-equalities of human fortune. Thus in the Phædon :—

“ Are we to suppose, says Socrates, that the soul, an invisible thing, in going to a place like itself, in-visible, pure, and noble, the true Hades, into the presence of the good and wise God, whither, if God will, my soul is also soon to go,—that the soul, I say, if this be her nature and origin, is blown away and perishes immediately on quitting the body, as the many say ? It is far otherwise, my dear Simmias and Cebes.

The truth is much more this, that if the soul is pure at its departure, it drags after it nothing bodily, in that it has never, of its own will, had connection with the body in its life, but has always shunned it, and gathered itself unto itself; for this avoidance of the body has been its constant practice. And this is nothing else than that it philosophises truly, and practises how to die with ease. And is not philosophy the practice of death ?

“ Certainly.

“ That soul, I say, itself invisible, departs to a world invisible like itself—to the divine, and immortal, and rational. Arriving there, its lot is to be happy, released from human error and unwisdom, fears, and wild passions, and all other human ills, and it dwells for all future time, as they say of the initiated, in the society of the gods. Shall we say this, Cebes, or say otherwise ?

“ It is so, said Cebes, beyond a doubt.

“ But do you think the soul will depart in perfect purity if it is polluted and impure at the time it quits the body, as having always been the companion and servant of the body, in love with and fascinated by it, and by the bodily desires and pleasures, until it comes to think that nothing is true but that which has a bodily shape, which a man may touch, and see, and eat, and drink, and gratify his sensuality upon ; and if at the same time, it has been accustomed to hate, and

OF THE UPANISHADS.

27

fear, and shun the intelligible world, which is dark and

Chap. I.

invisible to the bodily eye, and can be attained only by

philosophy ?

"It cannot possibly, he replied.

"It is engrossed by the corporeal, which the continual

companionship with the body, and constant attention to

it, have made natural to it.

"Very true.

"And this, my friend, may be conceived to be that

ponderous, heavy, earthy element of sight, by which

such a soul is weighted and dragged down again into

the visible world, because it is afraid of the invisible

and of the world below, and prowls about tombs and

sepulchres, in the neighbourhood of which certain

shadowy apparitions of souls have been seen, souls

which have not departed clean and pure, but still hold

by the things of sight, and are therefore seen them-

selves.

"That is likely enough, Socrates.

"Indeed it is likely, Cebes; and these must be the

souls, not of the good, but of the evil, who are necessi-

tated to haunt such places in expiation of their former

evil way of life ; and they continue to wander until the

desire of the bodily element which still cleaves to them

is gratified, and they are imprisoned in another body.

And they are then most likely tied to the same natures

which they have made habitual to themselves in their

former life.

"What natures do you mean, Socrates ?

"I mean to say that men who have followed after

gluttony, and wantonness, and drunkenness, and have

had no thought of avoiding them, would put on the

shape of asses and animals of that sort. What do you

think ?

"What you say is exceedingly probable.

"And those who have preferred the portion of injus-

tice, and tyranny, and violence will put on the shape

28

THE PHILOSOPHY

Chap. I.

of wolves, or hawks and kites; or where else should

we say that they would go?

"No doubt, said Cebes, they pass into shapes such

as those.

"And it is pretty plain, he said, into what bodies

each of the rest would go, according to the similitude

of the lives that they have led.

"That is plain enough, he said.

"Even among them some are happier than others;

and the happiest in themselves and in the place they

migrate to, are those who have practised the social and

civil virtues that men call temperance and justice,

which are acquired by habit and exercise, without

philosophy and reflection.

"Why are they the happiest?

"Because they will be likely to pass into some gentle

social nature like their own, such as that of bees or

ants, or even back again into the form of man, and

moderate men would spring from them.

"That is possible.

"But none but he who is a philosopher or lover of

learning, and altogether clean and pure at departing, is

permitted to reach the gods."

In this place Plato approaches more nearly than in

any other passage in his Dialogues to the Oriental tenets

of the migration of the soul from body to body, and the

sole efficiency of supersensible thinking in disengaging

the soul from these successive lives of sense. For

Socrates, in the Phædon, it is philosophy alone that

can purify the soul, detach it from the body, and lift

it up into communion with the eternal and unchanging

archetypes. But the Platonic abstraction is a contem-

plation of the eternal ideas, the patterns after which

the visible world was moulded, the universal verities

discernible through the things of sense; not a Hindu

meditation on formless being, on the characterless Self,

nor a Buddhist meditation on the vacuity into which

OF THE UPANISHADS.

29

all things are resolvable ; and the Platonic after-life of

the free intelligence is a positive exercise of intellec-

tion, neither a Hindu absorption into the fontal essence,

nor a Buddhist extinction into the aboriginal nothing-

ness of things.

The thesis of universal misery is a natural sequel

of the doctrine of the migration of the soul. In his

Dialogues concerning Natural Religion, Hume has

painted for us the miseries of life in dark colours, but

these are not nearly dark enough for the Hindu. For

him, the miseries of his present life, hunger, thirst, and

faintness, weariness, care, sickness, bereavement, dying

pangs, are to repeat themselves in life after life, and

death after death, in endless iteration. The morbid

reverie of the hypochondriac is gaiety by the side of

this Indian pessimism, and this pessimism is the ever-

present thought, the very motive power of Indian

speculation.

" The whole earth, believe me, Philo, is cursed and pol-

luted. A perpetual war is kindled amongst all living

creatures. Necessity, hunger, want, stimulate the strong

and courageous ; fear, anxiety, terror, agitate the weak

and infirm. The first entrance into life gives anguish

to the new-born infant and to its wretched parent :

weakness, impotence, distress, attend each stage of that

life ; and it is at last finished in agony and horror.

" Observe too, says Philo, the curious artifices of

nature in order to embitter the life of every living

being. The stronger prey upon the weaker, and keep

them in perpetual terror and anxiety. The weaker,

too, in their turn, often prey upon the stronger, and

vex and molest them without relaxation. Consider

that innumerable race of insects, which either are bred

on the body of each animal, or, flying about, infix their

stings in him. These insects have others still less than

themselves which torment them. And thus, on each

hand, before and behind, above and below, every ani-

30

THE PHILOSOPHY

CHAP. I.

mal is surrounded with enemies, which incessantly seek

his misery and destruction.

"Man alone, said Demea, seems to be an exception

to this rule. For, by combination in society, he can

easily master lions, tigers, and bears, whose greater

strength and agility naturally enable them to prey

upon him.

"On the contrary, it is here chiefly, cried Philo, that

the uniform and equal maxims of nature are most ap-

parent. Man, it is true, can by combination surmount

all his real enemies, and become master of the whole

animal creation; but does he not immediately raise up

to himself imaginary enemies, the demons of his fancy,

who haunt him with superstitious terrors and blast every

enjoyment of life? His pleasure, as he imagines, be-

comes in their eyes a crime; his food and repose give

them umbrage and offence; his very sleep and dreams

furnish new materials to anxious fear; and even death,

his refuge from every other ill, presents only the dread

of endless and innumerable woes. Nor does the wolf

molest more the timid flock, than superstition does the

anxious breast of wretched mortals.

"Besides, consider, Demea, this very society by which

we surmount those wild beasts, our natural enemies,

what new enemies does it not raise to us? what woe

and misery does it not occasion? Man is the greatest

enemy of man. Oppression, injustice, contempt, con-

tumely, violence, sedition, war, calumny, treachery,

fraud; by these they mutually torment each other, and

they would soon dissolve that society which they had

formed, were it not for the dread of still greater ills

which must attend their separation.

"But though these external insults, said Demea,

from animals, from men, from all the elements which

assault us, form a frightful catalogue of woes, they are

nothing in comparison of those which arise within our-

selves, from the distempered condition of our mind and

OF THE UPANISHADS.

31

body. How many lie under the lingering torment of

CHAP. I.

diseases? Hear the pathetic enumeration of the great

poet—

“Intestine stone and ulcer, colic pangs,

Demoniac frenzy, moping melancholy,

And moonstruck madness, pining atrophy,

Marasmus, and wide-wasting pestilence.

Dire was the tossing, deep the groans : Despair

Tended the sick, busiest from couch to couch.

And over them triumphant Death his dart

Shook, but delayed to strike, though oft invoked

With vows, as their chief good and final hope.’

“The disorders of the mind, continued Demea,

though more secret, are not perhaps less dismal and

vexatious. Remorse, shame, anguish, rage, disappoint-

ment, anxiety, fear, dejection, despair; who has ever

passed through life without cruel inroads from these

tormentors? How many have scarcely ever felt any

better sensations? Labour and poverty, so abhorred by

every one, are the certain lot of the far greater number;

and those few privileged persons who enjoy ease and

opulence, never reach contentment or true felicity. All

the goods of life united would not make a very happy

man, but all the ills united would make a wretch indeed;

and any one of them almost (and who can be free from

every one?), nay, often the absence of one good (and who

can possess all?) is sufficient to render life ineligible.

“Were a stranger to drop on a sudden into this world,

I would show him, as a specimen of its ills, a hospital

full of diseases, a prison crowded with malefactors

and debtors, a field of battle strewed with carcases,

a fleet foundering in the ocean, a nation languishing

under tyranny, famine, or pestilence. To turn the gay

side of life to him, and give him a notion of its plea-

sures, whither should I conduct him? To a ball, to an

opera, to court? He might justly think that I was

only showing him a diversity of distress and sorrow.”

32

THE PHILOSOPHY

Chap. I.

The Indian schoolmen produce a very similar list 1

of human ills. The miseries that await the soul

in its migration from body to body, are threefold in

their nature. Death itself is no release from suffer-

ing, and the prospect is unending. There are first

the personal afflictions that attach to the body and

the mind, pains of the body arising from disordered

temperament, and pains of the mind proceeding from

lust, anger, avarice, fear, envy, stupefaction, despon-

dency, and severance from all the soul would fain cling

to. The whole head is sick and the whole heart faint.

These are the ills that, in the words of Hume, “ arise

within ourselves, from the distempered condition of the

mind and body.” Next, there is the series of miseries

that spring from the environment, injuries at the hands

of men, and evils from beasts and birds and snakes

and other creeping things, and hurts from plants and

trees and stocks and stones. These, in the list of Hume,

are the “external insults from animals, from men, from

all the elements.” Thirdly, there is the train of ills

proceeding from supernatural agency, the terrors of evil

beings and demoniacal possession. These are the

“imaginary enemies, the demons of man’s fancy, that

haunt him with superstitious terrors.”

To recapitulate : the period in which Indian philo-

sophy had its rise, is the period in which the original

worship of the forces of nature has given place to the

mechanical repetition of prescriptive usages and sacred

formulas. Side by side with the decay of living faith

in the personified elemental powers there has gone on

a degeneration of the Indo-Arian tribes, partly from

climatic influences, partly from intermixture with

the rude indigenes. This degradation of the national

type marks itself in the worship of the terrific Śiva,

1 The list is given as in the the SānkhyatattvaKaumudi.

three series of miseries are in

Sanskrit ādhyātmika, ādhibhautika, and ādhidaivika.

and in the practice of savage self-torture, and the production of morbid cerebral conditions; in the revival

of the primitive Aryan rite of widow-immolation; in the polyandry and Kshatriya savageries pictured in the

Mahābhārata ; and finally, and above all, in the ever-active belief in the migration of the soul, and in the

misery of every form of sentient life.

34

THE PHILOSOPHY

CHAPTER II.

THE QUEST OF THE REAL—BRAHMAN AND MAYA,

THE SELF AND THE WORLD-FICTION.

"A presence that disturbs him with the joy

Of elevated thoughts ; a sense sublime

Of something far more deeply interfused,

Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,

And the round ocean, and the living air,

And the blue sky, and in the mind of man ;

A motion and a spirit that impels

All thinking things, all objects of all thought,

And rolls through all things."—WORDSWORTH.

"Nature itself plainly intimates to us that there is some such abso-

lutely perfect Being, incomprehensible to our finite understandings, by

certain passions which it hath implanted in us, that otherwise would

want an object to display themselves upon ; namely, those of devout

veneration, adoration, and admiration, together with a kind of ecstasy

and pleasing horror."—CUDWORTH.

CHAP. II.

Fixity amidst

the flux of

things.

Looking behind them and before them, the Indian

sages, meditating in the solitude of the jungle, find that

the series of lives through which each sentient thing is

passing is flowing forward without a pause, like a river.

Is the river to lose itself at last in the sea? The sum

of all the several series of lives, and of all the spheres

through which the living soul proceeds, is also in per-

petual flow. The sum of migrating forms of life, and of

the spheres through which they migrate, is the ever-

moving world.

Everything in it is coming into being

and passing out of being, but never is. The sum of

lives and of the spheres of living things is not real, for

it comes and goes, rises and passes away, without ceas-

ing, and that alone is real that neither passes into being

nor passes out of being, but simply is. To be is to last, Chap. II. to perdure. What is there that lasts ?

Every one of the countless modes of life that perpetually replace each other is a new form of misery, Repose and peace amidst or at best of fleeting pleasure tainted with pain, and the miseries nothing else is to be looked for in all the varieties of of life. untried being. In every stream of lives there is the varied anguish of birth, of care, hunger, weariness, bereavement, sickness, decay, and death, through embodiment after embodiment, and through æon after æon. Evil thoughts, evil words, and evil deeds push the doer downward in the scale of sentiencies, and into temporary places of torment. Good thoughts, good words, and good deeds push the doer upwards into higher embodiments, and into temporary paradises. It is the same wearisome journey above and below, miseries and tainted pleasures that make way for new miseries, and no end to it all. Good no less than evil activity is an imperfection, for it only prolongs the stream of lives. Action is the root of evil. Is there nothing that rests inert and impassive, untouched with all these miseries of metempsychosis ?

Again, the scenes through which the sage finds himself to be migrating are manifold and varied, and present Unity amidst the plurality themselves in a duality of experience,—the subject on the one side, the object on the other. The more he checks the senses and strives to gaze upon the inner light, when he sits rigid and insensate seeking ecstasy, —the more this plurality tends to fade away, the more this duality tends to melt into a unity, a one and only being. A thrill of awe runs through the Indian sage as he finds that this pure and characterless being, this light within the heart, in the light of which all things shine, is the very Self within him, freed from the flow of experiences for a while by a rigorous effort of abstraction. A perfect inertion, a perfect abstraction, have enabled him to reach the last residue of all abstrac-

36

THE PHILOSOPHY

Chap. II.

tion, the fontal essence, the inner light, the light beyond

the darkness of the fleeting forms of conscious life.

These are

found at inter-

vals in sleep

without a

dream.*

Times there are, moreover, when he wakes from sleep

unbroken with a dream, and is aware that he has slept

at ease, untouched for a space with the miseries of

metempsychosis. Dreamless sleep, like ecstasy itself

is a transient union with the one and only being that

perdures, and does not pass away as all things else are

passing, that is inert and untouched with the miseries

of migration, that is beyond the duality of subject and

object, and beyond the plurality of the things of experi-

ence. Dreamless sleep is, like ecstasy, an unalloyed

beatitude; it is a state in which all differences are

merged, and for the sleeper the world has melted away.

His very personality has passed back into the imper-

sonality of the true Self; and if only this state could be

prolonged for ever, it would be a final refuge from the

miseries of life.

They are found

permanently

in union with

the character-

less Self,

Thus, then, that which only is, while all things else

come and go, pass, and pass away; that which is un-

touched with the hunger, thirst, and pain, and sorrow

that wait upon all forms of life; that which is one

while all things else are many; that which stands

above and beyond the duality of all modes of conscious-

ness, is the Self, the one Self within all sentien-

cies,

the spiritual principle that permeates and vitalises

all things, and gives life and light to all things

living, from a tuft of grass up to the highest deity.

There is one thing that is, and only one—the light

within, the light in which these pleasures and pains,

these fleeting scenes and semblances, come and go, pass

into and pass out of being. This primordial light,

this light of lights, beyond the darkness of the self-feigned

world-fiction, this fontal unity of undifferentiated being,

is pure being, pure thought, pure bliss. It is thought in

which there is neither thinker nor thing; bliss without

self-gratulation, bliss in which there is nothing that re-

joices and nothing rejoiced at ; the unspeakable blessed-

ness of exemption from vicissitude and misery. “All

things live upon portions of its joy.” “Who could

breathe, who could live, if there were not this bliss

within the ether in the heart ?” It is not an empty

abstraction; that the Indian mystic in his hour of ecstasy

knows well. It is positive and self-affirming; for, says

Śankarāchārya, the last residuum of all abstraction is

not nonentity but entity. It is the object1 of the

notion “I,” and is present to every soul. It is above

and beyond2 all modes of conscious thought. “Words

turn back from it, with the mind, not reaching it.” It

can only be spoken of as “ not this, not that,” spoken

of in negatives, and by unsaying what is said. “It is

thought,” says the Kena Upanishad, “by him that thinks

it not; he that thinks it knows it not; it is unknown to

them that know it, known to them that know it not.”

It is at once necessitated to thought and withheld from

positive conception: cognoscendo ignoratur et ignorando

cognoscitur.

Such is the Brahman, the ultimate spiritual reality

of primitive Indian philosophy, out of which, in its

everlasting union with its counterfeit, Māyā, the self-

feigning world-fiction, proceeds the phantasmagory of

metempsychosis. Avidyā, Māyā, Śakti, the illusion, the

fiction, the power that resides within the Self as the

future tree resides within the seed,3—it is out of this,

overspreading the one and only Self, that all things

living, from a tuft of grass to the highest deity, with

all the spheres through which they migrate, have ema-

nated to form a world of semblances. They are all

alike figments of this inexplicable world-fiction, the

cosmical illusion.4 Personal souls and their environ-

ments are fleeting and phantasmagorical, the dreams of

1 Ahampratyayavishaya, aham-

padapratyayalakshitārtha.

2 Sarvabuddhipratyayatita.

3 Vatakanikāyām vaṭa iva, Śan-

kara.

4 Vismaya, visvajanani śaktih.

38

THE PHILOSOPHY

Chap. II. the spirit of the world;1 and being such, they may be

left behind, if by any means the sage can wake to their

unreality, and find his true being in the original essence,

the one Self, the only light of life. If only he knows

it, he is already this Self, this Brahman, ever pure,

intelligent, and free.2 Pure as untouched by the world-

fiction, passionless, inert; intelligent as self-luminous,

giving light to all the movements of the minds of living

things; free as unembodied, exempt from the miseries

of metempsychosis.

Etymology of The original idea of the term Brahman is indicated

the word Brahman. in its etymology. It is a derivative of the root brih, to

grow, to increase. Thus the scholiast Ānandagiri, with

reference to a passage in which Brahman is identified

with one of its manifestations, the breath of life, says,

"Brahman is from brih, to grow, and every one knows

how the body grows by respiration and other functions."

And in another place, in his gloss on Śankara's com-

mentary on the Taittirīyaka Upanishad, "The term

Brahman comes from brih, to grow, to expand, and is

expressive of growth and greatness. This Brahman is

a vastness unlimited in space, in time, and in content,

for there is nothing known as a limit to it, and the term

applies to a thing of transcendent greatness." Perhaps

the earliest sense of the term was the plastic power at

work in the process of things, viewed as an energy of

thought or spirit, a power present everywhere unseen,

that manifests itself most fully in vegetable, animal,

and human life. The cause of all changes in the order

of metempsychosis, it is itself unchangeable. It has

nothing before it or after it, nothing within it or without

it.3 It transcends space and time, and every kind of

object.4 It is the uncaused cause of all, but in its real

nature, and putting the world-fiction and its figments

1 Jagadātman, i.e., Brahman manifesting itself in Īśvara.

2 Nityaśuddhabuddhamukta.

3 Tad etad brahmāpūrvam an-

varam anantaram aviśyam.

4 Deśakālavishayāticartin.

OF THE UPANISHADS.

39

out of view, it is, in the phrase of Śankara's commentary Chap. II.

on the Śvetāśvatara Upanishad, “neither cause nor not

cause, nor both cause and not cause.”

“It is,” in the words of the Kena Upanishad, “other Brahman incogitable and

than the known and above the unknown.” To quote ineffable.

the scholium of Ānandagiri, that which is other than

the knowing subject is either known or unknown, and

thus the text, by denying in regard to Brahman both

the known and the unknown, identifies Brahman with

the Self of the knowing subject.

“The eye reaches it not, speech reaches it not, thought

reaches it not: we know not, we understand not, how

one should teach it: it is other than the known, above

the unknown. Thus have we heard of the ancients,

who proclaimed it to us.

“That which is not uttered by the voice, that by which

the voice is uttered: know thou that that only is the

Self, and not that which men meditate upon as such.

“That which is not thought by the thought, that by

which the thought is thought: know thou that that

only is the Self, and not that which men meditate upon

as such.”

“Thought,” says Śankara in his exposition of this

text, “is the internal organ, mind, intelligence. Thought

is the inward sense or faculty that co-operates with all

the several organs of sense and motion. Thus the text,

‘Desire, volition, doubt, faith, patience and impatience,

and shame, and thought, and fear,—all this is that

inner sense.’ The inner sense presents itself only in

the form of desire, volition, and the other modifications,

Brahman-the and therefore a man cannot recognise with his inward

sense the intelligential light that gives light to those

modifications. This pure light actuates the inner sense

by irradiation ; and as this pure light or Self transcends

all objects of outer and inner sense, the inward sense

is incompetent to approach it. The inward sense can

only operate when enlightened by the intelligential

40

THE PHILOSOPHY

CHAP. II.

light within, and therefore it is that the expositors of Brahman speak of the mind and its modifications as permeated and objectivised by the Self within." In plain words, when we are told that it is the Self that thinks the thought, we are to understand, in the language of the Indian mysties, that it is the Self that gives the light to the mental modes in which they shine—that is, it is the Self that causes the otherwise unconscious modes to become the conscious modes of mind. To return to the text of the Kena Upanishad.

"That which one sees not with the eye, that by which the eyes see: know thou that that only is the Self, and not that which men meditate upon as such.

"That which one hears not with the ear, that by which the ear is heard : know thou that that only is the Self, and not that which men meditate upon as such.

"That which one breathes not with the breath, that by which the breath is breathed: know thou that that only is the Self, and not that which men meditate upon as such."

Similarly in the Brihadāranyaka Upanishad :-

"This same imperishable is that which sees unseen, hears unheard, thinks unthought, and knows unknown. There is no other than this that sees, no other than this that hears, no other than this that thinks, no other than this that knows. Over this imperishable the expanse is woven woof and warp.1

"As in dreamless sleep the soul sees, but sees not this or that, so the Self in seeing sees not; for there is no intermission in the sight of the Self that sees ; its vision is one that passes not away; and there is nothing second to that, other than that, apart from that, that it should see."

Brahman is pure thought, eternal, and objectless.

What is meant here is that the thought or intelligence with which the Self is one, is something beyond

1 The expanse is here a synonym for Māyā, the self-feigning world-fiction.

OF THE UPANISHADS.

41

the relation of subject and object;1 it is, in the words of

Rāmatīrtha's commentary on the Upadeśasāhasrī, an

eternal objectless cognition.2 The Self is said to be

omniscient, but the reader must not be misled; this

only means that it is self-luminous, that it gives light

to all things, and to all the modifications of the minds

of sentient beings. Withdraw the light of the Self,

the Indian sages say, and the whole process of things

will lapse into blindness, darkness, nothingness. The

omniscience of the Self is its irradiation of all things.3

To cite Ānandagiri,4 “ It is not literally, but by a figure

that the Self is said to be all-knowing. The cognitions

of the everyday thinker in the sensible world pre-

suppose faculties and organs; the knowledge that is

the essence of the idea or Self does not presuppose

faculties and organs, for in that case it could not exist,

as it does exist, in the state of dreamless sleep, in which

the functions of the faculties and organs have ceased.”

It will be well here to point out once for all that we

are to tread warily among these epithets of Brahman.

If we are to use the language of European philosophy,

we must pronounce the Brahman of the Upanishads to

be unconscious, for consciousness begins where duality

begins. The ideal or spiritual reality of Brahman is

not convertible with conscious spirit. On the contrary,

the spiritual reality that, according to the poets of the

Upanishads, underlies all things, has per se no cogni-

tion of objects ; it transcends the relation of subject

and object ; it lies beyond duality. It is true that these

poets speak of it as existence, intelligence, beatitude.

But we must be cautious. Brahman is not intelligence

in our sense of the word. The intelligence, the thought,

that is the Self and which the Self is, is described as

eternal knowledge, without objects, the imparting of

light to the cognitions of migrating sentiencies. This

1 Jnātrijneyabāvātirīta.

2 Nityam nircishayam jñānam.

3 Sarvāvabhāsakatra.

4 Sarvajñam brahmopacharyate.

42

THE PHILOSOPHY

Chap. II. thought is characterless and eternal; their cognitions are

charactered, and come and go. Brahman is beatitude.

But we must again be cautious. Brahman is not beatitude in the ordinary sense of the word. It is a bliss

beyond the distinction of subject and object, a bliss the

poets of the Upanishads liken to dreamless sleep. Brahman per se is neither God nor conscious God; and on

this it is necessary to insist, to exclude the baseless analogies to Christian theology that have sometimes been

imagined by writers, Indian and European. Be it then

repeated that the Indian philosophers everywhere affirm

that Brahman is knowledge, not that Brahman has

knowledge ; that this knowledge is without an object

known, and that omniscience is predicable of Brahman

only by a metaphor. If we were to misinterpret such

knowledge by the word “consciousness,” we should

still have to say that Brahma is consciousness, not that

Brahman has consciousness or is a conscious spirit.

To return to the text of the Bṛihadāraṇyaka.

“As in dreamless sleep the soul hears, but hears not

this or that, so the Self in hearing hears not; for there

is no intermission in the hearing of the Self that hears;

its audition is one that passes not away ; and there is

nothing second to that, other than that, apart from that,

that it should hear.

“As in dreamless sleep the soul thinks, but thinks

not this or that, so in thinking the Self thinks not; for

there is no intermission in the thought of the Self that

thinks; its thought is one that passes not away ; and

there is nothing second to that, other than that, apart

from that, that it should think.

“As in dreamless sleep the soul knows, but knows

not this or that, so in knowing the Self knows not; for

there is no intermission in the knowledge of the Self

that knows, for its knowledge is one that passes not

away ; and there is nothing second to that, other than

that, apart from that, that it should know.”

Brahman the pure light of characterless knowledge.

OF THE UPANISHADS.

43

When overspread with the self-feigning world-fiction,

the Self is that out of which all things and all forms

of life proceed. It is, in the words of the Munḍaka

Upanishad, that on knowing which all things are

known; in the words of the Chhāndogya, that by in-

struction in which the unthought becomes thought,

and the unknown known. As the Indian scholiasts

say: If we know Brahman we know all things: if we

know what clay is, we know what all the variety of

pots and pans are, that the potter fashions out of clay;

if we know what gold is, we know what all the varieties

of earrings, bracelets, and other trinkets are, that the

goldsmith fashions out of gold. Thus, to quote the

Chhāndogya Upanishad:-

"Śvetaketu was the grandson of Aruṇa. His father

Āruṇi said to him: Śvetaketu, thou must enter on thy

sacred studentship. None of our family, my dear son,

is unstudied, a Brahman only in lineage. Śvetaketu

therefore at the age of twelve repaired to a spiritual

preceptor, and at the age of four-and-twenty came home

after going through all the Vedas, conceited, pedantic,

and opinionated. His father said to him: Śvetaketu,

tell me, my son, since thou art so conceited, pedantic,

and opinionated, hast thou asked for that instruction

by which the unheard becomes heard, the unthought

thought, the unknown known?

"Holy sir, how is that instruction given?

"His father said: My son, as everything made of

clay is known by a single lump of clay, being nothing

more than a modification of speech, a change, a name,

while the clay is the only truth:

"As everything made of gold is known by a single

lump of gold, being nothing more than a modification

of speech, a change, a name, while the gold is the only

truth:

"As everything made of steel is known by a single

pair of nail-scissors, being nothing more than a modi-

44

THE PHILOSOPHY

Chap. II. fication of speech, a change, a name, while the steel is

the only truth:

" Such, my son, is that instruction."

Brahman is, as has been already seen, said to be

" existent, thought, bliss." In the Taittirīya Upanishad

the Self is said to be " truth, knowledge, infinity."

Śankarāchārya's remarks on this passage of the Tait-

tirīya will serve also to illustrate the foregoing extract

from the Chhāndogya. " Self," he says, " is truth ; Self

is knowledge ; Self is infinity. A thing is true if it is

neither more nor less than it is taken to be. It is false

if it is more or less than that. Hence every form of

derived or emanatory existence is fictitious, nothing

more than a modification of speech, a change, a name,

and the clay is the only truth. That which is being

found to be the only truth, the words ' the Self is truth '

negative all modification of the Self. It follows that

Brahman is the cause or fontal essence. It operates as

such, because it is the reality. Lest it should be sup-

posed that Brahman being that of which all things are

made, it must be unspiritual, like the potter's clay, the

text proceeds to say that the Self is knowledge. The

term knowledge is abstract, standing as an epithet of

Brahman together with truth and infinity. If know-

ledge meant here a subject knowing, the epithet would

be incompatible with the other two. If Brahman were

a knowing subject, it would be modified in its cogni-

tions, and how then could it be the truth ? A thing is

infinite when it cannot be limited at any point. If the

Self were a knowing subject, it would be limited by the

cognita and the cognitions. Another text says: That is

the infinite in which nothing else is known, and that is

the finite in which one knows something else. As pre-

dicated of the Self along with truth and infinity, know-

ledge is thus an abstract term. The words ' Self is

knowledge ' are intended at once to deny agency and

action, and to deny that the Self or Brahman is an

unspiritual thing such as the potter's clay in the familiar example. The same words 'Self is knowledge'

might be imagined to imply the finitude of Self, forasmuch as all the cognitions of everyday life are limited

or finite. The epithet 'infinite' is added to exclude this idea of finitude. The term infinite is negative,

refusing the presence of limits; the epithets truth and knowledge are positive, giving a sense of their own.

The knowledge of Brahman is nothing else than the essence of the Self itself, like the light of the sun, or

the heat of fire. It is the eternal essence of the Self, and does not depend on conditions foreign to itself, as

our experiences do."

These remarks must suffice for the present in regard to Brahman. The several elements of the cosmi-

cal conception of the poets of the Upanishads are so closely interfused, that it is not possible with any ingenuity

altogether to separate them for convenience of exposition. So far as may be, however, these elements must

be exhibited in successive order, proceeding from Brahman to Māyā; from Māyā to the union, from before all

time, between Brahman and Māyā; from this union to the resultant procession of migrating souls and of the

spheres of their migration, and the hierarchic emanations Īśvara, Hiranyagarbha, and Virāj, severally representing

the sums of living things in the three several states of dreamless sleep, of dreaming sleep, and of waking con-

sciousness; and finally reverting to the "fourth," so called in contradistinction to the three states or modes

of life, that is, to the original unity of characterless being or Brahman. Brahman per se is the principle

of reality, the one and only being; Self alone is, and all else only seems to be. This principle of reality, how-

ever, has been from everlasting associated with an inexplicable principle of unreality ; and it is from the

fictitious union of these principles, the one real, the other only a self-feigned fiction, that the spheres and

Chap. II.

Brahman the principle of reality. The co-eternal principle of unreality, Maya, the world-fiction.

46

THE PHILOSOPHY

Chap. II. the migrating forms of life, the external and internal world, proceed.

Māyā the illusion in every individual soul.

Māyā may be regarded both in parts and in the whole. Viewed in parts, it is the particular illusion that veils from each form of life its own true nature as the one and only Self. Under its influence every kind of sentient being is said to identify itself, not with the Self that is one and the same in all, but with its counterfeit presentment,1 the invisible body that accompanies it through its migrations, and the visible bodies that it animates successively. Thus every living thing is a fictitiously detached portion, an illusive emanation of Brahman. Māyā overspreads Brahman as a cloud overspreads the sun, veiling from it its proper nature, and projecting the world of semblances, the phantasmagory of metempsychosis. For every form of life, from the lowest to the highest, from a mere tuft of grass up to the highest deity, its own proper nature is veiled, and a bodily counterfeit presented in lieu of it, by the primeval illusion or self-feigning fiction, Avidyā or Māyā. Hence all individual existences, and the long miseries of metempsychosis, in the procession of the æons without beginning and without end; for the world is from everlasting, and every genesis of things is only a palingenesia. The procession of the æons is often likened to a succession of dreams. The world is often said to be the mind-projected figment of migrating souls.2 It is, says Śankarāchārya, only an emanation of the internal sense of sentient beings, and this is proved by the fact that the world is resolved back into their inner sense in their intervals of dreamless sleep.3 As emanating from such illusion, the world of me-

1 Technically styled its upādhi. The totality of Māyā is the upādhi of Īśvara. Portions of Māyā are the several upādhis of the jīvas or migrating souls.

āram eva jagat, manasy eva sush-upte pralayadarśanāt. Elsewhere the phrase manorijhrimbhitam.

2 Sarvam hy antaḥkaranavik- yamānatvam, na ttu vastutvam.

OF THE UPANISHADS.

47

tempsychosis has an existence, but this existence is

unreal.

Māyā, viewed as a whole, is the cosmical illusion, the

Māyā the illusion in all

self-feigning world-fiction, that is without beginning.1

souls, the un-

It is said to be “neither entity nor nonentity, nor both

reale emanatory

in one, inexplicable by entity and by nonentity, ficti-

principle of

tious, and without beginning.” It is not a mere

the world, co-

nothing, but a nescio quid. It is an illusion projected

eternal with

by illusion, an unreal unreality, the three primitive

Brahman.

elements of pleasure, pain, and indolence2 in co-

equality, overspreading the one and only Self from

everlasting. It is the sum of the illusions of all indi-

vidual souls, as a forest is an aggregate of trees. It is

the power, cognitive and active, of Īśvara, the artifex

opifexque mundi deus, the Archimagus, or Demiurgus,

who is the first emanation of Brahman. It is his power

of illusory creation, the power out of which proceed all

migrating souls and all that they experience in their

migrations. Brahman, or Self per se, is changeless,

but in union with Māyā becomes3 fictitiously the basis

of this baseless world, and underlies the world-fiction

out of which the ever-changing figment-worlds proceed

in æon after æon. From the reflection upon Māyā,

the world-fiction, of Brahman, the one and only Self,

proceeds the first and highest of all emanations, Īśvara,

the cosmic soul, the Demiurgus. Māyā4 thus pre-

exists with Brahman, but Brahman is not thereby any

the less the one and only being, in like manner as the

possibility of the future tree pre-exists in the seed of

the tree, without the seed becoming any the less a one

and only seed. Māyā is the indifferent aggregate of all

the possibilities of emanatory or derived existences,

pre-existing together with Brahman, as the possibility

1 Viśvamāyā, anādimāyā.

2 Trigunātmikā māyā, gunatrayasāmyam māyā tattvam, sukh-

duḥkhamohātmakaśeshaprapañ-

chā rūpā māyā.

3 Āvar tyopādāna.

4 Bhāvivatuarrikshakshaktimad vī-

jam svaśaktyā na sadritīyam kat-

hyate, tadvad brahmāpi na māyā-

suktya sadritīyam.

48

THE PHILOSOPHY

Chap. II.

of the tree pre-exists in the seed. Māyā is the ancillary associate of the Archimagus. Māyā, though unconscious, is said to energise in the evolution of the world through its proximity to the inert and impassive Brahman, as the unconscious iron is set in motion through its proximity to the loadstone. Māyā is that out of which, literally speaking, the world proceeds; it is said, by a figure of speech, to emanate from Brahman. Māyā is the literal, Brahman the figurative upādāna, or principle out of which all things emanate.

It is Māyā1 that presents the manifold of experience. The world, with its apparent duality of subject and object, of external and internal orders, is the figment of this fiction, the imagination of illusion. All that presents itself to the migrating soul in its series of embodiments, lies unreally above the real; like the redness or blackness of the sky, which is seen there though the sky itself is never red or black, like the waters of a mirage, like the visions of the dreaming phantasy, like the airy fabric of a daydream, like the bubbles on the surface of a stream, like the silver seen on the shell of a pearl-oyster, like the snake that the belated wayfarer sees in a piece of rope, like the gloom that encircles the owl amidst the noonday glare. All the stir of daily life, all the feverish pleasures and pains of life after life, are the phantasmagory of a waking dream. For the soul that wakes to its own nature these things cease to be, and, what is more, have never so much as been.

Brahman and Māyā eternally co-existent.

Brahman and Māyā have co-existed from everlasting, and their association and union is eternal. Apart from Avidyā or Māyā, Brahman is purely characterless and indeterminate,2 and is not to be regarded as the principle from which things emanate, and again, is not to be regarded as not that principle; nor is it to be affirmed to be both that principle and not that prin-

1 Nānātvpratyupasthāpikā 'vidyā.

2 Śankarāchārya on Śvetāśvatara Upanishad I, 3.

ciple at once, nor is it to be denied to be both. Self

per se is neither principium nor principiata. When

the world is said to emanate from Brahman, we are

always to understand that it proceeds, not from Brah-

man per se, but from Brahman reflected upon Māyā,1 or

fictitiously limited by the limitations of the world-

fiction. Māyā, in its totality, is the limitative coun-

terfeit of Brahman,2 or the power of Īśvara, the

Māyāvin, or Archimagus, or Demiurgus. The limita-

tions of the illimitable Brahman are derived from this

limitativ3e counterfeit—its limitations through which

it manifests itself as god, and man, and animal, and

plant, and so forth. It is through this union from

before all time with this inexplicable illusion, that

the one and only Self presents itself in the endless

plurality and diversity of transient deities, of migrating

spirits, and of the worlds through which they migrate.

It is through this union that the one and only Self is

present in every creature, as one and the same ether

is present in many water-jars, as one and the same sun

is mirrored on countless sheets of water. It is through

this union that the one and only Self permeates and

animates the world. In the words of Śankara:3 “The

image of the sun upon a piece of water expands with

the expansion, and contracts with the contraction, of

the ripples on the surface ; moves with the motion, and

is severed by the breaking, of the ripples. The reflec-

tion of the sun thus follows the various conditions of

the surface, but not so the real sun in the heavens.

It is in a similar manner that the real Self is reflected

upon its counterfeits, the bodies of sentient creatures,

and, thus fictitiously limited, shares their growth and

diminution, and other sensible modes of being. Apart

1Tad eva chaitanyam māy-

and sometimes to limit Brahman

prativimbitarūpena kāraṇam bha-

fictitiously.

vati. Ānandagiri on the Muṇ-

2Upādhi.

daka Upanishad. Māyā is some-

3In the introduction to his

times said to reflect Brahman,

Commentary on the Śvetāśvatara

Upanishad.

50

THE PHILOSOPHY

Chap. II. from its various counterfeits, the Self is changeless and

unvaried." The one and only Self is present in the heart

of every living thing, as one and the same face may be

reflected upon a succession of mirrors.1 Such are some

among the many images employed by the ancient

Indian philosophers, to illustrate the presence of one

spiritual essence in all the innumerable forms of living

things. Others will be met with in the sequel. With

almost the same imagery Plotinus speaks of the one life

in all things living, like the one light shining in many

houses, as if itself many, and yet one and undivided; the

one life shining into and vitalising all bodies, project-

ing pictures of itself, like one face seen upon a multi-

tude of mirrors. Elsewhere he says that we are one in

God, and again other than God, as the solar rays are one

with the sun and other than the sun. And with a like

simile Fichte: "In all the forms that surround me I

behold the reflection of my own being, broken up into

countless diversified shapes, as the morning sun, broken

in a thousand dewdrops, sparkles towards itself."

The hierarchy

of emanations

out of Brah-

man and

Māyā.

Māyā, then, has fictitiously associated itself to Brah-

man from everlasting. In the series of æons, without

beginning and without end, the forms of life have at

the beginning of each æon emanated in the following

hierarchic succession.

Īśvara, the

Demiurgus, or

world-evolv-

ing deity, the'

universal soul.

First appears Īśvara, the Māyin or Māyāvin, the

arch-illusionist, the world-projecting deity, himself a

figment of the cosmic fiction, himself an unreality ;

an unreality for the philosopher intent on the one and

only truth, relatively a reality for the multitude, to

whom the world exists with all its possibilities of pain.

The totality of illusion is the body or counterfeit pre-

sentment of the Archimagus, out of which all things

emanate.2 Illusion, the world-fiction, may be viewed

1 Ādarśasthamukham iti yadṛat.

emanate, the principle of emana-

2 Kāranasarīra = the cosmic

body, the body out of which things

OF THE UPANISHADS.

51

in its several parts in the minds of the migrating

sentiencies, or in its totality as the sum of pleasures,

pains, and indolences. The Demiurgus, then, is the

Self with the totality of illusion as its counterfeit

presentment; the Self proceeding into fictitious mani-

festation, as the worlds and the migrating sentiences

that pass through them. The illusion of each of these

sentiencies veils from it its true nature as the one and

only Self; the illusion of all sentiences taken together

veils from them all their true nature as the one and

only Self. The Demiurgus is identified with the sum of

sentiencies in the state of dreamless sleep. His body,

the principle of emanations, as the sum of the bodies

of living things in the state of dreamless sleep, is the

beatific vesture.1 The Demiurgus is one, the sentien-

cies are many, as a forest is one and as the trees in it

are many; as a piece of water is one and as the drops

of water in it are many; and the one Demiurgus and

the many dreamless, sleeping sentiences are one and

the same being, viewed now as whole, and now as

parts. The same Brahman, the one and only Self, is

present wholly in the Demiurgus, and present wholly

in each dreamless, sleeping sentiency; as the same ether,

one and undivided, is present to the whole forest and

present to each and every tree; or as the same sky, one

and undivided, is reflected upon the whole watery sur-

face and on each portion of that surface.

The Archimagus is said to be omniscient, as being Īś'vara om'niscient, the

the witness of all lifeless and all living forms of exist-

ence. As ruling all migrating souls, and as giving to

each its dole of pleasures and pains in conformity with

the retributive fatality inherent in the process of things,

he is Īśvara, the lord. As setting all souls in motion,

and thus acting through them, he is the actuator. As

dwelling in the heart of each and every living soul, and

1 Ānandamayakosha,the wrapper

sists of the undifferenced beati-

of the migrating soul, that con-

tude of dreamless sleep.

52

THE PHILOSOPHY

CHAP. II.

fashioning its every mental mode, he is the internal ruler.

"The lord of all, himself through all diffused,

Sustains and is the life of all that live."

In this last character the Demiurgus, the highest emanation of Brahman, is described in the Bṛihadār-anyaka Upanishad:-

"That which dwells in earth, inside the earth, and the earth knows not, whose body the earth is, which actuates the earth from within,—that is thy Self, the internal ruler, immortal.

"That which dwells in water, inside the water, and the water knows not, whose body the water is, which actuates the water from within,—that is thy Self, the internal ruler, immortal.

"That which dwells in fire, inside the fire, and the fire knows not, whose body the fire is, which actuates the fire from within,—that is thy Self, the internal ruler, immortal.

"That which dwells in air, inside the air, and the air knows not, whose body the air is, which actuates the air from within,—that is thy Self, the internal ruler, immortal.

"That which dwells in wind, inside the wind, and the wind knows not, whose body the wind is, which actuates the wind from within,—that is thy Self, the internal ruler, immortal.

"That which dwells in the sky, inside the sky, and the sky knows not, whose body the sky is, which actuates the sky from within,—that is thy Self, the internal ruler, immortal.

"That which dwells in the sun, inside the sun, and the sun knows not, whose body the sun is, which actuates the sun from within,—that is thy Self, the internal ruler, immortal.

"That which dwells in moon and stars, inside the moon and stars, and the moon and stars know not, whose body the moon and stars are, which actuates the

OF THE UPANISHADS.

53

moon and stars from within,—that is thy Self, the

Chap. II.

internal ruler, immortal.

"That which dwells in all living things, inside the

living things, and all living things know not, whose

body all living things are, which actuates all living

things from within,—that is thy Self, the internal

ruler, immortal.

"That which dwells within mind, inside the mind,

and the mind knows not, whose body the mind is,

which actuates the mind from within,—that is thy

Self, the internal ruler, immortal.

"That which sees unseen, hears unheard, thinks un-

thought upon, knows unknown; that other than which

there is none that sees, none that hears, none that

thinks, none that knows,—that is thy Self, the internal

ruler, immortal."

It must be observed that this conception of the

Īśvara not a Demiurgus or world-projecting deity is not theistic.

He is nothing else than the totality of souls in dream-

less sleep, present in the heart of every living thing ;

himself only the first figment of the world-fiction,

Īśvara the first figment of the world-

resolved into the characterless unity of Brahman at

fiction.

the close of each age of the world, and issuing out

that unity at each palingenesia in the eternal proces-

sion of the æons. He is eternal, but every migrating

soul is co-eternal with him, a co-eternal and only

equally fictitious emanation of the one and only Self.

He can hardly be conceived to have any separate per-

sonality, apart from the souls he permeates and vivifies ;

and his state is not one of consciousness, but that of

the pure bliss of dreamless sleep. One with the sum

of living beings in that state, he is yet said to allot to

each of them their portion of weal and woe, but only

in accordance with their merits in prior forms of em-

bodied existence. Īśvara is feared by the many, as the

deity that retracts them into his own essence at the

close of each æon, and that casts the evil-doer into

54

THE PHILOSOPHY

Chap. II. places of torment; but the perfect sage learns that Īśvara is unreal, and passes beyond all fear of him. Īśvara is no less unreal than the migrating soul; he is the first figment of the cosmical illusion; and both Īśvara and the soul are only so far existent as they are fictitious manifestations of the one and only Self.

The next emanation in the order of descent is Hiranyagarbha, Prāṇa, Sūtrātman, the Golden Germ, the Breath of Life, the Thread-spirit. This divine emanation is the totality of migrating souls in the state of dreaming sleep, the sum of the dreaming consciousness of the world. His body is the sum of the invisible bodies, the tenuous involucra,1 clothed in which the soul passes from body to body in the long process of metempsychosis. These invisible bodies are made up of three vestures one upon the other, the cognitional, the sensorial, and the aërial garments of the soul. Within these, as its first and innermost garment, the soul, as one with the Archimagus, is clad with the beatific vesture already spoken of; and outermost of all it has, as we shall presently see, its fifth and last garment, the nutrimentitious vesture, the visible and tangible body of the world of sense, which is born and dies and passes back into the elements, the muddy vesture of decay. Three, then, of these five wrappers clothe2 Hiranya-garbha. He is called the Thread-spirit, as stringing together all dreaming souls clothed in the invisible bodies that accompany them in their migrations, as pearls are strung upon a thread to form a necklace. He is the sum of souls that illusively identify themselves with their tenuous involucra. It is thus that a place is provided in the cosmical conception of the poets of the Upanishads for the Hiranyagarbha of the ancient Rishis,

1 Lingasarīra, sūkshmasarīra.

2 The five wrappers of the migrating soul are styled successively in Sanskrit the ānandamayakosha (this is the kāranasharīra); the vijñānamayakosha, the manomaya-kosha, the prānamayakoska (these three are the lingasarīra); and the sthū-lannamayakosha (this is the laśarīra).

the Golden Germ that arose in the beginning, the lord

of things that are, the establisher of the earth and sky,

the giver of life and breath.

The third and lowest of the progressive emanations Virāj, the'

is Virāj, Vaiśvānara, Prajāpati, or Purusha. His body

is the whole mundane egg, the outer shell of the visible

world, or the sum of the visible and perishing bodies of migrating souls. He is identified with the totality of

waking consciousness, with the sum of souls in the

waking state, and the sum of their gross, visible, and

tangible environments. In this divine emanation a

place is provided by the poets of the Upanishads for

the Purusha of the ancient Rishis, the divine being out

of whom, offered up as a sacrificial victim by the gods, the

Sādhyas, and the Rishis, the visible and tangible world

proceeded. He is the sum of souls that illusively

identify themselves with their outer bodies, and thus

suffer hunger, thirst, and faintness, and all the other

miseries of metempsychosis.

The nature of spiritual entity unmanifest and mani-

fest, in its fourfold grades, is set forth in the following

lines taken from Śankarāchārya's exposition of the

Aitareya Upanishad :-

"First,[there is the one and only Self, apart from all

duality, in which have ceased to appear the various

counterfeit presentments or fictitious bodies and en-

vironments of the world of semblances; passionless,

pure, inert, peaceful, to be known by the negation of

every epithet, not to be reached by any word or

thought.

"Secondly, this same Self emanates in the form of

the omniscient Demiurgus, whose counterfeit present-

ment or fictitious body is cognition in its utmost purity ;

who sets in motion the general undifferenced germ of

the worlds, the cosrnical illusion ; and is styled the

internal ruler, as actuating all things from within.

"Thirdly, this same Self emanates in the form of

56

THE PHILOSOPHY

Chap. II. Hiranyagarbha, or the spirit that illusively identifies

itself with the mental movements that are the germ of

the passing spheres.

"Fourthly, this same Self emanates in the form of

spirit in its earliest embodiment within the outer shell

of things, as Virāj or Prajāpati.

"And finally, the same Self comes to be designated

under the names of Agni and the other gods, in its

counterfeit presentments in the form of visible fire and

so forth. It is thus that Brahman assumes this and

that name and form, by taking to itself a variety of

fictitious bodily presentments, from a tuft of grass up

to Brahmā, the highest of the deities."

Ānandagiri, in his gloss on this passage of Śankarā-

chārya, adds that the Self fictitiously manifests itself in

human and other sentienencies, as well as in the gods, and

is thus, illusively, the sum of life.

Brahman per se, apart from fictitious manifestation,

is the Nirgunam Brahma of Indian philosophy ; that is

to say, the Self free from the primordial, Self apart from

pleasures, pains, and indolences, the three factors of the

world-fiction, the three strands of the rope that ties the

soul to the miseries of metempsychosis.

Brahman in its hierarchic emanations as Īśvara,

Hiranyagarbha, and Virāj, is the Sagunam Brahma or

Śabalam Brahma of Indian philosophy ; that is to say,

the Self as fictitiously implicated in the pleasures, pains,

and indolences that make up the world-fiction, and are

experienced by migrating souls.

Six things

without beginning.

To six things there has been no beginning: souls

have been passing from body to body, through æon after æon, from eternity ; the Demiurgus has co-existed

with and in them from eternity ; there has been a dis-

tinction between the souls and the Demiurgus from

eternity ; the pure intelligence, the undifferentiated Self,

has existed from eternity ; the distinction between the

Demiurgus and that Self is from eternity; Māyā, the self-

feigning world-fiction,has feigned itself from everlasting,

and the union of Māyā with Brahman is itself eternal.

The migrating souls are nothing else than the one and

only Self fictitiously limiting itself to various individual

minds, these individual minds being various emanations

of the cosrnical illusion. Self is true; the ever-moving

world is false; and the migrating souls that seem to be,

and do, and suffer, are nothing else than that one and

only Self, clothed in the five successive vestures or

involucra, the beatific, the cognitional, the sensorial, the

vesture of the vital airs, and the nutrimentitious ves-

ture or visible body in the world of sense. To him

that sees the truth, all these bodies and their environ-

ments will disappear, merging themselves into that

fontal essence; and the Self will alone remain, a fulness

of unbroken and unmingled bliss.

58

THE PHILOSOPHY

CHAPTER III.

THE RELEASE FROM METEMPSYCHOSIS.

"To them I may have owed another gift

Of aspect more sublime ; that blessed mood

In which the burthen of the mystery,

In which the heavy and the weary weight

Of all this unintelligible world

Is lightened ; that serene and blessed mood

In which the affections gently lead us on,

Until the breath of this corporeal frame,

And even the motion of our human blood

Almost suspended, we are laid asleep

In body, and become a living soul :-

While with an eye made quiet by the power

Of harmony and the deep power of joy,

We see into the life of things."—WORDSWORTH.

"Moriturus Plotinus ad Eustochium dixit, se in eo esse ut quod in

se haberet divinum πρòς τò ἐν τῷ παντὶ θει̂ον adduceret."—FABRICIUS.

CHAP. III. The sum of being, as pictured by the poets of the

Re-ascent to Upanishads, may be retraced in the regressive order,

the fontal from the outermost to the innermost vesture of the

Self. soul, from the outermost to the innermost body, and

beyond to the spiritual reality that alone abides for

ever. The lowest grade of life is that of the soul in

this visible and tangible world, passing from body to

body, through sphere after sphere of being, through

æon after æon. The migrating soul is the one and only

Self fictitiously limiting itself to this or that individual

mind ; and each individual mind is nothing more than

one of the innumerable emanations of the cosmical

illusion. To this migration there has been no begin-

ning, and it is hard to find the end. At every stage,

above and below, it is the same wearisome journey,

miseries and tainted pleasures that give place to fresh

miseries, to new care, hunger, thirst, bereavement, sick-

ness, and decay. It would be intolerable to think that

this never-ceasing iteration of pains is real, for then it

could not be made to disappear; but to a true insight

it is not real; it is but a fiction, for it comes and goes,

passes into being and passes out of being; and that

alone is real that neither comes nor goes, neither passes

into being nor passes out of being, but simply is. To

be is to last,—to perdure; but what is there that lasts?

There is, they say, but one thing that lasts: the light

within, the light in which these pains and tainted plea-

sures, these shifting scenes and semblances, come and

go, pass into, and pass out of being. This primordial

light beyond the darkness of the world-fiction, this

fontal unity of characterless being, beyond the duality

of subject and object, beyond the plurality of the phan-

tasmagoric spheres of metempsychosis, is pure being,

pure thought, pure bliss. This alone it is that permeates

and vitalises all things, giving light and life to all that

live. It is through its connection from before all ages

with Avidyā, Māyā, the self-feigning world-fiction, that

this light, this Self, passes into the semblances of dual-

ity and plurality, and in the shape of innumerable

living beings passes through successive spheres of trans-

migratory experience, as through dream after dream.

To wake from his dreams, to extricate himself from

metempsychosis, the sage must penetrate through the

unreal into the real, must refund his personality into

the impersonality of the one and only Self. The way

Purificatory

to this is a process of purificatory virtues, that may be

renunciation,

the work of many successive lives; a renouncement of

meditative

family, home, and worldly ties; the laying aside of the

ecstatic vision,

five successive vestures of the soul by the repression

re-union.

of every feeling, every desire, and every thought; the

practice of apathy, vacuity, and ecstasy. A rigorous

60

THE PHILOSOPHY

CHAP. III.

process of abstraction melts away the nutrimentitious vesture of the soul into the vesture of the vital airs, this into the sensorial vesture, this into the cognitional vesture, this into the beatific vesture of the soul in union with the Demiurgus. And after this, it is only a yet more perfect inertion and yet further abstraction that can enable him to reach the last residue of all abstraction, the light within the heart, the spiritual unity of undifferenced being. After he has stripped off the successive vestures of his soul, and has reached this last, this highest mode of being, the intuition of the Self, nothing remains but that this intuition itself, as itself a mental modification, pass away, vanishing into the pure light of characterless being; that this light, this undifferenced unity, may alone remain, the isolated, only reality. "The sage to whose inner faculties this vision is present lives on in the body, till the expiry of the merits that have procured his present embodiment. At last his body falls away, and his soul re-enters the one and only Self, returning to its proper state of perfect indetermination, to abide in itself as characterless being, pure intelligence, undifferenced beatitude.

"The one remains, the many change and pass ;

Heaven's light for ever shines, earth's shadows fly ;

Life, like a dome of many-coloured glass,

Stains the white radiance of eternity."

The Vidve-kachūdāmaṇi quoted.

On the liberation of the sage, to use the language of the Vivekachūdāmaṇi, all things visible melt away into the original Self, as the darkness faints and melts away before the rising sun. Its fictitiously limiting mind with all its modes has been dissolved, and the soul is the Self again ; the jar is broken, and the ether that was in it is one with the one and undivided ether, from which the jar once seemed to sever it. The sage has seen the Self, and passed into oneness with it, lost like a water-drop in water. His implication in metempsychosis, and his extrication from it, have been but

figments of the cosmic fiction ; unreal as the snake that

appears and vanishes in place of the piece of rope, to

the eyes of the belated traveller. He has had life after

life from time without beginning, but these were but a

series of dreams. At last he is awake, and his dream-

lives are nullities. In pure verity it is only the Self

that ever is or has been. The world has neither come

into being nor passed out of being. There has been

no fatal migration of the soul, no worshipper seeking

recompense or mental purity, no sage yearning after

liberation, and no soul has been liberated. These things

were phantasmagoric figments, a play of semblances, a

darkness, an absence of light. Now the light is veiled

no more, and remains a pure undifferenced light, and

is in truth the only thing that ever has been, and

ever is.

This is the end of the knowledge of the divine Self,

the consummation of theosophy.

Thus liberated from metempsychosis, but still living

in the body, the sage is untouched by merit and de-

merit, unsoiled by sinful works, uninjured by what he

has done and by what he has left undone, unimplicated

in his actions good or evil. Good works, no less than

evil works, and equally the Demiurgus that recom-

penses them, belong to the unreal, to the fictitious plu-

rality of the world of semblances. As Śankarāchārya

says, in his introduction to the Śvetāśvatara Upanishad,

" Gnosis once arisen needs nothing farther for the reali-

sation of its result; it requires subsidia only that it may

arise ;" and Ānandagiri says, " The perfect sage, so long

as he lives, may do good and evil as he chooses, and

incur no stain ; such is the efficacy of a knowledge of

the Self."

How the individual soul is to recognise and recover

its unity with the universal soul, and thus with the one

and only Self, is taught in the following verses of the

Chhāndogya Upanishad, known as the Sāndilyavidyā,

or doctrine of the sage Śāṇḍilya. These verses are of

62

THE PHILOSOPHY

Chap. III. very frequent citation in the works of the Vedāntic schoolmen :-

The Sāndilya- vidyā, Chhān- dogya Upani- shad iii. 14. The soul is one with the cos- mic soul and with the Self.

" All this world is the Self. It arises out of, returns into, breathes in, the Self. Let the wise man be still, and meditate upon the Self.

" The soul is made of thought, and as its thought has been in this life, such shall its nature be when it departs out of this life. The wise man, therefore, must think thus :

" The universal soul1 is operative in the inward sense, embodied in the vital air;2 it is the pure light, the unfailing will, the ethereal essence, out of which all creations, all desires, all sweet sounds, and all sweet tastes proceed. It pervades all things, silent and un- perturbed.

" This universal soul is my soul within the heart, smaller than a grain of rice, a barleycorn, a mustard- seed, a grain of millet, or the kernel of a grain of millet. This is my soul within the heart, greater than the earth, the air, the sky, greater than these worlds.

" Out of this universal soul all creations, all desires, all sweet sounds, and all sweet tastes proceed. It per- meates all things, speechless, passionless. This is my soul within the heart. This is Brahman. As soon as I depart out of this life I shall win re-union with the Self.

" He that has this faith has no more doubt. These are the words of Śāṇḍilya."

When Brahman is viewed as in union with Māyā, Brahman becomes Īśvara, the cosmic soul, the world- evolving deity ; and Māyā is the cosmic body, the body of the Demiurgus Īśvara. Śāṇḍilya teaches that the soul realises and recovers its unity with the cosmic soul, and with the characterless Self beyond and above the cosmic soul, by meditative ecstasy.

1 The universal soul is Īśvara, the Self in manifestation as the creative spirit and soul of the world, the viśvakartṛi and jaga- dātman.

2 Migrating along with the invisible body or tenuous involu- crum through a succession of visible bodies.

OF THE UPANISHADS.

63

Renunciation, ecstasy, and the liberation of the soul Chap. III.

are spoken of as follows in the Ḅrihadāraṇyaka Upani-

shad :—

"Invisible is the path, outspread, primeval, that I have reached, that I have discovered ; the sages, they

that know the Self, travel along that path to paradise, in the Bri-

hadāraṇyaka Upanishad.

"They that follow after illusion enter thick darkness ;

they that satisfy themselves with liturgic knowledge, a

thicker darkness still.

"Those spheres are joyless, overspread with thick

darkness ;—to those go after death those infatuated men

that have no real knowledge.

"If a man know himself, that he is this universal spirit,

what can he want, what can he crave, that he should

go through the feverishness of a fresh embodiment ?

"He whose soul is found, is gazed upon by him,

amid this wild of troubles,—he is the maker of all

things, the maker of the world; the world is his, for he

is the world.

"Being here, we know this, and if we did not know

it, it would be a great perdition :

"They that know this become immortal, others pass

on again to misery.

"When he sees this Self aright, the luminous essence,

the lord of all that has been, all that shall be, there is

nothing that he shrinks from.

"That outside of which, day after day, the year rolls

round,—that the gods adore, as the light of lights, as

length of life undying.

"That over which the five orders of living things,1

and over which the ether is outspread,—that do I know

to be myself, the universal Self,—even I the sage im-

mortal.

"They that know the breath of the breath, the eye

of the eye, the ear of the ear, the thought of the thought,

1 The five tribes of men. See above, p. 14.

64

THE PHILOSOPHY

CHAP. III.

—they have seen the Self primeval, that has been from

all time.

“It is to be seen only with the mind: there is no-

thing in it that is manifold.

“From death to death he goes who looks on this as

manifold.

“It is to be seen in one way only, it is indemon-

strable, immutable. The Self is unsullied, beyond the

expanse,1 unborn, infinite, imperishable.

“Let the patient Brahman know that, and learn

wisdom. Let him not learn many words,2 for that is a

weariness of the voice.

“This is indeed the great unborn Self. This has the

form of conscious life, amidst the vital airs, dwelling in

the ether in the heart; the ruler of all things, lord of all

things, king of all things. It becomes no greater by

good works, no less by evil works. This is the lord of

all, the lord of living things, the upholder of living

things. This is the bridge that spans the spheres, that

they may not fall the one into the other. This it is

that the Brahmans seek after in reciting the Veda.

“By sacrifice, by almsgiving, by self-inflicted pains,

by fasting, if he learns this, a man becomes a quietist.

This it is that the holy mendicants long for, in setting

out upon their wanderings. Yearning after this it was

that the wise men of old desired no offspring, saying,

What have we to do with children, we to whom belongs

this Self, this spiritual sphere? They arose and for-

sook the desire of children, of wealth, of worldly exist-

ence, and set out upon their life of wandering. For

the wish for children is the wish for wealth, and the

wish for wealth is the wish for worldly existence, and

there are both of these desires.

“This same Self is not this, not that: it is impal-

1 The expanse is a synonym for Māyā, the self-feigning world-

fiction. 2 Words = hymns and liturgic

formulas.

pable, for it cannot be handled; undecaying, for it

wastes not away; unattached, for it has no ties ; invul-

nerable, for it is not hurt by the sword or slain. Things

done and things left undone cross not over to it. It

passes beyond both the thought that it has done evil,

and the thought that it has done good. That which it

has done, and that which it has failed to do, afflict it not.

"Therefore it has been said in a sacred verse : This,

the eternal greatness of the sage that knows Brahman,

becomes not greater by works, and becomes not lesser.

Let him learn the nature of that greatness. He that

knows it is no longer sullied by evil acts. Checking

his senses, quiescent, passionless, ready to suffer all

things, fixed in ecstasy, he sees within himself the Self,

he sees the universal soul. Imperfection crosses not

over to him, he crosses beyond imperfection, he burns

up all his imperfections. He that knows Brahman

becomes free from imperfections, free from doubt, en-

sphered in Self.

"This same great unborn Self is undecaying, un-

dying, imperishable, beyond all fear. The Self is

beyond all fear. He that knows this becomes the Self

beyond all fear."

The imperfections beyond which the sage of perfect

insight, living in the body but already free from fur-

ther transmigration, has passed, are merit and demerit,

the fruits of good and evil works, which serve alike

only to prolong metempsychosis. Good works as well

as evil are, from the higher point of view, an evil to be

shunned, as they protract the migrations of the soul.

It is not exertion, but inertion, and a perfect inertion,

that is the path to liberation. The sage is beyond all

fear, as already one with the one and only Self, and

free from the fear of misery in new embodiments. He

may, as we have seen that Ānandagiri says, do good

and evil for the rest of his days, as he pleases, and

66

THE PHILOSOPHY

Chap. III. incur no stain. Everything that he has done and everything that he is doing, all his works, save only those that are resulting in his experiences in his present body, are burnt up in the fire of spiritual intuition. And therefore in the Taittirīya Upanishad we read, "The thought no longer tortures him, What good have I left undone, what evil done?" And in another passage of the Bṛihadāraṇyaka : "Here the thief is a thief no more, the Chaṇḍāla1 a Chaṇḍāla no more, the Paulkasa 1 no more a Paulkasa, the sacred mendicant no more a sacred mendicant: they are no longer followed by good works, they are no longer followed by evil works. For at last the sage has passed through all the sorrows of his heart." At the height reached by the self-tormenting sage, at last arrived at insight into and re-union with the one and only Self, there is no longer any distinction of personality; and at this height of insight and re-union, saint and sinner, the holy Brāhman and the impure alien and the degraded outcast, are all one in the unity of characterless being. The objection is obvious that this doctrine is immoral, and the objection has been foreseen and met. The reply is that the theosophist has had to go through a process of initiatory virtues, in order to purify his mind for the quest of reality and escape from further misery, and that after he has attained his end, and is one with the one and only Self, these virtues will adhere to him as habits, so far as others are concerned, for to himself they are unrealities like all things else excepting Brahman. This is the reply of Nṛisimhasarasvatī towards the end of the Subodhinī, an exposition of the Vedāntasāra.

But will not therefore do evil, for the purificatory virtues adhere to him as habits.

"Some one may urge: It will not surely follow from this that the living yet liberated sage may act as he chooses. We cannot allow this to be urged. It cannot be denied that the perfect sage may act as he

1 Degraded indigenes or outcasts from the Hindu pale.

pleases, in the presence of such texts, traditions, and

arguments as the following:—‘Not by killing his

mother, nor by killing his father.’ ‘He that does not

mistake not-Self for Self, whose inner vision is unsul-

lied,—he, though he kills these people, neither kills

them nor is killed.’ ‘He that knows the truth is sul-

lied neither by good actions nor by evil actions.’

‘If

he sees the unity of all things, he is unaffected alike

whether he offer a hundred horse-sacrifices or kill hun-

dreds of holy Brāhmans.’ ‘Sages act in various ways,

good and bad, through the influence of the acts of for-

mer lives now at work in shaping their acts and their

experiences in their present embodiment.’ If then you

say that we teach that a perfect sage may do what he

likes, it is true we do teach this, but as these texts are

only eulogistic of the liberated sage, it is not intended

that he should act at random. As a great teacher says,

‘Ignorance arises from evil-doing, and wilful action

from ignorance: how can this wilful action, this doing

as one likes, result from good works, when the good

works pass away ?’ The preliminary acquirements of

the aspirant to extrication from metempsychosis, his

humility, sincerity, tenderness towards every form of

sentient life, stick to him like so many ornaments, even

after the rise of this spiritual intuition.”

The repetition of the sacred syllable Om is said to

conduct the slow aspirant to a gradual and progressive

liberation from metempsychosis. Om is a solemn affir-

mation, Yes. It is regarded by the Indian sages as made

up of the three letters A, U, M, in euphonic combina-

tion. This mystic syllable Om is said to be the nearest

similitude of Brahman ;1 it is an image of the Self,

as the black ammonite serves instead of an image of

Vishṇu.2 It is said to include all speech, and as names

are in some way one and the same as the things they

name, it is one with all things, one with Brahman. In

1 Brahmaṇo nedishṭham pratikam.

2 Śālagrāma.

68 THE PHILOSOPHY

Chap. III. the Praśna Upanishad the great teacher Pippalāda says,

"This syllable Om is the higher and the lower Brahman." That is to say, Om is Brahman as unconditioned, and Brahman in fictitious manifestation as the Demiurgus. In their exposition of this passage the scholiasts say that the Self, as characterless and supersensible, cannot be made an object to the thinking faculty, unless this faculty be previously purified by meditation on the mystic Om, taken and devoutly identified with Brahman, as a man may take an image and devoutly identify it with Vishnu. Upon the mind thus purified the Self shines of itself, undifferenced.

The following verses of the Taittirīya Upanishad are an invocation of this sacred utterance :-

Invocation of Om in the Taittirīya Upanishad.

"May that Indra, Om, that is the highest thing in the Vedas, that is all that is immortal, above the immortality of the Vedas, may that divine being strengthen me with wisdom.

"Let me, O god, become a holder of immortality. Let my body become able, my tongue mellifluous. Let me hear much with my ears. Thou art the sheath of Brahman, only obscured by earthly wisdom. Preserve in me what I have heard. That prosperity which brings, and adds, and quickly provides raiment and cattle and meat and drink at all times,—that prosperity bring thou to me. Wealth woolly with flocks: Svāhā.1

Let sacred students come to me: Svāhā. Let sacred students repair to me: Svāhā. Let me become a glory among men: Svāhā. O holy one, let me enter into thee: Svāhā. In thee, with thy thousand branches, let me become pure: Svāhā.

"As the waters flow downwards, as the months pass away into the year, even so let the sacred students come to me. O maker, let them come in from every side: Svāhā. Thou art the refuge. Give me thy light. Receive me into thyself."

1 Svāhā is an exclamation made in invocations of the deities.

OF THE UPANISHADS.

69

The mystic import of Om, and the nature of the three Chap. III.

states of the soul, above which the aspirant to extrication is to rise, and the fourth or undifferenced state of

the Self one and the same in all souls, into which he is to rise, are set forth in the Māṇḍūkya Upanishad, one

of the Upanishads of the Atharvaveda. This Upanishad is as follows:-

"Om. This syllable is all. Its interpretation is that The Māṇḍūk-

which has been, that which is, and that which is to be. ya Upanishad.

All is Om, and only Om, and whatever is beyond trinal The import of

time is Om, and only Om.

"For all this world is Brahman, this Self is Brahman, The four

and this same Self has four quarters.

"The first quarter is the soul in the waking state, The waking

externally cognitive, with seven members, with nineteen state.

inlets, with fruition of the sensible, the spirit of waking

souls, Vaiśvānara."

In the ascending order the first state of the Self, after

it has passed into a fictitious plurality of migrating

souls, is its waking state in the gross body, in which it

stands face to face with outward things. Vaiśvānara

or Purusha, the spirit that permeates all living bodies,

is said to have seven members; the sky is his head, the

sun is his eye, the air is his breath, the ethereal ex-

panse is his body, the food-grains are his bladder, the

earth is his feet, the sacrificial fire is his mouth.

The nineteen inlets of the waking soul are the five organs

of sense, the five organs of motion, the five vital airs,1

the common sensory, the intellect, the self-assertive,

and the memorial faculties.

1 The five organs of sense are those of hearing, touch, sight, organs are the common sensory,

taste, and smell. The five organs of motion are those of speech, manas; the intellect, buddhi; the

handling, locomotion, excretion, self-assertive, ahaṅkāra; and the

and generation. The five vital memorial, chitta. These organs

airs are that of respiration, the are made up of the elements as

descending, the permeating, the yet in a supersensible condition,

ascending, and the assimilative the elements becoming sensible

vital airs. The four internal only after a process of concretion,

technically known as quintuplica-tion, panchīkaraṇa.

70

THE PHILOSOPHY

CHAP. III.

soul is termed Viśva, the sum of embodied souls Vaiś-vānara.

The dreaming

"The second quarter is the soul in the dreaming state, with seven members, with nineteen inlets, with fruition of the ideal,—the dreaming spirit."

In the dreaming state, Śankarāchārya says, the senses are at rest, but the common sensory proceeds to work, and the images, painted upon it like pictures on a canvas, simulate the outward objects of the waking experiences.

The common sensory is set in motion in this way by the illusion, the desires, and the retributive fatality, which cling to the soul through all its migrations.

The individual sleeping soul is styled Taijasa, the sum of sleeping souls in their invisible bodies is Hiraṇya-garbha.

The state of dreamless sleep.

"Dreamless sleep is that state in which the sleeper desires no desire and sees no dream. The third quarter is the soul in the state of dreamless sleep, being one in itself, a mass of cognition, pre-eminent in bliss, with fruition of beatitude, having thought as its inlet, and of transcendent knowledge."

In dreamless sleep the soul is said to be one in itself, the unreal duality of the waking and the dreaming consciousness having melted away into unity.

The soul is, in this state, also said to be a mass of cognition, as it for the time reverts to its proper nature as undifferentiated thought.

All things become one, as in a dark night the whole outlook is one indistinguishable blur.

The soul is now pre-eminent in bliss, as no longer exposed to the varied miseries that arise from the fictitious semblances of duality, yet it is not yet pure bliss itself, for the state of dreamless sleep is not abiding.

The individual soul in this state is styled Prājña, transcendent in knowledge, and the sum of such souls is Īśvara, the arch-illusionist, the world-projecting deity.

The involucrum of the soul at this stage is the beatific vesture, and the counterfeit presentment or body of

OF THE UPANISHADS.

Īśvara is the body out of which all things emanate, the

cosmical illusion. The soul is not yet at rest. As

Ānandagiri says, "It cannot be admitted that in this

dreamless sleep the transcendently cognitive soul is in

perfect and unmingled bliss, for it is still connected

with the world-fiction. If it were not so, the sleeper

would be already released from further migration, and

he could not rise up again as he does to fresh experi-

ences." The soul is not at rest till it has reached its

final extrication from metempsychosis. To return to

the Māṇḍūkya.

"This Self is the lord of all, this the internal ruler,

this the source of all things; this is that out of which

all things proceed, and into which they shall pass back

again.

"Neither internally cognitive nor externally cogni-

tive, nor cognitive both without and within; not a

mass of cognition, neither cognitive nor incognitive,

invisible, intangible, characterless, unthinkable, un-

speakable; to be reached only by insight into the

oneness of all spirits; that into which the world

passes away, changeless, blessed, above duality ;-such

do they hold the fourth to be. That is Self. That is

to be known."

To cite a few remarks of the scholiasts. The pure

Self, the fourth and only real entity, is that in the

place of which the fictitious world presents itself to the

uninitiated, as the fictitious serpent presents itself in

place of a piece of rope to the belated wayfarer. There

is something that underlies every such figment; it is

the sand of the desert that is overspread by the waters

of the mirage, it is the shell that is fictitiously replaced

by seeming silver, it is a distant post that in the dusk

is mistaken for a man, and so on. Thus illusion every-

where points to a reality beyond itself. The three

so-called quarters of Brahman previously spoken of,

only fictitiously present themselves in place of the sole

72

THE PHILOSOPHY

CHAP. III.

reality, the fourth. They are principles that emanate,

and out of which other principles emanate. Māyā,

the world-fiction, is the seed, and its figments, the ele-

ments and elemental products, are the growing world-

tree. The fourth, the Self, does not emanate from

anything, nor does anything (save fictitiously) emanate

from it; it is neither seed nor tree. It is unthinkable

and unspeakable, to be enounced only in negations.1

It is absolute. The world does not emanate from, but

fictitiously presents itself in place of, Brahman.

Literal analy-

sis of Om.

"This same Self is exhibited in the mystic syllable.

Om is exhibited in letters. The quarters are the letters,

and the letters are the quarters,—the letter A, the letter

U, and the letter M.

"The first letter, the letter A, is Vaiśvānara, the spirit

of waking souls in the waking world, because it per-

meates all utterance, because it has a beginning. He

that knows this attains to all desires, and becomes the

first of all men.

"The second letter, the letter U, is Taijasa, the spirit

of dreaming souls in the world of dreams, because this

letter is more excellent, or because it is the intermediate

letter. He that knows this elevates the train of his

ideas, becomes passionless; there is none in his family

that knows not Brahman.

"The third letter, the letter M, is Prājña, the spirit of

sleeping and undreaming souls, because it comprehends

the other two, because the other two proceed out of it.

He that knows this comprehends all things, and becomes

the source of things.

"The fourth is not a letter, but the whole syllable

Om, unknowable, unspeakable, into which the whole

world passes away, blessed, above duality. He himself

by himself enters into the Self,—he that knows this,

that knows this." 2

1 Nisheddhadvāraiva tannirdes'ah

sambhavati, Ānandagiri.

2 The repetition hereaselsewhere

marks the close of the Upanishad.

OF THE UPANISHADS.

73

The Māṇḍūkya Upanishad is thus an exposition of

Chap. III.

the significance of the sacred syllable Om, of the three

The doctrine

unreal states, and of the one real state of Brahman.

of the five

The several vestures or involucra of the migrating souls

vestures of

in the ascending order; the mode in which they and

the soul as

their spheres of migration emanated out of Brahman

taught in the

overspread with Māyā; and the scale of beatitudes by

Taittirīya

which the soul may re-ascend to its fontal essence, the

Upanishad.

one and only Self, are the themes of the second and

third sections, the Brahmānandavallī and the Bhṛiguvallī

of the Taittirīya Upanishad. This Upanishad belongs,

as its name imports, to the so-called Black Recension of

the Yajurveda. From the first section, the Śikshāvallī,

treating of the initiation and purification of the aspirant

to release from metempsychosis, the hymn to Om has

been already presented to the reader. The scale of

beatitudes the soul may mount by, is given in the

same words also in the Brihadāraṇyaka Upānishad.

The second and third sections of the Taittirīya are not

so engaging and impressive as many portions of the

Upanishads are; but as they contain many of the texts

of most frequent occurrence in the records of Indian

philosophy, a translation is subjoined. One of these

texts occurs in the opening lines of the second section,

the Brahmānandavallī, which is as follows :-

"Hari.1 Om. May he preserve us both, may he

The Brahmān-

reward us both. May we put forth our strength to-

andayallī, the

gether, and may that which we recite be efficacious.

second section

May we never feel enmity against each other. Om.

of the Tait-

Peace, peace, peace."

tirīya Upani-

shad.

This is an invocation on the part of the teacher and

his disciple, to remove any possible obstacles to the com-

munication and acquisition of the traditional science

of Brahman. The preserver and recompenser is the

universal soul or Demiurgus.

"He that knows Brahman attains the ultimate reality.

1 Hari is a name of Vishṇu.

74

THE PHILOSOPHY

CHAP. III.

Therefore this sacred verse has been pronounced : Truth,

knowledge, infinite, is Brahman. He that knows this

Self seated in the cavity in the highest ether, has fruition

of all desires at one and the same moment by means of

the omniscient Self."

The Self is

The scholiasts tell us that the word ether is here

within the

mind, inside

the heart of

every living

thing.

another name for the world-fiction, as it is also in the

text of the Bṛihadāraṇyaka : “Over this imperishable

principle the ethereal expanse is woven warp and

woof.” The cavity is the mind, so called because

knowledge, the subject knowing and the thing known,

are contained in it, or because implication in metemp-

sychosis and extrication from it depend upon it. The

migrating soul is nothing else than the one and only

Self fictitiously limiting itself to this or that individual

mind; every individual mind being, equally with its

successive environments, an emanation of the cosmical

illusion: He that sees through the illusion the Self

within his mind, enters into the fulness of undifferenced

beatitude. He has every form of happiness at one

and the same moment, not a succession of pleasures

through this or that avenue of sense; such pleasures

are mere products of the retributive fatality that pro-

longs the migration of the soul. The highest aim of

all is to pass beyond such experiences to the further

shore of union with Brahman, the fulness of bliss; to

refund the personality of the migrating soul into the

impersonality of the Self exempt from the experiences

of metempsychosis. The aspirant to release from misery

must learn that he and all other individuals are but par-

ticular and local manifestations of the universal soul ;

and that the universal soul, the Jagadātman, is the one

and only Self veiled beneath the self-feigning world-

fiction, and thus conscious of a seeming twofold order

of subjects and objects. The world-fiction is made up

of the sum of pleasures, pains, and indolences, the three

primordia rerum of Indian cosmology. As soon as he

OF THE UPANISHADS.

75

recognises his true nature he shall repossess it, and on Chap. III.

the rise of spiritual intuition the world of semblances The soul is the

shall dissolve and pass away. The soul is already the Self, but does

characterless being, the pure thought, the undifferenced self to be the

bliss—how can it be said to regain it, to recover that

which it already is? It recovers it by seeing it, by

knowing it. In its everyday life the soul has lost

itself by identifying itself with what it is not, with

its temporal vestures, its fictitious envelopments.

Nṛsimhasarasvatī teaches us that the soul seeking

to find itself in the impersonal unity of the Self, is

like a man looking for a necklace he thinks that he

has lost and suffers from the loss of, the necklace

being all the time about his neck. Terrified at the

miseries that await his soul in its migrations, he is

only trembling at his own shadow, for these miseries

are unreal. His affliction ceases as soon as he learns

what he truly is ; his fears cease as soon as he learns the

unreality of everything that only seems to be. To the

highest point of view won by abstraction pursued to

its last limit, the implication of the soul, and its re-

lease, in and from metempsychosis, are unreal, mere

figments of the cosmic fiction. To return to the text:-

" Out of this same Self the ether rose, from ether air, Procession of

from air fire, from fire water, from water earth, from the five ele-

earth plants, from plants food, from food the germ of ments, and

life, from the germ of life man. This is man as made their quintu-

up of the extractive matter of food." plication or

Such are the five elements in their progressive con- concretion.

cretion as they emanate from Brahman overspread with

Māyā. Ether comes first with its single property of

sound ; it is the soniferous element, and in it all finite

things exist. From ether the atmosphere proceeds,

with the property of ether and with a superadded pro-

perty of its own, namely, tangibility. Thus air has two

properties. From air comes fire with the properties

of ether and air, sound and tangibility, and with a

76

THE PHILOSOPHY

Chap. III.

superadded property of its own, namely, colour. Thus fire has three properties. From fire proceeds water with the properties of ether, air, and fire, and with a superadded property of its own, namely, taste. Thus water has four properties. From water emanates earth with the properties of ether, air, fire, and water, and with a superadded property of its own, namely, odour. Thus earth has five properties. It is Brahman as illusively overspread with Māyā, that manifests itself in this progressive concretion of the elements and of elemental things; and it is into Brahman that by a regressive process of abstraction the whole series may be made to disappear. Man in his visible and earthly body is made up of the materials of food. Man here stands for the whole scale of animal life, as being the highest representative, and alone capable of the worship of the gods and the knowledge of the sole reality that is veiled beneath the world. The earthly body is the first of the five vestures of the soul in order of ascent to the fontal essence : it is the nutrimentious involu crum. Each lower is to be resolved into each higher garment of the soul, by a progressive insight into the fictitious nature of them all, till the aspirant passes through the last, the so-called beatific vesture, to the Self within. We are told that he is to strip every wrapper off himself one by one, as he might peel off the successive shells of a grain of rice. The several portions of the outermost shell of the soul, the earthly body, are next described in grotesque similitude to the parts of a bird:-

"Of this, this head is the head, this right arm is the right wing, this left arm the left wing, this trunk is the body, this nether part the tail, the prop. Therefore there is this memorial verse : It is food that living creatures spring from, all they that dwell upon the earth. They live by food, and at the last they pass into food again,

The first and outermost vesture of the soul is the earthly body.

OF THE UPANISHADS.

77

for food is the earliest of creatures. Therefore food is Chap. III.

called the panacea."

The body dies and restores its elements to the earth,

out of which they reappear in fresh vegetable forms,

to supply food again to animals and men—an Indian

statement of the circulation of matter.

"See dying vegetables life sustain,

See life dissolving vegetable again :

All forms that perish other forms supply,

By turns we catch the vital breath and die ;—

Like bubbles, on the sea of matter borne,

They rise and break, and to that sea return."

Food, Śankarāchārya says, is called the panacea, as

quenching the burning of the body,1 that is, as repair-

ing the waste of the system. It is a standing rule of

Indian philosophy that everything passes back into

that out of which it came. The body came out of, was

made out of food, and it passes back into the form

of food. To proceed with the text. Every item of

knowledge is promised its proportionate reward, and

so we read :—

"They that meditate upon food as Brahman obtain

all kinds of food. For food is the earliest of created

things, and it is called the panacea. From food all

creatures are born, and after birth they grow by food.

It is eaten by them, and it eats them, and therefore it

is called food."

Animals are said to be eaten by food, in one of the

rude metaphors so frequent in the Upanishads, because

the elements of their bodies after dissolution enter

into the forms of vegetable life. The aspirant is now sup-

posed to have seen into the unreality of the food-made

body, and to have made it to disappear by an effort of

abstraction. He is now called upon to dissolve the

vesture next within, the so-called vesture of the vital

1 Sarvaushadham, sarvaprāninām dehadāhapraśamanam annam

uchyate.

78

THE PHILOSOPHY

Chap. III.

airs. This vesture is invisible, and one of the three factors of the invisible migrating body, the tenuous involucrum, the other two being the sensorial and the cognitional vestures. The body has been got rid of, the vesture of vital airs must next be put away.

The second

vesture, the

vesture of the

vital airs.

"Within this same body made of the extractive matter of food, there is another and interior body, made of the vital airs, and with that the outer body is filled up. This interior body is also in the shape of man, fashioned after the human shape of the outer body. Of this interior body the breath is the head, the pervading air is the right wing, the descending air is the left wing, ether is the trunk, and earth is the tail, the prop. Therefore there is this memorial verse: It is breath that gods breathe, and men, and cattle, for the breath is the life of living things." Therefore it is called the life of all. They that meditate upon breath as Brahman live the full life of man. This body of vital air is embodied within the food-made body.

Animals, and men, and gods live in the outer body by virtue of an inner body made of the breath of life. To this inner body there is another, the sensorial body, which fills it up; to that another, the cognitional; to that another, the beatific. They are all alike permeated and animated by the universal Self, their true being, everlasting, unchanging, beyond the five vestures. Meditation upon the vesture of vital air is rewarded with length of life, according to the maxim that the votary is assimilated to that manifestation under which he meditates upon the Self. This second wrapper being opened and laid aside by meditative abstraction, the sage proceeds to the third or sensorial vesture of his soul.

The third ves-

ture, the ves-

ture of the

common sen-

sory.

"Within this same body of the airs of life there is another inner body made of the common sensory, and with this the vesture of the vital airs is filled. This

also is in the shape of man, fashioned after the human

Chap. III. shape of the vesture of vital airs. Of this sensorial

body the Yajush is the head, the Ṛik is the right wing,

the Sāman the left wing, the Brāhmaṇas the trunk,

and the Atharvāṅgirasa the tail, the prop. Therefore

there is this memorial verse : From which words turn

back with the thinking faculty, not reaching it; he

that knows the bliss of the Self is for ever free from

fear. This sensorial body is embodied in the body of

vital airs."

After stripping off this wrapper in his quest of the

reality hidden within, the aspirant proceeds to the

fourth vesture of the migrating soul, its garment of in-

tellect or cognition.

"Within this same sensorial body there is another

The fourth interior body, the cognitional body, and with this

the mental or cognitional sensorial body is filled. This also is in the shape of

vesture. man, fashioned after the human shape of the sensorial

vesture. Of this cognitional body faith is the head,

justice the right wing, truth the left wing, ecstasy the

trunk, the intellect the tail, the prop. Therefore there

is this memorial verse: It is knowledge that lays out

the sacrifice and performs the rites. All the gods

meditate upon knowledge as the earliest manifestation

of the Self. If a man learn that knowledge is the Self,

and swerves not from that, he has fruition of all desires

after leaving his imperfections in the body. This same

cognitional vesture is embodied in the sensorial body."

The aspirant, after laying aside the first wrapper, is

free from the body ; after laying aside the second, third,

and fourth, he is free from the invisible body, the tenuous

involucrum, which clothes the soul in its migration

from body to body. Passing beyond the visible and

the invisible body, he arrives at the last vesture of the

spirit, the beatific involucrum, that clothes the sleeping

but undreaming soul.

"Within this same cognitional body there is another,

80

THE PHILOSOPHY

CHAP. III.

The fifth and innermost vesture, the vesture of beatitude. This clothes the soul in its third state, the state of dreamless sleep.

an inner body, the blissful body, and with this the cognitional body is filled. This also is in the shape of man, fashioned after the human shape of the cognitional body. Of this blissful vesture tenderness is the head, joy is the right wing, rejoicing the left wing, bliss the trunk, and Brahman is the tail, the prop. Therefore there is this memorial verse: If a man think that the Self is not, he becomes as if he were not: if he knows that the Self is, then they know that he is indeed. This same blissful vesture is embodied in the cognitional body.

This blissful vesture of the soul reposing in dreamless sleep is not Brahman, but it has Brahman beneath it as its prop or basis. In this vesture the soul that sleeps without dreaming is for the time at one with Brahman, and all the duality projected by illusion is for the time at an end in the pure unity of the Self. This is the last vesture to be laid aside in order to reach the ultimate truth within.

So far the doctrine of the five vestures of the migrating soul1 has been propounded in the text of this Upanishad. A similar tenet makes its appearance in the philosophy of the neo-Platonists. Thus Proclus teaches that even before it comes into the world the soul must have animated a body, just as the dæmons and deities are embodied souls. This body is immaterial and ethereal, and emanates, like the soul itself, out of the Demiurgus. Proclus places between this immaterial body and the earthly body a series of other involucra, which come with it into the world, clothe it after death, and accompany it in its migrations so long as it remains in the phenomenal order of things.

The Brahmānandavallī proceeds to represent the disciple as asking his teacher who it is that is to attain to re-union with the one and only Self. The emanation of elements and elemental things from

1 Panchakoshavidyā.

Brahman and Māyā, and the five wrappers of the soul, CHAP. III.

are matters that relate to the ordinary man and to the

sage alike : is the re-union with the fontal essence open

to both alike? The text proceeds:-

" After this arise the questions: Does a man without

knowledge go after death to that veritable world? or is

it only he that has knowledge, that has fruition of that

veritable world?"

The sequel of the Upanishad is the reply to these

questions. It is he only that surmounts the general

illusion and sees the Self within by spiritual intuition,

that shall pass into the Self never to return. The

text first speaks of the creation of the world at the

opening of each æon in the infinite series of æons, by

the fictitiously-conditioned Brahman,1 the cosmic soul,

or Archimagus.

" He desired: Let me become many, let me pass into Brahman be-

comes Īśvara,

plurality. He performed self-torture, and having per-

formed that self-torture, projected out of himself all

this world, whatever is."

The notion of the creative action of the Demiurgus

here exhibited, is the same as that in the Nāsadīyasūkta,

Rigveda, x. 129, presented to the reader in the first

chapter of this work. As the Indian scholiasts say

that the words, "It was not entity, nor was it non-

entity," in that hymn refer to Māyā, so they also hold

that " the one that was void, covered with nothingness,"

which " developed itself by the power of self-torture,"

is Brahman in its earliest manifestation, the illusory

creator, or Demiurgus, or soul of the universe. The

passing of Brahman into the fictitious plurality of

the phenomenal world, is frequently spoken of in the

Upanishads as the self-explication of Brahman under

1 We must be cautious not to

refer what is predicable only of

Īśvara to Brahman per se. Īśvara,

the Demiurgus or Archimagus, is

Brahman fictitiously associated

with Māyā, and thus the fictitious

creator of the fictitious world.

82

THE PHILOSOPHY

Chap. III.

names and colours, that is to say, its manifestation under visible and nameable aspects.1 Brahman, the one and only Self, when mirrored upon Māyā, the world-fiction, is that out of which the world emanates.2 The desires of this Demiurgus are the emanations of the world-fiction.3 “ His self-torture is a figurative expression for his prevision of the world that is to be ; and after this prevision he projects out of himself the world as it is to be experienced by migrating souls, waking, dreaming, or in dreamless sleep, in space and time, in name and colour,—a world that is suitable to the residuary influence of the works of those souls in the last æon.” For it must always be remembered that the series of worlds is without beginning, and that every genesis is a palingenesia. To

“ Having evolved that world, he entered into it, and having entered it, he became the limited and the unlimited, the definite and the indefinite, the receptacle and not the receptacle, the living and the lifeless, the true and the false ; he became the true, for whatever is they call the true. Therefore there is this memorial verse : Non-existent was this in the beginning, from that the existent proceeded. That made itself, and therefore it is called self-made or holy.4 He is taste, for on receiving taste a man becomes blissful. For who could live, who could breathe if in this ether there were not bliss ? For he gives bliss ; for when a man finds a safe footing in this invisible, incorporeal, undefined, ultimate principle, he arrives beyond all fear ; but when he admits even the smallest difference in that principle, fear comes upon him. That very principle is a fear to the sage that views such difference. Accordingly there is this memorial verse : In awe of

1 Nāmarūparyākarana.

2 Māyāpratibimbitaṃ brahma jagataḥ kāraṇam, Anandagiri.

3 Śankarāchārya's Commentary on the Taittirīya Upanishad.

4 Sukrita.

OF THE UPANISHADS.

83

this the wind blows, in awe of this the sun rises; in Chap. III.

awe of this speed Agni and Indra, and the Death-god speeds besides those other four."

The universal soul enters into the ether in the heart

of every living thing, and there lodges in fictitious limi-

tation to each individual mind, like the ether one and

undivided in every jar and other hollow thing, or like

the one sun reflected upon every piece of water. Thus

lodged, it is many in the many that see, that hear, that

think, that know. It is the life of all. In saying that

this was non-existent in the beginning, the text does

not deny that Brahman existed in the beginning, but

only that it existed in the fictitious modes of the

phantasmagoric world. The text now presents the

scale of beatitudes in human and divine embodiments,

through which the migrating soul may remount on its

passage to the fontal unity of Self.

"There is the following computation of beatitude :

The scale of

Let there be a youth, a good youth, versed in the Veda, that may be

an able teacher, hale and strong, and let the whole

earth, full of wealth, belong to him. This is one

human bliss. A hundred of these human beatitudes

are the one bliss of the man that has become a Gand-

harva, and also of a sage learned in the Veda and un-

stricken with desire. A hundred of these beatitudes

of the man that has become a Gandharva, are the one

bliss of the divine Gandharvas, and also of a sage

learned in the Veda and unstricken with desire. A

hundred of these beatitudes of the divine Gandhar-

vas, are the one bliss of the forefathers of the tribes

in their long-lasting sphere, and also of a sage learned

in the Veda and unstricken with desire. A hundred

of these beatitudes of the forefathers in their long-

lasting sphere, are the one bliss of those born as gods

in the sphere of the gods, and also of a sage learned in

the Veda and unstricken with desire. A hundred of

these beatitudes of those born as gods in the sphere of

84

THE PHILOSOPHY

CHAP. III.

the gods, is the one bliss of those that have become gods, having gone to the gods by means of sacrifice, and also of a sage learned in the Veda and unstricken with desire. A hundred of these beatitudes of those that have become gods, is one bliss of the gods themselves, and also of a sage learned in the Veda and unstricken with desire. A hundred of these beatitudes of the gods is the one bliss of Indra, and also of a sage learned in the Veda and unstricken with desire. A hundred of these beatitudes of Indra is the one bliss of Brihaspati,1 and also of a sage learned in the Veda and unstricken with desire. A hundred of these beatitudes of Brihaspati is the one bliss of Prajāpati,2 and also of a sage learned in the Veda and unstricken with desire. A hundred of these beatitudes of Prajāpati is the one bliss of Brahmā,3 and also of the sage learned in the Veda and unstricken with desire. It is the same universal soul4 that is in the soul and that is in the sun.

"He that knows this turns his back upon the world, passes through this food-made body, passes through this body of the vital airs, passes through this sensorial body, passes through this cognitional body, and passes through this beatific body. Therefore there is this memorial verse: It is the Self from which words turn back with the mind, not reaching it; he that knows the bliss of the Self no longer fears anything. He is no longer tortured with the thought, What good thing have I left undone, what evil have I done? When he knows this, these two, the good and the evil, strengthen his spirit, for both are only Self.5 These two only strengthen his spirit when he knows this. Such is the mystic doctrine."

1 The spiritual teacher of the gods.

2 Prajāpati is the same as Prajāpati, Virāj, or Vaiśvānara.

3 Brahmā is Hiranyagarbha.

4 The Demiurgus.

5 That is, the good and the evil things that he has done are now seen by him to have been only fictitious manifestations of the one and only Self.

OF THE UPANISHADS.

85

The aspirant on his way to liberation passes through Chap. III. and beyond all finite and local phases of bliss, into the pure, undifferenced beatitude, in which there is no longer the distinction of subject and object. He enters into the beatitude beyond duality ; and good and evil for him have lost their sting, the power of giving rise to the miseries of fresh embodiments. The Bhṛiguvallī opens and closes with the same invocation as that pre-fixed to the Brahmānandavallī. It treats of self-torture and of meditation on the five wrappers of the soul, as subsidiary to the knowledge of Brahman.

"Hari. Oṃ. May he preserve us both, may he The Bhṛigu-reward us both. May we put forth our strength to- vallī, the third gether, and may what we recite be efficacious. May Taittirīya we never feel enmity against each other. Oṃ. Peace, Upanishad. peace, peace.

"Bhṛigu, the son of Varuṇa, approached his father and said, Sir, teach me about Brahman. His father said this to him : Food, breath, eye, ear, the thinking organ, speech."

Varuṇa is said to be here enumerating the several avenues to the knowledge of Brahman, these being food, i.e., the outer body, the breath within, and within that the organs of sense and motion, which belong to the cognitional and sensorial vestures of the soul.

"And again he said to him : Seek to know that out First step to of which these living things come forth, by which they the knowledge live when they have come forth, and into which they of Brahman. pass again and re-enter : that is Brahman. Bhṛigu prac-The earthly tised self-suppression, and upon performing it perceived body is Brah-that food is Brahman, in that all these living things man. arise from food, live by food when they have arisen, and pass back into and re-enter food.

"After learning this he came again to his father Second step. Varuṇa and said, Sir, teach me about Brahman. He The vital air is said to him, Seek to know Brahman by self-suppres- Brahman. sion : self-suppression is Brahman. He practised self-

86

THE PHILOSOPHY

Chap. III.

suppression, and upon performing it perceived that vital air is Brahman, inasmuch as all these living things proceed from vital air, live by vital air, and pass back and re-enter vital air.

The self-torture1 or self-suppression prescribed as introductory to the knowledge of Brahman, is a prolonged effort to annul the individual consciousness, to put away sense and thought, desire and will. It consists in the fixation of the muscles, the senses, and the intellect, with a view to riveting the senses and the thought upon one single object.

Third step.

The common sensory is Brahman.

"Upon learning this he again came to his father Varuna and said, Sir, teach me about Brahman. He said to him, Seek the knowledge of Brahman by self-suppression: self-suppression is Brahman. He practised self-suppression, and on practising it learned that the common sensory is Brahman, inasmuch as all these living things issue out of, live by, and return into the common sensory.

Fourth step.

The mind is Brahman.

"After learning this he again came to his father Varuna and said, Sir, teach me about Brahman. He said to him, Seek the knowledge of Brahman by self-suppression: self-suppression is Brahman. He practised self-suppression, and on practising it perceived that cognition is Brahman, inasmuch as all these living things issue out of cognition, live by it, and pass back into it.

Fifth step.

The bliss of dreamless sleep is Brahman.

"Upon learning this he again came to his father Varuna and said, Sir, teach me about Brahman. He said to him, Seek the knowledge of Brahman by self-suppression: self-suppression is Brahman. He practised self-suppression, and on practising it perceived that bliss is Brahman, inasmuch as all these living things issue out of bliss, live upon it, pass back into it. This is the science that Varuna imparted and Bhrigu received, a science made perfect in the supreme ether

1 Tapas. Tach cha tapo vāhyāntahkaranasamādhānam, manasas chendriyānām chaikāgryam param tapah, Śaṅkarāchārya.

in the heart. He that knows this is made perfect; he

becomes rich in food, an eater of food; he becomes

great in offspring, in flocks and herds, and spiritual

power; he becomes great in fame. Let him never find

fault with food: that is his observance. The vital air

is food. The body is the eater of that food.

The body is based on vital air, and vital air is based on the

body, and thus food is based on food. He that knows

this food based on food is made perfect; he becomes

rich in food, an eater of food; he becomes rich in

offspring, flocks and herds, and spiritual power; he

becomes great in fame.

"Let him never despise food: that is his observance.

Water is food, light is the eater of that food. Light is

based on water, and water is based on light, and thus

food is based on food. He that knows this food based

on food is made perfect; he becomes rich in food, an

eater of food; he becomes rich in offspring, flocks and

herds, and spiritual power, and rich in fame.

"Let him make much of food: that is his observance.

Earth is food, ether is the eater of that food. Ether is

based on earth, and earth is based on ether, and thus

food is based on food. He that knows this food based

on food is made perfect; he becomes rich in food, an

eater of food; he becomes rich in offspring, in flocks

and herds, and spiritual power, and rich in fame.

"Let him forbid no man to enter his house: that is

his observance. Let him then store up food in what-

ever way he can. They tell him that comes to the

house that his food is ready. If the food is given at

once, it shall be given at once to the giver; if it be

given later, it shall be given later to the giver; if it be

given only at the last, it shall be given only at the last

to the giver.

"Let Brahman be meditated on as that which is

preservative in speech, as that which is acquisitive and

preservative in the ascending and descending vital airs.

88

THE PHILOSOPHY

CHAP. III.

as work in the hands, as locomotion in the feet. These

are the meditations on the Self in man. Now for its

manifestations in the gods. It is fertility in the rain,

mightiness in lightning. It is wealth in flocks and

herds; in the stars it is light. It is offspring, immor-

tality, beatitude. In the ether it is all that is. Let

him meditate upon Brahman as the basis of all that is,

and he shall be firmly based. Let him meditate upon

it as greatness, and he shall become great. Let him

meditate upon it as thought, and he shall become a

thinker. Let him meditate upon it as that which

overawes, and the things that he desires shall bow

before him. Let him meditate upon it as powerful,

and he shall become powerful. Let him meditate upon

it as that into which divine things die away, and his

enemies and rivals shall perish, and his brother's sons,

if they displease him, shall die. It is the same uni-

versal spirit that is in the soul and that is in the sun.

“He that knows this turns his back upon the world,

passes through this food-made body, passes through

this body of the vital airs, passes through this sensorial

body, passes through this cognitional body, and passes

through this beatific body. Expatriating through these

worlds, with food at will, and taking shapes at will, he

is ever singing this song of universal unity: O wonder-

ful, wonderful, wonderful. I am food, I am food, I

am food; I am the eater, I am the eater, I am the

eater; I am the transmuter of food into the eater, I

am the transmuter of food into the eater, I am the

transmuter of food into the eater. I am the first-born

of creation, earlier than the gods, the navel of immor-

tality.1 He that gives me keeps me. I am the food

that eats the eater. I stand above every world, with

light as of the sun. He that knows this is all this.

Such is the mystic doctrine.

“Hari. Om. May he preserve us both, may he re-

He strips off

the five ves-

tures of the

soul one after

another. He

acquires and

exercises ma-

gical powers.

He sings the

song of uni-

versal unity,

and is ab-

sorbed into

the one and

all.

1Hiraṇyagarbha.

ward us both. May we put forth our strength together,

and may what we recite be efficacious. May we never

feel enmity against each other. Om. Peace, peace,

peace."

In this song of universal unity the sage finds that he

is one with every manifestation of Brahman, from the

visible elemental things of the world of sense up to the

divine emanations Purusha, Hiranyagarbha, and Îśvara ;

one also with the underlying reality, the one and only

Self. At this stage he is said to possess magical powers;

he can range at will from this world through the several

worlds of the deities, and assume what shapes he

pleases. A trace of illusion1 adheres to him at times,

so that he still sees the semblances of duality; he knows

himself to be the Self that is in all things, and finds

that he possesses the wonder-working powers of the

Yogin or ecstatic seer; he can take upon himself any

shape, visible or invisible, from the least to the greatest,

and go where he chooses among the worlds of men and

gods, and is said figuratively to enjoy every form of

pleasure at one and the same moment. Thaumaturgy

is the gift of ecstasy. The epithets that Archer Butler

bestows upon the philosophy of Proclus are applicable

to the philosophy of ancient India. It is sublime and

it is puerile. It is marked at once by sagacity and by

poverty, by daring independence and by grovelling

superstition.

In the view of the Indian schoolmen, the greatest of

The great text,

all the texts of the Upanishads is the text That art

thou, in the sixth Prapāṭhaka2 of the Chhāndogya

Upanishad. This is pre-eminently the Mahāvākya, the

supreme enouncement. It is on the comprehension of

this text that spiritual intuition3 or ecstatic vision rises

in the purified intelligence of the aspirant to extrication

from metempsychosis. This text is the burden of the

instruction given by Āruṇi to his son, the pedantic and

1Ānandagiri in loco.

2Lecture.

3Samyagdarśana.

90

THE PHILOSOPHY

CHAP. III.

The dialogue

of Aruni and

S'vetaketu,

from the

Chhāndogya

Upanishad.

opinionated Śvetaketu, already mentioned in the second chapter of this work.

"Rooted in the existent are all these created things,

built upon the real, based upon the real. It has been

said already how these divine elements heat, water,

earth, in man are threefold.1 When a man is dying,

his speech passes into his inner sensory, his inner sen-

sory into his vital breath, his vital breath into heat, his

heat into the supreme divinity. All this world is ani-

mated by the supersensible. This is real, this is Self.

THAT ART THOU, Śvetaketu. Hearing this, Śvetaketu

spoke again: 'Teach me further, holy sir. Be it so, my

son, he replied.

Allegory of

the sweet

juices and the

honey.

"As bees make honey, gathering into one mass, into

unity, the sweet juices of various plants ; as those

juices cannot distinguish themselves the one from the

other, as the juices of this plant and that: so all these

creatures, though they are one in the real, know not

that they are one in the real. What they are severally

in this life, lion, or wolf, or boar, or worm, or moth, or

gnat, or musquito, that they become again and again.

All this world is animated by the supersensible. This

is real, this is Self. THAT ART THOU, Śvetaketu. He

said again: Teach me further, sir. Be it so, my son,

he replied.

Allegory of

the rivers and

the sea.

"These rivers flow east and west, they are drawn

from the sea east and west, and flow into the sea again.2

They become sea and only sea. They know not there

that one is this river and another that. And so with

all these living things. They come out of the real, and

do not know that they come out of it, and therefore they

1 The threefold nature of the elements, as taught in the Chhān-

dogya, is said by the scholiasts to imply the fuller doctrine of quin-

tuplication, or the fivefold succes-

sive concretion of the elements

already described in this chapter.

2 "They are drawn up from the sea into the clouds, fall again in

the form of rain, and in the shape

of the Ganges and other rivers

flow back into the sea, and be-

come one with it again."—Śan-

karāchārya in loco.

OF THE UPANISHADS.

91

become in this life, as it may be, lion, or wolf, or boar,

or worm, or moth, or gnat, or mosquito. All this world

is animated by the supersensible. That is real, that is

Self. That art thou, Śvetaketu. He said again :

Teach me further, sir. Be it so, my son, said Āruṇi.

"Here is a great tree. If a man strike the root, it still

lives, and its sap exudes. If he strike it in the trunk, it

still lives, and its sap exudes. If he strike it at the top, it

still lives, and its sap exudes. This tree, permeated by

the living soul, stands still imbibing, still luxuriant.

If the living soul forsake one of its branches, that

branch dries up: if it forsake a second branch, that

branch dries up: if it forsake a third branch, that

branch dries up: if it forsake the whole tree, the whole

tree dries up. Know this, my son, said Āruṇi. In-

formed as it is by the living soul, it is this body that

dies, the soul dies not. All this world is animated by

the supersensible. That is real, that is Self. That art

thou, Śvetaketu. Hereupon Śvetaketu spoke again :

Teach me further, holy sir. Be it so, my son, said Āruṇi.

"Take a fig from the holy fig-tree. Here it is, sir,

said he. Break it open. It is broken open, sir. What

dost thou see in it? These little seeds, sir. Break

open one of them. It is broken open, sir. What dost

thou see in it? Nothing. His father said : From this,

so small that thou canst not see it, from this minute-

ness the great holy fig-tree grows up. Believe, my son,

that all this world is animated by the supersensible.

That is real, that is Self. That art thou, Śvetaketu.

He said again : Teach me further, sir. Be it so, my son,

said Āruṇi.

"Take this lump of salt, and throw it into some

water, and come to me again to-morrow. Śvetaketu

did so. His father said : Take out the lump of salt

thou threwest into the water yester evening. He

1 The tree is the body, the body. These are vitalised by the

branches the constituents of the indwelling soul.

92

THE PHILOSOPHY

CHAP. III.

— looked for it, but could not find it, for it was dissolved.

His father told him to sip some water from the surface.

What is it like? It is salt, he answered. Taste it fur-

ther down: what is it like? It is salt. Taste it from

the bottom: what is it like? It is salt. Now thou

hast tasted it, come to me, said Āruṇi. Śvetaketu

came and said: It remains always as it is. His father

said: 'The salt is still there, though thou seest it not.

All this world is animated by the supersensible. That

is real, that is Self. THAT ART THOU, Śvetaketu. So

Śvetaketu said again : Teach me further, sir. Be it so,

my son, he replied.

Allegory of

the highway-

man and the

blindfold tra-

veller.

"A highwayman leaves a wayfarer from Kandahār

blindfold in a desolate waste he has brought him to.

The wayfarer brought blindfold into the waste and left

there, knows not what is east, what is north, and what

is south, and cries aloud for guidance. Some passer-by

unties his hands and unbinds his eyes, and tells him,

Yonder is the way to Kandahār, walk on in that direc-

tion. The man proceeds, asking for village after village,

and is instructed and informed until he reaches Kan-

dahār. Even in this way it is that in this life a man

that has a spiritual teacher knows the Self. He is de-

layed only till such time as he pass away.1 All this

world is animated by the supersensible. That is real,

that is Self. THAT ART THOU, Śvetaketu. Then Śveta-

ketu said again : Teach me further, sir. Be it so, my

son, he replied.

Gradual de-

parture of the

soul at death.

"His relatives come round the dying man and ask,

Dost thou know me? dost thou know me? He recog-

nises them so long as his voice passes not away into his

thought, his thought into his breath, his breath into his

vital warmth, his warmth into the supreme divinity.

But when his voice has passed away into thought, his

1 The sage liberated and yet

living, the jīvanmukta, has to wait

him, to make his personality pass

only till his body falls away from

away for ever into the imperson-

ality of the one and only Self.

OF THE UPANISHADS.

93

thought into breath, his breath into warmth, his warmth

into the supreme divinity, then at last he ceases to

know them. All this world is animated by the super-

sensible. That is real, that is Self. That art thou,

Śvetaketu. After this Śvetaketu spoke yet once again :

Teach me further, holy sir. Be it so, my son, said

Āruṇi.

"They bring a man with his hands tied before the

Raja, saying, He has carried something off, he has

committed theft. Heat the axe for him. If the man

is guilty of the deed, but falsifies himself, intending

falsehood, and screens himself with a lie, he lays hold

of the red-hot hatchet and is burnt, and thereupon is

put to death. If he is guiltless he tells the truth

about himself, and with true intent, clothing himself

with the truth, he lays hold of the glowing hatchet

and is not burnt, and is not put to death. As he is not

burnt in that ordeal, so is the sage unhurt in the fiery

trial of metempsychosis. All this world is animated

by the supersensible. This is real, this is Self. That

art thou, Śvetaketu."

That art thou.1 The word That, in the first place,

denotes the totality of things in the whole, that is, the

world-fiction, the Demiurgus or universal soul, and the

characterless Self. These three fictitiously present

themselves in union ; the universal soul and the ficti-

tious universe being penetrated and permeated by the

Self, as a red-hot lump of iron is penetrated and per-

meated by fire. The word That, in the second place,

points to the characterless Self apart from the fictitious

universal spirit, and the fictitious universe which over-

lies it.

The word thou, in the first place, denotes the totality

of things in the parts, that is, the various portions of the

world-fiction, the various individual minds or migrat-

ing souls to which these portions are allotted, and the

1 This explanation is taken from Ṇrisimhasarasvati's Subodhinī.

94

THE PHILOSOPHY

Chap. III. characterless Self. These three also fictitiously present

themselves in union ; the various phases of the world-

fiction and the various migrating souls being penetrated

and permeated by the Self as a lump of iron by fire.

The word THOU, in the second place, points to the

characterless Self, the pure bliss, that underlies the

various phases of the world-fiction and the various

migrating souls.

The sense of the text is therefore this: the individual

soul is one with the universal soul, and the universal

soul is one with the one and only Self. It is of this

Self, through the operancy of the world-fiction, that all

individual things and persons are the fictitious parts:-

"Not all parts like, but all alike informed

With radiant light, as glowing iron with fire."

The differences that mark off thing from thing and

soul from soul are false, and shall pass away; the

spiritual unity that pervades and unifies them is true,

and shall abide for ever.

OF THE UPANISHADS.

95

CHAPTER IV.

THE MUNDAKA UPANISHAD.

"All are but parts of one stupendous whole

Whose body nature is, and God the soul :

That changed through all, and yet in all the same,

Great in the earth as in the ethereal frame,

Warms in the sun, refreshes in the breeze,

Glows in the stars, and blossoms in the trees;

Lives through all life, extends through all extent,

Spreads undivided, operates unspent;

Breathes in our soul, informs our mortal part,

As full, as perfect, in a hair as heart;

As full, as perfect, in vile man that mourns

As the rapt seraph that adores and burns :

To him no high, no low, no great, no small :

He fills, he bounds, connects and equals all."—POPE.

"And this deep power in which we exist, and whose beatitude is all

accessible to us, is not only self-sufficing and perfect in every hour, but

the act of seeing and the thing seen, the seer and the spectacle, the sub-

ject and the object, are one. We see the world piece by piece, as the sun,

the moon, the animal, the tree; but the whole, of which these are the

shining parts, is the soul. From within or from behind a light shines

through us upon things, and makes us aware that we are nothing, but

the light is all."—EMERSON.

IT is said in a Vedic text that every Brāhman1 comes

into the world bringing with him three debts. These are

his debts to the Rishis of sacred studentship, that he

may learn the primitive hymns by heart, and become

able himself to teach them to pupils of his own to ensure

their perpetual transmission ; his debt of sacrifice to the

gods; and his debt to the Pitris or forefathers of the

1 Jāyamāno vai brāhmaṇas trib-

hir ṛṇavān jāyate, brahmacharyeṇa

rishibhyo, yajñena devebhyah, pra-

jayā pitṛibhyah.

96

THE PHILOSOPHY

CHAP. IV.

tribes, of sons to offer the food and water to their

deceased father and to their progenitors. The payment

of these debts is incumbent on those living in the world;

and they must fulfil every prescriptive usage, and live

in obedience to the religion of tradition and liturgic

rites. Worship with its proper ritual is binding upon

the multitude, and has its fruit in raising the wor-

shipper to higher embodiments, or procuring for him

a sojourn in a paradise of the deities. This religion

belongs therefore to the world of fictions and semblances,

to the phantasmagoric world of migrating souls and

their spheres of recompense; and has its reality only

for the unpurified and unawakened spirit, for whom

it is true that the miseries of metempsychosis are real

enough. These immemorial rites and ordinances have

their place; they are the religion of the many, and if

followed with the understanding of their mystic import,

and a knowledge of the deities invoked, may elevate

the worshipper to the paradise of Brahmā. This under-

standing and this knowledge are the “inferior science,”

aparā vidyā. The worship of the deities and the ances-

tral usages, however, bear also a higher fruit. The

aspirant to extrication from metempsychosis may prac-

tise them with a sole view to the purification of his intel-

lect for the reception of higher truth. He turns his back

upon the world, and upon the religion of the world

and all its promises. He wishes for no higher form of

life, for every form of life is hateful; he wishes for no

paradise, for the pleasures of every paradise are tainted

and fugitive. The religion of usages and liturgic rites

The religion

of rites pro-

longs the

migration of

the soul.

is a mode of activity, and, like every other mode of

action, tends to misery. Activity is the root of pain,

for so long as a living being acts so long must he receive

the award of his good and evil works, in body after

body, in æon after æon. The aspirant has already

learnt, imperfectly as he may have realised it, that to

the true point of view taught by the recluses in the

jungle, the religion of rites and of immemorial usages,

Chap. IV.

the sacrifices, and the gods sacrificed to, are alike unreal: for the sage made perfect they have no existence.

There is no truth in things many, in things finite ;

no truth where the thinker is other than the things

around him. A Vedic text says that he that medi-

tates upon any deity as a being other than himself

has no knowledge, and is a mere victim to the gods.

As soon as a man turns his back on every form of

life, and aspires to escape from all further embodi-

ment, he is free from the debt of sacrifice to the

deities, and the debt of progeny to the forefathers of

the tribes. He may, if he will, leave these debts

unpaid, and proceed at once from sacred studentship to

meditation and self-discipline in the jungle. After his

initiation into the Veda, the path of abnegation and

knowledge is at once open to him. As there is no

The religion of

truth in the many, all truth is in the one; and this

gnosis frees

one that alone is is the Self, the inmost essence of all

the soul from

things, that vivifies all sentiencles and permeates all

further migra-

things, from a tuft of grass up to the highest god, up to

tion.

Brahmā himself. This is the pure bliss, and it dwells

within the heart of every creature, and to see this and

to become one with it for ever is the highest end of

aspiration. It is to be reached only by a never-failing

inertion and a never-failing abstraction, by a rigid and

insensible posture, by apathy, vacuity, and ecstasy. To

see it, to become one with it, to melt away his per-

sonality into its impersonality, a man must renounce

all ties, must repair to the solitude of the forest, must

crush every desire, and check every feeling and thought,

till his mind be fitted to reflect the pure light of undif-

ferenced being, to be irradiated with, till it pass away

into, "the light of lights beyond the darkness." In the

course of this procedure the cosmic fiction gradually

vanishes, and the Self shines forth as the sun shines

out slowly as the clouds disperse. There is thus a

G

98

THE PHILOSOPHY

Chap. IV. — many is only the first step of preliminary purification. This higher religion, the knowledge of the Self, is the superior science, the parā vidyā. The sacrifices, and the deities sacrificed to, and the recompense, have a relative reality to the unawakened multitude. They have no reality to the already purified aspirant to liberation from metempsychosis; he refuses reality to everything but the one and only real, and renounces all things that he may find that one and only real, the Self within. His only business is with the spiritual intuition. Such is the subsumption of karmavidyā, the knowledge of rites, under brahmavidyā, the knowledge of the Self; and such is the absorption of the religion of usages into the religion of ecstatic union. The inferior science is a dharmajijñāsā, or investigation of the several rewards of the various prescriptive sacra; the superior science is a brahmajijñāsā, or investigation of the fontal spiritual essence, Brahman.

This religion or philosophy must be learned from an authorised exponent.

The knowledge of the Self or Brahman is not a private and personal thing, or attainable by an exercise of the individual intellect. It is everywhere taught in the Upanishads that it was revealed by this or that god or other semi-divine teacher, and handed down through a succession of authorised exponents.1 It is only from one of these accredited teachers that the knowledge of the Self is to be had; as we have already read, “A man that has a spiritual teacher knows the Self.” All teaching that is out of accordance with the traditionary exposition of the Upanishads, is individual assertion and exercise of merely human ingenuity.2

These things premised, and with the information given in the preceding chapters, the reader is in a position to understand the Muṇḍaka Upanishad. This is one of the Upanishads of the Atharvaveda, and one of the most

1 Āchāryaparamparā, sampradāyaparamparā.

2 Śabddhiparikalpita, utprekṣāmātra.

important documents of primitive Indian philosophy. Chap. IV.

Explanations will be given from time to time from the

traditional exposition of the scholiasts Śankarāchārya

and Ānandagiri. The text is as follows :-

I. 1. “Om. Brahmā was the first of the gods that

emanated, the maker of the world, the upholder of the

spheres. He proclaimed the science of the Self, the

basis of all science, to his eldest son, Atharvan.

“Atharvan in ancient days delivered to Angis that

science of the Self which Brahmā had proclaimed to him,

and Angis to Satyavāha the Bhāradvāja, and the Bhārad-

vāja transmitted the traditionary science to Angirasa.

“Śaunaka the householder came reverently to An-

girasa and asked : Holy sage, what must be known that

all this universe may be known ?

“Angirasa replied : Those that know the Veda say

that there are two sciences that are to be known, the

superior science and the inferior.

“Of these, the inferior is the Rigveda, the Yajurveda,

the Sāmaveda, the Atharvaveda, and the instrumental

sciences, the phonetics, ritual, grammar, etymology,

metrics, and astronomy. The superior science is that

by which the imperishable principle is attained to.

“That which is invisible, impalpable, without kin-

dred, without colour, that which has neither eyes

ears, neither hands nor feet, which is imperishable,

manifested in infinite variety, present everywhere, and

wholly supersensible,—that is the changeless principle

that the wise behold as the origin of all things.

“The whole world issues out of that imperishable

principle, like as a spider spins his thread out of him-

self and draws it back into himself again, or as plants

grow up upon the earth, or as the hairs of the head

and of the body issue out of the living man.”

Māyā, the world-fiction, is, as has been already seen,

the body of Īśvara, the Archimagus, the first and highest

of emanations,—the body out of which all things pro-

100

THE PHILOSOPHY

CHAP. IV. ceed, the kāraṇaśarīra. Īśvara projects all things and

all migrating souls out of his body, and withdraws them

into it again at the close of each æon, as the spider

extends its thread out of its body and draws it back

into it again. The simile of the spider occurs also in

the Brihadāraṇyaka Upanishad. A curious misappre-

Hume's misin-

terpretation of

this simile.

hension on the part of Hume, or rather of some inform-

ant of Hume, is noteworthy in reference to this image.

It is to be found in his Dialogues concerning Natural

Religion :—“The Brahmins assert* that the world arose

from an infinite spider, who spun this whole complicated

mass from his bowels, and annihilates afterwards the

whole or any part of it, by absorbing it again and resolving

it into his own essence. Here is a species of cosmogony

which appears to us ridiculous; because a spider is a

little contemptible animal, whose operations we are

never likely to take for a model of the whole universe.

But still here is a new species of analogy even in our

globe. And were there a planet wholly inhabited by

spiders, this inference would then appear as natural

and irrefragable as that which in one planet ascribes

the origin of all things to design and intelligence.

Why an orderly system may not be spun from the

belly as well as from the brain, it will be difficult to

give a satisfactory reason.” To return to the text :—

“Brahman begins to swell with fervid self-coercion.

Thence the aliment begins to unfold itself, and from that

aliment proceed Prāṇa, the internal sensory, the elements,

the actions of living souls, and their perennial fruits.

“This Brahman,1 Hiranyagarbha, and name and

colour, and food, issue forth out of that being that

knows all, that knows everything, whose self-coercion

is prevision.”

Here again we meet with the same idea as in the

Nāsadīyasūkta and in the Taittirīya Upanishad. The

1 The saguṇam brahma, or śa-

balam brahma, the divine emana-

tion of Brahman and Māyā, the

māyopādhikam brahma.

one, the Self, Brahman in association with Māyā, Chap. IV.

and thus already the creative Īśvara,—that is to say,

Brahman in the first quasi-personal manifestation or

emanation as the Demiurgus,—is said to engage in

self-torture,1 self-suppression, or self-coercion. This

self-torture of the Demiurgus is a meditation, a pre-

vision of the world that is to be. The “aliment” is

the cosmical illusion, developing itself in such a way

that each migrating soul shall pass through successive

lives appropriate to the residuary influences of its

works in the last æon. Prāṇa or Hiranyagarbha, the

spirit of dreaming senticencies, emanates out of Īśvara,

the all-knowing Demiurgus. “Name and colour” is

a constant phrase of the Upanishads for the outward

world in its visible and nameable aspects. Food as

the material of the earthly body, is the latest mani-

festation of Brahman in the descending order of pro-

gressive concretion.

The text speaks, in the next place, of the matter of

the two sciences. The inferior science, it says, has to

do with metempsychosis, and with the usages and rites

on the fulfilment or neglect of which higher and lower

future states of life depend; the superior science treats

of the knowledge of the Self as the means of releasing

the aspirant from further migration.

I. 2. “This is the truth: The rites which the sages

1st Mundaka,

saw in the Mantras were widely current in the Tre-

tāyuga or second age of the world. Perform them

regularly, you that wish for rewards. This is your

path to recompense in a higher embodiment.

“When the fire is kindled, and its blaze is flickering,

the sacrificer should throw the offering between the

two portions of sacrificial butter, throwing it with

faith.

“If the sacrifice upon the perpetual household fire

1 Tapas, in this verse translated

and at the same time with its usual

in accordance with its derivation,

sense, as fervent self-coercion.

102

THE PHILOSOPHY

Chap. IV.

be not followed by the oblation at new-moon, by the

The rewards

of the pre-

scriptive sacra

are transient.

The sage must

turn his back

upon them all.

full-moon rites, by the Chāturmāsya, and by the offer-

ing of first-fruits ; if it be unfrequented with guests; or

if it be unaccompanied with the oblation to all the

deities; or if it be presented with any error in the

form; the sacrificer forfeits the seven ascending worlds

of recompense.

"Fire has seven wavy tongues,—the black, the terrific,

the thought-swift, the red, the purple, the scintillating,

and the tongue of every shape, divine.

"If a man offers his sacrifices while these tongues of

fire are flashing, and offers them in proper season, his

very sacrifices become the solar rays to lead him up to

the abode of the one lord of all the gods.

"The shining sacrifices bear the sacrificer upward

through the solar rays, crying, Come hither, come

hither; greeting him with kindly voice, and doing

honour to him, saying, This is your recompense, the

sacred sphere of Brahmā.

"But these sacrifices with their ritual and its eighteen

parts are frail boats indeed ; and they that rejoice in

sacrifice as the best of things, in their infatuation shall

pass on again to decay and death.

"They that are infatuated, dwelling in the midst of

the illusion, wise in their own eyes, and learned in their

own conceit, are stricken with repeated plagues, and go

round and round, like blind men led by the blind.

"They are foolish, and living variously in this illu-

sion, think that they have what they want: and since

they that trust in sacrifices are too greedy of higher

lives to learn the truth, they fall from paradise on the

expiry of their reward.

"In their infatuation they think that the revealed

rites and works for the public good are the best and

highest thing, and fail to find the other thing that is

higher and better still. When they have had their

reward in the body in some upper mansion in paradise,

they return to a human embodiment, or to a lower life

Chap. IV.

"They among them that practise austerity and faith

in the forest, quiescent, versed in the knowledge of the

gods, and living upon alms,—these put away the stain

of good and evil works, and go after death to the sphere

of the imperishable deity, the abiding spirit, Hiranya-

garbha.

"Surveying these spheres won by works, the seeker

of Brahman should learn to renounce all things. No

uncreated sphere of being is to be gained by works.

Therefore he should take fuel in his hands, and repair

to a sacred teacher, learned in the Veda, intent upon

the Self, that he may learn the uncreate.

"The spiritual guide, when he comes to him with

reverence, with a humble heart and with his senses re-

pressed, must truly expound to him the science of the

Self, as he knows the undecaying spirit, the sole reality."

The aspirant to extrication from metempsychosis

must turn his back upon every sphere of recompense,

even upon the paradise of the gods that is won by

sacrificial rites, and upon the paradise of Hiranyagarbha

or Brahmā, that is attained to by those that add to their

outward worship a knowledge of the deities and of the

import of the rites. These latter reside in the paradise

of Brahmā till the close of the æon. All these spheres

of fruition are transitory; they reproduce each other

like seed and plant; they are empty and unsatisfying,

perishing like a reverie or dream, like the waters of a

mirage, like the bubbles and foam upon the surface of

a stream. To return to the text. The first section of

the second Munḍaka treats of Brahman and the supe-

rior science.

II. 1. "This is the truth: As its kindred sparks fly

out in thousands from a blazing fire, so the various

living souls proceed out of that imperishable principle,

and return into it again.

104

THE PHILOSOPHY

Chap. IV.

"That infinite spirit is self-luminous, without and within, without origin, without vital breath or thinking

faculty, stainless, beyond the imperishable ultimate."

The imperishable ultimate is the cosmical illusion. Brahman is in truth untouched by the world-fiction.

It is only fictitiously that this overspreads Brahman, as the waters of the mirage fictitiously overspread the

sands of the desert. All living things are only the one Self fictitiously limited to this or that fictitious mind

and body, and return into the Self as soon as the fictitious limitation disappears. As soon as the jar is

broken the ether from within it is one with the ether without, one with ether one and undivided. The text

next speaks of the several unreal effluences or emanations from the Self as illusorily overspread with the

cosmical illusion. Each such emanation is false; in the words of the Chhāndogya Upanishad, "a modification

of speech only, a change, a name."

"From that proceed the vital breath, the thinking principle and all the organs of sense and motion, and

the elements, ether, air, fire, water, and the earth that holds all things."

Purusha or Vaiśvānara, the universal soul that emanates from Hiraṇyagarbha, dwells in every living body,

and every living body is made up of the elements just spoken of. The text accordingly proceeds to charac-

terise this Purusha. The scholiast identifies him with Vishṇu.

"Fire is his head, the sun and moon his eyes, the regions his ears, the open Vedas are his voice, the air

is his vital breath, the whole world is his heart, the earth springs from his feet, for this is the inner soul of

all living things."

The whole world is said to be the heart of Purusha, because it is all an effluence of the mind,1 into which it

is seen to melt away in the state of dreamless sleep,

1 Antahkaṇa, the aggregate of buddhi, manas, ahaṅkāra, and chitta.

OF THE UPANISHADS.

103

and out of which it re-issues when the sleeper awakens, Chap. IV.

as sparks fly up out of fire. The mind is in the heart.

Purusha is the soul internal to all living things, for in

every living thing it is he that sees, hears, thinks, and

knows.

" Fire proceeds from him, and the sun is the fuel of

that fire. From the moon proceeds the cloud-god Par-

janya; from the cloud-god the plants upon the earth ;

from these the germ of life. Thus the various living

things issue out of Purusha.

" The Rik, the Sāman, and the Yajush, the initiations,

the sacrifices, the offerings of victims, and the presents

to the Brāhmans, the liturgic year, the sacrificer, and

the spheres of recompense, those in which the moon

purifies, and those in which the sun purifies the elevated

worshipper,—all these things issue out of Purusha.

" The gods in various orders, the SādhyaS, men, and

beasts, and birds, the breath and vital functions, rice

and barley, self-torture, faith, truth, continence, and the

prescriptive usages,—all issue out of Purusha."

The imagery of the Nāsadīyasūkta was reproduced

in the first section of the first Mundaka, that of the

Purushasūkta is reproduced in these verses. The cos-

mological conception of the poets of the Upanishads

seems to have had its first beginnings in the later part

of the Mantra period of Vedic literature.

" The seven breaths proceed from him, the seven

flames, the seven kinds of fuel, the seven oblations, the

seven passages of the vital airs, the vital airs that reside

in the cavity of the body, seven in each living thing.

" It is from him that the seas and all the mountains

proceed; it is from him that the rivers flow in various

forms; it is from him that plants grow up, and their

nutritious material by which the inner invisible body

is clothed with the visible elemental frame.

" All this world, with its sacrifices and its knowledge,

is Purusha. Self is supreme, immortal. My friend,

106

THE PHILOSOPHY

Chap. IV.

he that knows this Self that is seated in the heart of

The vision of

every living thing, scatters off the ties of illusion even

the Self within

in this present life."

the heart is

The second section of the second Munḍaka sets forth

the only salva-

the means of a fuller knowledge of Brahman. The

tion.

aspirant is to meditate upon it as the characterless

2d Munḍaka,

essence that shines forth in every mode of mind, the

2d Section.

one and only Self illusorily manifested in the plurality

II. 2. “This Self is self-luminous, present, dwelling

of migrating souls.

in the heart of every living thing, the great centre of

all things. All that moves, and breathes, and stirs is

centred in it. You know this as that which is and

that which is not; as the end of aspiration, above the

knowledge of all living things, the highest good :

“As bright ; as lesser than the least and greater than

the greatest; as that on which all the spheres of recom-

penses are founded, together with the tenants of those

spheres. This same imperishable Brahman is the vital

air, the inner sensory, the voice. This same Brahman

is true, this is immortal. That is the mark. Hit it

with thy mind, my friend.

“Let a man take the great weapon of the Upanishads

Use of the

for his bow, and let him fix upon it his arrow sharpened

mystic

with devotion. Bend it with the thoughts fixed upon

syllable Om.

the Self, and hit the mark, the undecaying principle.

“The mystic utterance Om is the bow, the soul the

arrow, the Self the mark. Let it be shot at with un-

failing heed, and let the soul, like an arrow, become

one with the mark.

“ It is over this Self that sky and earth and air are

woven, and the sensory, with all the organs of sense

and motion. Know that this is the one and only Self.

Renounce all other words, for this is the bridge to

immortality.

“ This Self dwells in the heart where the arteries

are centred, variously manifesting itself. Om: thus

OF THE UPANISHADS.

107

meditate upon the Self. May it be well with you that

Chap. IV.

you may cross beyond the darkness.

" This Self knows all, it knows everything. Its glory

is in the world. It is seated in the ether in the irra-

diated heart, present to the inner sensory, actuating

the organs and the organism, settled in the earthly

body. The wise fix their heart, and by knowledge see

the blissful, the immortal principle that manifests itself.

" When a man has seen that Self unmanifest and

The ties of the

manifest, the ties of his heart are loosed, all his per-

heart are

plexities are solved, and all his works exhausted.

loosed by see-

" The stainless, indivisible Self is in that last bright

ing the Self,

sheath, the heart: it is the pure light of lights that

the light of

they that know the Self know.

the world.

" The sun gives no light to that, nor the moon and

stars, neither do these lightnings light it up; how then

should this fire of ours ? All things shine after it as it

shines, all this world is radiant with its light.

" It is this undying Self that is outspread before,

Self behind, Self to the right, Self to the left, above,

below. All this glorious world is Self."

The aspirant is bidden to renounce all other words.

He is to renounce the inferior science, the knowledge

of the gods and of the various rites with which they

are worshipped ; for these things only prolong the series

of his embodied lives. The knowledge of Brahman is

said to be the bridge to immortality, as it is the way

by which the sage is to cross over the sea of metemp-

sychosis to reunite his soul with the Self beyond.

Self or Brahman is said to reside in the heart, in the

midst of all the arteries. By this it is only meant that

the modifications of the mind seated within the heart

shine, or as we should say, rise into the light of con-

sciousness, in the light of the Self. The mind is in

the heart, and there receives the light of the one and

only Self, that itself is everywhere, ubique et in nullo

loco. It is only in semblance that the Self, which is

108

THE PHILOSOPHY

CHAP. IV. everywhere, can be said to come and go, to dwell here

or there. The indwelling of the Self is its manifestation in the mental modes. A lotus-shaped lump of

flesh in the heart is styled the brahmapura, the abode

of Brahman. It is here that the Self is said to witness,

that is, to give light to, every feeling, thought, and pas-

sion of the soul. It is here that it sees unseen, hears

unheard, thinks unthought upon; but its vision, its

hearing, and its thought are unintermitted and un-

differenced. It does not see as we see, or hear as we

hear, or think as we think, but as a pure light of char-

acterless intelligence. It gives light to all, and receives

light from nothing. It is the pure light beyond the

darkness of the world-fiction; the pure bliss of exemp-

tion from evil, pain, and weariness. All the things

that present themselves in nameable and coloured

phases seem to be, and this only is.

The first section of the third Munḍaka opens with

the simile of the two birds upon one tree. They repre-

sent the migrating soul and Īśvara the cosmic soul,

residing together in the body of each and every living

thing. This section is said to treat of the qualifications

required in an aspirant to liberation, before he can

enter on the pursuit of ecstasy and intuition of the

Self.

3d Munḍaka,

1st Section.

Allegory of

the two bird

on one tree.

III. I. “Two birds always together and united nestle

upon the same tree; one of them eats the sweet fruit of

the holy fig-tree, the other looks on without eating.

“In the same tree the migrating soul is immersed,

and sorrows in its helpless plight, and knows not what

to do ; but its sorrow passes as soon as it sees the adored

lord, and that this world is only his glory.

“When the sage sees the golden-hued maker of the

world, the lord, the Purusha that emanates from Brah-

man, he shakes off his good and evil works, and without

stain arrives at the ultimate identity.”

The body is a tree that bears the fruits of actions

in a former life. The migrating soul, clothed in the Chap. IV.

tenuous involucrum, resides in the body, and eats the

various fruits of its good and evil actions in earlier

embodiments. Not so the Demiurgus, the golden-hued,

that is, the self-luminous, universal soul, ever pure,

intelligent, and free. He actuates all the migrating

souls and all the spheres through which they migrate,

but takes no part in the experiences they pass through.

The soul, laden with illusions, and with cravings after

temporal felicity, is fated to pass through all the varied

anguish of hunger, thirst, faintness, sickness, partings,

bereavements, decay, and death, in body after body in

vegetal, animal, or human shape, through countless

ages; till at last the good works that it has done in a

series of lives may bring it in a human embodiment

into the presence of a spiritual guide, who shall teach

it the way of release from further migration, through

self-torture, ecstasy, and intuition in which it identifies

itself, first with the universal soul, and then with the one

and only Self.

"This Īśvara is the living breath that variously

manifests itself in all living things. Knowing him, the

sage ceases to speak of many things; his sport is in

the Self, his joy is in the Self, his action is relative to

the Self, and he is the best of those that know the

Self.

"For this Self is to be reached by persevering truth-

Mental purity

fulness, self-coercion, precise intuition, and continence.

the aspirant

This Self, which ascetics behold after the annulment of

their imperfections, is within the body, luminous and

pure.

"It is truth that prevails, not falsehood. The road

is laid out by truth, the divine path by which the

Rishis free from all desire proceed to the treasure of

truth.

"That Self is great and luminous, unthinkable; it is

supersible beyond the supersensible, farther than the

110

THE PHILOSOPHY

CHAP. IV.

farthest, and yet near, within the body, seated within

the cavity of the heart of those that see it.

"It is not apprehended by the eye, nor by the voice,

nor by the other organs of sense and motion, nor by

self-coercion, nor by sacrificial rites. He whose mind is

purified by the limpid clearness of his knowledge, sees

in meditation that undivided Self.

"This supersensile Self is to be known by the mind,

in the body in which the vital air has entered to its

fivefold functions; every mind of living things is over-

spread with the vital airs, and when this mind is purified

the Self shines forth.

"He whose mind is purified wins whatever sphere of

recompense he aspires to, and whatever pleasures he

desires. Therefore let him that wishes for prosperity

worship him that knows the Self"

A pure mind

is the only

mirror that

reflects the

Self.

Truthfulness, the repression of the senses and the

volitions, and continence, are part of the purification of

the mind required in the seeker of spiritual insight and

ecstatic union. They are among the qualifications of

the aspirant. In its natural state the mind is stained

with desires, aversions, and passions relative to external

things, and like a tarnished mirror or a ruffled pool, is

unprepared to mirror the Self that is ever present to it.

The senses must be checked and the volitions crushed,

that the impurity and turbid discoloration of the mind

may be purged away, and that it may become an even

and lucid reflecting surface, to present the image of the

Self. This image of the Self1 is itself a mode of mind,

but it is the last of the modes of the mind, arising only

when the mind is ready to melt away into the fontal

unity of the characterless Self. As this mode passes

away, the personality of the sage passes away with it

into the impersonality of Brahman. The magical

powers of the Yogin or ecstatic seer are again asserted.

All that is promised to the follower of the prescriptive

1 Phalitam brahma.

sacra, of the religion of the many, is promised to him, if

he desire it, before his re-absorption into the spiritual

essence. The promise is intended as a farther incite-

ment to the seeker of release from the miseries of

metempsychosis.1 Here again, as elsewhere, the Mun-

ḍaka Upanishad is remarkable for the clearness with

which it states the relation of the philosophy of the

recluses of the forest to the religion of those living in

the world. This religion is retained as part of the ficti-

tious order of things ; real for the many, as bearing fruit

in the unreal series of embodied lives, and unreal for

the few that turn their back upon the world, and refuse

reality to all things but the spiritual unity that per-

meates them. The old religion, unreal as it is, is needed

for the purification of the unreal mind, and has its

place prior to the quest of the sole reality. It has its

place and passes away : for the perfected sage it is a

figment.

The last section of the Muṇḍaka Upanishad is as

follows:—

III. 2. “He knows the supreme Brahman, the base

on which the world is fixed, which shines forth in its

purity. The wise that have put away desire and wor-

ship this sage, pass beyond all further re-embodiment.

“He that lusts after pleasures and gives his mind to

them, is born by reason of them into sphere after sphere

of recompense ; but if a man has already all that he

desires and has found the Self, all his cravings melt

away even in his present embodiment.

“This Self is not attainable by learning, by memory,

by much sacred study, but if he choose this Self it is

attainable by him : the Self itself manifests its own

essence to him.

“This Self is not attainable by a man that lacks for-

titude, nor without concentration, nor by knowledge

1 Sagunavidyāphalum api nirgunavidyāstutaye prarochenārtham uch-

yate. Anandagiri.

Chap. IV.

without the renunciation of the world; but if a sage exert himself with these appliances, his soul enters the abode of Brahman.

"When they that have this inner vision, satisfied with knowledge, perfected in the spirit, their imperfections passed away, their faculties quiescent —when they have reached this Self, when they have fully reached the all-pervading principle,—with perfect insight and with spirits unified, they enter into the all of things.

"All these quietists, familiar with the object of intuition in the Upanishads, purified in mind by renunciation and ecstatic union, are liberated in the hour of death, being one with the supreme immortal principle.

"The fifteen constituents of their bodies re-enter their several elements; their senses return into their several presiding deities; their works and their conscious soul are all unified in the imperishable Self.

He loses him-

self in it, as a river loses it-

self in the sea.

"The sage, quitting name and colour, enters into the self-luminous spirit beyond the last principle,1 in like manner as rivers flow on until they quit their name and colour, and lose themselves in the sea.

"He that knows that highest Self becomes that highest Self only. There is none in his family ignorant of the Self. He passes beyond misery, he passes beyond the taint of good and evil works, he is released from his heart's ties, and becomes immortal.

"Therefore it has been said in a memorial verse : Let a sage reveal this knowledge of Brahman to those only that have fulfilled the prescriptive rites, who know the Veda, intent on the Self, who sacrifice to that one Rishi, the fire-god Agni, and have duly achieved the self-torture of carrying fire upon their heads.

"This true Self was proclaimed of old by Angiras the Rishi. Let none that has not undergone that discipline presume to study it. Glory to the great Rishis. Glory to the great Rishis."

1 The world-fiction.

OF THE UPANISHADS.

113

They, says Śankarāchārya, that rise to the ecstatic

vision become one in the unity of the one and only

Self. The images of the sun are seen no longer when

the watery surfaces evaporate. The jar is broken, and

the ether that was in it is again one with the ether

one and undivided. On the rise of the ecstatic vision

all the difficulties of the sage are past; to raise fresh

impediments is beyond the power of the gods them-

selves. He has passed through the darkness into light.

His personality passes into impersonality, his mortality

into immortality. He has found himself, and is for

ever one with the one and all.

Fichte,1 in like but higher terms, rich with the

thought of centuries, speaks of his recognition of his

nature as one of the many manifestations of the one

abiding spiritual essence, the life of which is the pro-

gressive life of all things. “I have indeed dwelt in

darkness during the past days of my life. I have

indeed heaped error upon error, and imagined myself

wise. Now for the first time do I wholly understand

the doctrine which from thy lips, O wonderful spirit,

seemed so strange to me, although my understanding

had nothing to oppose to it; for now for the first time

do I comprehend it in its whole compass, in its deepest

foundation, and through all its consequences. Man is

not a product of the world of sense, and the end of his

existence cannot be attained in it. His vocation tran-

scends time and space, and everything that pertains to

sense. What he is and to what he is to train himself,

that must he know: as his vocation is a lofty one, he

must be able to lift his thoughts above all the limitations

of sense. He must accomplish it: where his being finds

its home, there his thoughts too seek their dwelling-

place; and the truly human mode of thought, that

which alone is worthy of him, that in which his whole

spiritual strength is manifested, is that whereby he

1 Dr. W. Smith's Popular Works of Fichte, pp. 368, sqq.

CHAP. IV.

Fichte quoted1

Perfect peace

from conscious

participation

in the divine

life that lives

in all things.

114

THE PHILOSOPHY

CHAP. IV. raises himself above those limitations, whereby all that pertains to sense vanishes into nothing,—into a mere reflection, in mortal eyes, of the one self-existent infinite. Thou art best known to the childlike, devoted, simple mind. To it thou art the searcher of the heart, who seest its inmost depths; the ever-present true witness of its thoughts, who knowest its truth, who knowest it although all the world know it not. The inquisitive understanding which has heard of thee, but seen thee not, would teach us thy nature ; and as thy image shows us a monstrous and incongruous shape, which the sagacious laugh at, and the wise and good abhor. I hide my face before thee, and lay my hand upon my lips. How thou art and seemest to thy own being, I shall never know, any more than I can assume thy nature. After thousands of spirit-lives, I shall comprehend thee as little as I do now in this earthly house. That which I conceive becomes finite through my very conception of it; and this can never, even by endless exaltations, rise into the infinite. In the idea of person there are imperfections, limitations: how can I clothe thee with it without these? Now that my heart is closed against all earthly things, now that I have no longer any sense for the transitory and perishable, the universe appears before my eyes clothed in a more glorious form. The dead, heavy mass which only filled up space is vanished ; and in its place there flows onward, with the rushing music of mighty waves, an eternal stream of life, and power, and action, which issues from the original source of all life,—from thy life, O infinite one, for all life is thy life, and only the religious eye penetrates to the realm of true beauty. The ties by which my mind was formerly united to this world, and by whose secret guidance I followed all its movements, are for ever sundered; and I stand free, calm, and immovable, a universe to myself. No longer through my affections,

but by my eye alone, do I apprehend outward objects

and am connected with them; and this eye itself is

purified by freedom, and looks through error and deformity to the true and beautiful, as upon the unruffled

surface of water shapes are more purely mirrored in a

milder light. My mind is for ever closed against embarrassment and perplexity, against uncertainty, doubt,

and anxiety; my heart against grief, repentance, and desire.

116

THE PHILOSOPHY

CHAPTER V.

THE KATHA UPANISHAD.

"If the red slayer think he slays,

Or the slain think he is slain,

They little know the subtle ways

I keep, and pass, and turn again.

Far or forgot to me is near,

Shadow and sunlight are the same;

The vanished gods to me appear,

And one to me are shame and fame.

Ay reckon ill who leave me out,

Me when they fly I am the wings;

I am the doubter and the doubt,

And I the hymn the Brahman sings.

The strong gods pine for my abode,

And pine in vain the sacred seven;

But thou, meek lover of the good,

Find me, and turn thy back on heaven."

—Emerson.

Chap. V. The reader is by this time becoming familiar with the

The story of general conception of the primitive Indian philoso-

Nachiketas and the regent phers, and with the grotesque imagery and rude subli-

of the dead. mity with which it is exhibited in the Upanishads.

Epithet is added to epithet, and metaphor to metaphor,

and sentence stands by sentence in juxtaposition, rather

than in methodical progression, till we are at a loss to

pass any judgment, and feel alternately attracted and

repelled. The thoughts of these thinkers formed them-

selves out of other antecedents, and other predisposi-

tions, and in another medium, than any of which we

have had experience. In the present chapter the work

of exposition will proceed by the presentation of the

Katha Upanishad, a perspicuous and poetical Upani-

shad of the Yajurveda. This Upanishad opens with

Chap. V. the legend of the revelation of the brahmavidyā, or

knowledge of the one and only Self by Yama, the regent

of the dead, to Nachiketas the son of Vājaśravasa.

I. “Vājaśravasa, with the desire of recompense, Kaṭha Upani-

shad. offered sacrifice, and gave all that he possessed to the First Valli.

priests. He had a son named Nachiketas.

“While the presents were in course of distribution

to the priests and to the assembly, faith entered into

Nachiketas, who was yet a stripling, and he began to think :

“These cows have drunk all the water they will

ever drink, they have grazed as much as they will

graze, they have given all the milk that they will ever

give, and they will calve no more. They are joyless

spheres of recompense that a sacrificer goes to, who gives

such gifts as these.

“He therefore said to his father : Father, to whom wilt

thou give me? He said it a second time and a third

time, until his father exclaimed : I give thee to Death.

“Nachiketas thought : I pass for the first among

many disciples, I pass also for the middlemost among

many : what has Yama to do that he will do with me

to-day?”

Seeing his father's regretful looks, and fearing that

he would break his promise to the regent of the dead,

Nachiketas begs him not to waver.

“Look back and see how those of old acted, and how

those of later days. Man ripens and is reaped like the

corn in the field, and like the corn is born again.”

His father sends him to the realm of Yama. The

death-god is absent, and Nachiketas is neglected. On

Yama's return his wife and servants admonish him :

“When a Brāhman comes into the house he is like

a fire, and therefore men offer him the customary pro-

pitiation. Bring water for his feet, Vaivasvata.1

1 A patronymic of Yama the son of Vivasvat.

118

THE PHILOSOPHY

Chap. V.

"A Brāhman that stays without eating food in the

house of an inattentive host lays waste all his hopes

and expectations, the merits that he has earned by

intercourse with good men, by friendly speech, and by

sacrifices and works for the public good,1 as well as all

his children and his flocks and herds.

"Hearing this, Yama said to Nachiketas : Three

nights hast thou lodged in my house fasting, thou a

Brāhman guest that shouldst be worshiped. Hail,

Brāhman, and may it be well with me. Choose there-

fore three wishes, a wish for each such night.

"Nachiketas said: God of death, I choose as the first

of these three wishes that my father Gautama may be

easy in his mind, that he may be gracious towards me,

that his anger may be turned away from me, that thou

send me back to him, and that he may know me again

and speak to me.

"Yama replied: Auddāliki,2 the son of Aruṇa, by my

permission shall be as tender towards thee as of old.

He shall sleep peacefully at night, and his anger shall

pass away when he sees thee released from the power

of Death.

"Nachiketas said: In the sphere of paradise there is

no fear. Thou art not there, and there man fears not

decay. A man passes beyond both hunger and thirst,

leaves misery behind, and rejoices in the sphere of

paradise.

"Thou, Death, knowest the sacred fire that is the means

of winning a sojourn in paradise. Teach me about it, for

I have faith. They that are insphered in paradise par-

take of immortality. I choose this as the second wish.

"Yama said: I know the fire that leads to paradise,

and tell it to thee : therefore listen. Know that that

fire that wins the endless sphere for him that knows

it, the basis of the world, is seated in the heart."

1 Such as tanks, wells, roads, bridges, gardens.

2 A name of Vājāśravasa.

OF THE UPANISHADS.

119

The fire the knowledge of which is recompensed by

CHAP. V.

a sojourn in Svarga, the paradise of the gods, is a figura-

tive name for Vaiśvānara, Purusha, or Virāj, the divine

soul that dwells in all that live in earthly bodies.

Yama proceeds to teach Nachiketas the nature of that

divine Vaiśvānara. The sage is to meditate upon him-

self as one with that mystic fire; the seven hundred

and twenty bricks that form the sacrificial hearth are

the days and nights of the year, and so on. He will

then become one with Vaiśvānara.

"He revealed to him that fire, the origin of these

spheres of migration, and what were the bricks, and

how many, and how laid out, in building the sacrificial

hearth; and Nachiketas repeated everything after him

as he had said it. So Death was pleased, and spoke again.

"Feeling gratified, the large-minded Yama said, I

give thee now and here another gift: this fire shall

be called by thy name. Take also this necklace of

gems of various colours.

"He that thrice performs the Nāchiketa fiery rite,

taking counsel of three,—of his father, his mother, and

his spiritual teacher,—and fulfilling the three observ-

ances of sacrifice, sacred study, and almsgiving, passes

beyond birth and death. He that knows and gazes

upon the lustrous and adorable emanation of Hiranya-

garbha, the divine being that proceeds from Brahmā

(or Īśvara), passes into peace for ever.

"He that has performed three Nāchiketa rites, and

knows these three things,—the bricks, their number,

and the arrangement of them,—he that thus piles up

the Nāchiketa fire, shakes off the ties of death before

he dies, leaves his miseries behind, and rejoices in the

sphere of paradise.

"This is thy fire, Nachiketas, the knowledge of which

wins paradise. This thou hast chosen as thy second

boon, and men shall call this fire thine. Choose the

third wish, Nachiketas."

120

THE PHILOSOPHY

CHAP. V.

Identification with Purusha or Vaiśvānara, with its consequent exemption from personal experiences in body after body till the close of the æon, is the promise to those that meditate on the allegory of the Nāchiketa fire. In this there is no final release from metempsychosis, as the soul of the rewarded votary will have to enter afresh on its transit from body to body and sphere to sphere at the opening of the next æon.

The third gift requested by Nachiketas is teaching relative to the renunciation of all things and the quest of the real and immortalising knowledge of Brahman. The form in which the request is preferred points to the existence of doubt and dissentiency on spiritual questions in the age of the Upanishads. A similar indication occurs in the second verse of the Śvetāśvatara Upanishad: “Is time to be thought the source of things, or the nature of the things themselves, or the retributive fatality, or chance, or the elements, or the personal soul?” Another occurs in the sixth Prapāṭhaka of the Chhāndogya Upanishad, with a reference to Buddhistic or pre-Buddhistic teaching of the emanation of migrating souls and the spheres through which they migrate from an aboriginal void or blank: “Existent only, my son, was this in the beginning, one only, without duality; but some have said: Non-existent only was this in the beginning, one only, without duality, and the existent sprang out of the non-existent; but how could it be so, how could entity come out of nonentity?” To return to the Kaṭha Upanishad.

Disquieting doubt of awaking reflection.

“Nachiketas said: When a man is dead there is this doubt about him: some say that he is, and others say that he is no more. Let me learn how this is from thy teaching, and let this be the third boon.”

Some people say there is, and some say there is not, a Self1 other than the body, the senses, and the mind,

The third gift, a knowledge of the soul, and of its real nature.

1 Sarīrendriyamanobuddhiryatiriktodhāntarasambandhy ātmā, Sankarāchārya.

that passes onward into another body. This is a matter

that is beyond human observation and human reason-

ing, and yet we must know it if we would know the

highest end of man.

"Yama said: The gods themselves have been puzzled

about this long ago, for it is no easy thing to find out.

This is a subtile nature. Choose another boon, Nachi-

ketas, press me not; but release me from this gift.

"Nachiketas answered: As for thy saying, Death,

that the very gods have been perplexed about this long

ago, and that this is no easy thing to learn,—there is

no other teacher to be found like thee, no other boon

that shall be equal to this.

"Yama said: Choose sons and grandsons gifted with

a hundred years of life, many flocks and herds, ele-

phants, and gold, and horses: choose a wide expanse

of soil, and live thyself as many autumns as thou wilt.

"If thou thinkest of any other gift as great, choose

that. Choose riches and long life, and rule over a wide

territory, and I will give thee the enjoyment of thy

desires.

"Ask what thou wilt, ask for whatever pleasures are

hardest to get in the world of men. Ask for these

nymphs, their heavenly chariots and heavenly music,

for such as these are not to be won by men; have

thyself waited upon by these, for I will give them;

but ask me not about dying.

"Nachiketas answered: These are things that may

or may not be to-morrow, and things that waste the

strength of all the faculties; and every life alike is

short. I leave to thee the chariots, and the singing

and the dancing.

"A man is not to be satisfied with wealth. We

shall obtain wealth. If we have seen thee we shall

live so long as thou rulest, but no more. The boon

that I choose is preferable to this.

"For what decaying mortal in this lower world, after

122

THE PHILOSOPHY

Chap. V. coming into the presence of the undecaying and immortal gods,—what mortal that has knowledge, and that reflects upon the fleeting pleasures of beauty and love, would be enamoured of long life ?

"Tell us, Death, about that great life after death that the gods are themselves in doubt about. Nachiketas chooses no other boon than this boon that penetrates that mystery."

So far Yama has tested the readiness of Nachiketas to renounce the pleasures of the world. Finding him ready to put away all ties, he judges that he is a fit disciple, and proceeds to contrast the two pursuits of men, the pursuit of the pleasurable, which prolongs the series of embodied lives, and the pursuit of the good, which leads to a final release from metempsychosis. Nachiketas has already chosen the pursuit of the good.

Second Vallī. The pleasurable and the good.

II. "The good is one thing, the pleasurable another. Both these engage a man, though the ends are diverse. Of these, it is well with him that takes the good, and he that chooses the pleasurable fails of his purpose.

"Both the good and the pleasurable present themselves to man; and the wise man goes round about them both and distinguishes between them. The sage prefers the good to the pleasurable; the unwise man chooses the pleasurable that he may get and keep.

"Thou, Nachiketas, hast thought upon these tender and alluring pleasures, and hast renounced them. Thou hast not chosen the path of riches, which most men sink in.

"Far apart are these diverse and diverging paths, the path of illusion and the path of knowledge. I know thee, Nachiketas, that thou art a seeker of knowledge, for all these various pleasures that I proposed have not distracted thee.

1 "They that are infatuated, dwelling in the midst

1 This verse occurs also in the second section of the first Muṇḍaka.

See above, p. 101.

The liturgic experts are blind leaders of the blind.

of the illusion, wise in their own eyes, and learned in

their own conceit, are stricken with repeated plagues,

and go round and round, like blind men led by the

blind.

"Preparation for the hereafter does not suggest itself

to the foolish youth neglecting everything in his infa-

tuation about riches. Thinking that this life is, and

that there is no life after this, he comes again and again

into subjection to me.

"The good, the Self, is not reached by many that

The seekers of

they should hear it; and many hearing of it know it not. Wonderful is he that teaches it, and wise is he

that attains to it ; wonderful is he that knows it when

he is taught by the wise.

"This Self is not proclaimed by an inferior man ;

it is not easy to know when variously thought upon.

When it is taught by one that is one with it, there is

no dissentiency about it. It is supersensible beyond

the infinitesimal, and is unthinkable.

"This idea of the Self that thou hast gained is not

to be attained by the discursive intellect, but it is easy

to know it when revealed by another, dearest disciple.

Thou art truly steadfast. May I find another questioner

equal to thee, Nachiketas !

"I know that the treasure of recompense is fleeting,

for that lasting Self is not gained by transient works;

and therefore I have piled up the Nachiketa fire, and

have won with perishable goods a lasting sphere."

There is an apparent inconsistency between the former

and the latter portions of this last verse. The scholiast

explains that the lasting sphere that Yama has attained

by means of the Nāchiketa sacrifice is the regency of

the dead. This is said to be lasting, not as everlasting

like the Self, but only as enduring throughout an æon

until the next dissolution or collapse of all things into

the aboriginal unity of Brahman. In the verse that

next follows Yama commends Nachiketas for refusing

124

THE PHILOSOPHY

Chap. V.

to be satisfied with the sphere of the highest divinity

already promised to his knowledge of the Nāchiketa

rite, and for insisting on the pursuit of a knowledge of

Brahman, the one and only Self.

Renunciation

and medita-

tive abstrac-

tion the only

path of safety.

"Though thou hast seen the consummation of desire,

the basis of the world, the lasting meed of sacrifice,

the farther shore where fear is left behind,—great and

glorious and wide-spread, a place to stand upon,—yet,

Nachiketas, thou hast renounced it all, wise in thy

fortitude.

"By spiritual abstraction the sage recognises the

primeval divine Self, invisible, unfathomable; put out

of sight by things of sense, but seated in the heart,

dwelling in the recesses of the mind; and on recognis-

ing it he bids farewell to joy and sorrow.

"When a mortal man has heard this, and grasped it

on all sides, and parted Self from all that is not Self,

and reached this subtile essence, he rejoices at it, for he

has won pure bliss. I know thee, Nachiketas, to be a

habitation open to that spiritual essence.

"Nachiketas said: Tell me about that which thou

seest, which is apart from good and apart from evil,

apart from the create and the uncreate, apart from that

which has been and that which is to be.

"Yama said: I will tell thee briefly the utterance

that all the Vedas celebrate, which all modes of self-

The mystic

syllable Om

must be em-

ployed by the

seeker of the

Self.

coercion proclaim, and aspiring to which men live as

celibate votaries of sacred science. It is Om.

"This mystic utterance is Brahmā, this mystic utter-

ance is Brahman. He that has this has all that he

would have.

"This is the best reliance, this is the highest reliance;

he that knows this reliance is glorified in the sphere of

Brahmā."

The repetition of the mystic monosyllable and medi-

tation upon it, is said to raise the less skilful aspirants

1

The mandādhikārin and madhyamādhikārin.

OF THE UPANISHADS.

to the paradise of Brahmā, the highest of the deities,

the first emanation out of the divine Self. To the

higher order of aspirants1 it serves as a help on the

way to knowledge of Brahman, and extrication from

the miseries of metempsychosis, as being an image or a

substitute for the characterless Self.

"This Self is not born, and dies not; it is omniscient.

It proceeds from none, and none proceeds from it; it is

without beginning and without end, unfailing, from

before all time. It is not killed when the body is

killed.

"If the slayer think to slay, and if the slain think

that he is slain, they neither of them know the Self

that they are. This neither slays nor is slain.

"Lesser than the least and greater than the greatest,

Antithetic

epithets of the

this Self is seated in the heart of every living thing.

This the passionless sage beholds and his sorrows are

left behind ; in the limpid clearness of his faculties he

sees the greatness of the Self.

"Motionless it moves afar, sleeping it goes out on

every side. Who but I can know that joyful and

joyless deity ?

"It is bodiless and in all bodies, unchanging and in

all changing things. The sage that knows himself to

be the infinite, all-pervading Self, no longer sorrows."

The scholiasts remark that contradictory attributes

are simultaneously predicable of the Self, as, on the

one hand, it is the characterless Self per se, and as,

on the other hand, it is the Self present in this or that

fictitious embodiment. The Self may thus be likened

to a colourless gem reflecting the various hues of the

things that are nearest to it, or to a magic crystal,2

presenting to the spectator the various things he may

choose to think about. The pure indifference alone is

true, the differences are illusory, mere figments of the

cosmical illusion.

1 Uttamādhikārin.

2 Chintāmaṇi.

126

THE PHILOSOPHY

CHAP. V.

1"This Self is not attainable by learning, by memory,

by much sacred study ; but if he chooses this Self it

is attainable by him: the Self itself manifests its own

essence to him.

"Neither he that has not ceased from evil, nor he that

ceases not from sensations, nor he that is not concen-

trated, nor he whose mind is not quiescent, can reach

this Self by spiritual insight.

"Who in this way knows where that Self is, of

which Brāhman and Kshatriya are the food and death

the condiment?"

All personal distinctions are merged in the cha-

racterless impersonality of the Self. Brāhman2 and

Kshatriya, and death itself that swallows all, are

swallowed up and reabsorbed into it, at the close of

every æon. To return to the text.

Third Vallī.

The individual III. "The universal and the individual souls residing

soul and the in the cavity, in the ether of the heart, in the same

soul of the body, drink in the recompense of works. Sages that

world. know the Self, householders that keep up the five

sacred fires,3 and worshippers who have thrice per-

formed the Nāchiketa rite,—alike pronounce that these

universal and the individual souls are like shade and

sunshine."

Properly speaking, it is only the individual soul that

has fruition of its works in body after body. The

visible body is the place of pleasures and pains.4 The

universal soul, or Īśvara, abides together with it in the

heart, the regulator of its actions and witness of its

experiences, as is set forth in the simile of the two

birds in the first section of the third Mundaka. The

individual soul differs from the universal as shade from

1 This verse occurs also in the

each pralaya or period of uni-

second section of the third Mun- versal collapse.

daka. See above, p. 110.

2 Brahman, manifested as Īś-

vara, is here spoken of as viś-

vasamhartri, as 'retrieving all

things into its own essence at

3 The five fires known as Anvā-

hāryapachana, Gārhapatya, Āha-

vanīya, Sabhya, and Āvasathya.

4 Sukhaduhkhāyatana, bhogā-

yatana.

sunshine, the individual soul migrating from body to

body, and the universal soul being free from such

migration.

" We know and can pile up the Nāchiketa fire, the

bridge that leads the sacrificers to the sphere of the

highest deity; and we also know the undecaying,

highest Self, the farther shore beyond all fear for those

that will to cross the sea of metempsychosis."

There now follows the celebrated simile of the cha-

riot.1 The migrating soul is compared to a person in

a chariot; the body is the chariot, the mind is the

charioteer, the common sensory or will the reins, the

senses the horses. The soul drives in this chariot

either along the path of metempsychosis, or along the

road of liberation from further embodiments.

" Know that the soul is seated in a chariot, and that

the body is that chariot. Know that the mind is the

charioteer, and that the will is the reins.

" They say that the senses are the horses, and that

the things of sense are the road. The wise declare

that the migrating soul is the Self fictitiously present

in the body, senses, and common sensory.

" Now if the charioteer, the mind, is unskilful, and

the reins are always slack, his senses are ever unruly,

like horses that will not obey the charioteer.

" But if the charioteer is skilful, and at all times

firmly holds the reins, his senses are always manageable,

like horses that obey the charioteer.

" If the mind, the charioteer, lacks knowledge, and

does not firmly hold the will, and is always defi-

cient in purity, the soul fails to reach the goal, and

returns to further transmigration.

" But if the charioteer has knowledge, and firmly

holds the will, and is at all times pure, the soul then

arrives at the goal, and on reaching it is never born again.

" The soul whose charioteer is skilful and holds

1 Ratharūpaka.

128

THE PHILOSOPHY

CHAP. V.

firmly the reins of the will, reaches the further term of

its migration, the sphere of Vishnu the supreme.

"For their objects are beyond and more subtile than

the senses, the common sensory is beyond the objects,

the mind is beyond the sensory, and the great soul

Hiranyagarbha is beyond the mind.

"The ultimate and undeveloped principle1 is beyond

that great soul, and Purusha,2 the Self, is beyond the

undeveloped principle. Beyond Purusha there is

nothing ; that is the goal, that is the final term.

"This Self is hidden in all living things, it shines

not forth ; but it is seen by the keen and penetrating

mind of those that see into the supersensible.

"Let the sage refund his voice into his inner sense,

his inner sense into his conscious mind ; let him refund

his mind into the great soul, and let him refund the

great soul into the quiescent Self.

"Arise, awake, go to the great teachers and learn.

The wise affirm this to be a sharp razor's edge hard to

walk across, a difficult path.

"When a man has seen the Self, inaudible, intan-

gible, colourless, undecaying, imperishable, odourless,

without beginning and without end, beyond the mind,

ultimate and immutable,—when he has seen that, he

escapes the power of death.

"The sage that hears and recites this primeval nar-

rative that Death recited and Nachiketas heard is

worshipped as in the sphere of Self.

"If the purified sage rehearse this highest mystery

before an assembly of Brāhmans, or to those present

at a Śrāddha ceremony, it avails to endless recompense,

it avails to endless recompense."

Self is said to be hidden within all living things, as

lying veiled beneath those fictitious presentments of the

senses that make up the experience of common life.

1 Māyā, Avidyā, the world-fiction, the cosmical illusion.

2 Purusha is here synonymous with Brahman.

OF THE UPANISHADS.

129

The aspirant to extrication from metempsychosis is to melt away the visible and nameable semblances that hide it from him; to cease to see the figments, and to see only that which they replace; as a man may cease to see the waters of the mirage, and may come to see the sands of the desert in place of which they have fictitiously presented themselves to his illusive vision. The varied phases of fictitious life, and the varied elemental environments of migrating souls, are to be set aside by progressive abstraction and ecstatic vision; they are like so many webs of finer and finer tissue woven across and across the Self, and veiling it from heedless eyes. In the descending order each successive manifestation is more and more concrete; in the ascending order each is more and more simple, fine, or subtle. In the progress of abstraction each later is melted away into each earlier manifestation; the mind of the aspirant rises to more and more subtle and supersensible emanations, until he arrives at that which lies beyond them all, the Self that emanates from nothing, and cannot be melted away into any principle from which it has emanated. In a new metaphor he is then said to have awakened from his dreaming vision of the figments of the world-fiction to the intuition of his true nature as one with the characterless and impersonal spiritual essence. To return to the text.

IV. "The self-existent Īśvara has suppressed the Fourth Valli senses that go out towards the things of sense. These senses then go out, not inwards to the Self. Here and there a wise man with the craving for immortality has closed his eyes and seen the Self.

"The unwise follow after outward pleasures and enter into the net of wide-spread death; but the wise, who know what it is to be immortal, seek not for the imperishable amidst the things that perish."

The net of death is metempsychosis, the endless succession of birth and death, decay and sickness. To be

Chap. V.

The liberated theosophist wakes up out of his dream-world into real being.

I

130

THE PHILOSOPHY

CHAP. V.

immortal is not to be as the gods are, who live till the

close of a period of evolution, but to be at one with

the transcendent Self. The state of the gods is said to

be a relative immortality:1 they are implicated in me-

tempsychosis until they liberate themselves by self-

suppression and ecstatic meditation.

" What is left over as unknown to that Self by which

the soul knows colour and taste and smell and sound

and touch ? " This is that.

This is that, this is the imperishable principle in

man, as to the existence of which the gods themselves

are said to have been puzzled, the principle about

which Nachiketas has inquired, the spiritual reality

that manifests itself in the world of semblances.

The sage

" He that knows that this living soul that eats the

eludes the net

honey of recompense, and is always near, is the Self, and

of death, and

has no fear.

that it is the lord of all that all that has been and all

that is to be, no longer seeks to protect himself from

anything. This is that."

The sage that knows that his true nature is imperish-

able, and that his bodily life is only a source of misery,

is exempt from fear, and there are no longer any perils

against which he can seek to protect himself. He has

won—

" A clear escape from tyrannising lust,

And full immunity from penal woe ;"

and is one with the universal soul, the deity that makes

the world, and one with Brahman.

" He sees the Self who sees Hiranyagarbha, that

emanated from the self-coercion of Īśvara, that came

forth before the elements, that has entered into the

cavity of the heart, and there abides with living crea-

tures. This is that.

" He sees the Self who sees Aditi, one with all the

gods, who emanated out of Hiranyagarbha, and has

1 Āpekshikam amritatvam. Ābhūtasamplavam avasthānam amrita-

tvam hi bhashyate.

OF THE UPANISHADS.

entered into the cavity of the heart, and there abides

with living creatures. This is that.

"Agni, the fire that is hidden in the fire-drills as the

unborn child within the mother, to be adored day by

day by men as they wake and as they offer their obla-

tions,—this is that."

Agni the fire-god, worshipped in the Vedic sacrifices,

is here identified with Hiranyagarbha, as also the fire

within the heart meditated upon by the self-torturing

mystic or Yogin. Hiranyagarbha is said to be one with

Brahman, as an earring is one with the gold of which

it is made.

"All the gods are based upon that divine being

Hiranyagarbha, out of whom the sun rises, into whom

the sun sets. No one is beyond identity with that

divine being. This is that.

"What the Self is in the world, that is it outside the

world; and what it is outside the world, that it is in

the world. From death to death he goes who looks on

this as manifold."

The Self manifested in every form of life, from a tuft

of grass up to the highest deity, and passing in sem-

blance from body to body, is the same with the Self

outside the world, Brahman per se, the characterless

thought beyond the fictions of metempsychosis. He

that sees in his individual soul an entity apart from

the universal soul, and other than the one impersonal

Self, retains his fictitious individuality, and must pass

from body to body so long as he retains it. Let a man

therefore see that he is one with the one reality, the

characterless thought, that is, like the ether that is

everywhere, a continuous plenitude of being. It is

only illusion 1 that presents the variety of experience,

a variety that melts away into unity on the rise of the

ecstatic vision. The many pass, the one abides.

"It is to be reached only with the inner sense; there

1 Nānātvapratyupāsthāpikā viddhā.

132

THE PHILOSOPHY

Chap. V. — is nothing in it that is manifold. From death to death

he goes who looks on this as manifold.

“Puruşha, the Self, is within the midst of the body,

of the size of a thumb, the lord of all that has been and

of all that is to be. He that knows this seeks no longer

to protect himself. This is that.

Puruşha or Brahman is pure light.

“Puruşha, of the size of a thumb, is like a smokeless

light, the lord of all that has been and of all that is to

be. This alone is to-day and is to-morrow. This is

that.

“He that looks upon his bodily manifestations as

other than the Self, passes into them again and again,

as rain that has fallen on a hill loses itself among the

heights.

“The soul of the sage that knows the unity of souls

in the Self, is like pure water poured out upon a level

surface.”

The Self is figuratively said to be of the size of a

thumb, inasmuch as it is manifested in the mind, and

the mind is lodged in the cavity of the heart; in the

same way as the ether within a hollow cane may be

said to be of the same size as the hollow, whereas in

propriety this ether is one with the ether present every-

where, one and undivided. The soul of the sage that

sees the unity of all things is compared to pure water

upon a level surface, as having returned to its proper

nature of pure undifferenced thinking. It is a unifor-

mity of thought in which every particular character of

thought has been suppressed.

Fifth Valli.

V. “The sage who meditates upon his body as an

eleven-gated city for the Self, without beginning, and

of changeless thought, ceases to sorrow, is already

liberated, and liberated once for all. This is that.

Various mani-

festations of

Puruşha or

Brahman.

“This is the all-permeating Self; it is the sun in the

firmament, the air in middle space, the fire on this

earth as its altar; it is the guest in the house; it

dwells in men, it dwells in the gods, it dwells in the

sacrifices, it dwells in the sky; it is born in the waters

in the shapes of aquatic animals, it is born on the earth

as barley, rice, and every other plant, it is born in the

sacrificial elements, it is born on the mountains in the

form of rivers. It is the true, the infinite.

"It impels the breath upwards, it impels the descend-

ing air of life downwards. All the senses bring their

offerings to this adorable being seated in the midst of

the heart.

"When the spirit that is in the perishing body is

parted from it, what is left of the body? This is that.

"No mortal lives by his breath or by the descend-

ing vital air. They live by another principle in which

these vital airs reside."

The scholiasts remark of the last three verses that Vedāntic

they give the proofs of the existence of the Self. These

proofs are these:—The activities of the vital airs (on

which, in Indian physiology, the functions of the viscera

are said to depend), and the functions of the senses and

the muscles, are for the sake of some conscious prin-

ciple ulterior to themselves; the activity of unconscious

things being instrumental to the ends of conscious

beings, as the activity of a chariot is instrumental to

the ends of the person driving in it. Again, the body

implies a conscious tenant, as it loses all sense of

pleasure and pain on the departure of that tenant.

Again, the body is composite, and everything composite

exists for the sake of something ulterior to itself,—a bed

for the sake of the sleeper, a house for the sake of the

inmates, and so forth. That there is an ultimate prin-

ciple of reality beyond the plurality of experience, is

proved by the fact that the last residuum of all abstrac-

tion is entity. After all differences have one by one

been thrown away, the mind remains to the last filled

with the idea of being. And this ultimate reality is

proved to be spiritual, by that power of intuition to

which the aspirant to extrication may rise even in this

134

THE PHILOSOPHY

CHAP. V. life. He comes to see the light within the heart, the

light of consciousness in which the modes of mind are

manifested. He puts away the duality of subject and

object as the fictitious outflow of the world-fiction,1 and recovers the characterless bliss of unity, the fulness

of joy that is the proper nature of the soul as Self.

Every phase of happiness2 in everyday experience is

only a fictitious portion of that total blessedness, and

everything that is dear to us is dear only as it is one

with us in the unity of the beatific Self.3 To return to

the text.

What becomes

of the soul at

death.

"Lo, Gautama, I will again proclaim to thee this

mystery, the everlasting Self, and how it is with the

Self after death.

"Some souls pass to another birth to enter into

another body, and some enter into vegetable lives,

according to their works, and according to their know-

ledge.

"The spirit that is awake in those that sleep, fashion-

ing to itself enjoyment after enjoyment,—this is the

pure Self, this is the immortal; on this the spheres of

recompense are based; beyond this none can pass. This

is that.

The Self is like

a permeating

fire, or like a

pervading at-

mosphere.

"As one and the same fire pervades a house and

shapes itself to the shape of everything, so the one Self

that is in all living things shapes itself to all their

several shapes, and is at the same time outside them.

"As one and the same atmosphere pervades a house

and shapes itself to the shape of everything, so the one

Self that is in all living things shapes itself to all their

several shapes, and is at the same time outside them.

Simile of the

sun unsullied

by the impuri-

ties it looks

down upon.

"As the sun, the eye of all the world, is unsullied by

visible external impurities, so the one Self that is within

1 Nirasto 'vidyāḥkrite vishayas-

hajivibhāge vidyayā svabhāvikaḥ

puripūrṇa eka ānando 'draite bha-

vati.

2 Laukiko hy ānando brahmān-

andasyaira mātrā.

3 Ātmapratisādhanatvād gaunī

anyatra prītiḥ.

all living things is not soiled by the miseries of migra-

tion, and is external to them.

" The wise see within their own heart the one and

only lord, the Self that is in all living things, that makes

its one form to become many ; and everlasting bliss is for

them and not for others.

" The wise see within their own heart the one thing

that perishes not in all things that perish; the one thing

that gives light in all things that have no light; the one

being that gives the recompense to many ; and peace

eternal is for them and not for others.

" This is that, so think they ; this is the unspeakable,

the bliss above all bliss. How shall I come to know

that bliss ? does it shine forth, does it reveal itself ?

" 1The sun gives no light to that, nor the moon and

stars ; neither do these lightnings light it up; how then

should this fire of ours ? All things shine after it as it

shines, all this world is radiant with its light.

" VI. This everlasting holy fig-tree stands with roots

above, with branches downwards. Its root is that pure

Self, that immortal principle. All the spheres of recom-

pense have grown up upon it, and no man can pass

beyond it. This is that.

" All this world, whatever is, trembles in that living

breath; it has come forth and stirs with life. They

that know this, the great awe, the uplifted thunderbolt,

become immortal.

" 2In awe of this, fire gives heat; in awe of this, the

sun scorches; in awe of this speed Indra and Vāyu,

and the Death-god speeds besides those other four.

" If a man has been able to see this in this life before

his body falls away from him, he is loosed from future

embodiments. If not, he is fated to further embodi-

ments in future ages and future spheres of recompense.

1 This verse occurs also in the

second section of the second Mun-

ḍaka. See above, p. 166.

2 A similar verse occurs in the

Taittirīya Upanishad. See above,

p. 82.

136

THE PHILOSOPHY

Chap. V.

"This Self is seen in the heart as in a mirror, in the

sphere of the forefathers as in a dream, in the sphere of

the Gandharvas as on a watery surface, in the sphere

of Brahmā as in light and shade."

The world-tree

and the seed

from which it

springs.

Brahman, it has been seen, is the seed of the world-

tree, and Māyā is the power of growth residing in the

seed. Here Brahman is said to be the root of the

world-tree. The world of semblances is a tree, and may

be cut down with the hatchet of ecstatic vision. It

grows up upon Brahman as its root, out of the world-

fiction Māyā as its seed. Hiranyagarbha is the sprout-

ing seed. It is watered by the cravings of migrating

souls, whose actions through the law of retribution pro-

long the existence of the spheres of metempsychosis.

Its fruits are the pleasure and pains of living things.

The spheres of recompense are the nests in which

deities and migrating souls dwell like birds. It rustles

with the cries, the weeping, and the laughter, of the

souls in pain or for the moment happy. It is like a

holy fig-tree in constant agitation, tremulous to the

breeze of emotion and of action. Its pendulous branches

are the paradises, places of torment, and spheres of

good and evil recompense. It is in constant growth

and change, varying from moment to moment. It is

unreal as the imagery of a reverie, as the waters of a

mirage, and vanishes away in the light of intuition of

the one and only truth, the Self beyond it. The Self

in its earliest manifestation as Īśvara is the great awe;

the being in fear of whom the sun and moon and stars,

and all the powers of nature, perform their never-ceasing

ministrations. The sage is urged to strive with all his

force to rise to the intuition of the Self, before he quits

his present body. In this life he can see the light

within his heart in the polished mirror of a purified

mind. In the sphere of the Pitris or forefathers of the

tribes, to which the soul of the worshipper of the deities

proceeds, he can see it faintly and dimly only as in a

OF THE UPANISHADS.

137

dream, for in that sphere the soul is engrossed in the

enjoyment of its reward. In the sphere of the Gand-

harvas, he can see it only fitfully reflected as on a

ruffled sheet of water. In the sphere of Brahmā, the

highest deity, it may indeed be seen as a thing is seen

in the sunlight and in the shade, but this sphere is

promised only to the rarest merit, and the sage may

fail to win it. To return to the text.

"The wise man knows that the senses are not him-

self, and that they rise and set as they have severally

issued forth, and knowing this he grieves no more.

"The inner sensory is beyond the senses, the mind

is higher than the inner sensory, the great soul Hiraṇ-

yagar bha is higher than the mind, and the undeveloped

principle1 is higher than that great soul.

"The supreme Purusha2 is beyond the undeveloped

principle, pervading all things, characterless; and the

migrating soul that knows this Purusha is loosed from

metempsychosis, and passes into immortality.

"Its form is not in anything visible; no man has seen

The Self is to

this Self with his eyes: it is seen as revealed by the

heart, the mind, the spiritual intuition. They that

know this Self become immortal.

"When the five senses and the inner sense are at

rest, and when the mind ceases to act, they call this

the highest state.

"They account this motionless suspension of the senses

Ecstatic

to be the ecstatic union. This is the unintermittent

vision, and

the recovery

union, for union has its furtherances and hindrances.

tality.

"The Self is not to be reached with voice, or thought,

or eye. How shall it be known otherwise than as he

knows it who says only that it is?

"It is,—only thus is the Self to be known, and as

that which is true in both that which is and that which

is not. Its real nature reveals itself only when it is

known as that which is.

1Māyā.

2Brahman.

Chap. V.

138

THE PHILOSOPHY

Chap. v.

"When all the desires that lie in his heart are shaken off, the mortal becomes immortal, and in this life rejoins the Self.

"When all his heart's ties already in this life are broken off, the mortal becomes immortal. This is the whole of the sacred doctrine."

The aspirant must become passionless. If he desire anything he will act to get it, and action is followed by recompense in this or in a future body. All desire arises from the illusion by which a man views his animated organism as himself. Action, good and evil alike, serves only to prolong the miseries of migration, by giving rise to retributive experience. The aspirant must learn the falsity of plurality, the fictitious nature of the duality in experience, and the sole reality of the supersensible and unitary Self. He must crush every sense and suppress every thought, that his mind may become a mirror to reflect the pure, characterless being, thought, and bliss. Its everyday experience is a dream of the soul, and it is only by suppressing this experience that it awakens to its proper nature. It is true that the Self is not to be reached by desire or thought; but if it be argued that it is not, for if it were it would be reached, the reply, says Śankara1charya, is as follows. The Self is, for it may be reached as the ultimate principle from which all things have emanated. Refund by progressive efforts of abstraction each successive entity in the world of semblances into the entity out of which it emanated; ascend through the series of emanations to the more and more rarefied, the less and less determinate; do this, and you will find, at the end of this process, the idea of being. The final mode of mind is not non-entity but entity.1 The mind, after thus resolving all things into the things from which they came, is itself

1 Yadāpi vishayapravilāpanena pravilāpyamānā buddhis tadāpi sā satpratyayagrbhaiḥa viliīyate.

OF THE UPANISHADS.

139

resolved; yet as it melts away it melts away in the

form of existence and full of the idea of being; and

the mind is our only informant as to what is and is

not. Again, another reply is, that if non-existence were

the root of the world, all the things of the world that

have successively come into manifestation would mani-

fest themselves as non-existent. This is not the case;

these things manifest themselves as existent, as an

earthenware vessel manifests itself as made of earth.

It is only as apart from that which underlies them

that these things are non-existent, “a modification of

speech only, a change, a name.” The Self is “true in

both that which is, and that which is not,” it is true in

its proper nature as the fontal characterless essence,

and true underneath the figments of the world-fiction

that illusively overspread it. The desires are said to

lie in the heart. The feelings, passions, thoughts, and

volitions are modes of mind, and the mind is lodged in

the heart. When these modes are blown out like a

lamp, the personality passes away into the imperson-

ality of Brahman. To proceed with the text.

“There are a hundred and one arteries to the heart,

The soul’s

and one of these issues up through the head. Going

upwards by that artery a sage ascends to immortality.

The other arteries proceed in all directions.”

The coronal artery, sushumnā, is the passage by which

the soul of the aspirant to extrication from metempsy-

chosis ascends to the sphere of Brahmā, there to sojourn

till it wils its reabsorption into the pure spiritual

essence Brahman. The other arteries are the passages

through which the soul issues out to new embodiments.

“Of the size of a thumb, the Purusha, the Self within,

is ever seated in the hearts of living things. The sage

should patiently extract it from his body, as he might

extract the pith out of a reed ; and he should learn that

that Self is pure and immortal, pure and immortal.

“Thus Nachiketas received this gnosis revealed by

140

THE PHILOSOPHY

Chap. V. the god of death, together with all the precepts for

ecstatic union; he reached the Self, and became free

from good and evil, and immortal ; and so will any

other sage become who thus knows the fontal spiritual

essence.

"May he preserve us both, may he reward us both.

May we put forth our strength together, and may that

which we recite be efficacious. May we never feel

enmity against each other. Om. Peace, peace, peace.

Hari. Om."

The formula with which the Kaṭha Upanishad closes

has already several times occurred in these pages. It

is intended to secure the co-operation of the universal

soul or Demiurgus, and the safe tradition and recep-

tion of its doctrines of gnosis and ecstatic vision by

teacher and disciple.

The allegory

of the chariot

compared

with the Pla-

tonic figure in

the Phædrus.

One of the most striking passages in this Upanishad

is the allegory of the chariot in the third section. The

migrating soul is said to be seated in the body as in

a chariot. The mind is the charioteer, the will is the

reins, the senses are the horses, and the journey is

either towards fresh embodiments or towards release

from metempsychosis. This allegory of the chariot

has often been compared with the Platonic figure in

the Phædrus, in which the souls of gods and of men in

the ante-natal state are pictured as a charioteer in a

chariot with a pair of winged horses. The charioteer

is the reason. In the chariots of the gods both horses

are excellent, with perfect wings; in the human chariot

one of the horses is white and fully winged, the other

black and unruly, with imperfect or half-grown wings.

The white horse typifies the rational impulse, and the

black violent and rebellious horse represents the sen-

sual and concupiscent elements of human nature. In

these chariots gods and men ascend to the vision of

the intelligible archetypes of things, men for ever

slipping down again to intercourse only with the things

OF THE UPANISHADS.

141

of sense, to feed upon opinion, and no longer upon Chap. V.

truth.

"Now the winged horses and charioteers of the gods

are all of them good and of good breed, while those of

men are mixed. We have a charioteer who drives them

in a pair, and one of them is excellent and of excellent

origin, and the other is base and of base origin; and

necessarily it is hard and troublesome to manage them.

The teams of the gods, evenly poised, glide upwards in

obedience to the rein; but the others have a difficulty,

for the horse that has evil in him, if he has not been

thoroughly broken in by the charioteer, goes heavily,

inclining towards the earth, and depressing the driver."

The gods ascend to the heaven above the heavens,

the place of pure truth, and there contemplate the

colourless and figureless ideas. "This is the life of the

gods, but of the other souls that which follows the gods

best and is likest to them lifts the head of the charioteer

into the outer region, and is carried round in the revo-

lution of the worlds, troubled with the horses, and

seeing the ideas with difficulty. Another rises above

and dips below the surface of the upper and outer region,

and sees and again fails to see, owing to the restiveness

of its team. The rest of the souls are also longing

after the upper world, and they all follow; but not

being strong enough, they sink below the surface as

they are carried round, plunging, treading on one an-

other, striving to be first. There is confusion, and

conflict, and the extremity of effort, and many of them

are lamed or have their wings broken through the ill-

driving of the charioteers; and all of them, after a long

toil, depart without being initiated into the spectacle

of being, and after their departure are fain to feed upon

the food of opinion. The reason why the souls show

this great eagerness to see the field of truth is that

pasturage is found in that meadow suited to the highest

part of the soul, and to the growth of the pinions on

142

THE PHILOSOPHY

CHAP. V. which the soul flies lightly upwards. And the law of Nemesis is this, that the soul which, in company with the gods, has seen something of the truth, shall remain unharmed until the next great revolution of the world, and the soul that is able always to do so shall be unharmed for ever. But when a soul is unable to keep pace, and fails to see, and through some mishap is filled with forgetfulness and vice, and weighed down, and sheds its plumage, and falls to the earth beneath the weight, the law is that this soul shall not in its first birth pass into the shape of any other animal, but only into that of man. The soul that has seen most of truth shall come to the birth as a philosopher, or lover of beauty, or musician, or amorist; that which has seen truth in the second degree shall be a righteous king, or warrior, or lord; the soul that is of a third order shall be a politician, or economist, or trader; the fourth shall be a lover of hard exercise, or gymnast, or physician; the fifth shall have the life of a soothsayer or hierophant; to the sixth the life of a poet or some kind of imitator will be suitable ; to the seventh the life of an artisan or husbandman; to the eighth that of a professor or a people's man; to the ninth that of a tyrant. In all these varieties of life he who lives righteously obtains a better lot, and he who lives unrighteously a worse one." The soul of him that has never seen a glimpse of truth will pass into the human form, but into some lower form of life. "The intellect of the philosopher alone recovers its wings, for it is ever dwelling in memory upon those essences, the vision of which makes the gods themselves divine. He is ever being initiated into perfect mysteries, and alone becomes truly perfect. But as he forgets human interests and is rapt in the divine, the many think that he is beside himself and check him; they fail to see that he is inspired."

OF THE UPANISHADS.

143

CHAPTER VI.

THE BRIHADARANYAKA UPANISHAD.

"The thing visible, nay the thing imagined, the thing in any way conceived as visible, what is it but a garment, a clothing of the higher celestial, invisible, unimaginable, formless, dark with excess of bright.

This so solid-seeming world, after all, is but an air-image over Me, the only reality ; and nature, with its thousand-fold production and destruction, but the reflex of our own inward force, the phantasy of our dream ; or what the earth-spirit in Faust names it, the living visible garment of God :-

"In being's flood, in action's storm,

I walk and work, above, beneath,

Work and weave in endless motion,

Birth and death,

An infinite ocean ;

A seizing and a giving

The fire of living :

Tis thus that at the roaring loom of time I ply,

And weave for God the garment thou seest him by."

—CARLYLE.

Many of the most impressive utterances of the primitive Indian philosophy are to be found in the Bṛihad-āṛanyaka Upanishad, a long treatise on the science of Brahman, forming the last portion of the Śatapatha-brāhmaṇa, the legendary and liturgic dissertation annexed to the Vājasaneïsamhitā, or so-called White Recension of the Yajurveda.

A passage treating of renunciation, ecstasy, and the liberation of the soul has been already laid before the reader in the third chapter of this work.

The present chapter will present the greater part of the narratives and dialogues of this Upanishad that relate to the revelation of the Self,

144

THE PHILOSOPHY

Chap. VI. with a few words of explanation from the scholiasts

interposed from time to time.

The Bṛihadār-

anyaka Upani-

shad.

The earlier part of the Bṛihadāranyaka Upanishad,

setting forth the mystic significance of the Aśvamedha

or horse-sacrifice, and relating the generation of the

world by Prajāpati or Purusha, may be passed over.

The first extract selected is the dialogue between

Gāṛgya and Ajātaśatru. It is as follows:-

Dialogue of

Ajatas'atru

and the Gār-

gya.

"Once upon a time there lived the proud son of

Balākā, a Gāṛgya, an able reciter of ancient learning.

On a particular occasion he visited Ajātaśatru, the

Raja of Kāśi, and said: Let me expound Brahman to

you. Ajātaśatru replied: I will give you a thousand

head of cattle as a return for your instruction, for

people go about with the idea that a liberal man is the

best disciple.

"The Gāṛgya said: I meditate upon the Purusha, the

divine spirit that is in the sun, as the Self. Ajātaśatru

said: Nay, never teach me of such a Self as that. I

meditate upon the Self as that which stands beyond,

the head of all things, the king of all things. He that

meditates upon the Self in this manner stands beyond,

the head of all things, the king of all things."

The being that the Gāṛgya identifies with the Self

is his own individual soul, Brahman as it is manifested

in the sun and in the eye, and that through the eye

has entered into the hearts of living things, and seems

to know and act and suffer in the world of semblances.

He finds the Self in his own body and senses.

Ajātaśatru at once rejects this presentation of the Self

as inadequate; he himself already meditates upon the

Self in a higher manifestation. 1 It is a Hindu maxim

that a man rises to that grade of being under which he

meditates upon Brahman. The Gāṛgya proceeds to

enumerate a variety of other manifestations under

which he meditates upon the sole spiritual essence.

1 Yathā yatho 'pāste tad eva bhavati.

OF THE UPANISHADS.

145

As in the first instance he found Brahman in the sun Chap. VI.

and in the organ of vision, of which the sun-god is the

tutelary deity, so next he finds Brahman in the moon

and in the inner sense or common sensory, of which

the moon-god is the tutelary deity.

"The Gāṛgya said: I meditate upon the Purusha, the

divine being that is in the moon, as the Self. Ajātaśatru

said: Nay, never teach me of such a Self as that. I

meditate upon the Self as the great, white-robed Soma,

the king. If a man meditate upon the Self in this

wise, his soma libation is pressed out and poured forth

day by day, and his food does not fail.

"The Gāṛgya said: I meditate upon the Purusha, the

divine being that is in the lightning, as the Self.

Ajātaśatru said: Nay, never teach me of such a Self as

that. I meditate upon the Self as the glorious being.

He that meditates upon the Self in this wise becomes

glorious, and his progeny becomes glorious.

"The Gāṛgya said: I meditate upon the Purusha, the

divine being that is in the ether, as the Self. Ajātaśatru

said: Nay, never teach me of such a Self as that. I

meditate upon that which fills all things and is inopera-

tive as the Self. He that meditates upon the Self in

this wise has the fulness of offspring and of flocks and

herds, and his posterity is never cut off in this world.

"The Gāṛgya said: I meditate upon the Purusha, the

divine being that is in the air, as the Self. Ajātaśatru

said: Nay, never teach me of such a Self as that. I

meditate upon the Self as Indra the unassailable, and

as the never-vanquished host of the Maruts. He that

meditates upon the Self in this wise becomes an in-

vincible victor, the vanquisher of the aliens.

"The Gāṛgya said: I meditate upon the Purusha,

the divine being that is in fire, as the Self. Ajātaśatru

said: Nay, never teach me of such a Self as that. I

meditate upon the Self as the sustainer. He that

meditates upon the Self in this way becomes a sus-

146

THE PHILOSOPHY

CHAP. VI. tainer of things, and his posterity become sustainers of

things.

"The Gāṛgya said : I meditate upon the Purusha, the

divine being that is in water, as the Self. Ajātaśatru

replied: Nay, never teach me of such a Self as that. I

meditate upon the Self as that which is in conformity

with prescriptive ordinances. If a man meditate upon

the Self in this wise, the fruit of such conformity

accrues to him, and a religious son is born to him.

"The Gāṛgya said : I meditate upon the Purusha, the

divine being that is seen upon a mirror, as the Self.

Ajātaśatru said : Nay, never teach me of such a Self as

that. I meditate upon the Self as the shining being.

If a man meditate upon the Self in this way, he shines,

his children shine, and he outshines all men that he

meets with.

"The Gāṛgya said: I meditate upon the sound of

my footsteps as the Self. Ajātaśatru said : Nay, never

teach me of such a Self as that. I meditate upon the

Self as the breath of life. If a man meditate upon the

Self in this wise, he lives out his whole life in this

world, and his breath does not fail him before his day.

"The Gāṛgya said : I meditate upon the Purusha, the

divine being that is in the regions of space, as the Self.

Ajātaśatru said: Nay, never teach me of such a Self as

that. I meditate upon the Self as the companion that

never leaves me. If a man meditate upon the Self in

this way, he has friends, and his friends are never

parted from him.

"The Gāṛgya said : I meditate upon the Purusha, the

divine being that is my shadow, as the Self. Ajātaśatru

said: Nay, never teach me of such a Self as that. I

meditate upon death as the Self. If a man meditates

upon the Self in this way, he lives out all his days in

this life, and death does not come to him before his

hour.

"The Gāṛgya said: I meditate upon the Purusha, the

OF THE UPANISHADS.

147

divine being that is in the mind, as the Self. Ajātaśatru Chap. VI.

said: Nay, never teach me of such a Self as that. I

meditate upon the Self as that which has peace of mind.

If a man meditate upon the Self in this manifestation,

he has peace of mind in this life, and his children have

peace of mind. After this the Gārgya held his peace."

Bālāki the Gārgya knows the Self in its particular

and local manifestations, as it presents itself fictitiously

in the shape of the gods, in the forces of nature, and in

the hearts and minds of living things. He does not know

the Self as it is in its own nature, the Self per se, the

Self unmanifested, the nirgunam brahma, the mukhyam

brahma; and Ajātaśatru the prince, finding that the Gārgya is put to shame and has nothing more to say,

has to instruct the Brāhman in his own Brāhmanic lore.

“Ajātaśatru asked, Is this all you have to say ? The

Gārgya replied, It is all. Ajātaśatru said: The Self is

not learnt by anything you have said so far. The

Gārgya said: Let me wait upon you as your disciple.

“Ajātaśatru said: It is preposterous that a Brāhman Ajātas'atru

should come to a Kshatriya to be taught about the Gārgya the

Self, but I will teach you. So he stood up and took three states of

him by the hand, and they went to a place where a of the Self be-

man was lying asleep. The Raja called to him by the yond those

names, Great white-robed King Soma, but he did not states.

rise. He patted him with his hand and woke him,

and the man stood up.

“Ajātaśatru said: When this man was fast asleep

where was his conscious soul, and where has it come

from back to him ? The Gārgya did not know what to

say.

“Ajātaśatru said: When the conscious soul was

asleep within him, it was in the ether in his heart,

and had withdrawn into itself the knowledge that

arises from the intimations of the senses. When

the soul withdraws these into itself, it is said to sleep in

148

THE PHILOSOPHY

CHAP. VI.

the dreamless state; its sense is withdrawn into itself,

its speech is withdrawn, its sight is withdrawn, its

hearing is withdrawn, its inner sense is withdrawn.

"But when the soul enters into the dreaming state

the retributive experiences present themselves, and the

man seems to himself to be, it may be a great Raja, or

it may be a great Brāhman, or he passes into bodies

higher or lower than those of man. If he seems to be

a great Raja, he seems to have his subjects, and to live

as he pleases in his kingdom. In this way it is that

he has withdrawn the outer senses into the inward

sense, and lives as he wills within his own person.

"But when the soul returns to dreamless sleep and

is no longer cognisant of anything, it retires by way of

the seventy-two thousand arteries that proceed out of

the heart and ramify throughout the body, into the

body and reposes in it. It passes into the state of

highest bliss and sleeps at peace like a child, like a

great prince or Brāhman. It is thus that the spirit

rests in dreamless sleep.

"All the senses, all the spheres of recompense, all

the gods, and all living things proceed in all their

diversity out of this Self, in like manner as a spider

issues out of itself in the form of its threads, and as

the little sparks fly on all sides out of a fire. The

mystic name of this Self is the true in the true: the

senses are true, and the Self is the truth of them."

Ajātaśatru thus teaches Bālāki that Brahman is

the one and only Self, that manifests itself in the

seeming plurality of souls in their three states of

dreamless sleep, dreaming sleep, and waking experi-

ence. The peaceful state of the undreaming sleeper,

in which the duality of subject and object has for the

time melted away, is the highest manifestation of the

one divine life that lives in all things. In this state

the soul recovers its native purity; it is like water that

has been purified from previous discolorations. To

sleep without dreaming is to be released awhile from

the miseries of metempsychosis. To be for ever in

such a state would be final peace and blessedness, the

devoutly-to-be-wished-for consummation. In the state

of dreamless sleep the Self is said to permeate the

whole body, as fire penetrates and permeates a redhot

mass of iron. In the state of dreaming sleep the

senses are withdrawn through the arteries into the

mind 1 within the heart, and the inner sensory 2 pre-

sents a series of images that simulate the objects of

perception. On awaking, the organs of sense and

motion are sent out of the mind to their several sta-

tions in the body through the network of the arteries.

In dreaming and in waking the modes of the mind

shine, that is, rise into consciousness, in the light of

the Self that dwells in the heart. In dreamless sleep

there are no modes of mind to be lighted up, for the

mind is for the time melted away. The Self is said at

that time to permeate the body, only in the sense that

it is ready to reillumine the mind so soon as it shall

reappear. Brahman is said to be the true in the true.

Brahman is that out of which all things arise, that

upon which they abide in false presentment, and that

into which they disappear again. All things are the

five elements, or made of the five elements, in their

supersensible or their sensible manifestation. The

mind and the senses are themselves made of the super-

sensible elements. The elements are designated name

and colour; name and colour are said to be the true,

and Brahman is that which is true in this true.

The next dialogue in the Brihadāranyaka Upanishad

is that between the Rishi Yājñavalkya and his wife

Maitreyī. Yājñavalkya is on the point of quitting the

ties of home to become a religious mendicant, that he

may be able to ponder on the emptiness of life and

to seek reunion with the one and only being, the im-

personal Self.

1 Buddhi.

2 Manas.

150

THE PHILOSOPHY

Chap. VI.

"Yājñavalkya said: Maitreyī, I am about to leave this home-life; come, let me divide the property between thee and my other wife, Kātyāyanī.

"Maitreyī said: If all this earth were mine and full of riches, should I be any the more immortal ? No, replied Yājñavalkya; your life would be like the life of other wealthy people; but as for immortality, there is no hope of that from riches.

"Maitreyī said: What am I to do with a thing that will not make me immortal ? Tell me, holy lord, the thing that thou knowest. Yājñavalkya said: I love you indeed, and I love what you now say ; come, sit down, and I will tell you, and you must think deeply about what I say.

"He said: A husband is loved, not for love of the husband, but the husband is loved for love of the Self that is one within us all. A wife is loved, not for love of the wife, but a wife is loved for love of the Self. Children are loved, not for love of the children, but children are loved for love of the Self. Wealth is loved, not for love of wealth, but wealth is loved for love of the Self. The Brāhmanic order is loved, not for the love of that order, but for the love of the Self. The Kshatriya order is loved, not for the love of that order, but for the love of the Self. The spheres of recompense are loved, not for the love of those spheres, but for the love of the Self. The gods are loved, not for the love of the gods, but the gods are loved for love of the Self. Living things are loved, not for love of the living things, but for love of the Self. The world is loved, not for love of the world, but the world is loved for love of the Self that is one in all things. Ah! Maitreyī, it is the Self that one must see, and hear about, and think about, and meditate upon. All this world is known by seeing the Self, by hearing about it, thinking about it, meditating upon it."

These expressions look strange and not very lucid,

but the words must be taken to represent a nascent

Chap. VI.

feeling that there is a universal and impersonal element

in every form of interest, attachment, love, and worship,

and that in these the individual rises above his usual

limitations. All other love, say the scholiasts, is im-

perfect; the love of the Self that is one in all things,

alone is perfect; all other love has fictitious limitations,

the love of the Self alone is illimitable. And therefore

it is that the Self is what one has to see, and that the

aspirant must turn his back on all things that he may

come to see it. First he is to hear about it in the

teaching of his spiritual guide and in the words of

revelation; next it is to be thought about in the exer-

cise of the understanding; next it is to be meditated

upon in prolonged ecstasy; and, last of all, the inner

vision rises clear within the purified mind, so soon as

all the semblances of the world have been melted away

into their fontal unity by a never-failing effort of ab-

straction. Then and not till then he shall have reached

the only satisfying love and blessedness. The words,

think about, and meditate upon,1 form one of the texts

of highest importance and most frequent citation in the

philosophy of the Upanishads. To return to the text.

"The Brāhmanic order would reject any one who

should view the Brāhmanic order as elsewhere than in

the Self. The Kshatriya order would reject any one

who should regard the Kshatriya order as elsewhere

than in the Self. The spheres of recompense would

reject any one who should regard the spheres as else-

where than in the Self. The gods would reject any one

who should view the gods as elsewhere than in the Self.

All living things would reject any one that should view

the living things as elsewhere than in the Self. All

things would reject any one that should view all things

as elsewhere than in the Self. This Brāhmanic order,

1 Ātmā vā're draṣṭavyaḥ śrotaryo mantaryo nididhyāsitavyaḥ.

152

THE PHILOSOPHY

Chap. VI.

this Kshatriya order, these spheres, these gods, these living things, this all, are the Self.

All things are one in the Self, as partial sounds in one total sound, as of a drum, a conch-shell, a lute.

"All various things are the one and only Self, in the same manner as when they beat a drum a man cannot catch the various external sounds, but the one total sound is caught by listening to the drum or to the beating of the drum;

"In the same manner as when they blow a conch-shell a man cannot catch the various external sounds, but the one total sound is caught by listening to the conch-shell or to the blast upon the shell;

"In the same manner as when they touch a lute a man cannot catch the various external sounds, but the one total sound is caught by listening to the lute or the performance on the lute.

The Vedas are an exhalation of the Self.

"Smoke issues forth on every side from a fire laid with moist fuel. Even so the Ṛigveda, Yajurveda, Sāmaveda, Atharvāṅgirasa, the legendaries, the sayings of the ancient sages, the theogonies, the sacred texts and memorial verses of the Upanishads, the aphorisms, the explanations of the texts,—rise as an exhalation out of that great being. All these are exhalations of that Self.

"The Self is that into which all things pass away, even as the ocean is the one thing into which all waters flow; as the touch is the sense in which all modes of tactual feeling meet; as the sight is the sense in which all feelings of colour meet; as the hearing is the sense in which all feelings of sound meet; as the common sensory is the organ in which all the volitions find their unity; as the heart is the place where all the modes of mind are unified; as the hands are the organs in which all forms of manual activity are at one; as the feet are those in which all modes of locomotion are centred; as the voice is the organ in which all repetitions of the Veda are at one.

"A lump of salt thrown into water melts away into

OF THE UPANISHADS.

153

the water, and no one can take it out, but wherever any

one takes up the water it is salt. Even so, Maitreyī,

is this great, this endless, impassable being a pure in-

difference of thought. A man comes out of these

elements, and passes back into them as they pass away,

and after he has passed away there is no more con-

sciousness. This is what I have to tell you, Maitreyī,

said Yājñavalkya."

This dialogue of Yājñavalkya and Maitreyī is repeated

with variations farther on in the Brīhadāraṇyaka, and

the last verse is there : "This Self has nothing inside

it or outside it, in the same way as a lump of salt has

nothing inside it or outside it, but is one mass of savour.

The Self is a pure indifference of thought. A man rises

from these elements, and passes back into them again

as they pass away, and there is no consciousness after

he has passed away." The figure of the salt and

the salt water is one of the commonplaces of the philosophy

of the Upanishads, and has already occurred, as the

reader will recollect, in the dialogue between Āruṇi

and Śvetaketu in the Chhāndogya Upanishad. The

body, the senses, and the mind are said to be emana-

tions of the sensible and of the supersensible elements.

Every individual soul is the Self itself in fictitious

limitation to such and such a mind and body. At the

end of every æon the bodies and the minds of all living

things, as well as their environments, are dissolved and

return into Māyā, and their souls return into unity with

Brahman. Every personality melts away into the im-

personality of Brahman, as the lump of salt is lost in

the uniformity of the salt water. All living things are

bubbles and foam that return to the water they issued

from. All the bodies and minds of living things are

like pools that reflect the sun ; the pools disappear, and

the sun alone remains. Or, to reproduce another Indian

simile, they are like flowers of various hues, that impart

their own colour to the pure and colourless crystal of

CHAP. VI.

No more con-

sciousness for

the liberated

sage.

154

THE PHILOSOPHY

Chap. VI. the Self; the flowers are withdrawn, and the crystal is

pure and colourless again. There is no consciousness

for the soul freed for the time or freed for ever from

the body, the senses, and the mind; there is only the

state of characterless bliss beyond personality and

beyond consciousness, unthinkable and ineffable. To

return.

"Maitreyī said: Holy sir, thou hast bewildered me

by saying that there is no consciousness after one has

passed away. Yājñavalkya answered her: I have said

nothing bewildering, but only what may well be under-

stood.

The duality of

subject and

object is un-

real.

"For where there is as it were a duality, one sees

another, one smells another, one hears another, one

speaks to another, one thinks about another, one

knows another; but where all this world is Self alone,

what should one smell another with, see another

with, hear another with, speak to another with, think

about another with, know another with? How

should a man know that which he knows all this

world with? Wherewithal should a man know the

knower?"

The dialogue of Yājñavalkya is followed by the Mad-

huvidyā or allegory of honey, in which the following

verses may be noticed :-

"The body is the honey of all living things, and all

living things are the honey of this body; and this same

luminous immortal Purusha that is in the body and

this same luminous immortal Self are one. Purusha

is Self. This is immortal, this is Brahman, this is all

that is.

"This same Self is the lord over all living things, the

king of all living things. All living things, all the

gods, all the spheres, all the faculties, all souls are con-

centred in the Self, as the spokes of a wheel are all

fixed in the axle and the felly.

"This is the honey that Dadhyach the son of Atharvan

OF THE UPANISHADS.

155

proclaimed to the Aśvins. Seeing this, the Rishi has Chap. VI.

said: This Self shaped itself after the shape of every- The Demi-

thing, that it might unfold its essence. Indra 1 appears illusively into

multiform by his illusions, for his horses are yoked, a plurality of

hundreds and ten. This Self is the horses (the senses), vironments of

this is the ten (organs of sense and motion), this is the souls and en-

many thousands, the innumerable (living souls). This souls.

same Self has nothing before it or after it, nothing inside

it or outside it. This Self is Brahman and is omniscient.

Such is the doctrine.

The fourth book of the Brihadāranyaka Upanishad

introduces us to a public disputation on the import of

various elements of sacrificial worship, and on the know-

ledge that liberates the soul, between the Rishi Yājña-

valkya and the Brāhmans present at a sacrifice offered

by Janaka, the Raja of Videha or Tirhut. The ceremony

was thronged with visitors, who came either at the invi-

tation of the prince, or of their own accord, to see the

spectacle, some Brāhmans having come from the lands

of the Kurus and Panchālas in the distant north. The

story is as follows:-

"Janaka, the Raja of Videha, performed a sacrifice, The disputa-

and gave numerous gifts to those that came to it. tion at the

Brāhmans from the countries of the Kurus and Pan- sacrifice cele-

chālas had come to be present at it. A desire arose in Janaka, the

the mind of Janaka to know which of all these Brāh- ha. A drove

mans was the most proficient in the repetition of the of cattle is

sacred text. He accordingly had a thousand head of

cattle driven into a pen, the horns of each being over-

laid with ten measures of gold.2

"He said: Holy Brāhmans, let him that is most Yajñavalkya

learned of you all drive off these cattle. Not one of them took upon himself to do so. Yājñavalkya said to

the disputants.

1 Indra is Īśvara. Īśvara ap-

pears in a fictitious plurality of

forms, by illusively entering into

and identifying himself with the

plurality of bodies and minds that

proceed out of the elements that

emanate from Māyā.

2 Cf. Odyssey, iii. 426; Tibullus

Eleg., iv. 1, 15.

156

THE PHILOSOPHY

Chap. VI. his disciple, Good Sāmaśravas, drive these cattle to

my house; and the youth did as he was bid. The

Brāhmans were angry, thinking, Why should this man

think himself more learned than any of us all? Now

Janaka had a Hotri priest named Aśvala, and Aśvala

asked Yājñavalkya, Yājñavalkya, art thou more learned

than any one of us? He answered, I offer my profound

obeisance to the most learned, but I must have the

cattle; and thereupon Aśvala took courage to put ques-

tions to him.

As'vala chal-

lenges him to explain the

symbolical import of the

several factors

of the sacri-

fice.

"Yājñavalkya, he said, thou knowest how all these

sacrificial elements are pervaded by death and under

the dominion of death: what shall the sacrificer es-

cape beyond the reach of death withal? He replied:

He shall escape beyond death by seeing that the Hotri

priest and the voice are one and the same with Agni,

the god invoked by means of them. It is the voice

that is the Hotri priest at the sacrifice, and this same

voice is the fire-god Agni, and is the Hotri priest. This

is the escape, this is the escape beyond death.

"Yājñavalkya, he said, thou knowest how all these

sacrificial elements are things that exist in day and

night, and under the dominion of day and night: what

shall the sacrificer escape beyond the reach of day and

night withal? He replied: He shall escape beyond

day and night by seeing that the Adhvaryu priest and

the eye are one and the same with Āditya. It is the

eye that is the Adhvaryu priest at the sacrifice, and

this same eye is the sun-god Āditya, and is the Adh-

varyu priest. This is the escape, this is the escape

beyond day and night.

"Yājñavalkya, he said, thou knowest how all these

sacrificial elements are things that exist in the waxing

and the waning of the moon, and under the dominion

of the waxing and the waning of the moon: what

shall the sacrificer escape beyond the reach of the

waxing and the waning of the moon withal? He

OF THE UPANISHADS.

157

replied: He shall escape beyond the two semi-lunations

Chap. VI.

by seeing that the Udgātṛi priest and the vital breath

are one and the same with Vāyu. The vital breath is

the Udgātṛi priest at the sacrifice, and this same breath

is the wind-god Vāyu, and is the Udgātṛi priest. This

is the escape, this is the escape beyond the periods of

the waxing and the waning of the moon.

"Yājñavalkya, he said, thou knowest how yonder

sky seems unsupported. By what ascent shall the

sacrificer ascend to the paradise that is his recom-

pense? He replied: He shall ascend to paradise by

seeing that the Brahman priest and the inner sense are

one with Chandra. The inner sense is the Brahman

priest at the sacrifice, and this same inner sense is the

moon-god Chandra, and is the Brahman priest. This

is the escape, the escape beyond the sky. Such are

the modes of liberation, and the preparations at the

sacrifice."

Aśvala's questions relate to the mystic significance

of the various persons and things employed in the great

sacrifice of Janaka. They are questions in the kind of

knowledge which may be added to the performance of

the time-hallowed ritual; and the ritual, and the know-

ledge of this kind added to it, may elevate the wor-

shipper to higher and higher spheres of recompense,

but they are of no avail towards the highest end of

all, the final escape from metempsychosis. The next

interrogator, Ārtabhāga, proceeds to examine Yājña-

valkya on the nature of the bondage of the soul, its

implication in metempsychosis. The soul is in bondage

so long as it attributes reality to the objects of its

sensible experience, and the nature of its experience is

determined by the senses and the things of sense.

"Next Ārtabhāga the Jāratkārava began to question

him. Yājñavalkya, he said, how many organs of sense

calls upon him

and motion are there, and how many objects of those

of sensible ex-

organs? Yājñavalkya replied: There are eight such

perience.

158

THE PHILOSOPHY

Chap. VI. organs and eight such objects. He asked: What are

the eight organs, and what are the eight objects ?

"Yājñavalkya said: Smell is an organ, and the ex-

haling substance is its object; for a man is sensible

of odours by the sense of smell.

"The voice is an organ, and the utterable word is its

object; for a man utters words by means of the voice.

"The tongue is an organ, and the sapid thing is its

object; for a man is sensible of taste by means of the

tongue.

"The eye is an organ, and colour is its object; for a

man sees colours with the eye.

"The ear is an organ, and sound is its object; for a

man hears sounds with the ear.

"The common sensory is an organ, and the pleasur-

able is its object; for a man lusts after the pleasurable

with this sensory.

"The hands are an organ, and the thing handled is

the object; for a man handles things with the hands.

"The skin is an organ, and the tangible is its object;

for a man is sensible of touch by means of the skin.

These are the eight organs and the eight objects of the

organs.

"Yājñavalkya, he said, thou knowest how all this

world is food for death, what divine being is death the

food of? Yājñavalkya replied: Fire is the death of

death, and fire is the food of water.1 A man may over-

The mind and

senses of the

liberated sage

are dissolved

at death.

"Yājñavalkya, he said, when the sage that has won

release from metempsychosis dies, do his organs issue

upwards to pass into another body or not? Yājñaval-

kya replied: They do not; they are melted away at the

1 All things in the spheres of

recompense, the world of metem-

sychosis, may be destroyed by fire;

fire itself again may be destroyed,

that is, extinguished, by water.

All these things being perishable,

the soul, as imperishable, may be

disengaged from them, and may

overcome death, that is, may

achieve its extrication from me-

tempsychosis.

OF THE UPANISHADS.

159

moment of his death. He is inflated, and swells, and

Chap. VI.

lies a swollen corpse.

"Yājñavalkya, he said, when the liberated sage dies,

what is it that does not leave him? The Rishi replied :

His name; his name is endless : the Viśvadevas are

endless, and therefore he wins an endless recompense.

"Yājñavalkya, he said, where does a man that has

not won this release go when he dies, and his voice

passes back into fire and his vital breath into the air,

his eyes into the sun, his common sensory into the

moon, his ears into the regions of space, his body

into the earth, the ether in his heart into the ether

without, the hair of his body into plants, the hair of his

head into trees, and his blood into water? Yājñavalkya

said : Give me thy hand, good Ārtabhāga; we will find

out the answer to thy question, but this is no matter

to discuss in public. So they went out and conferred

together, and said that it was the law of retribution

The soul of the

that they had been speaking of, and pronounced it to

be this law that sent the soul from body into body. A

man becomes holy by holy works, and unholy by

unholy works in previous lives.

"Hereupon Ārtabhāga the Jāratkārava held his

peace."

At the death of an ordinary man his several organs

of sense and motion, as forming part of the tenuous

involucrum of his soul, pass out and enter into a new

body, and he is born again. At the death of the perfect

sage they sink back into the original unity of Brahman,

as waves sink back into the sea. The answer to the

question, Where does the soul that has not won its

release go after the dissolution of his present body? is

that it goes into some new embodiment, higher or lower

in the scale according to its works in former lives. By

the law of retribution the soul becomes holy, that is, is

born into higher grades of life, by good works, by con-

formity to the prescriptive sacra ; and it becomes un-

160

THE PHILOSOPHY

Chap. VI. holy, that is, is born into vegetal, animal, or other lower grades of life, by unholy works, that is, by neglect of immemorial usages. The reader must beware of attaching to the text a higher moral and spiritual significance than properly belongs to it.

Bhujyu exa- mines Yājñavalkya on the recompense of the horse- sacrifice.

"Next Bhujyu, the grandson of Lāhya, began to question him. Yājñavalkya, he said, when we were itinerating as sacred students in the country of the Madras, we came to the house of Patancala the Kāpya. He had a daughter possessed of a spirit more than human, a Gandharva. and he said that he was Sudhanvan, an Āngirasa. In talking to him about the uttermost parts of the world, we asked what had become of the descendants of Parikshit. Now I ask thee, Yājñavalkya, what has become of the Pārikshitas?

"Yājñavalkya said: They have gone to the sphere to which they go who have celebrated an Aśvamedha or sacrifice of a horse. Bhujyu asked: And where do the celebrants of an Aśvamedha go? This world, said Yājñavalkya, is equal to thirty-two daily journeys of the sun-god's chariot. This is surrounded on every side by a land of twice that size. That land again is surrounded by a sea twice as extensive. Beyond this sea there is an ethereal space of the width of a razor's edge or a mosquito's wing. There Indra, taking the shape of a bird, conveyed the Pārikshitas to the air, the air holding the Pārikshitas within itself forwarded them to the sphere where all former celebrants of an Aśvamedha reside. The Gandharva therefore revealed to you that it was the air through which the Pārikshitas passed. Air is each and every thing, and air is all things. He that knows it as such overcomes death.

"Hereupon Bhujyu Lāhyāyani was silent.

"Next Ushasta Chākrāyana began to question him. Yājñavalkya, he said, tell me plainly what that present and visible Brahman is, that is the Self within all living

OF THE UPANISHADS.

161

things? Yājñavalkya replied: The Self that is thine is

Chap. VI.

the Self within all living things. What Self, Yājña-

valkya, is in all things? Yājñavalkya answered: That

Ushasta calls upon him for

which breathes with the breath is the Self that is thine,

an ocular de-

monstration

and that is in all living things. That which descends

of the Self. He replies

with the descending air of life is the Self that is thine,

that the Self

and that is in all living things. That which circulates

is the unseen

with the circulating air of life is the Self that is thine,

seer.

and that is in all living things. That which ascends

with the ascending air of life is the Self that is thine,

and that is in all living things. This is thy Self that is

in all things that are.

"Ushasta Chākrāyana said: Thou hast only taught

me as a man might say a cow is so and so, a horse is

so and so. Point out to me plainly what that present

and visible Brahman is, that is the Self within all living

things. Yājñavalkya replied again, The Self that is

thine is the Self within all living things. Ushasta

asked again, What Self is in all things? Yājñavalkya

answered him: I cannot point it out. Thou canst not

see the seer of the sight; thou canst not hear that that

hears the hearing; thou canst not think the thinker of

the thought; thou canst not know the knower of all

knowledge. This is thy Self that is in all things that

are, and everything else is misery.

"Hereupon Ushasta Chākrāyana ceased from farther

questioning"

So far, says Śankarāchārya, the text of this dialogue

has treated of the bondage of the soul, its implication

in metempsychosis, and has taught that the migrating

soul is, if only it be truly viewed, the Self itself. The

text now proceeds to treat of the renunciation of all

things and spiritual intuition, as the means by which

the soul may win its release from further transmigration.

"Next Kahola Kausītakeya began to question him.

Yājñavalkya, he said, tell me plainly what that present

and visible Brahman is, that is the Self within all living

things living.

L

162

THE PHILOSOPHY

Chap. VI.

things. Yājñavalkya said, This Self of thine is the

Self that is within all things. What Self, Yājñavalkya,

is in all things? Yājñavalkya answered him : The Self

that is beyond hunger and thirst, and grief and stupor,

and decay and death. Knowing the Self to be such,

Brāhmans have risen and laid aside the desire of chil-

dren, the desire of wealth, and the desire of spheres of recompense, and have wandered forth as sacred mendi-

cants. For the desire of children is the same as the

desire of wealth, and the desire of wealth is the same

as the desire of the spheres of recompense; for there

are both of these kinds of desire. Therefore 1 let a

Brāhman learn wisdom, and stand fast in the power of

wisdom ; and having made an end of wisdom and the

power of wisdom, let him become a quietist; and when

he has made an end of quietism and non-quietism, he

shall become a Brāhman, a Brāhman indeed. What-

The visionary

sage is the

true Brāhman.

ever kind of a Brāhman he may have been, he becomes

a veritable Brāhman now.

"Hereupon Kahola Kaushītakeya held his peace.

"Next Gārgī the daughter of Vachaknu began to

Gārgī ques-

tions him.

Over what is

the cosmic

web woven?

question him. Yājñavalkya, she said, thou knowest

how all this earth is woven upon the waters warp and

woof; what are the waters woven upon warp and woof?

Upon the air, Gārgī, replied the Ṛishi. What is the

air woven upon warp and woof? Upon the regions of

middle space, Gārgī. What are the regions of middle

space woven upon warp and woof? Upon the spheres

of the Gandharvas, Gārgī. What are the spheres of

the Gandharvas woven upon warp and woof? Upon

the solar spheres, Gārgī. What are the solar spheres

woven upon warp and woof? Upon the lunar spheres,

1 The translation of this part

of the verse follows the gloss of

Śankarāchārya. Quitting the tra-

ditional explanation, the words

might be translated, "Let a Brāh-

man renounce learning and become

as a child ; and after renouncing

learning and a childlike mind, let

he has made an end of quietism

and non-quietism, he shall become

a Brāhman, a Brāhman indeed."

Gārgī. What are the lunar spheres woven upon warp and woof? Upon the starry spheres, Gārgī. What are the starry spheres woven upon warp and woof? Upon the spheres of the gods, Gārgī. What are the spheres of the gods woven upon warp and woof? Upon the spheres of Indra, Gārgī. What are the spheres of Indra woven upon warp and woof? Upon the spheres of Prajāpati, Gārgī. What are the spheres of Prajāpati woven upon warp and woof? Upon the spheres of Brahmā, Gārgī. What are the spheres of Brahmā woven upon warp and woof? He said to her: Gārgī, push not thy questioning too far, lest thy head fall off. Thou goest too far in putting questions about the divine being that transcends such questioning; push not thy questioning too far.

"Hereupon Gārgī the daughter of Vachaknu ceased to speak."

Here as elsewhere in the Upanishads, the various spheres of recompense through which the soul has to go up and down in its migrations in obedience to the law of retribution, are said to be woven warp and woof, like so many veils of finer and finer tissue, across and across the one and only Self. The whole world of semblances is only a vesture that hides from the soul, the underlying spiritual essence of which it is only one of the innumerable fictitious emanations.

The soul is one of the countless sparks of the fire, one of the countless wavelets of the sea, one of the countless images of the sun upon the waters; and it is only the inexplicable power of the illusion that exercises itself from before all time, that hides from it its pure and characterless nature, its unity with the primitive essence, thought, and bliss. The true Self is hidden from the eyes and thoughts of living souls by veil after veil of illusory presentation, by sphere after sphere of seeming action and suffering; the successive figments of the primitive world-fiction, the principle of

164

THE PHILOSOPHY

Chap. VI.

unreality that has unreally associated itself from before all æons with the principle of reality.

So far the various speakers in the dialogue have talked about the spheres of recompense lower in ascent than the sphere of Hiranyagarbha. Beyond Prajāpati or Purusha, beyond the souls in the waking state, is Hiranyagarbha, the Sūtrātman, the spirit that permeates all dreaming souls; and beyond Hiranyagarbha and the dreaming souls is Īśvara, the internal ruler, the spirit that is present in all souls in their dreamless sleep, that directs every movement of every living thing, and metes out to the migrating sentiences their varied lots from the lowest to the highest, in accordance with the law of retribution. Accordingly the dialogue proceeds to treat of the thread-soul Hiranya garbha, and the internal ruler Īśvara within the thread-soul.

Uddālaka

questions him

on the nature

of the thread-soul Hiranya garbha.

"Next Uddālaka the son of Aruṇa began to question him. Yājñavalkya, he said, we once lived in the country of the Madras, in the house of Patanchala the Kāpya, studying the nature and import of sacrificial rites. He had a wife possessed of a spirit more than human, a Gandharva. We asked the Gandharva who he was, and he said, I am Kabandha the son of Atharvan. He also said to Patanchala the Kāpya, and to us liturgists: Kāpya, dost thou know what the thread is by which this embodiment and the next embodiment and all living things are strung together? Patanchala the Kāpya said, I do not know it, venerable spirit. He said again to Patanchala the Kāpya, and to us liturgists: Kāpya, dost thou know that which actuates this embodiment and the next embodiment and all living things from within? Patanchala the Kāpya said, Great spirit, I know it not. The Gandharva said again to Patanchala the Kāpya, and to us liturgic students: Kāpya, he that knows that thread and that internal actuator within the thread-soul, knows Brah-

OF THE UPANISHADS.

165

man, knows the spheres of recompense, knows the gods, knows the Vedas, knows all living things, knows

the Self, knows all things. He revealed the thread-soul and the internal actuator that is within it to us,

and I know them. Now if thon, Yājñavalkya, hast driven away the cattle that are the prize of the most

learned Brāhman, without knowing that thread-soul and that internal ruler, thy head shall fall off. Yājña-

valkya said, Gautama, I know that thread-soul and that internal ruler. Uddālaka rejoined, Any one can

say, I know them; tell me what thou knowest.

"Yājñavalkya said: Gautama, the air is that thread-soul. This embodiment and the next embodiment and

all living things are strung together by the air. It is for this reason that they say of a dead man that his

limbs are unstrung, for his limbs are strung together by the air as by a thread. Just so, Yājñavalkya, said

Uddālaka ; now tell me about the internal actuator."

Śankarāchārya tells us that the air is here a metonym for the supersensible rudiments, or elements in

their primitive state, as yet uncondensed by progressive concretion. It is out of these supersensible ele-

ments that the tenuous involucra, or invisible bodies of migrating souls, are formed. These invisible bodies

clothe the soul in its transit from body to body, and the retributive influences of the good and evil works

of former lives adhere to them. Yājñavalkya proceeds to answer Uddālaka by a description of the Demiurgus,

the universal soul that permeates and vivifies all nature and all migrating personalities. This cosmic

soul is the first manifestation of Brahman ; it is Brahman itself in its first illusory presentment, as ficti-

tiously overspread with Māyā, or, as it is otherwise said, with the whole world-fiction as a body, the cosmic

body out of which all things lifeless and living emanate. It is in virtue of the presence and light of this

universal soul within them that the deities of earth,

166

THE PHILOSOPHY

CHAP. VI. and water, and fire, and other natural agents, pass

from rest to motion and from motion to rest again.

This universal soul is also present in every living

thing, from the grass below the feet to Brahmā the god

high over all; and it is in virtue of his presence and

his light that they pass from rest to motion, and from

motion back to rest. He is invisible, and vision is his

being; unknowable, and knowledge is his being; as

heat and light are the being of fire. As the universal

soul he is exempt from the varied experiences of me-

tempsychosis, which are the modes of individual life,

and which he allots, in conformity always with the

law of retribution, to the innumerable migrating souls.

"Yājñavalkya said: That which dwells in earth,

inside the earth, and earth knows not, whose body the

earth is, which actuates the earth from within, — that

is thy Self, the internal ruler, immortal.

"That which dwells in water, inside the water, and

the water knows not, whose body the water is, which

actuates the water from within,—that is thy Self, the

internal ruler, immortal.

"That which dwells in fire, inside the fire, and the

fire knows not, whose body the fire is, which actuates

the fire from within,—that is thy Self, the internal ruler,

immortal.

"That which dwells in air, inside the air, and the

air knows not, whose body the air is, which actuates

the air from within,—that is thy Self, the internal

ruler, immortal.

"That which dwells in wind, inside the wind, and

the wind knows not, whose body the wind is, which

actuates the wind from within,—that is thy Self, the

internal ruler, immortal.

"That which dwells in the sky, inside the sky, and

the sky knows not, whose body the sky is, which

actuates the sky from within,—that is thy Self, the

internal ruler, immortal.

The Demiurgus is the internal ruler or actuater, the first and highest manifestation of the Self. He informs and animates the elements.

OF THE UPANISHADS.

167

"That which dwells in the sun, inside the sun, and

the sun knows not, whose body the sun is, which

actuates the sun from within,—that is thy Self, the

internal ruler, immortal.

"That which dwells in the regions of space, inside

the regions, and the regions know not, whose body the

regions are, which actuates the regions from within,—

that is thy Self, the internal ruler, immortal.

"That which dwells in the moon and stars, inside

the moon and stars, and the moon and stars know not,

whose body the moon and stars are, which actuates the

moon and stars from within,—that is thy Self, the

internal ruler, immortal.

"That which dwells in the ether, inside the ether,

which the ether knows not, whose body the ether is,

which actuates the ether from within,—that is thy

Self, the internal ruler, immortal.

"That which dwells in darkness, inside the darkness,

which the darkness knows not, whose body the dark-

ness is, which actuates the darkness from within,—

that is thy Self, the internal ruler, immortal.

"That which dwells in light, inside the light, which

the light knows not, whose body the light is, which

actuates the light from within,—that is thy Self, the

internal ruler, immortal.

"Such are the elemental manifestations of the internal

ruler; now for his manifestations in animated nature.

"That which dwells in all living things, inside all

He informs

living things, which no thing living knows, whose body

and animates

all living things are, which actuates all things living

from within,—that is thy Self, the internal ruler, im-

mortal.

"That which dwells in the breath of life, inside the

breath, which the breath knows not, whose body the

breath is, which actuates the breath from within,—that

is thy Self, the internal ruler, immortal.

"That which dwells in the voice, inside the voice,

168

THE PHILOSOPHY

CHAP. VI. which the voice knows not, whose body the voice is,

which actuates the voice from within,—that is thy

Self, the internal ruler, immortal.

"That which dwells in the eye, inside the eye, which

the eye knows not, whose body the eye is, which

actuates the eye from within,—that is thy Self, the

internal ruler, immortal.

"That which dwells in the ear, inside the ear, which

the ear knows not, whose body the ear is, which

actuates the ear from within,—that is thy Self, the

internal ruler, immortal.

"That which dwells in the inner sense, inside the

inner sense, which the inner sense knows not, whose

body the inner sense is, which actuates the inner sense

from within,—that is thy Self, the internal ruler,

immortal.

"That which dwells in the sense of touch, inside the

touch, which the touch knows not, whose body the

sense of touch is, which actuates the sense of touch

from within,—that is thy Self, the internal ruler,

immortal.

"That which dwells in the consciousness, inside the

consciousness, which the consciousness knows not,

whose body the consciousness is, which actuates the

consciousness from within,—that is thy Self, the inter-

nal ruler, immortal.

The Demiur-

gus is Brah-

man mani-

fested in the

world.

"That which sees unseen, hears unheard, thinks

unthought upon, knows unknown; that other than

which there is none that sees, none that hears, none

that thinks, none that knows;—that is thy Self, the

internal ruler, immortal. Everything else is misery.

"Hereupon Uddālaka the son of Aruṇa ceased from

questioning."

From Brahman as manifested in the form of the

Demiurgus or universal soul that permeates and ani-

mates all things, the dialogue next passes to Brahman

as beyond manifestation, the present and visible Brah-

man within the heart of every living thing, the pure

light, the characterless fontal essence.

"Next Gārgī the daughter of Vachaknu spoke again : Gārgī exa-

mines him

Reverend Brāhmans, I will ask this man two questions. If he can answer them, no one of you all can outvie

him in exposition of the Self. They said, Ask him,

Gārgī.

"Yājñavalkya, said Gārgī, I rise to put two ques-

tions to thee. I rise as some Raja of Kāśī or Videha

might rise to encounter thee, a father of heroes, with

his bow strung, and with two sharp threatening arrows

of cane in his hand. Answer me these questions.

Yājñavalkya said, Put the questions to me.

"Yājñavalkya, she said, across what is that principle

woven warp and woof, which they say is above the sky,

below the earth, and within which this earth and yonder

sky exist, and all that has been, is, and is to be ?

"Yājñavalkya said : That principle that they say is

above the sky, below the earth, and within which this

earth and yonder sky exist, and all that has been, is,

and is to be,—is woven warp and woof across and

across the ethereal expanse.1

"Gārgī said: Glory to thee, Yājñavalkya, that thou

hast answered this my first question; now prepare

thyself to meet the second. He said, Put it to me,

Gārgī.

"She said: Yājñavalkya, across what is that principle

woven warp and woof, which they say is above the sky,

below the earth, and within which this earth and

yonder sky exist, and all that has been, is, and is

to be ?

"Yājñavalkya answered her again: That principle

that they say is above the sky, below the earth, and

within which this earth and yonder sky exist, and all

that has been, is, and is to be,—is woven warp and

woof across and across the ethereal expanse. And I

1 Ethereal expanse is here a synonym of Māyā.