A History of Ancient Sanskrit Literature, so far as it illustrates the Primitive Religion of the Brahmans c11.192

c11.192

There is a hymn of peculiar interest in the tenth Maṇḍala, full of ideas which to many would seem to necessitate the admission of a long antecedent period of philosophical thought. There we find the conception of a beginning of all things, and of a state previous even to all existence. "Nothing that is, was then," the poet says; and he adds, with a boldness matched only by the Eleatic thinkers of Greece, or by Hegel's philosophy, "even what is not (τὸ μὴ ὄν), did not exist then." He then proceeds to deny the existence of the sky and of the firmament, and yet, unable to bear the idea of an unlimited nothing, he exclaims, "What was it that hid or covered the existing?" Thus driven on, and asking two questions at once, with a rapidity of thought which the Greek and the Sanskrit languages only can follow, he says, "What was the refuge of what?" After this metaphysical flight, the poet returns to the more substantive realities of thought, and, throwing out a doubt, he continues, “Was water the deep abyss, the chaos, which swallowed everything?” Then his mind, turning away from nature, dwells upon man and the problem of human life. “There was no death,” he says, and, with a logic which perhaps has never been equalled, he subjoins, “therefore was there nothing immortal.” Death, to his mind, becomes the proof of immortality. One more negation, and he has done. “There was no space, no life, and lastly, there was no time, no difference between day and night, no solar torch by which morning might have been told from evening.” All these ideas lie imbedded in the simple words, “Na râtryâ ahna âsît praketaḥ.” Now follows his first assertion: “That One,” he says, and he uses no other epithet or qualification—“That One breathed breathless by itself: other than it nothing since has been.” This expression, “it breathed breathless” seems to me one of the happiest attempts at making language reflect the colourless abstractions of the mind. “That One,” the poet says, “breathed, and lived; it enjoyed more than mere existence; yet its life was not dependent on anything else, as our life depends on the air which we breathe. It breathed breathless.” Language blushes at such expressions, but her blush is a blush of triumph.