History of Dharmashastra (Ancient and Mediaeval Religious and Civil Law in India) v7.c96.s1.33

v7.c96.s1.33

The Upanisadic teaching is a universal doctrine in which all men of good will can meet and combine, in whatever religion they might have been brought up from their childhood. Many illustrations are adduced in the Upanisads to bring home non-difference to the inquirer about the Essence. But two are very apt. The Mundaka Upanisad (III. 2. 8) declares "just as rivers flowing (towards the ocean) become merged in the ocean after giving up their names and forms, so the man who realizes (knows), being free from name and form, attains the divine Person that is higher than the highest". The Praśnopanisad has (VI.5) the same illustration in prose. The Kathopanisad IV. 15 states 'just as pure water poured into pure water assumes the same form (appearance), similarly the soul of the sage who has realized (the Essence) becomes the Ātman (Self).' Deussen in his address on 20th February 1893 before the Asiatic Society of Bombay (in J. B. B. R. A. S. No. 18 for 1893 Art 20 pp. 330-340) after quoting the verse of Mundaka III. 2. 8 remarks "It is not the falling of the drops in the infinite ocean, it is the whole ocean returning to that which he really is and has never ceased to be, to his own all-pervading eternal almighty nature" and concludes (p. 340) "Vedānta in its unfalsified form is the strongest support for morality, is the greatest consolation in the sufferings of life and death; Indians, keep to it." Vide V. S. II. 3.43, where reference is made to Atharvaveda 'Brahma dāśā brahma dāsā brahmeme kitavā uta' (occurring in the Paippalāda version as shown by Prof. Durgamohan Bhattacharya in his paper on a palm-leaf ms. of the Paippalāda-saṃhitā in Adyar Library Bulletin, vol. XXV, parts 1-4 ).