Sexual Life in Ancient India: A Study in the Comparative History of Indian Culture v1.c5.278

v1.c5.278

his work that bears him company. As night is the mother of things, so too we come out of the darkness and go into the darkness, come forth out of nothingness, and go through a short being into nothingness (cp. Agnipuraṇa, 119.13b, taken from Viṣṇu, xx, 48); just as little as the tree knows of its flowers and fruits, does man know of whence he comes and whither he goes. Our bodily and spiritual organism is ever changing; what belongs, then, to us? Even our body, our sense perceptions, thoughts and feelings are not ours, are only products of the ever-flowing matter. Thus, too, there is really no teacher or leader for anyone, each is his own Guru and must go along the road to happiness alone. Only the self is the friend, only the self is the foe of man; from others nothing comes to him. Therefore what must be is to honour, to assert the self, to be quite true, never to lie either in word or deed. Self-culture, however, is found in self-discipline. Indeed, he who of his own will renounces all (and only lives in others), he who then really knows and feels that nothing belongs to him, to him everything belongs. But as opposed to this most lofty ethical teaching there is deduced from the saying: "Each is alone, and each is akin only and utterly to himself" the most thoroughgoing egoism or individualism, and the teaching is always being stressed: For the sake of self we must give up everything, even the nearest and dearest, it is only to self that we owe any regard. And: He that wants greatness must be cruel; moral virtue (dharma) has been put in the way of the strong by the weak. It is perhaps worthy of note that the Buddhists call this "the wisdom of the Kṣattriyas" (cp. my Daçakumārac., p. 109). But here the thought of the Indian "Mirrors of Princes" may have played a very great part. See, for instance, i, 140, especially 140.77 (= xii, 140.50); 158.27 ff.; iii, 159.14; 215.27, 28; v, 33.74; 34.64, 65; 37.18; vi, 30.5 f.; x, 1.24; xi, 2.6; 2.13 (almost = xii, 174.17 and xv, 34.17); xii, 139.30; 140.5; 275.35; 288.16 ff.; 318.104; 320.115 ff.; 321.85, 86; 329.32 ff.; xiii, 111.9 ff.; xv, 34.17. Cp. my Kauṭilya, p. lx. Many of these thoughts are also often uttered by the Buddhists and the Jains. So Majjh.-Nik., i, 136; Mahāvagga, i, 6.38 ff., etc. The Jain monk Amitagati is ready at hand in Subhāṣitasamḍoha, ii, 16, with a Sanskrit model for the celebrated saying of Hans the Stone-breaker in Anzengruber's *Kreuzel-schreiber*: Anyajano na kimcic chaknoti kartum ("nothing can happen to thee"). Cp. my Daçakumārac., note 1, pp. 110; 362, and *Hindu Tales*, p. 153, where indeed the quotations could be multiplied to infinity.