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The Philosophy of the Upanishads c10.s1.t2: 3. The Creation of Inorganic Nature

The Philosophy of the Upanishads c10.s1.t2

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3. The Creation of Inorganic Nature

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In the whole of nature no distinction is so sharply drawn as that between the inorganic and the organic; and this distinction dominates the Indian view of nature also, in so far as they both, the inorganic no less than the organic, are derived from the âtman, but in quite a different sense. All organic bodies, and therefore all plants, animals, men and gods, are wandering souls, are therefore in essence the âtman itself, as it, for reasons which have still to be considered, entered into this manifold universe as wandering individual soul. Inorganic bodies, on the contrary,¹ *i.e.* the five elements, ether, wind, fire, water, earth, though they are ruled by Brahman,¹ and remain under the protection of individual deities,² yet are not wandering souls, as are all plants, animals, men, and gods, but are only the stage erected by Brahman on which the souls have to play their part. Before we consider the origin of the elements from Brahman, and in the immediately following section of the entrance of Brahman into them as the soul, a few words of introduction are necessary on the creation myths of the Upanishads.

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¹ Named *mahâbhûtâni* on account of their bulk by Ait. 3. 3, Maitr. 3. 2, Prâṇagnihotrop. 4.

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¹ Bṛih. 3. 7. 3–14.

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² Bṛih. 2. 1. 5–8, 2. 5. 1–10.

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It was shown above (pp. 183–186) how it became possible for the teachers of the Upanishads, in spite of the doctrine of sole existence which they defended, and which denied the existence of the universe outside of the âtman, by an unconscious approximation to the empirical view to adopt the traditional scheme of the creation myths. Thus in Chând. 4. 17. 1–3, and in a briefer form Chând. 2. 23, a creation myth is reproduced, in part verbally, which we have already come to know from Ait. Br. 5. 32 and S'atap. Br. 11. 5. 8.³ A creation myth is attached to the conception of the egg of the universe, whose earliest origin we have found in the "vital force that was enclosed in the shell,"⁴ and in the "golden germ";⁵ and the progressive development of the same idea met us already in S'atap. 6. 1. 1 and 11. 1. 6. This myth is preserved in Chând. 3. 19:—"This universe was in the beginning not-being; this (not-being) was being. It arose. Then an egg was evolved. It lay there a whole year long. Thereafter it split open; the two halves of the shell were, the one of silver, the other of gold; the silver half is this earth, the golden is yonder heaven," etc. (On these predecessors the representation in Manu 1. 9–13 depends.)

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³ Deussen, *Allgemeine Einleitung u. Philosophie des Veda*, pp. 183, 189.

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⁴ Rigv. X. 129. 3.

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⁵ *hiraṇyagarbha*, Rigv. X. 121. 1.

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The conception of the egg of the universe appears in a more characteristic context together with that of the premundane purusha¹ in the creation myth at the beginning of the Aitareya Upanishad that belongs to the Rigveda :—"In the beginning the âtman alone was this universe; there was nothing else at all to meet the eye. He deliberated:—I will create worlds." Accordingly after he had created the earth and the atmosphere, the waters above and below, he drew forth the purusha from the waters, and gave him shape. Brooding over these waters they opened "like an egg," the mouth, nose, eyes, etc. of which are then developed, and from them the eight psychical organs, and from these in turn Agni, Vâyu, Âditya, etc. as the eight guardians of the universe, who finally take up their abode in men as speech, breath, sight, etc. Although however the human frame is thus animated by the organs of sense that spring from the purusha, it can only exist after the creator through the fissure of the skull (*vidriti*) has entered into it as individual soul. The tendency of this myth is clear. The purusha, that in Rigv. X. 90 had been the first principle, becomes here a power dependent on the âtman; and similarly only the organs of man's soul are ascribed to the purusha, but the soul itself to the âtman.

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¹ Rigv. X. 90.

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The most original and significant creation myth of the Upanishads is the representation of the evolution of the universe from the âtman in Brih. 1. 4. Here the traditional form of the creation myth appears only as a veil lightly thrown over the whole. The aim is not to relate a consistent history of the creation, but rather in a series of loosely connected creation pictures to teach the absolute dependence of all existing beings on the âtman. Accordingly the perpetual return of created things into the âtman is used to show how the division of the universe into male and female, and then into the different species of animals by the flight of the female before the male, how the evolution of name and form, and the entrance of the âtman into them, together with the creation of the castes of the gods and afterwards of men, etc., how all this signifies only the self-evolution of the âtman to become the manifold universe, and the essential identity of all its phenomena with the âtman. Through the consciousness “I am Brahman” (*aham brahma asmi*)¹ the âtman becomes the universe, “and to this day whoever knows this ‘I am brahman’ he becomes this universe; nor have even the gods power to prevent his so becoming. For he is its soul (*âtman*).” Thus the traditional doctrine of the creation is preserved only as an external form. It serves merely to exhibit the sole reality of the âtman under the different phenomena of the universe.

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¹ Bṛih. 1. 4. 10.

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From this lofty standpoint we see the Upanishads ever turning back to the realism natural to us, in order to teach in detail a creation of the universe, and of the elements of which it consists.

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Like the Greek philosophers, Philolaus, Plato and Aristotle, most of the Indian thinkers distinguish five elements, — ether, wind, fire, water and earth. A dependence however of the Greek idea on the Indian, or the Indian on the Greek, is not to be thought of for this reason, if for no other, that the order of the elements is different, inasmuch as the Greeks place fire between ether and air, the Indians air between ether and fire. Further also because on both sides independently of one another the simple observation of nature led to the thought of the five compound states of matter, viz. the solid, fluid, gaseous, permanently elastic and the imponderable, as the five component parts of the material universe, to which correspond, as we shall see, the five specific energies of the organs of sense. The result is that both in the Greek and in the Indian philosophy we see the doctrine of the fivefold character of the elements gradually formed out of simpler conceptions.

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The oldest element with the Indians is water. As early as Rigv. X. 129. 3 the first principle appeared as a "dark undulation" (apraketam salilam). In Rigv. X. 121. 9 Prajâpati begets "the great sparkling waters." These again appear in Rigv. X. 82. 1 as the primeval slime in which in the beginning heaven and earth were plunged; and in Rigv. X. 72. 4-6 as the "wave-surge," that is identical with Aditi, etc. In the Upanishads also the conception of the primeval waters still survives. "The waters are the body of that prâṇa!"¹ "This earth, the air, the heavens, the mountains, gods and men, domestic animals and birds, vegetables and trees, wild creatures down to worms, flies and ants, are nothing but this water under solid conditions, they are all nothing but this water under solid conditions."² In Kaush. 1. 7 also Brahman speaks to the soul that knows itself to be identical with him:—"The primeval waters in truth are my universe (as hiraṇyagarbha), and it is thine." In Kâṭh. 4. 6 again it is said of the purusha that he existed before the primeval waters; and the latter are to be understood in the following verse³ by "Aditi the sustainer of the god that springs forth together with them to life." It also "dwells in the cavity of the heart" (in which according to Chând. 8. 1. 3 heaven and earth are confined), that is the primeval waters also are a product of the âtman dwelling in the heart. Therein, according to Îśâ 4, Mâtaris'van, (i.e. probably the prâṇa) has already interwoven the primeval waters; according to Mahânâr. 1. 4 he has sown by water the germ of life on the earth. The cosmogony also of Ait. 1. 1 is to be explained on the same principle. It seems to be especially closely connected with Ṛigv. X. 82. 1. There it is said that in the beginning the worlds were plunged in the *ghṛitam* of the primeval waters, and that the creator, having first fastened the extreme ends (which could only stand fast out of the waters), spread out heaven and earth between them. This gives the key to Ait. 1. 1, where it is said:—"He deliberated:—I will create worlds, the ocean, the realms of light, death, the waters (*ambho, marīcīr, maram, āpas*). That is the ocean, beyond the heaven; the heaven is its floor. The atmosphere is the realms of light. Death is the earth. The waters are whatever is beneath it." After this description we have the waters as the two ends of the universe, above and below, and between them the clear atmosphere (hence called *marīcīr*), and the dark earth (hence dead), *i.e.* the *sūrtam* and the *asūrtam rajas* of Ṛigv. X. 82. 4. By a reference to this passage the otherwise isolated description of the construction of the parts of the universe in Ait. 1. 1 seems to find a complete explanation. The same Upanishad further on¹ enumerates the five elements as usually given by later writers.

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¹ Brih. 1. 5. 13.

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² Chând. 7. 10. 1.

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³ cp. Rigv. X. 72. 5, supra.

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¹ Ait. 3. 3.

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A further step is taken in Bṛih. 1. 2. 2, where we find the one element of the primeval waters replaced by three. Here also Prajāpati forms the water by his song of praise. From its churning the earth arises, fire from the labour and heat involved in the movement.

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The leading authority for the number three of the elements is Chānd. 6. 2. Here the waters are no longer the starting-point, but take their place between the subtler fire and the grosser earth. The tendency to choose for common subjects mystical terms intelligible only to the initiate (which in the Brahmasūtras is carried to an absurd extreme) is exhibited in the description side by side with water whose name is retained of fire as *tejas* (heat), of earth as *annam* (food). The evolution of these three elements from one another and ultimately from the self-existent, *i.e.* Brahman, is systematically described and established:—"He proposed:—I will be many, will propagate myself. Accordingly he created heat (*tejas*). This heat proposed:—I will become many, will propagate myself. Accordingly it created the waters (*âpas*). Therefore when a man feels the heat of pain or perspires, water (*i.e.* tears, sweat) is produced from the heat. These waters proposed:—We will become many, will propagate ourselves. Accordingly they created food (*annam*).

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Therefore when it rains, abundant food is produced, for from the waters is produced food for man's eating." Then after the account of the entrance of the self-existent as individual soul (*jîva âtman*) into the three deities that he has created, *i.e.* into the elements, there follows next the order of development from one another, how the self-existent "made threefold" the elements that he had created, and alloyed each of them with constituent parts of the other three. Thus for example it is shown of fire, sun, moon and lightning, that the red in them consists of heat, the white of water, the black of food. According to this the substances recurring in nature are not pure elementary substances, but compounds of which, as Bâdarâyaṇa says,¹ *vais'eshyât tu tadvâdas tadvâdaḥ*; which admits of a literal rendering, *denominatio fit a potiori*. In this theory of the threefold division of the primitive elements lies the earliest germ of the later distinction of pure substances (*tanmâtra*) and gross elements (*sthûlabhûtâni*). This distinction is first drawn in Pras'na 4.

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8, where there are distinguished—"The earth and the earth-substance (*prithivî c'a prithivîmâtrâ* ca), the water and the water-substance, heat and the heat-substance, the wind and the wind-substance, the ether and the ether-substance.” The expressions here used, prithivîmâtrâ, apomâtrâ, tejomâtrâ, vâyumâtrâ, âkâśamâtrâ, were later comprehended under the term tanmâtra, “subsisting from this alone,” which is found first in Maitr. 3. 2, and later on in Prâṇâgnihotrop. 4, Mahop. 1. (A derivation from tanu-mâtra, as might perhaps be maintained, is not to be thought of, after what has been said.) In the verse Manu 1. 27 (which is disconnected from the context) the tanmâtras are referred to as aṇvyomâtrâḥ, and in the Sânkhya philosophy they play an important part, as will later be shown. Bâdarâyaṇa does not name them, and Śankara¹ mentions them as technical terms of the Sânkhya only to reject them, although in his doctrine of the subtle body a kindred conception finds a place. The three elements having been increased to five, each was then conceived as fivefold instead of threefold, in such a way, according to the Vedântasâra, that half of each of the fivefold elements was pure, and the other half was made up of the remaining four elements; so that e.g. natural water consists of a half water together with an eighth of earth, fire, air and ether.

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The theory however propounded in Vedântasâra 128 in connection with this triple or fivefold distribution, according to which the earth can be smelt, tasted, seen, felt and heard, water be tasted, seen, felt and heard, fire be seen, felt and heard, the wind felt and heard, and the ether merely heard, must not be regarded as suggesting it. For this theory implies not the compounded but the uncompounded elements, which as they proceed forth from one another preserve the attributes of the elements from which they have proceeded (the wind can be heard as well as felt, because it has proceeded from the audible ether). On the contrary, the theory is opposed to the triple or fivefold distribution, since for example the fivefold ether, for the very reason that the four other elements are intermingled in it, can no longer be merely audible, but must be capable also of being felt, seen, tasted and smelt. Beyond however the observation that in all of them there are traces of all,¹ we were able to indicate, as suggesting the triple or fivefold distribution, only the fact that the human organism, although it takes up nothing but simple substances as food, yet assimilates from them all three elements, food water and heat, which according to the description attached to the threefold distribution of the elements in Chând. 6. 5 are requisite for its growth.

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¹ Sûtra 2. 4. 22.

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¹ In his commentary on 2. 2. 10, 14.

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¹ cp. πᾶν ἐν παντὶ μεμῖχθαι, Anaxagoras in *Ar. Phys.* 1. 4. 187, *b* 1.

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A great advance on the passage discussed,² which represents only three elements, viz.—fire water and earth, as proceeding forth from Brahman, is found in the later insertion of ether (or space, *âkâśa*) and wind (*vâyu*), which in earlier times, as we saw, had themselves been regarded as symbolical representations of Brahman, as the two subtlest elements between Brahman and fire. By this means the number of five elements was obtained, and this with few exceptions was assumed by all the later philosophers of India. The earliest passage that represents the five elements as proceeding forth according to the scheme laid down in Chând. 6. 2, the first from Brahman and each in succession from its immediate predecessor, is Taitt. 2. 1 (enumerations like Bṛih. 4. 4. 5 do not enter into consideration), a passage which has acquired a fundamental meaning in Indian philosophy:—"From this âtman, in truth, has the ether (space) arisen, from the ether the wind, from the wind the fire, from the fire the water, from the water the earth." This number of five elements corresponds, as we shall see later, to the number of five organs of knowledge (hearing, touch, sight, taste, smell) which has suggested if not the primary enunciation, yet the definite arrangement of the five elements. Each element has its assigned quality (sound, resistance, colour, flavour, odour), and besides this, as already remarked above, the qualities of those elements out of which each has proceeded. Later passages of the Upanishads, in which the five elements are partly enumerated, partly referred to, are Ait. 3. 3 (still unarranged); S'vet. 2. 12, 6. 2 (cp. also Kâth. 3. 15); Pras'na 6. 4, Maitr. 3. 2, 6. 4, Âtma 2, Piṇḍa 2, Prâṇâgnihotra 4.

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² Chând. 6. 2 f

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