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The Philosophy of the Upanishads c10.s2.t5: 5. Cosmography of the Upanishads

The Philosophy of the Upanishads c10.s2.t5

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5. Cosmography of the Upanishads

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The views that are found in the Upanishads with regard to the universe and its parts are scanty in detail, and possess little consistency.

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As concerns, to begin with, the geographical horizon, it is seen to be essentially limited by the ranges of the Himâlaya and Vindhya on the north and south,¹ and by the river basins and mouths of the Indus and Ganges on the west and east. Day is born in the ocean towards the east, night in the ocean towards the west.² “These streams, my dear sir, flow in the east towards the morning, and in the west towards the evening; from ocean to ocean they flow (uniting together), they become open sea.”³ What lies beyond these limits appears to be unknown. Only in a quite late Upanishad that is founded upon the Râmâyaṇa is mention made of Laṅkâ in (sic) Ceylon⁴ and similar names. But even the country of the Indus appears as almost unknown. Noble steeds are brought thence,⁵ perhaps salt also;⁶ the people of Gandhâra (west of the Indus, and south of Peshawar) appear in Chând. 6. 14 as distant; the Brahman students penetrate in their wanderings as far as the Madras (on the Hyphasis).⁷ Just as Yâjñavalkhya appears as the greatest personality in the Upanishads, so Janaka appears as the centre of the intellectual life of the court that surrounds him; he is king of Videha (north-east of Patna), where in Bṛih. 3. 1. 1 the Brâhmans also of the Kurus and Pañcâlas (who dwell farther west, between the Ganges and the Jumna) gather together to the great argumentative contest described in Bṛih. 3. 1–9. Together with these, reference is made to the courts of Ajātaśatru, king of Kāśi (around Benares),¹ and of Jīvala, king of the Pañcālas.² The Kekayas, on the upper course of the Hydraotes, as repositories of the knowledge stored up in the Upanishads, seem to belong to the far north-west; whose king Aśvapati imparts instruction on the Vaiśvānara to the six Brāhmans who approach him.³ Apart from these, in the enumeration in Kaush. 4. 1 of the peoples who have sought the renowned Vedic scholar Gārgya Bālāki, are named probably all the tribes who took an active part in the intellectual life of the period. They are these:—the Uśīnaras, Satvans, and Matsyas, west of the Jumna; the Kurus and Pañcālas between the Jumna and Ganges; the Kāśīs east of the latter, and still farther east the Videhas. No common name for the Āryan races or their country is found in the ancient Upanishads. In Nādabindu 12 for the first time *Bhāratam varsham* occurs as a name of Āryan India. The “five races of five”⁴ appear to denote merely the indefinite multitude⁵ of all the races of mankind.

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¹ Kaush. 2. 13.

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² Bṛih. 1. 1. 2.

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³ Chând. 6. 10. 1; whether we are to think here with S'ankara in loc. of a return of the water of the sea into the rivers by means of clouds and rain is in view of the wording of the text very questionable; cp. Chând. 2. 4. 1.

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⁴ Râmapûrvat. 43. 45.

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⁵ Bṛih. 6. 1. 13.

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⁶ Bṛih. 2. 4. 12, 4. 5. 13; cp. Maitr. 6. 35.

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⁷ Bṛih. 3. 3. 1, 3. 7. 1.

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¹ Bṛih. 2. 1, Kaush. 4.

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² Chānd. 5. 3–10, Bṛih. 6. 2 ; for whom in Kaush. 1 Cītra Gāngyāyana is introduced.

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³ Śatap. Br. 10. 6. 1, Chānd. 5. 11–24.

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⁴ *pañca pañcajanāḥ*, Bṛih. 4. 4. 17 ; cp. the remark there.

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⁵ cp. *pañcanadam*, *Allgemeine Einleitung*, p. 73.

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The earth is surrounded by water.⁶ According to a late text, it has oceans, mountains, and seven islands or continents.⁷ The conception of heaven and earth as the two halves of the egg of the universe recurs.⁸ A similar view appears to lie at the basis of the cosmography described in Bṛih. 3. 3. Here the same concentric arrangement holds in the universe as in the different layers in an egg, viz.—(1) in the middle the (inhabited)

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⁶ Chānd. 3. 11. 6.

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⁷ Nṛisimhap. 1. 2, 5. 2.

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⁸ Chānd. 3. 19.

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world, (2) around this the earth, (3) around this again the sea. The world is in breadth 32 days' journey of the chariot of the sun, the earth 64, the sea 128; according to which measurement the diameter of the egg of the universe would amount to 416 courses of the sun. "There," *i.e.* where heaven and earth as the two layers of the egg of the universe meet one another, "is a space as broad as the edge of a razor or the wing of a fly" (between the two layers), through which access is obtained to the place where the offerers of the horse-sacrifice are, *i.e.* probably to the "back of heaven" (*nâkasya prishṭham*) mentioned in other passages as being "free from suffering,"¹ where according to Taitt. Âr. 10. 1. 52 union with Brahman is obtained,² but according to Vâj. Saṁh. 15. 50 recompense for good works, and the latter according to Muṇḍ. 1. 2. 10³ is transitory. A second scheme of cosmography, though put forward by Yâjñavalkhya in Bṛih. 3. 6 in the same context, is irreconcilable with that mentioned in Bṛih. 3. 3. According to this theory the universe inwoven with the water is besides "inwoven and interwoven" with ten other layers, *i.e.* is overlaid by them, or, perhaps more correctly, is altogether surrounded by them. These ten layers (the worlds of the wind, the atmosphere, the Gandharvas, the sun, moon, stars, the gods, Indra, Prajâpati and Brahman) recall the degrees of bliss of Bṛih. 4. 3. 33 and Taitt. 2. 8, as well as the stations of the way of the gods.⁴ The difference is that in these, as we shall see later, measurements of time and space are co-ordinated together, exactly as in Chând. 2. 10. 5 similar terms are added together without consideration.⁵

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¹ *nâkam* = *na akam*, Chând. 2. 10. 5.

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² *brahma salokatâ*; cp. also Mahânâr. 1. 1, 10. 21, 63. 5.

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³ cp. Kâṭh. 3. 1.

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⁴ Chând. 4. 15. 5, 5. 10. 1–2, Bṛih. 6. 2. 15, and especially Kaush. 1. 3.

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⁵ cp. also Bṛih. 1. 1.

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The prevailing view in the Upanishads is the traditional one, according to which there are three world-regions, earth, air and heaven, to which Agni, Vâyu and Âditya correspond as rulers.¹ The fragment of a verse also which is inserted in Chând. 8. 5. 3 is to be interpreted in this sense (that this is so is shown by Atharvav. 5. 4. 3 also):—*tritîyasyâm ito divi*. The reference is not here, as often elsewhere, to three heavens, but the words mean,—"In the heaven, which is (reckoned) the third from here." According to Ait. 1. 1. 2 the primeval waters extend above and below the three regions (earth, air and heaven). Bṛih. 3. 8. 4 teaches that all three are inwoven in the âkâśa, as the latter in Brahman. Very often earth, air and heaven are denoted by the three mystic syllables of the sacrifice (*vyâhṛitis*) *bhûr, bhuvaḥ, svar*. In Taitt. 1. 5 a fourth *mahas* is added to them, denoting probably Brahman. Later, three higher worlds, *janas, tapas*, and *satyam*, were imposed above these four, and so the number seven was obtained, the first mention of which as far as our knowledge goes is in Muṇḍ. 1. 2. 3, and the first enumeration of them in Taitt. Âr. 10. 27–28. Later lists are given in Nâdabindu 3–4, Nṛisimhap. 5. 6. In course of time a distinction was drawn between *bhûr, bhuvaḥ, svar, mahas, jana(s), tapas*, and *satyam* as the seven upper worlds, and *atala, pâtâla, vitala, sutala, rasâtala, mahâtala, talâtala*² as the seven lower. Even this number was exceeded, and in Atharvas'iras 6 nine heavens, nine atmospheres, and nine earths are reckoned.

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¹ Chând. 1. 3. 7, 2. 21. 1, 3. 15. 5, Bṛih. 1. 2. 3, 1. 5. 4, 3. 9. 8, Pras'na 5. 7, etc.

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² Âruṇeya Up. 1; cp. Vedântasâra § 129.

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The number also of the heavenly regions is differently given. In Chând. 4. 5. 2 four are enumerated (east, west, south and north; five in Bṛih. 3. 9. 20–24; six in Bṛih. 4. 2. 4, Chând. 7. 25; eight (four poles, and four intermediate between the poles) in Maitr. 6. 2, Râmap. 71–72, 87, 89.

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Astronomical conceptions are only slightly developed in the Upanishads. Sun and moon enter principally into consideration, in so far as they form stations for the soul on its journey to the other world, a subject that will later demand treatment. If the texts of Chând. 4. 15. 5, 5. 10. 2 are to be followed, the sun is nearer to us than the moon. The red white and black aspects of the sun depend, according to Chând. 3. 1 f., on the juices of the different Vedas dissolved in it. According to Chând. 6. 4. 2–3, sun and moon also, like everything else in the universe, consist of the three elements; the red in them of fire, the white of water, the black of earth. The sun moves in winter and summer alternately for six months to the south and six to the north.¹ It is disc-shaped (*maṇḍalam*).² The purusha of the sun dwells therein, who is usually hidden by the rays,³ but by these same rays is brought into connection with the purusha in the eye,⁴ or with the veins of the heart.⁵ The moon is (as in Ṛigv. X. 85. 5) the soma cup of the gods, which is alternately drained by them and again filled;⁶ on the other hand, the waxing and waning of the moon depend on the arrival of the dead therein and their return.⁷ The two conceptions are combined in Bṛih. 6. 2. 16. According to Bṛih. 1. 5. 14, the moon is Prajâpati as prâṇa, whose fifteen parts alternately disappear and are again restored. At an eclipse the moon is held in the jaws of *Râhu*.⁸ All night long the moon holds on her course among the other constellations (*nakshatram*), on which she depends like the Sâman on the Ṛic.⁹ The same 27 constellations are traversed, according to Maitr. 6. 14, by the sun on his yearly journey, and therefore on each of the twelve months 27/12 aksha tras, i.e. nine quarters (navâṁs'akam) of them are covered. The planets (grahâḥ) are first mentioned in Maitr. 6. 16. In a very late text¹ their number is given as nine, and therefore together with sun and moon Râhu and Ketu also (the head and tail of the dragon) are reckoned with them. S'ukra, Venus,² and S'ani, Saturn are especially mentioned with Râhu and Ketu.³ Of movements affecting the cosmos there are mentioned in Maitr. 1. 4:—"the drying up of great seas, shattering of mountains, oscillations of the pole-star (dhruva), straining of the ropes of the wind (which bind the constellations to the pole-star), sinkings of the earth, and overthrow of the gods from their place."

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¹ Chând. 4. 15. 5, 5. 10. 1–3, Bṛih. 6. 2. 15–16.

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² Bṛih. 2. 3. 3, 5. 5. 2–3, Mahânâr. 13.

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³ Bṛih. 5. 5. 2, 5. 15, Îś'â 16.

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⁴ Bṛih. 5. 5. 2.

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⁵ Chând. 8. 6. 2.

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⁶ Chând. 5. 10. 4.

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⁷ Kaush. 1. 2, 2. 8; differently in 2. 9.

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⁸ Chând. 8. 13. 1.

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⁹ Chând. 1. 6. 4.

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¹ Râmottarat. 5.

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² Maitr. 7. 3.

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³ Maitr. 7. 6.

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As curiosities of natural science we will cite further that the rain has its origin from the sun,⁴ while heat occasions storm and rain,⁵ just as indeed in men warmth draws forth sweat and heat tears of pain;⁶ also that according to Maitr. 6. 27 "a piece of iron buried in the earth enters forthwith into the substance of the earth." The anatomical and physiological views of the Upanishads will later on be discussed.⁷

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⁴ Mahânâr. 63. 16, Maitr. 6. 37; cp. Manu 3. 76.

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⁵ Chând. 7, 11. 1.

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⁶ Chând. 6. 2. 3.

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⁷ Chap. XII, 6.

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