The Philosophy of the Upanishads c9.s3.t2.2

c9.s3.t2.2

That the body of all (organic) beings can be sustained only as long as the *prâṇa* inhabits it, is taught in a passage frequently misunderstood, Chând. 1. 11. 5:—*sarvâṇi ha vâ' imâni bhûtâni prâṇam eva abhisamvis'anti, prâṇam abhyujjihate*. This does not mean, as S'ankara and many with him explain it, that beings enter (at death) into *prâṇa*, and are thence born anew, but rather the contrary:—"All these creatures enter with the breath (into the body), and with the breath they again depart out." The best illustration is furnished by the metaphor Pras'na 2. 4, which contains possibly a reminiscence of our passage, and by Brahma Upanishad 1, which is dependent upon it. The illustration is employed, it is true, not of living beings, but of the individual organs in their relation to the *prâṇa*. "Just as the bees all follow the queen bee when she comes forth, and so long as she tarries all tarry, so also speech, manas, eye, and ear." The *prâṇa* is the fundamental and constant part of the sixteen of which man consists. In Bṛih. 1. 5. 14 this is illustrated in mythological language by the example of Prajâpati, who loses a sixteenth part each night with the waning of the moon:—"And after that at new moon he has entered with the sixteenth part into everything which has breath, thereupon is he born on the following morning (as the crescent of the new moon)." Here Prajâpati, after the loss of his fifteen changeable parts, continues to exist at the new moon with his sixteenth "unchangeable" (*dhruva*) part solely as *prâṇa* in all living beings. From a physiological point of view this thought is explained in Chând. 6. 7; man consists of sixteen parts, of which after a fifteen days' fast only one, the *prâṇa*, survives. An enumeration of these sixteen parts is undertaken in Pras'na 6. 3-4:—"He (purusha) reflected, 'With the departure of what shall I myself depart, and with the remaining of what shall I remain?' Accordingly he created the *prâṇa*"; from which, as the passage goes on to declare, the fifteen other parts originate. Here, in harmony with the later date of the composition, the prâṇa is dependent on the purusha, i.e. the âtman, but is still at the same time its empirical representative. As such, as the bhûman brought within the circle of experience (in the distinction of subject and object), the prâṇa makes its appearance already in the beautiful description of Chând. 7. 15:—“As the spokes are inserted into the nave of the wheel, so everything is inserted into this life (prâṇa). The life advances by the life (the breath), the life (breath) gives the life, it becomes the life. The life is father and mother, the life is brother and sister, the life is teacher and Brâhman. Therefore if a father or mother or brother or sister or teacher or Brâhman is used roughly, men say of you, Fie, you are a parricide, a matricide, a murderer of brother or sister, of teacher or Brâhman. Should he, however, strike even these with a spear, after the life has departed (on the funeral pyre) and they are burnt to the last hair, then it is not said, ‘You are a parricide, a matricide, a murderer of brother or sister, of teacher or Brâhman’; for the life only is all this.” The comparison that occurs here of the prâṇa to the nave of a wheel, in which all the spokes meet, is found again: (1) of the prâṇa, in Pras’na 2. 6, in the hymn to the prâṇa here inserted, though derived from an earlier period, and which recalls not only Vâj. Saṁh. 34. 5, but also in many ways Atharvav. 11. 4; (2) of the prâṇa, which is already identified in the second place with Prajñâtman in Kaush. 3. 8 (for which is substituted, in Kaush. 4. 20, the figure of the chieftain and his people); (3) of the âtman, in Bṛih. 2. 5. 15, cp. 1. 5. 15 Muṇḍ. 2. 2. 6 Pras’na 6. 6, and interpreted in S’vet. 1. 4, in terms of Sâṅkhyan thought.