The Philosophy of the Upanishads c9.s3.t3.6

c9.s3.t3.6

As early as the period preceding the Upanishads we were able to discern a series of attempts to regard the first principle of the universe as inherent in the sun, but at the same time by means of metaphorical interpretations to advance beyond this conception as being merely symbolical. These attempts were continued in the Upanishads. In Kaush. 2. 7 a ceremony is taught, which by means of a worship of the rising mid-day and setting sun delivers from all sin committed by day or by night. Chând. 3. 19. 1 enjoins in addition the worship of the sun as Brahman; and that this representation is merely symbolic appears from what follows, where the sun is regarded not as the original creative principle, but, falling back upon representations discussed elsewhere,¹ as the first-born of creation. With the attempts to which reference is there made to interpret these views of Brahman as the sun, and to see in the natural light a symbol merely of the spiritual light, is to be classed especially the paragraph Chând. 3. 1–11, which undertakes on a larger scale to depict Brahman as the sun of the universe, and the natural sun as the phenomenal form of this Brahman. It may be regarded as a further endeavour to penetrate beyond the symbol to the substance when, in a series of passages, it is no longer the sun, but the *purusha* (man, spirit) in the sun, and the corresponding *purusha* in the eye that is described as Brahman. In Chând. 1. 6–7 it is said in an adaptation of the Udgîtha (which the Udgâtar had to sing); as the Udgâtar is lord over *ṛic* and *sâman*, so over the cosmical gods is lord “the golden man (*purusha*), who is seen within the sun with golden beard and golden hair, altogether of gold to the finger-tips”; and over the psychical gods “the man who is seen within the eye.” The former is lord over the worlds which lie beyond the sun, and over the desires of the gods; the latter over the worlds which lie on this side of the eye (therefore within man), and over the desires of men. According to Mahânâr. 13, the *ṛic*, *sâman*, and *yajus* (and therefore the Brahman embodied in the Veda) are compared to the orb of the sun, its flame, and the *purusha* in this flame,—“as this triple knowledge does he gleam, who as golden *purusha* is therein in the sun”; while the identity of this *purusha* with that in men has been already asserted in Taitt. 2. 8:² “He who dwells here in men and that one yonder in the sun are the same." This thought is further developed in Bṛih. 5. 5, where among other things it is said:—"Yonder man who is in the orb of the sun, and this man who is in the right eye, these two depend on one another. The former depends by its rays on the latter, and this by the breath of life on the former. This one, when he determines to go forth, gazes at that orb of the sun pure (from rays); those rays do not interfere with him." Accordingly in Bṛih. 5. 15¹ the dying man entreats the sun:—"Disperse thy rays, concentrate thy splendour; yea, I see thee, thou lovely form; and he there, that man there, I am he himself." A similar conception underlies the explanation of themselves given in Chând. 4. 11–13 by the three sacrificial fires in their instruction of Upakosala as the man in the sun, the moon, and the lightning; whereupon the teacher in a subsequent correction remarks:—"They have told you only its environment, but I will tell you its real nature . . . the man who is seen in the eye, he is the âtman—thus he spake,—he is the immortal, the fearless, he is Brahman." Sun, moon, and lightning are, as he further shows, only the uppermost stations of the way of the gods, by which "the man who is not as a man" (puruṣo 'mânavah) guides the soul to eternal union with Brahman. These views are apparently criticised in Kaush. 4,² when Gârgya among his sixteen definitions of Brahman proposes the man in the sun, the moon, the lightning, and the right eye, and is therefore turned away by Ajâtas'atru.