The Philosophy of the Upanishads c9.s3.t5.2

c9.s3.t5.2

That India more than any other country is the land of symbols is owing to the nature of Indian thought, which applied itself to the most abstruse problems before it was even remotely in a position to treat them intelligently. As early as the period of the Brâhmaṇas the separate acts of the ritual were frequently regarded as symbols, whose allegorical meaning embraced a wider range. But the Āraṇyakas were the peculiar arena of these allegorical expositions. In harmony with their prevailing purpose, to offer to the Vānaprastha an equivalent for the sacrificial observances, for the most part no longer practicable, they indulge in mystical interpretations of these, which are then followed up in the oldest Upanishads. In the latter we often see the fundamental conception of the ātman doctrine appearing in symbolical guise, and we should be disposed to trace in allegorical speculations of this nature the earliest origin of the Upanishad doctrine. That it is not so, that the doctrine of the ātman as the sole reality has not been developed originally from ritualistic conceptions, but was adapted to them first in later times, we have inferred above (p. 17 ff.) from the tradition surviving still in numerous instances in the Upanishads, that it was kings, i.e. Kshatriyas, from whom the Brāhmans first received the most important elements of the ātman doctrine. This they then appropriated in their own way, combining it in allegorical fashion with the entirely heterogeneous methods of the ritual. This view finds an unexpected but all the more valuable confirmation in the manner in which the different schools of the Veda arrived at the conception of the ātman, or the prāṇa as its precursor. It is evidenced, that is to say, by the fact that each Veda starts from the ritual service peculiar to it, the adherents of the Rigveda from the uktham, those of the Sâmaveda from the udgîtha, and the schools of the white Yajurveda from the aśvamedha, in order by a symbolical interpretation to arrive at the conception of the prâṇa or âtman. It is however inconceivable that the âtman doctrine should have originated on so different yet parallel lines of development, while the facts are completely explained on the supposition that the doctrine of the prâṇa-âtman was taken over from another source, and harmonised by each school to the best of its ability with the ruling ideas of its ritual. This we propose to illustrate by a few examples.