Pramāṇa · Search · About · API

The Religion and Philosophy of the Veda and Upanishads v2.c39.s2: § 2. The Highest Principle of the Universe

The Religion and Philosophy of the Veda and Upanishads v2.c39.s2

Language
English

§ 2. The Highest Principle of the Universe

v2.c39.s2.1

In the period of the Brāhmaṇas the god Prajāpati occupies without doubt or question the position of the creator god, the supreme god of the world. The commencement of legend after legend proclaims his creative activity, often figured under the form of the practising of fervour, a reminder of the cosmic heat, whence came forth the power enclosed in the shell according to the view of the hymn of creation.² The world egg appears as producing the heaven and the earth from its two parts, and, as Hiraṇyagarbha, it is the form of Prajāpati, in which he proceeds to immediate creation of living beings of all kinds, and the ordering of the universe. These tales, of which there is no end, often tell us that Prajāpati felt at the end of his efforts that he was empty, and had to be filled up again, always by some ritual process. The details of these stupid myths are wholly unimportant : it is enough to note that he is constantly the creator, the ruler, and the preserver of the world and is accepted by every Brāhmaṇa of the period as being the lord of the world : he is, it may be added, without any ethical importance : the conception of him is purely intellectual, that of the unity of the universe, and the choosing of Prajāpati as the symbol of this unity is one of the most striking proofs of the great influence of the Rigveda upon the period of the Brāhmaṇas.

v2.c39.s2.2

² RV. x. 129. Cf. Lévi, *La doctrine du sacrifice*, pp. 18 ff.

v2.c39.s2.3

Of Prajāpati's activities the most interesting are his relation as creator to the gods, to the Asuras, whose connexion is with the darkness and cunning, and to men. He is, however, much more than the mere universe: he is the 'unmeasured, the unexpressed, as opposed to the measured and the expressed in nature: he is the seventeenth beside the sixteen elements of the psychic organs: the thirty-fourth above the thirty-three gods. He is universal peace, the decider of disputes among the gods; he gives Indra his victorious prowess and his crown of victory. He is devoid of sorrow, for there is no sorrow in heaven. He is the lord of the three worlds, he sits above them and sees in himself the seed of creation, and the gods proceed from his mouth, the Asuras from his descending breath, that of nutrition.

v2.c39.s2.4

It is, however, clear that in Prajāpati the Brāhmaṇas do not find complete satisfaction for their view of the construction of the universe. The Atharvaveda, which in these matters must be ranked with the Brāhmaṇas, in its version of the great hymn of the Rigveda, which, as later expanded,¹ mentions him as all-creator, leaves out the last line giving his name and the Brāhmaṇa of that Veda, which is certainly late, replaces him by the Brahman and Atharvan.² In the Brāhmaṇas, therefore, we find efforts made to arise to a principle above and beyond him: in the Rigveda he produced from himself—the idea of world creation is always in the Vedic literature regarded in the light of the sending out of something already there rather than of mere bringing into being—the waters, and then entered them in the form of Hiraṇyagarbha, the golden germ. In the Taittirīya Saṁhitā,³ we find in the spirit of the hymn of creation the waters treated in two places as the *prius*, and Prajāpati as arising as wind on them, and the Çatapatha Brāhmaṇa⁴ goes one step farther in attributing to the waters as Prajāpati's predecessors as first in order the act of fervour, which is primarily his activity in creation. A farther step is taken in the Taittirīya Āraṇyaka,⁵ in which the waters come first, then Prajāpati, in whose mind desire arises⁶ and who practises fervour; then his body he throws off: from the sap is born the tortoise, who is Puruṣa, who, however, asserts his priority to Prajāpati himself, and from the flesh the seer Aruṇaketu, to whom further creative activity is assigned. Yet another step is reached in the Çatapatha Brāhmaṇa,⁷ where the first thing is stated to be not-being, then arises Prajāpati, who is the same as Puruṣa, and then the Brahman, the holy science, the threefold Veda, with which he enters the waters as a creative principle. Thus sprang up the world egg, whence came forth first the Brahman itself, and then Prajāpati in the form of Agni. But in another account¹ the priority of the Brahman over Prajāpati is made absolute, not merely empirical: the first entity is not-being, then springs into life mind, i. e. the Brahman, and then Prajāpati. Later still the Brahman produces Prajāpati, but without face or sight; then it enters him, as breath, and makes him mortal, to arise as a generator of beings.

v2.c39.s2.5

¹ Oldenberg, *Weltanschauung der Brāhmaṇatexte*, p. 28, n. 2, against Oltramare, *L'histoire des idées théosophiques*, i. 25, n. 1.

v2.c39.s2.6

² AV. iv. 2; GB. i. 1, explaining RV. x. 121.

v2.c39.s2.7

³ v. 6. 4. 2; vii. 1. 5. 1.

v2.c39.s2.8

⁴ xi. 1. 6. 1; xiv. 8. 6. 1 (BAU. v. 5. 1), where the waters produce the real (*satya*), and it, as the Brahman, Prajāpati, as in xi. 1. 6, the golden egg or the waters produces him.

v2.c39.s2.9

⁵ i. 23.

v2.c39.s2.10

⁶ This is the view here taken of RV. x. 129. 4.

v2.c39.s2.11

⁷ ÇB. vi. 1. 1.

v2.c39.s2.12

¹ TB. ii. 2. 9; JUB. iii. 38. 1 ff.

v2.c39.s2.13

There is nothing particularly valuable or serious in these attempts, though they merit mention. More interesting are efforts to explain the nature of Prajāpati, and to dispose thus of him. The position of Prajāpati as decider of disputes leads to the view that he intervenes in the great dispute of the mind and speech as to which should be given the higher rank, a dispute settled by Prajāpati in favour of mind.² The connexion of speech and mind³ as elements in Prajāpati himself is expressed by the figure of union between the two within him, and either is occasionally made into the final entity of the world: thus mind is identified with Brahman, with Prajāpati, and even with the first principle, which is neither being nor not-being, of the hymn of creation.⁴ Similarly Vāc, ‘speech’, is identified with Prajāpati, or even placed above Prajāpati, identified with Viçvakarman, with the whole world, and with Indra.⁵ These identifications are, however, despite their interest, of no importance for Indian philosophy: the will or the intellect as such does not in fact become the essential reality of any Indian orthodox philosophy. Prajāpati is also the sacrifice,⁶ and sacrifices himself to the gods, for, as we have seen, the order of the world is constantly compared with the sacrifice, and Puruṣa by being sacrificed creates the universe: he is also the year,⁷ or both,⁸ and these identifications are of great importance in connexion with the theory of sacrifice to which we shall return.

v2.c39.s2.14

² ÇB. i. 4. 5. 8–11.

v2.c39.s2.15

³ ÇB. vi. 1. 2. 7; PB. vii. 6.

v2.c39.s2.16

⁴ TB. ii. 2. 9; KB. xxvi. 3; ÇB. x. 5. 3. 1.

v2.c39.s2.17

⁵ PB. xx. 14. 2; KS. vii. 5; ÇB. v. 1. 3. 11; viii. 1. 2. 9; xi. 1. 6. 18.

v2.c39.s2.18

⁶ ÇB. i. 5. 1. 16; 6. 3. 5, &c.; PB. xiii. 11. 18; vii. 2. 1 f.

v2.c39.s2.19

⁷ ÇB. i. 1. 1. 13; 5. 2. 17, &c.

v2.c39.s2.20

⁸ KB. vi. 15.

v2.c39.s2.21

In the Atharvaveda⁹ we find several further efforts to substitute for Prajāpati new names and ideas. In this effort it is certainly difficult to resist the view that the Atharvaveda is out of the main stream of Vedic development: the hymns seem like deliberate efforts to convert into a kind of poetry the philosophical ideas of the Brāhmaṇa period without any real inspiration of any sort. The abstractions Kāla, ‘time’,¹⁰ and Rohita,¹¹ ‘the ruddy one’, probably the sun as the more concrete expression of time, are identified with Prajāpati and praised as all-creating: the ox¹² and the cow, Vaçā,¹³ are also identified with the god, and may to some extent be compared with the view of the Brāhmaṇas, that the sacrifice is Prajāpati. But the Atharvaveda goes farther and in its pseudo-theosophy exalts many other things to the rank of supreme powers, the ladles, the Darbha grass amulet, the porridge cooked for the priest, the bull offered in the sacrifice, the deity Anumati, and possibly others.¹ In two cases a deeper meaning has been seen by Deussen,² who finds in the Skambha hymns³ an effort to find a principle above Prajāpati which supports the whole universe, and in the Ucchiṣṭa⁴ hymn, a glorification of 'what is left over', not, as is normally believed, from the offering, but after all that is empirical has been abstracted from the universe, an idea which he thinks can possibly be reconciled with the normal view by remembrance of the fact that Puruṣa in the sacrifice hymn is said to be only a quarter in the universe, the other three-quarters being beyond it. But it is impossible to take this speculation seriously, and the Skambha hymn has no great claim to be more than a poor piece of theosophical juggling with words, save in so far as it seems to identify Skambha with the Brahman, and as it served as a suggestion for the Muṇḍaka Upaniṣad.⁵

v2.c39.s2.22

⁹ Cf. M. Lindenau on ii. 1, ZII. i. 83 ff.

v2.c39.s2.23

¹⁰ AV. xix. 53, 54.

v2.c39.s2.24

¹¹ AV. xiii. 1. 3; TB. ii. 5, 2; Henry, *Les Hymnes Rohitas* (Paris, 1891); Bloomfield, AJP. xii. 430 ff.; Lindenau, ZII. i. 48, n. 2.

v2.c39.s2.25

¹² AV. iv. 11.

v2.c39.s2.26

¹³ AV. x. 10.

v2.c39.s2.27

¹ AV. xviii. 4. 5; xix. 32. 9; ix. 4; iv. 35; vii. 20.

v2.c39.s2.28

² *Gesch. der Phil.* I. i. 305 ff.

v2.c39.s2.29

³ AV. x. 7, 8. Hauer (*Die Anfänge der Yogapraxis im alten Indien*, pp. 115 f.) sees in this a personification of the ascetic who wins ecstasy by Tapas. For the mystic sense of x. 7. 11, see Lindenau and Geldner, *ZII.* i. 48 f.

v2.c39.s2.30

⁴ AV. xi. 7.

v2.c39.s2.31

⁵ Hertel's assertion (*Muṇḍaka Upaniṣad*, pp. 45 ff.) that in AV. x. 7. 32 ff. *bráhman* is used as masculine, is not probable, nor is it certain that *bráhman* is the product of Skambha, though that may be the sense of verse 17, as opposed to the identification in 32–4.

v2.c39.s2.32

But beside these ideas there is to be found a much more fruitful source of philosophy, the creation of the conception of the Brahman as a cosmic principle. The origin of the meaning of Brahman is uncertain: it is interpreted by the Vedānta school, absurdly, as the absolute from *vṛh*, 'twist', 'tear away'; the view of Max Müller⁶ is that it denotes what grows, from *vṛh* in the sense of 'grow', that which expresses itself in speech or in nature as force. The view of Deussen⁷ is that it is the human will in its striving to the divine, when the individual in prayer returns to the timeless, spaceless, individualless self of his, which is God. These senses are somewhat elaborate, and render it difficult to think that the word really had any such meaning: neither for the views of Max Müller nor for that of Deussen is there any support in the actual use of the word in the Rigveda. There at any rate the word naturally and normally means prayer, but there are further developments: it can mean spell, for the prayer may be a spell,⁸ and not real prayer, and it often means holy speech and the holy writ, the three-fold Veda. It is not necessary to trace to the original sense of Brahman the fact that the Vedic poet regards himself often as inspired: we cannot really think it probable, and certainly no argument had yet been adduced to show, that the prayer was felt to be the voice of God speaking in the prayer. But in many passages it seems as if Brahman must be taken rather as holy power than as prayer or holy rite: the gods are said to discuss the Brahman, and, when the greatness of the Brahman is celebrated, it is clear that more than the mere word may be intended. But the growth of the idea of Brahman as a suitable expression for the absolute must have been greatly furthered by the extraordinary value attached to the prayer and to the spell. The prayer rapidly passes over to the lower rank: in one late hymn of the Rigveda¹ a prayer is offered that Agni should in union with the Brahman drive away disease. The spell appears repeatedly by itself in the Atharvaveda as a power to destroy evil of all kinds, and the Brahman is actually set over against the three Vedas as a power of equal force.² It is a very easy step from the conception of the Brahman as the prayer, which brings into operation the activity of the gods, or as the spell which is the cause of results aimed at by men, and from the conception of the whole body of such spells and prayers, to develop the use of the term to cover the idea of holy power generally, and this rendering is applicable in many passages of the Brāhmaṇas, where the idea of holy writ is too vague and the idea of the absolute is too elaborate.

v2.c39.s2.33

⁶ *Six Systems of Indian Philosophy*, pp. 68 ff.

v2.c39.s2.34

⁷ *Op. cit.*, pp. 240 ff. For Oldenberg's latest view see *GN.* 1916, pp. 715 ff.; for connexion with Irish *bricht*, Osthoff, *BB.* xxiv. 113 ff.; cf. Scandinavian *brag*, Carnoy, *Les Indo-Européens*, p. 236. Hertel's criticism (*IF.* xli. 205) that the etymology is based on a false interpretation of the sense of Brahman, is itself based on his quite incorrect view of Brahman (see below).

v2.c39.s2.35

⁸ Bloomfield (*Rel. of Veda*, p. 273) insists on the secondary character of this sense and rejects the magic fluid idea of Oldenberg. Oltramare (*L'histoire des idées théosophiques*, i. 12 ff.) sees in it the force passing from men to the gods, or *vice versa*, in religious life; cf. Güntert, *Der arische Weltkönig*, pp. 222 ff.

v2.c39.s2.36

¹ RV. x. 162.

v2.c39.s2.37

² VS. xi. 2; ÇB. v. 2. 4. 18.

v2.c39.s2.38

A further element should doubtless be allowed for in the process of the evolution of the use of the term Brahman. Oldenberg,³ indeed, has denied that in the Veda there exists either the idea or the word for a supernatural power pervading the universe, akin to that power which in Melanesia is denoted by *mana*, among the Hurons by *orenda*, and variously in other parts of the world.⁴ It seems, however, unlikely that no such general idea should have appealed to the intellect of the Indians. If we accept, as we should, the view that individual powers are older in conception than manifestations of a universal power, still it seems natural to suppose that India developed the conception of a power common to the various gods, just as there was admitted the unity of the gods even by the time of certain Rigvedic hymns. This power, we may assume, was naturally denoted by the term Brahman, as a result of the extraordinary importance attached by priests to the prayers and spells which secured them their means of livelihood, and which served to propitiate the gods or to secure ends desired by their patrons or themselves. Other terms such as Māyā, which served in part to denote a power similar to *mana*, failed to be widely generalized. Asu possibly served the same purpose, if we believe the view of Güntert that Asura denotes primarily and properly the possessor of *mana*.¹

v2.c39.s2.39

³ *Weltanschauung der Brāhmaṇatexte*, pp. 49 f.

v2.c39.s2.40

⁴ Cf. Marett, *Archiv für Rel.* xii. 186 ff.; Preuss, *ibid.* xiii. 427 ff.; Söderblom, *ibid.* xvii. 1 ff.; Strauss, *Bṛhaspati im Ṛgveda*, p. 20; Hubert and Mauss, *Année sociol.*, 1902–3, pp. 108 ff.; Söderblom-Stube, *Das Werden des Gottesglaubens*, pp. 54 ff.

v2.c39.s2.41

¹ See *Der arische Weltkönig*, pp. 98 ff., 229 ff.

v2.c39.s2.42

A very different view of the nature of the Brahman is presented by Hertel,² who asserts that the misinterpretation of the term is one of the many fatal errors of Vedic scholarship, shared alike by the Indian and the western interpreters. The essential work of Indian philosophers of the Upaniṣad period was to depersonalize the old gods, and to show that in the macrocosm and the microcosm alike there existed nothing save nature powers and processes, which required no explanation by the assumption of divinities. The Kṣatriyas who were the sources of the doctrine of the Upaniṣads rejected the doctrine of personal deities, and also the theory that man's lot depended on his deeds, and constructed in lieu a materialistic, monistic, science of nature, which was at once morally indifferent and in essence atheistic. The priests decided to render innocuous this doctrine by amalgamating it with their own as an esoteric system. On this view the Brahman is that which fills all beings, stimulates the sense organs, penetrates the whole world, and encircles the universe. Its true nature is revealed in those passages of the Upaniṣads which describe the Brahman as qualified, the unqualified Brahman being manifestly the product of further refinement of speculative thought. Now in certain passages³ we find that the Brahman is the bodily warmth in man, which is identified with his self, Ātman, and also with the cosmic light or fire (*tejas* or *jyotis*). These passages are to be taken perfectly literally, and this version throws an important light on the Indian ascetic, Tāpasa, who is a very different person from the Christian ascetic. The latter practises chastity and flees from desires, because these are the work of the devil, and he seeks to kill carnal longings. The Tāpasa inflicts even more serious penances on himself and remains celibate, merely to increase the vital fire within him, and fit himself for the abundance of sexual delight which Indian opinion as early as the Atharvaveda⁴ and even in the Upaniṣads⁵ assures him. The fire, however, which composes the self of the individual, is essentially bound up with the power of thought.⁶ The cosmic Brahman, on the other hand, is fire (*jyotis*) in no metaphorical sense;⁷ the *brahmaṇaḥ parimaraḥ* of the Aitareya Brāhmaṇa⁸ really means that all comes from fire and is resolved into it again. Now the connexion of the individual and the cosmic fire is simple;⁹ the rays of the sun bring fire into the heart of the individual, and at death the fire departs from him back to the sun whence it came, or rather to the heaven of fire, which lies above the earth and of which the sun and the moon are doors pierced in it. The idea of this path of light is older than the Upaniṣads, for it occurs in verses cited in the Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad,¹ and the Atharvaveda ² knows the threads of which life is woven and calls this knowledge the great Brāhmaṇa, that is the great secret of the Brahman. Prior to the Upaniṣads we find the conception in a personal shape, Bṛhaspati, the lord of the heaven of light, the peer of Zeus Pater, of Jupiter, of the German war god, a form of Dyaus himself. It is for this that he appears in the Rigveda as the highest of gods, their father and ruler, guardian of the Ṛta, leader of men, enemy of all that is false, an Indian parallel to Ahura Mazdāh. Significant is his connexion with Narāçaṅsa, for in the Avesta Nairyosaṅha is not merely the envoy of Ahura Mazdāh, but also the fire which burns in the kings and secures them in their power. Bṛhaspati as lord of the heaven is responsible for breaking through its stone boundary to set the sun as a source of the streaming forth of its light; moreover he has placed the stars there, and released through the apertures the waters amid the noise of his thunders.³ Significant is the assertion that he encompasses or is present in all (*vibhu*), the Rigveda ⁴ thus saying of the personal deity what the Upaniṣads assert of the depersonalized Brahman.

v2.c39.s2.43

² IF. xli (1923), 185 ff.

v2.c39.s2.44

³ BAU. iv. 3. 1 ff.; 4. 1 ff.; CU. iii. 13. 8; Muṇḍ. iii. 1. 5; seed is the concentrated *tejas*, AU. ii. 1.

v2.c39.s2.45

⁴ iv. 34. 2; cf. Lanman, HOS. vii. 206; RV. ix. 113. 11 (cf. TB. ii. 4. 6. 5 f.; Muir, OST. v. 307, n. 462).

v2.c39.s2.46

⁵ Kauṣ. iii. 5 ff.; TU. iii. 6. 1; x. 3.

v2.c39.s2.47

⁶ BAU. iv. 3. 7; CU. iii. 14. 2.

v2.c39.s2.48

⁷ BAU. iv. 4. 16 f.; CU. viii. 3. 4; 4. 2; 12. 2 f.; Muṇḍ. ii. 2. 8; Īçā 8; the sun is the Brahman, CU. iii. 19. 1. viii. 28; cf. Kauṣ. ii. 12. The interpretation is clearly impossible.

v2.c39.s2.49

⁹ CU. iii. 13. 7 f.; v. 3 (five fire-doctrine); viii. 6. 1 ff.

v2.c39.s2.50

¹ iv. 4. 8 ff.; cf. CU. viii. 6. 1.

v2.c39.s2.51

² x. 8. 37.

v2.c39.s2.52

³ Cf. Part II, Chap. 10, § 2.

v2.c39.s2.53

⁴ ii. 24. 11.

v2.c39.s2.54

The obvious question why the term Brahman is so regularly used of prayer in the Rigveda is answered by the theory that the cause is used for the effect, and similarly the use of *ṛc* and *dhī*, *dhīti*, and *dīdhiti* is explained. Moreover a suitable etymology is found in the comparison with the Greek φλέγω and Latin *flagro*, and the Brahmacārin of the Atharvaveda ⁵ is explained as one who concentrates in himself the fire from which all conditions and actions in the world are derived. The fact that Bṛhaspati appears in the Rigveda already as a moon god, which Hertel accepts from Hillebrandt,⁶ is explained as due to the gradual fading out of the idea of the sun and moon as merely doors to heaven and the abode of the Soma, the rain, and the Fathers, and the emergence of the conception of the moon as actually the home of these beings.

v2.c39.s2.55

⁵ xi. 5. 24; cf. V. Henry, *Les Livres X, XI et XII de l'Atharva-Veda*, pp. viii ff.

v2.c39.s2.56

⁶ *Ved. Myth.* i. 404 ff.; iii. 450.

v2.c39.s2.57

Ingenious as is the theory, it is clear that it cannot claim acceptance as probable. The idea that fire pervades and constitutes the essence of the universe is based on the interpretation given to the Brahman; independent evidence is wholly lacking; Hertel cites only an Atharvan ⁷ passage in which it is stated that fire exists in the earth, the plants, the waters, stones, men, cattle, and horses, and an Avestan reference ⁸ to six fires which the Pahlavi tradition interprets as the fire in kings, the temple fire, and that of everyday use, the fire in the body of men and beasts, the fire in plants, the fire of lightning, and the fire in the paradise of Ahura Mazdāh. Neither of these passages even suggests that fire is the essential principle of the universe, and the only other proof, the etymology of Brahman, is extremely far from convincing. Not a single passage is adduced in which Brahman normally or naturally denotes fire, and the transfer of meaning alleged is harsh and implausible, for the alleged parallel of *ṛc* and *dhī* is quite unproved. The whole theory in fact rests on the overestimation of the terms light (*tejas* or *jyotis*) applied to the self, individual or cosmic, and insistence on treating them as essentially material. We have to deal with an early stage of intellectual effort, and with the great difficulty of expressing the nature of the self in anything but material terms, as well as with the fact that the Brahman is not an abstraction. It is something which embraces all, and which is manifested in the warmth of the body and in the heat of the sun. But it is manifested also in the breath of man and in the wind, and it is to exaggerate one element out of all proportion to find the fundamental reality in fire, even when that fire is deemed to be endowed with intelligence, and therefore to be much more than merely material.

v2.c39.s2.58

⁷ xii. 1. 19 ff.

v2.c39.s2.59

⁸ Yasna, xvii. 11.

v2.c39.s2.60

In the process of evolution of the conception of Brahman an important part is played by the identification of the Brahman and Bṛhaspati, ‘the lord of prayer’: he is in the later period of the Brāhmaṇas always regarded as the Purohita of the gods, as their Brahman priest in the technical sense of the term and also as the Brahman itself,¹ an idea which is often expressed. Now Bṛhaspati is the depository of great power already in the Rigveda, and this element undoubtedly aided the conception of the Brahman to obtain great prominence. This prominence as usual takes the form of identification with many diverse things, such as speech and truth and holy order, Ṛta,² as the wind into which the five deities, sun, moon, fire, lightning and rain all enter and from which they emerge,³ as the breaths,⁴ and often as the sun.⁵ In the latter aspect the Brahman appears as the firstborn of the day, and perhaps also as the firstborn of the whole creation, a conception which places it on a lower plane than the final reality. The tendency is, however, more and more to place the Brahman on that plane: as we have seen, Prajāpati, who at first is the superior of and the creator of the Brahman, as the holy writ, became identified with the Brahman, as is often expressly stated in the Brāhmaṇas, and is at last placed below the Brahman as a metaphysical principle. With this view we attain to the conception of Brahman Svayambhu,⁶ the Brahman which exists of itself and which is regarded as being the cause of the universe, in which it sacrifices itself in the usual parallelism of the world and the sacrifice, the ground of the continued existence of the universe, and the source into which on death things return. Hence we meet the idea that by correct sacrifice a man may succeed in obtaining community of life and abode with the Brahman, or by right study of the Veda avoid repeated death and attain identity of essence with the Brahman.¹ The further step is taken to apply to the Brahman the attribute of taking the place of the highest god, Prajāpati or Viçvakarman of the Rigveda, and this is duly done in the Taittirīya Brāhmaṇa.² The Atharvaveda³ in its own peculiar way recognizes the same idea in its explanation of the Brahman and the Brahmacārin, the Brahman student, as the highest of beings.

v2.c39.s2.61

¹ AB. i. 19. 1; 30. 6; TS. iii. 1. 1. 4; ÇB. iii. 9. 1. 11; xiii. 5. 4. 25.

v2.c39.s2.62

² ÇB. ii. 1. 4. 10; iv. 1. 4. 11.

v2.c39.s2.63

³ AB. viii. 28.

v2.c39.s2.64

⁴ ÇB. viii. 4. 1. 3.

v2.c39.s2.65

⁵ ÇB. vii. 4. 1. 14; viii. 5. 3. 7; TS. v. 3. 4. 4; VS. xxiii. 48; KB. viii. 3; TA. x. 63. 15, &c.

v2.c39.s2.66

⁶ TB. ii. 8. 8. 8–10; AV. iv. 1; AB. i. 19. 1; KB. viii. 4; TA. x. 1. 1, &c.; ÇB. xi. 2. 3; xiii. 7. 1. 1.

v2.c39.s2.67

¹ ÇB. xi. 4. 4; 5. 6. 9.

v2.c39.s2.68

² TB. ii. 8. 9. 3-7.

v2.c39.s2.69

³ x. 2 and xi. 5.

v2.c39.s2.70

The final step to be taken in the conception of the Brahman was to identify it with the Ātman,⁴ which, from another point of view in the Brāhmaṇas, attains the position of representative of the unity of the world, and this step is partially taken in the Taittirīya Brāhmaṇa,⁵ where the Brahman and the omnipresent Ātman are identified, and the self of man, as it seems, is stated to be the mode of finding the Ātman, while knowledge of it frees from contamination by works, and the same idea occurs in the Çatapatha Brāhmaṇa.⁶ Both these passages, however, are clearly transitional to the period of the Upaniṣads, and mark the end of the reflections of the Brāhmaṇas before the new views were definitely accepted.

v2.c39.s2.71

⁴ AV. x. 8. 44, recognizes Ātman as the world soul probably for the first time.

v2.c39.s2.72

⁵ iii. 12. 9; cf. PB. xxv. 18. 5.

v2.c39.s2.73

⁶ x. 6. 3. See also TA. iii. 11. 1; VS. xxxiv. 1-6.

v2.c39.s2.74

Apart from the most improbable etymology, suggested by Hertel, which has been discussed above, there is, as we have seen, no ground to find more in the word than, in the first place, prayer, and the development which it undergoes is in all probability to be attributed to the growth of the importance of the prayer in the mind of the priest, not in the realization of the subjective nature of prayer as the striving towards the divine, which is in reality the human, will. The Brahman is, therefore, rather a conception of the ritual and of religion, not a psychological principle, and it is in my opinion impossible to accept the view of Deussen,⁷ that the Ātman is evolved from the Brahman by developing the conception of the subjective element, which lay in the latter. The conception of the Brahman and the Ātman is late, and has every appearance of being a syncretism⁸ due to the fact that the two expressions had by diverse ways come to be regarded as expressions for the same thing, the highest reality and unity of the universe, and the history of the Ātman suggests that it had from the first an independent existence. This view is certainly strengthened by the fact that the opinion of Deussen is based to some degree on a new etymology, which he suggests for that word: in place of the root *an*, 'breathe', *at*, 'move', or *av* (=*vā*), 'blow', and connexion with the Greek ἀτμός, ἀϋτμήν, and Germanic *atum*, *aedhm*, he suggests that it is a highly abstract word derived from the roots *a* seen in *aham*, ‘I’, and *ta*, ‘this’, so that it denotes ‘this I,’ the self, which in due course is felt to be the final expression possible for the ultimate fact of existence, arrived by stripping away the various coverings which envelop the ultimate reality, the covering of the body, the covering of the mind, the covering of the intellect. This view he supports, not merely by the undoubted difficulties¹ in the explanation of the form Ātman, and of the corresponding form in the Rigveda, without the *ā*, but also by the suggestion that the development of meaning assumed from ‘wind’, in which sense it is found only four times in the Rigveda, to ‘self’ is more difficult than the development of meaning which his own etymology would give. Thus he thinks from ‘this I’ could easily spring the view of the body in contrast to the outer world, and thence the trunk in contrast to the limbs, and on the other hand the sense of the soul in opposition to the body, and real being in opposition to unessential things. The possibility of such an etymology must, however, be denied: without pretending that the problems of the relation of Ātman and Tman is easy, or that the etymology is certain, the fact remains that the word does mean ‘wind’ in the Rigveda,² that the normal use of it there is ‘breath of life’, and that the meaning ‘wind’ is harder to deduce from ‘breath’, than vice versa, and that to deduce either ‘wind’ or ‘breath’ from the conception of ‘this I’ is extremely difficult.

v2.c39.s2.75

⁷ *Gesch. der Phil.* I. i. 284 ff.

v2.c39.s2.76

⁸ Oldenberg, *Buddha*, pp. 30 ff.; *Die Lehre der Upanishaden*, pp. 44 ff.

v2.c39.s2.77

¹ Bloomfield, AJP. xvi. 421.

v2.c39.s2.78

² vii. 87. 2; i. 34. 7; x. 92. 13; 168. 4.

v2.c39.s2.79

The real history of Ātman seems then to be that from the meaning ‘wind’ sprang early up that of ‘the breath’: thence came the meaning ‘self’, as when it is said of Sūrya that he is the self of that which stands and moves.³ Then we have the use of the self as a reflexive pronoun, and the use as meaning the body,⁴ an idea which is clearly intended when it is contrasted with Prāṇa, ‘the breath’: the meaning ‘trunk’,⁵ as opposed to limbs, is an easy development from this sense. But the sense ‘breath’ or ‘self’ is also capable of being understood in more abstract ways, and we, therefore, find Ātman used to denote the essential nature of a thing: this use is already found in the Rigveda⁶ where the nature of the breath, the blood, the self of the earth, is put as a question, and similarly we hear of the self of the disease Yakṣma,⁷ of all beings, and the adjective *ātmanvant*, ‘possessing existence’.⁸ But of much more importance is the development of the use of the word to denote the self of man in direct distinction from the members of his body and his body itself: it must be admitted that the use is far from common in the Vedic literature, but twice in the Atharvaveda⁹ the contrast of Ātman with breath and body seems clearly intended, and the same thing must be admitted for two passages in the Çatapatha,¹⁰ in which either one or ten breaths are set over against the self. Further, it seems that efforts were being made to define the self either as mind or as consciousness, Vijñāna.¹

v2.c39.s2.80

³ RV. i. 115. 1; ix. 2. 10; 6. 8, &c.

v2.c39.s2.81

⁴ RV. x. 163. 5, 6; AV. iii. 29. 8; vi. 53. 2; vii. 67. 1, &c.

v2.c39.s2.82

⁵ VS. xix. 93; ÇB. i. 3. 2. 2; vii. 1. 1. 21; viii. 7. 23, &c.

v2.c39.s2.83

⁶ i. 164. 4.

v2.c39.s2.84

⁷ RV. ix. 97. 11; AV. viii. 7. 9, and often.

v2.c39.s2.85

⁸ TB. ii. 1. 6. 1; AV. x. 2. 32; xi. 2. 10.

v2.c39.s2.86

⁹ v. 1. 7; 9. 7.

v2.c39.s2.87

¹⁰ ÇB. iv. 2. 3. 1; xi. 2. 1. 2.

v2.c39.s2.88

¹ ÇB. x. 3. 5. 13; cf. iii. 8. 3. 8 (mind).

v2.c39.s2.89

The development of the meaning of Ātman was accompanied by the development of the conception of the relation of the Ātman of the universe and the Ātman of the individual. The comparison of the macrocosm and the microcosm had been familiar from the time of the Rigveda,² where the cosmic Puruṣa is clearly closely allied to the individual man. In the case of Puruṣa, however, under that name we do not find that the conception of his Ātman was developed: of the individual man we have the question asked, later at least, what is left after his members are dispersed by death; but, though it might have been expected that this problem would have been posed in the case of Puruṣa, there is no evidence that this was ever done. The reference to the cosmic Ātman seen by Deussen³ in a passage of the Taittirīya Brāhmaṇa⁴ is as shown above too doubtful to found any argument upon: if the cosmic Ātman is really deliberately meant, it is very strange that the series of identifications of macrocosm and microcosm should not end there, but should proceed to the abode of the Ātman in the heart, the heart in the man, the man in the immortal, and the immortal in the Brahman. More important is the recognition of the Ātman as cosmic in the Atharvaveda, as the conclusion of the second Skambha hymn.⁵

v2.c39.s2.90

² x. 90. Cf. below, Chap. 29.

v2.c39.s2.91

³ *Gesch. der Phil.* I. i. 333.

v2.c39.s2.92

⁴ iii. 10. 8. Cf. above, p. 441.

v2.c39.s2.93

⁵ x. 8. 44.

v2.c39.s2.94

In the case of Prajāpati, the development of the conception of the Ātman is very clear: the creator enters, in the view of the Rigveda⁶ and of all subsequent texts, into the creation with his spirit, and the terms now used in the late works, the Taittirīya Āraṇyaka⁷ and the Tadeva section of the Vājasaneyi Saṁhitā,⁸ are that he enters with the self into the self. It is needless to press the exact force of these words: it is sufficient to note that they obviously lend themselves to the view of the identity of the cosmic self with the self of man. The actual expression of this identity is found only occasionally and in late texts such as the Taittirīya Āraṇyaka⁹ and the Çivasaṁkalpa section of the Vājasaneyi Saṁhitā,¹⁰ both works which are of the latest period of the Brāhmaṇa epoch and closely analogous to Upaniṣads, while the identification of the Ātman and the Brahman is also, as we have seen, confined to texts of the most developed stratum of Brāhmaṇa philosophy, the Taittirīya Brāhmaṇa¹¹ and the Çatapatha Brāhmaṇa,¹² in either case in late chapters.

v2.c39.s2.95

⁶ x. 121. 1.

v2.c39.s2.96

⁷ x. 1. 19.

v2.c39.s2.97

⁸ xxxii. 11.

v2.c39.s2.98

⁹ iii. 11. 1.

v2.c39.s2.99

¹⁰ xxxiv. 1–6; cf. Scheftelowitz, ZDMG. lxxv. 201–12.

v2.c39.s2.100

¹¹ iii. 12. 9.

v2.c39.s2.101

¹² x. 6. 3.

v2.c39.s2.102

Of other expressions of the inner nature of man, the Puruṣa is of no very serious importance for the philosophy of this epoch: he is indeed mentioned in two sections of the Vājasaneyi Saṁhitā, the Uttaranārāyaṇa and the Tadeva, in which he is identified with Prajāpati, and with Brahman, ensouls nature, is before but is also produced by the gods, is the source of time and is without limit in space; moreover the cosmic and the individual self appear to be identified, and we find the doctrine¹ that, as Anquetil du Perron expresses it, 'Quisquis Deum intelligit Deus fit;' the inspired seer can become identical with the deity, entering with his own self into the self.² But, though the term Puruṣa is occasionally used as a vague expression for the human personality,³ it is not destined to become in this period ever a very definite or clear conception. On the other hand the Brāhmaṇas have an important principle of existence to match with the Ātman, and one the prominence of which never disappears entirely in Indian philosophy, though the Sāṁkhya system seeks to diminish its place. This is the conception of the Prāṇa or the Prāṇas, 'breath' or 'vital airs', which achieves an importance denied to the older term Asu.

v2.c39.s2.103

¹ Cf. AV. ii. 1 as interpreted by Lindenau, ZII. i. 33 ff. His view (p. 37, n. 1) that RV. iv. 26 and 27 refer to the divinity of man is without justification; in neither case is a man the speaker.

v2.c39.s2.104

² xxxi. 17–22 (= TA. iii. 13); xxxii. 1–12 (= TA. x. 1. 2–4).

v2.c39.s2.105

³ Deussen, *Gesch. der Phil.* I. i. 288 ff. Its use in the Sāṁkhya is significant; the one Puruṣa regarded as pure spirit here is split into innumerable entities.

v2.c39.s2.106

The importance of the breath is due obviously to its connexion with the life of man or beast, and we find in the Çatapatha Brāhmaṇa⁴ the express statement that the victim is the breath, since only while it breathes is it a beast at all, and, when the breath departs, it is a mere inert mass. But the term is naturally enough extended to other forms of the activity of life, the speech, the hearing, the sight, and the mind, and further in the Vedic view between the organ and the activity there was no very clear distinction:⁵ the ear is what hears and the hearing, the eye what sees and the sight, and so on. The number of the vital airs is very various: they can be reckoned pretty much at pleasure as two, three, five, seven, nine, twelve, thirteen, and so on. But nine are often mentioned: seven in the head and two below.⁶ The seven in the head are the mind, speech, the breath itself, the two eyes and the two ears, and those below the organs of reproduction and evacuation. But the seven can be reduced to five by counting the ears and eyes as one organ each, and from quite different points of view we have six,⁷ two eyes, nostrils and ears, or two, Prāṇa and Udāna, or three, Prāṇa, Udāna, and Apāna.⁸ These vital airs are repeatedly called the gods, Devas: they are produced from the ascending airs of Prajāpati with which he created the gods, and the view that these activities are divine is a perfectly natural one from the point of view of Vedic religion, and it is quite unnecessary¹ to attribute the use of the term to the fact that no word for nature powers existed.

v2.c39.s2.107

⁴ iii. 8. 3. 15.

v2.c39.s2.108

⁵ An attempt at an analysis of perception occurs in the Buddhist canonical work, the *Dhammasaṁgaṇi*; see C. Rhys Davids, *Buddhist Manual of Psychological Ethics*², pp. lviii ff.; but even there it is quite impossible to say if the conception was not materialistic (as in the Milindapañha, p. 60; Walleser, *Die philosophische Grundlage des älteren Buddhismus*, pp. 113, 114). In truth, the distinction of psychic and physiological elements had not been yet thought out; see below, Chap. 28, § 10.

v2.c39.s2.109

⁶ ÇB. vi. 4. 2. 5; ix. 2. 2. 5; x. 1. 3. 4, &c.

v2.c39.s2.110

⁷ ÇB. xii. 9. 1. 9.

v2.c39.s2.111

⁸ A. H. Ewing, *The Hindu Conception of the Functions of Breath* (1901–3); Caland, ZDMG. lv. 261 ff.; lvi. 556 ff.; Keith, *Aitareya Āraṇyaka*, p. 217, n. 4; Oldenberg, *Weltanschauung der Brāhmaṇa-texte*, pp. 65 ff.; G. W. Brown, *Human Body in the Upanishads*, pp. 201 ff.

v2.c39.s2.112

¹ Hertel, IF. xli. 188.

v2.c39.s2.113

The multitude of Prāṇas, however, rest upon a single Prāṇa, which is sometimes, it would seem, sought to be identified with mind, but normally is called the Mukhya Prāṇa, the chief of the breaths. Its position appears clearly in a legend of creation in the Çatapatha Brāhmaṇa.² From the not-being arose the seven Prāṇas in the shape of the seven seers: they were kindled up by the Prāṇa in the middle as Indra, whereupon they produced the seven Puruṣas, which again united themselves to one Puruṣa. The same priority of one Prāṇa is elsewhere expressed by the relationship of it to the others as like that of Prajāpati to the gods.³

v2.c39.s2.114

² vi. 1. 1. In vii. 5. 2. 6 it is identified with mind.

v2.c39.s2.115

³ ÇB. vii. 5. 1. 21.

v2.c39.s2.116

It was of course quite inevitable that the eternal comparison of macrocosm and microcosm should here play its part, and so, in point of fact, we find the relationship of the breath as the principle of life in man, and the cosmic Prāṇa, which is the wind, asserted in the Çatapatha Brāhmaṇa.⁴ Nor are there lacking evidences of efforts to make Prāṇa the one reality, as Ātman was so made: Prāṇa is identified with Prajāpati, and also the Ātman, but these views are late and isolated.⁵ The theosophy of the Atharvaveda⁶ with its cosmopolitanism, however, accepts the Prāṇa readily as an expression of the universal, just as it accepts the Brahman, and as it sees in the Ātman the same essence as the meaning of the universe.

v2.c39.s2.117

⁴ ÇB. x. 3. 3. 6.

v2.c39.s2.118

⁵ ÇB. iv. 2. 3. 1; xi. 1. 1. 17. Cf. later JUB. iii. 1 f.; CU. iv. 3; Lüders, SBA. 1916, pp. 278 ff. (the Saṁvargavidyā).

v2.c39.s2.119

⁶ xi. 4; cf. TA. iii. 14.

Linked texts (22)