The Religion and Philosophy of the Veda and Upanishads v2.c39.s2.42

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.