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The Religion and Philosophy of the Veda and Upanishads v2.c39.s5: § 5. Modes of Thought and Categories

The Religion and Philosophy of the Veda and Upanishads v2.c39.s5

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§ 5. Modes of Thought and Categories

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Despite their interminable controversies, of which the Brāhmaṇas contain many hints, there is no evidence of the development of any logical theory. In a late text, the Taittirīya Āraṇyaka,¹ we find, indeed, an enumeration of four means of attaining correct knowledge, tradition (*smṛti*), perception (*pratyakṣa*), communication by one who is expert (*aitihya*), and reasoning (*anumāna*). This occurs in a verse to be used in connexion with the piling of the Āruṇaketuka fire, a late rite, and it has epic parallels,² showing that it represents a late popular view. It is obvious that it is unscientific, for tradition and communication obviously are not distinct sources, and what really was meant by reasoning does not appear, nor is the term otherwise defined in the Brāhmaṇas.

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¹ i. 2. 1; Oldenberg, *Weltanschauung der Brāhmaṇatexte*, pp. 221 ff.

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² Hopkins, *Great Epic of India*, pp. 145 ff.; *Rāmāyaṇa* (ed. Gorr.), v. 87. 23.

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The real distinction in the Brāhmaṇas is between what is normally perceived (*pratyakṣa*) and what is beyond mere perception (*parokṣa*), and, as the gods prefer the latter, so men recognize that mere appearances are not the essence of reality. Hence the foundation is laid for the doctrine of forms (*rūpa*) which lie at the basis of the interminable and seemingly absurd identifications of the texts. Philosophically the view has a real importance, for it points to the development of the pantheistic doctrine which asserts the unity of the individual self and the universe; the individual is no more than an aspect of the universal. What is obvious is not what is ultimately true; what is *pratyakṣa* for men is *parokṣa* for the gods; what is *parokṣa* for men, is *pratyakṣa* for the gods.³ Hence, although the importance of sight as a source of knowledge is asserted, at other times the emphasis is laid on the necessity of thought to penetrate reality, but this stage is not consciously reached until the Upaniṣad period. In the Brāhmaṇas what we find is the assertion of special insight through the power of asceticism, which enables the seers to behold the rising of the metres to the heaven.⁴ By asceticism or even without it the seers discover the sacred texts and the rites, for already these are regarded as beyond human creation or invention; they must be seen, learned, or found, not created. Indra himself in visible form reveals the Stomabhāga formulae to Vasiṣṭha, a Sāman converses with Keçin Dālbhya, a voice unseen instructs Devabhāga, a golden bird, a maiden possessed by a Gandharva reveal secret lore. Çrautarṣi Devabhāga discovers the right way to divide the sacrificial victim, but dies without revealing it to any one; a supernatural being tells it to Girija. The great texts trace their revelation to such gods as Āditya, Indra, Prajāpati, or Brahman, though no purposeful action is ascribed in this regard to these deities.

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³ PB. xxii. 10. 3.

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⁴ TS. v. 3. 5. 4.

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Against tradition of this kind human ingenuity is valueless; Yājñavalkya, always an innovator in spirit, asserts that there are two kinds of created things; the Ṛc verse says three, and its authority is conclusive.¹ Nevertheless human thought must have an outlet, and it expresses itself in the deep consideration of topics, styled Mīmāṅsā, the desiderative form of *man*, 'think', a term so common that it can be omitted, the genitive case alone standing to denote the object of investigation. At other times Mīmāṅsā fares less respectfully; suggestions that a rite should be carried out in other than the established manner may be dismissed as mere speculation. Another term, Vicikitsā, also a desiderative formation, denotes the doubt which prompts inquiry, while the final result is denoted by Sthiti, the station attained.

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¹ ÇB. ii. 5. 1. 2.

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Unfortunately this consideration does not penetrate to facts, but lives largely in a world of fancy, unrestrained by regard for reality and with extremely slight sense of the limitations of knowledge. If the Taittirīya Saṁhitā² in a moment of sanity admits the possibility of doubt whether a man really exists in yonder world or not, that candour is accidental and episodic. The theologians of the Brāhmaṇas are not prepared to admit to ignorance of any sort, and revelation reduces them to interpretation at their pleasure, aided by the fact of the bizarre nature of the revealed texts. If the waters can practise asceticism, it is not surprising that speech can speak standing in the seasons, or that the sacrificial consecration can be pursued by the gods with the aid of the seasons, or that the ascent of the metres to the sky should be visible. The texts operate freely, as already in the later Rigveda, with the conceptions of being or not-being, but they fail to make any serious progress in discovering effective categories. The cardinal points and the year lead very slowly up to more adequate conceptions of space and time, and the two seem endlessly confused even in the Upaniṣads. The conception of causality remains wholly obscure; instances of natural causation are recorded, but equally we have the most fantastic conception of cause and result, and it is significant that neither Kārya, 'result', nor Kāraṇa, 'cause', appears. Other important technical terms are missing; there are no expressions for relation in general or conditions, the expressions Viṣaya, 'object', Viparyaya, 'opposition',³ Pravṛtti, 'activity', and Nivṛtti, 'cessation from action', are wanting. On the other hand, certain advances are made; the adjective *prākṛta* in the Çatapatha Brāhmaṇa reveals the existence of the conception Prakṛti, 'ground form', later famous in the Sāṅkhya; difference is expressed by Nānātva, though the later Bheda occurs only in the more recent Upaniṣads; the nature of any thing is expressed by a derivative in *tva* or *tā*, and in a late passage in the Taittirīya Āraṇyaka⁴ the use, later established, of an abstract in the ablative as giving the ground of some result, is actually found. The terminology of the Brāhmaṇas does not know any general expression for sensation or perception, compelling needless repetitions, which the Upaniṣads also adopt, but phrases such as ‘In each season there is the form of all the seasons’ show efforts at expressing general conceptions.¹

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² vi. 1. 1. 1.

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³ KU. has Viṣaya and *viparīta*.

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⁴ i. 7. 6 (*nānāliṅgatvāt*). BAU. iv. 3. 23 has *avināçitvāt*, 'by reason of imperishability'.

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¹ ÇB. viii. 7. 1. 3 f.

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When no clear distinction had been made between personal and impersonal, and anything whatever might be conceived as active and living, it was inevitable that little progress could be made with formal definitions. We have instead endless identifications; the sacrifice is man or the year or anything else which may suit the moment, and, if the horse character (*açvatva*) of the horse is explained, it is merely that it came into being from the eye of Prajāpati when it was swollen (*açvayat*). Some of these etymologies were probably recognized as absurd by their makers, but others not, despite the fact that there was already developing itself an acute system of linguistic investigations, which reveals itself in the early appearance of terms for number (*vacana*), case forms (*vibhakti*) and so on, and in investigations as to euphonic combination and phonetical peculiarities.² When the priests set to work to define, they normally merely give fanciful identifications, as those of Agni Vaiçvānara, which they propound to Açvapati Kaikeya.³ Nevertheless, occasionally they reveal more acumen; the vague term Kratu is defined; ‘When a man wishes, “May I do that, may I have that,” that is Kratu; when he attains it, that is Dakṣa.’⁴

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² Cf. PB. xx. 14. 2; AB. v. 4. 3; Wackernagel, *Altind. Gramm.* i. pp. lxii. ff.

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³ ÇB. x. 6. 1.

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⁴ ÇB. iv. 1. 4. 1.

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When definition is in so feeble a condition, classification naturally fares no better. The love of numbers already appears as a dominant factor; the term Prāṇa is subdivided into five elements, among other divisions, and these five are obviously incapable of presenting any intelligible picture to the minds of the priests; moreover, under the same title we find not merely varieties of breathing, as is natural, but the quite different set of five, mind, speech, breath, sight and hearing. But other numbers and divisions are also found; we have here signs of that love of numerical enumerations which is seen in its full development in the Aṅguttara Nikāya of the Pāli Canon or the Ekottarāgama of the north, and which on one view has given the Sāṁkhya philosophy its distinctive name.

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Reasoning, indeed, we find, but of a peculiar character. Its logical value consists merely in its systematic form, marked by the use of the particles⁵ *vai* and *khalu vai*, the former of which marks the general principle asserted as the basis of the reasoning, the latter the identification which renders the general principle apposite. Thus, if it is necessary to explain why during the consecration the person consecrated has milk as his sole food, the principle⁶ is asserted, ‘By milk indeed (*vai*) embryos wax’; the application follows, ‘Now indeed (*khalu vai*) the consecrated person is as it were an embryo’, and the conclusion is arrived at, ‘In that he has milk as his food, he causes himself to wax.’ Or again¹ we have, ‘By means of the Stoma the gods prosper in this world; the Vātsapra is a counterpart of the Stoma; in that he pays homage with the Vātsapra, so does he win prosperity in this world.’ The principles and their application alike rest on mere assertion, and it is seldom that they are self-evident. Naturally, when deductive processes are so feebly represented, there is no effort at induction, which is found only in the Upaniṣads, and even then merely in the form of arguments which exhaust a series of possibilities, assumed, not proved, to be exhaustive, and so assumed tacitly, no expression of the assumption being requisite. There is a further advance in the Pāli canon, but that is of still later date.²

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⁵ Delbrück, *Altindische Syntax*, p. 493; cf. Keith, *Rig-Veda Brāhmaṇas*, p. 95.

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⁶ TS. vi. 2. 5. 3.

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¹ TS. v. 2. 1. 6 f.

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² BAU. iv. 5. 6 ff.; Mahāvagga, i. 6. 38 ff.; Oldenberg, *Buddha*⁶, pp. 214 ff.

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With thinking still so undeveloped, it would be impossible to expect any serious advance in the construction of categories to aid in the comprehension of the world. The distinction between what has and what has not life and power of action is not made; the gods, demons, men, plants, beasts of all kinds, are no more alive than the atmosphere, wind, rain, storm, minerals, the sacrifice and its utensils, numbers, metres, qualities or emotions. The holy power and the lordly power are concrete activities, like the strength (*vīrya*) of a man; his greatness (*mahiman*) is even said along with his Ātman to constitute him.³ The anguish caused to the victim in the slaying adheres to the roasting spit, and if placed on earth will penetrate to the earth; guilt (*enas*, *āgas*) is a substance which the god can carry with him; a man’s good deeds are within the altar, his evil deeds without it.⁴ Equally substantial are conceptions such as right, asceticism, evil, death, immortality, truth, falsehood, space and time. These two are normally represented by the cardinal points and the year; gradually we find the development of Ākāça, which denotes the vacancy between objects,⁵ such as the Antarikṣa between heaven and earth, but it is also material, as the Upaniṣads frankly recognize, and of Kāla, which primarily means the suitable moment for any thing, but becomes regarded as a cosmic power, similar to the year, in the Atharvaveda.

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³ JB. i. 228.

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⁴ ÇB. iii. 8. 5. 8 f. TS. ii. 5. 1; ÇB. xi. 2. 7. 33.

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⁵ AB. iii. 42. 1; ÇB. iii. 3. 2. 19; vii. 1. 2. 23.

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Even the more imposing conceptions of being and not-being prove to have little profundity. Being does not denote in the Brāhmaṇas the whole of existence as a unity, contrasted with the imperfect plurality of the individual; it is essentially the term to denote that whence the world emerged, and the Vedic thinker proceeds to ask whence it itself came, evolving the answers not-being or something beyond both being and not-being, identified in the usual light-hearted manner in one passage with mind.⁶ Not-being naturally as the foundation of all things is subject to similar identifications; it may be said to be the seers, or to practise austerities, or to desire to become being, mere verbal intricacies without trace of serious thought.⁷

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⁶ ÇB. x. 5. 3. 1, 2.

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⁷ ÇB. vi. 1. 1. 1; TB. ii. 2. 9. 1. See also AV. iv. 19. 6; x. 7. 21.

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Some effort, however, is made to secure order in conceptions, and there can be traced the gradual formation of the ideas of the five elements and of the five senses, with mind above or beside them, ideas which introduce some degree of system into the conception of the external world and of man's powers, although terminology remains changing and vague. Persistent from the Puruṣasūkta onwards is the effort to distinguish and compare the macrocosm and the microcosm; what is interpreted as regards the gods (*adhidevatam*, *adhidaivatam*) as earth, atmosphere, and sky, is mind, breath, and speech as regards the self (*adhyātmam*); wind, fire, sun, the quarters, and the moon correspond to breath, speech, eye, ear, and mind. Similarly there is a marked love for arranging things in lists, each with many correspondences; if the creator produces¹ from his mouth the Trivṛt Stoma, it has as correlative the god Agni, the metre Gāyatrī, the Rathantara tune, the Brahman among men, the goat among beasts, and similar series are invented for the other Stomas. Correspondence in any sense is a basis for identification, and affords one of the various rounds of connexion even of the loosest nature which justified a Brahmanical identification.

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¹ TS. vii. 1. 1. 4 ff. Cf. JUB. iii. 1 f.

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More interesting is the effort to express aspects of reality by the use of the word Tanū, 'body'. It denotes primarily simply the body of a person or his self regarded as corporeal, as in the reflexive use of the term and in its occasional exchange with Ātman,² which denotes the spiritual aspect of the self. But it is specially frequent in the plural to denote what may best be styled aspects;³ thus Agni has one aspect as bearing the oblations to the gods, another as carrying the offerings for the dead; he has auspicious and dread aspects. The aspects may be mortal or immortal; Prajāpati has five of either, mortal as hair, &c., immortal as mind, &c. Taken together they may make up the whole, or they may be set beside the self, Ātman, as members; or the whole may itself be styled a Tanū.⁴ Or the aspects may be in different places; even the Rigveda recognizes that Agni has such aspects. In any case the Tanūs give rise to indefinite possibilities of identification, since in respect of some one or other of them most things can be made similar.

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² KS. vii. 6.

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³ KS. xxxvi. 13; vii. 13; ÇB. x. 1. 3. 2, 4.

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⁴ AB. v. 25. 11; TB. i. 1. 6. 3 f.; KS. xxxiv. 17.

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While Tanū is not of enduring importance in Indian thought, Rūpa, 'form', remains a term of high importance. Its primary meaning is visible extension or shape; it is the object of the eye, as sound is that of the ear. Only during life does form exist, being lost in death, a hint of the doctrine of the necessity of the imposition of form on matter to create the concrete individual.⁵ Similarly⁶ the Brahman is said to enter the world when it is to be made distinct by means of name and form, the name corresponding to the form, and thus—to develop the idea—being the means of expressing the nature of the form, though this conception is far from that of the Brāhmaṇa which treats name and form as two distinct active potencies. Nor can we venture to attach too much importance to the aspect of Rūpa as form, for even in the Chāndogya Upaniṣad¹ the term denotes not pure form, but a material possessing form; heat, water, food are the results of the creator entering the world with name and form.

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⁵ JUB. iii. 32; cf. of animals, ÇB. iv. 3. 4. 14.

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⁶ ÇB. xi. 2. 3.

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¹ vi. 2 ff.

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Form naturally serves as the basis of identifications, for almost anything can be said to be the form of another, either on solid or on fanciful grounds. Thus the bull can be said to be the form or symbol of Indra, type of male strength, butter and gold of the cow, repaired things of the fire piled after an fruitless effort. Or the firesticks are the hidden form of Agni, while he is the revealed form. If things have any form in common, they can be identified, and though Tanū derives its origin from the corporeal aspect of a thing, and Rūpa comes from the idea of appearance, they tend largely to coincide in force. But, unlike Tanū, Rūpa is regularly associated with name, and the association develops into the expression, name and form, which in Buddhism expresses concrete individuality.

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Akin to Rūpa in the view of many scholars is the somewhat vague term Dhāman, especially in cases where we hear of the Dhāmāni of such a god as Soma,² or, as often in the Brāhmaṇas and earlier, of the dear Dhāman of a deity, though the sense 'abode' is preferred by Hillebrandt³ among others. We hear of the butter as the dear Dhāman of Agni, of the mead as that of the Açvins; speech is that of Indra and Agni, salt that of heaven and also of the cattle, the quarters that of Soma.⁴ A frequent reward of the man who worships correctly or has the proper knowledge is to attain the Dhāman of the deity, or by the use of the sacrificial strew, which is the Dhāman of cattle, one obtains them.⁵ In Oldenberg's view⁶ the term denotes what is ordained (*dhā*). Thus in the Rigveda we hear of the ordinances of Mitra and Varuṇa, and with a genitive the term often denotes what is appointed by some power.⁷ In other cases, when thus used, the term in the genitive expresses what is ordained, or the substratum, in which the thing ordained has effect; the former may be the meaning in the Rigveda⁸ of the phrase the Dhāman of the Ṛta, which is given⁹ as the description of the dawn, or the Dhāman of the sacrifice.¹⁰ But, while this explanation has the advantage of being true to the etymology of the term, and is doubtless largely correct, it is clear that the meaning 'abode' early developed, and this sense should probably be recognized much more freely than is admitted by Oldenberg, though he recognizes that the term did develop something approaching this sense.¹¹

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² So Geldner (*Glossar*, s.v.) as to RV. i. 91. 4, 19, &c. The term occurs frequently in formulae of offering.

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³ *Lieder des Ṛgveda*, p. 66, n. 1.

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⁴ TS. v. 1. 9. 5; 3. 10. 3; ÇB. xiv. 1. 4. 13; AB. vi. 7. 10; KS. xx. 1; viii. 2; ÇB. iii. 9. 4. 20.

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⁵ TS. v. 2. 3. 4; KS. viii. 2; MS. iii. 2. 2; cf. RV. ix. 114. 1; Yasna, xlvi. 6.

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⁶ GN. 1915, pp. 180–90, 401–3. He treats *dāman* in the Avesta similarly.

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⁷ RV. x. 10. 6; i. 91. 3; 123. 8; x. 81. 5 (Viçvakarman); vi. 21. 3 (Indra).

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⁸ RV. i. 43. 9; cf. the use of the verb in i. 71. 3; viii. 27. 19.

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⁹ KS. xxxix. 10.

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¹⁰ RV. x. 67. 2 (created by the Aṅgirases).

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¹¹ ÇB. i. 9. 1. 16; Muṇḍ. iii. 2. 1.

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It is significant that contemporaneously we find the science of grammar alone in process of development; the Brāhmaṇas show knowledge of the scientific grouping of the letters,¹ of the distinction of case forms, numbers and so forth, and the elaboration of the system of Pāṇini, as well as the researches of the Prātiçākhyas prove the skill which was being developed in this period. The Nirukta of Yāska which falls in date at the close of the Brāhmaṇa period proves how considerable had been the advances made in regard to questions of etymology, the classification of the parts of speech (of which Yāska reckons four, nouns, verb, prepositions, and particles), and the nature of language.² The superiority of Indian achievement in this regard to that of contemporary Greece is manifest, but, on the other hand, there is extremely little evidence of any progress in regard to astronomy or mathematics, for we cannot accept the overestimates of the knowledge involved in the Çulba Sūtras, apart altogether from the doubt as to their date, and the fact of their serving essentially practical ends.³ Of natural science we know nothing at this period, and both in the Brāhmaṇas and the Upaniṣads the nature of the ideas current is incompatible with any progress in these matters in contemporary thought.⁴

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¹ Cf. PB. xx. 14. 2; CU. ii. 22; Wackernagel, *Altind. Gramm.* i. p. lxii; Oldenberg, *Weltanschauung der Brāhmaṇa-texte*, p. 233; TU. i. 2; AA. iii. 1 ff.

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² See Lakshman Sarup's trs. of the Nirukta, Intr. pp. 53 ff.

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³ See Chap. 29.

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⁴ Regarding Indian medicine, cf. A. F. R. Hoernle, *Studies in the Medicine of Ancient India*, and Keith, ZDMG. lxii. 134 ff. It is impossible to take seriously the Kāma Sūtra tradition which makes Çvetaketu, who figures in the Upaniṣads, an authority on erotics.

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