The Religion and Philosophy of the Veda and Upanishads v2.c39.s5.9

v2.c39.s5.9

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