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The Religion and Philosophy of the Veda and Upanishads v2.c40.s4: § 4. The Problem and Conditions of Knowledge

The Religion and Philosophy of the Veda and Upanishads v2.c40.s4

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English

§ 4. The Problem and Conditions of Knowledge

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It is an essential feature of the Upaniṣads that, though they make, as we have seen, little or no advance in logical doctrine, they do tentatively raise and deal in some measure with the question of the source of knowledge of the Brahman or Ātman. The view of the Brāhmaṇas, of course, is that knowledge is to be found in the Vedas, and the authority of the Vedic texts is not discussed. In the Upaniṣads, however, we find that the question of the means of knowledge is definitely raised: the three Vedas or the four, which are sometimes recognized, are not always recognized as the sources of complete knowledge: Çvetaketu, despite much Vedic learning, cannot solve the question of transmigration, Nārada admits to Sanatkumāra his incompetence to understand the Ātman. The Taittirīya Upaniṣad¹ expressly reduces the knowledge of the Vedas to an inferior position by assigning them to the stage of the mind-made Ātman, which has to be surmounted before reaching the final truth. But these views were gradually and naturally supplemented by another, which makes the Upaniṣads an essential part, the secret instruction, of the Veda: hence the term Vedānta which first occurs in the Çvetāçvatara Upaniṣad¹ and denotes the Upaniṣads, as the end of the Veda in which its deepest secret is disclosed.

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¹ ii. 3.

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¹ vi. 22; Muṇḍ. iii. 2. 6. Cf. Kena 33.

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The Brāhmaṇas had recognized, beside study of the Veda, the duty of sacrifice, and the importance of asceticism, and on both these points the thinkers of the Upaniṣads were bound to take a clear stand. The sacrifice is least reputed in the Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad² where, with a certain insolence, the worship of anything except the self is derided, and the relation of the ordinary worshipper to his gods is compared with that of housedogs. Again Yama is said to have his abode in the sacrifice, and the sacrifice in the fees. The Chāndogya³ also seems in part to recognize the demerits of the sacrifice. But it would be an error to think that the general depreciation of the sacrifice is characteristic of the Brahmans; it is clear that a few enlightened minds had a poor opinion of the whole apparatus, but the normal view of the Upaniṣads is quite removed from that of opposition to sacrifice, which is often believed to mark them out. The sacrifice, however, is expressly relegated to an inferior place: the faithful performance of offerings takes a man but to the world of the Fathers, whence he will return to earth again in due course,⁴ and not thus can final liberation be won. On the other hand the actual performance of the sacrifice is rendered needless by the substitute for the ritual acts of allegorical acts: the three periods of life supersede the three Soma offerings,⁵ inhalation and speech the Agnihotra,⁶ the organs of the self the four priests, and so on. The tendency, however, to restore the sacrifice to honour steadily grows: the Kaṭha⁷ recognizes it as of value, the Çvetāçvatara⁸ recommends recourse to it, the Maitrāyaṇīya⁹ asserts that without the study of the Veda, the observance of caste duties, and the following of the orders of life, through the stage of student householder, forest hermit, and wandering ascetic, the reunion of the individual and the personal self is impossible. Doubtless in this we can recognize the growing aversion of the Brahmans to the Buddhist and the Jain tenets.

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² iii. 9. 6, 21.

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³ i. 10–12; iv. 1–3.

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⁴ BAU. i. 5. 16; vi. 2. 16; CU. v. 10. 3; PU. i. 9; Muṇḍ. i. 2. 10.

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⁵ CU. iii. 16.

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⁶ AA. iii. 2. 6.

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⁷ i. 17; iii. 2. Cf. also Īçā 11.

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⁸ ii. 6, 7.

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⁹ i. 1; iv. 1 ff.

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The part of asceticism in the pursuit of knowledge is similar to that of the sacrifice. The Bṛhadāraṇyaka¹⁰ is not inclined towards it, recognizing in it as in sacrifice at most a way to the lower bliss of the world of the Fathers,¹¹ the Chāndogya¹ substitutes the faith of the forest dweller for penance. The Taittirīya Upaniṣad,² on the other hand, places value on Vedic study and asceticism, and even insists on the supreme value of the latter: the Mahānārāyaṇa³ sets renunciation, Nyāsa, above even asceticism: and from the Kena⁴ onwards the value of asceticism for the obtaining of the knowledge of the Brahman is absolutely recognized and sometimes insisted upon. In this, as in regard to Vedic study and sacrifice, the process is one of steady accommodation to the popular view, which was at the same time the profitable view to the priests. It is needless, however, to see in this the fact of the borrowing of the theory of the Ātman from an external source: the facts accord perfectly with a reform within the Brahmanical fold: the reformers gradually sink back into the main body, while their doctrine in some degree at least is adopted by the main body of the priests.

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¹⁰ iii. 8. 10; iv. 4. 22.

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¹¹ vi. 2. 18; in view of this passage we may perhaps hold that in CU. v. 10. 1 the qualification for full enlightenment is not faith and Tapas (as in PU. i. 10; Muṇḍ. i. 2. 11; Windisch, *Buddha's Geburt*, p. 73, n. 1) but faith as Tapas, as the words *çraddhā tapa ity upāsate* normally mean; see below, § 10.

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¹ ii. 23.

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² i. 9 and iii.

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³ lxii. 11.

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⁴ 33; PU. i. 10; Muṇḍ. i. 2. 11.

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Nor in the oldest stratum of the Upaniṣads do we find the necessity of instruction by a teacher laid down: Yājñavalkya⁵ on several occasions teaches persons such as his wife, Maitreyī, informally and without initiation, and Açvapati⁶ teaches the Brahmans who come to him freely. The rule of taking a teacher is absolute in the Kaṭha,⁷ and is approved in the Chāndogya,⁸ where the teacher is regarded as being as essential as the removal of a bandage to a blindfolded man, who wishes to find his way home to Gandhāra. In these texts the vague requirements also occur that a man should be endowed with self-restraint, renunciation, tranquillity, patience, and collectedness.

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⁵ BAU. ii. 4; iv. 1 ff.

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⁶ CU. v. 11. 7.

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⁷ ii. 8.

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⁸ vi. 14. ÇU. vi. 23 demands devotion to the teacher as to god.

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But beyond these minor matters, which are none of them recognized as essential in the oldest Upaniṣads, a further question arises, how far there can be real knowledge at all of the Ātman. The natural desire of the philosopher is to know the Ātman: the Upaniṣads are in very real sense the search for that knowledge, but the conviction is clearly early felt that there were serious difficulties in assuming the possibility of empiric means giving the desired result. The Rigveda⁹ already contained the idea that the first principle in some degree disguised itself, and the world of name and form becomes in the Bṛhadāraṇyaka¹⁰ the immortal concealed in truth, or reality, and as the reality of reality is seen the self. The only normal sense which can be given to these passages is that suggested by the description of the whole universe in the Chāndogya¹¹ as a matter of words, a mere name. The reality of the world is empiric, the true reality is the Ātman, which the empiric reality conceals. It follows, therefore, that all so-called knowledge is really ignorance, Avidyā, and that in death in casting off the body the soul throws aside ignorance.¹²

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⁹ x. 81. 1; cf. 129. 7; even the lord may not know the origin of creation.

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¹⁰ i. 6. 3; ii. 1. 20; ii. 4. 7-9.

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¹¹ vi. 1-3; cf. vii. 1, 2; viii. 3. 1, 2.

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¹² BAU. iv. 4. 3, 4; ÇU. v. 1.

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The Kaṭha¹ illustrates this theme: ordinary knowledge aims at pleasure, real knowledge at salvation, and it must be accorded through a teacher,² and by the favour of the Ātman,³ a doctrine which develops into the express declaration that the favour of the creator is essential. The Çvetāçvatara⁴ carries us to the logical result and offers prayers to the gods for assistance, inculcating devotion, Bhakti, to god and to the teacher.

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¹ KU. ii. 1-6; Muṇḍ. i. 2. 8-10; Maitr. vii. 9; the later verses in BAU. iv. 4. 11, 12.

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² KU. ii. 7-9.

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³ KU. ii. 23 and 20; ÇU. iii. 20; Mahānār. x. 1 (viii. 3); Muṇḍ. iii. 2. 3.

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⁴ ii. 1-5; iii. 1-6; iv. 1.

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On the other hand, there arises in the doctrine of Yājñavalkya a distinct and different element: the self in this view cannot be known at all.⁵ There is no consciousness after death, he explains to Maitreyī, and the grounds of his explanation are that duality is essential for consciousness. The absolute self is unknowable, for there is no duality between it and anything else: the individual self is also unknowable because it must be the activity in knowing, and cannot be the object. The doctrine has echoes in other Upaniṣads,⁶ and it results in fierce attacks on knowledge, which is ranked as worse than ignorance by the Īçā.⁷ The Kaṭha⁸ lays stress on the necessity of turning the eye inwards in contrast to the mere use of the senses to grasp what is external, and insists that the only assertion that can be made of the self is the mere declaration of existence pure and simple. The way is, therefore, clearly open to the development of the doctrine alluded to in the earlier Upaniṣads, but not developed until later,⁹ which seeks by means of processes of physical and psychical disposition to produce the trance condition in which unity with the absolute, the only possible form of knowledge, is arrived at.

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⁵ ii. 4. 12; iii. 4. 2; 7. 23; 8. 11; iv. 3. 10; 4. 2. Similarly the Dharma of the Buddhists, which replaces the Brahman (W. Geiger, *Dharma und Brahman*, pp. 1 ff.), is ultimately unknowable (Stcherbatsky, *The Central Conception of Buddhism*, p. 75).

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⁶ CU. vi. 9, 10; 15. 1, 2; vii. 24. 1; TU. ii; Kena 3, 11.

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⁷ 9-11.

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⁸ iv. 1; vi. 12, 13; the later verse in BAU. iv. 4. 10.

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⁹ The Abhidharmakoça (i. 40) formally insists against older Buddhism that sensuous consciousness and material elements can be suppressed only by ecstasy, not knowledge.

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