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The Religion and Philosophy of the Veda and Upanishads v2.c40.s8: § 8. The Supreme and the Individual Souls

The Religion and Philosophy of the Veda and Upanishads v2.c40.s8

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§ 8. The Supreme and the Individual Souls

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In the philosophy of Yājñavalkya the identity of the supreme and the individual souls is carried to the extreme extent, but at the same time the term soul is deprived of any distinct meaning. The identity of the soul of man and the absolute is due to the mere fact that, by reducing the soul to nothing save what may be termed the mere abstraction of subjectivity, or of the transcendental unity of apperception, the soul becomes nothing but an aspect of a process.⁶ It is perfectly legitimate then to identify the supreme and the individual souls, but we are really carried no further by this than the occasional remarks of the Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad, which regards the universe as made up of nothing except subject and object. It is in fact perfectly true that all the world can be regarded as distinguished as subject and object, but, unless we are able to show that this is the sum total of all that we can know, it is clearly impossible for philosophy to stop there. The actual existing world of thought, emotion, and action requires explanation and investigation. In the Vedānta the matter is solved comfortably by the doctrine of the two forms of knowledge: on the upper stage the identity of the self and the absolute is recognized, on the lower there is found to be a personal deity, Hiraṇyagarbha, and personal selves, who are indeed the absolute self, but fall under the influence of conditioning facts, the Upādhis, mind, the senses, the vital airs, and the body, which, while in reality no more affecting the reality of the nature of the absolute than the red colour the rock crystal, nevertheless convert it into the self or soul, Jīva,¹ of everyday humanity. In the Upaniṣads we naturally expect to find both sides of this doctrine, and we do find them in point of fact quite clearly expressed. On the one hand, we have the constant efforts to show that there is but one self, that there is no multiplicity and no change, which is pure idealism of a very intransigeant type, and on the other the reality of the individual self is constantly insisted upon. It is, however, constantly repeated that the individual and the absolute self are the same, and this is true no less in those cases where we may accept the view that idealism of the Yājñavalkya type is present, than in those, in which there is mere pantheism or cosmogonism. In the latter cases equally there is no ground to distinguish ultimately between the selves, since at the most the individual is merely the absolute in another form. But even when the Upaniṣads are theistic in spirit, like the Kaṭha and still more decidedly by far the Çvetāçvatara, they never reach the view that the supreme and the individual souls are anything really different. The Kaṭha,² however, is marked by its clear enunciation for the first time of the conception of the enjoyer as the union of the self with mind and the senses. It also describes the two aspects of the souls as light and shadow, while in the Çvetāçvatara ³ we find the metaphor of the two birds on a tree, one eating the sweet berries, the other merely gazing downwards, without eating. It also develops the idea of the individual soul, as endowed with the faculty of framing concepts and resolves, individualism and intellect, as enjoying the fruit of action, as small as a thumb in height, or a needle's point, or the ten-thousandth part of the tip of a hair, which is yet identical with the infinitely great supreme soul, a statement which is clearly identical in essence with the Vedānta position as seen in Çaṅkara.

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⁶ The fact of this undue abstraction explains the view of one aspect of Buddhism in its denial of any Ātman at all. But in so doing they naturally found themselves obliged to invent a substitute in the doctrine of Karman. The praise occasionally lavished on their psychology without a soul is only conclusive of the philosophical crudity of the encomiasts. Cf. de la Vallée Poussin, *Bouddhisme*, pp. 82 ff., 156 ff.; Keith, *Buddhist Philosophy*, pp. 169 ff., 207 f.

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¹ Cf. A. Guha, *Jīvātman in the Brahma-Sūtras* (Calcutta, 1921).

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² iii. 1.

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³ iv. 6, 7; v. 2-6.

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The cause of the appearance in this restricted form of the supreme soul is given by Çaṅkara as the effect of ignorance, and with him that explanation ends the matter, since it is impossible to go further than this. In the Upaniṣads, apart from the many creation legends which yield no philosophic result, the actual nature of the problem is rarely expressed and very slightly explained. The view of the Praçna ⁴ is that breath is born from the self, and it is likened to the shadow on a man. Unhappily the rest of its explanation is obscure: if rendered according to grammar, it distinctly says that the position is involuntary (*manokṛta*) on the part of the self: the version of Sāyaṇa, which is defiant of grammar, takes it that the result is produced by the previous acts of the will of the man in question; it is possible that we must amend so as merely to say that the mind attaches itself to the breath, but this suggestion of Böhtlingk's ⁵ is doubtful, and the best plan seems to be to recognize that the process is not voluntary, which is in agreement with the Vedānta view. In the Maitrāyaṇīya,¹ which is influenced by the Sāṅkhya views of the constituents of nature, the doctrine is laid down that the self is overcome by the Guṇas, and falls into an illusion in which it becomes weak, disordered, sensual, and believes in the separate existence of the self, fettering itself by its own action like a bird by its nest, while an addition² to that text gives the different conception, that the supreme soul becomes individual, in order to experience life in the world as well as eternal verity.

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⁴ iii. 1-3.

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⁵ Hillebrandt suggests *manodūtena*, but this gives no explanation of the misreading. Böhtlingk emends to *manaḥ. tena*.

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¹ iii. 2.

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² vii. 11.

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The description of the parts of the individual souls in the Upaniṣads is far from uniform or homogeneous. In the Sāṁkhya, as we have seen, it is a union of the individual spirit with the elements of intellect, individuation, mind, the five organs of intelligence and the five organs of action, and the subtle elements as well as the fine parts of the gross elements. In the Vedānta the position is not essentially different: the soul is the absolute enveloped in the Upādhis: in this case they are mind,³ the ten senses, the five breaths, which are the organs of nutrition, and the subtle body, that is the subtle parts of the elements which form the seeds of the body. In both cases there must be added the psychic disposition which causes the kind of rebirth and secures that rebirth, the Bhāva of the Sāṁkhya, the Karman of Çaṅkara.

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³ Mind in this system covers all the three activities of the Sāṁkhya Buddhi, Ahaṁkāra, and Manas, and in the epic these three appear often as two (Ahaṁkāra being suppressed); cf. Dahlmann, *Die Sāṁkhya-Philosophie*, pp. 79 ff. See also Oltramare, *L’histoire des idées théosophiques*, i. 190 ff.

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In the Upaniṣads the terminology centres mainly in the word Prāṇa, which every now and then, as we have seen, is treated as a synonym of the absolute, but which on the whole is more normally of less consequence. The Prāṇa often represents the senses, but the numbers of Prāṇas, into which it is divided, differ greatly: the origin of the various calculations may certainly be traced in part at least to the Atharvaveda,⁴ where we are told of the head as a drinking bowl with seven seers in the apertures: the sense ascribed to the seven appears to have been the eyes, ears, nostrils, and the organ of taste, for the Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad⁵ adds to the seven an eighth in the form of speech. The Upaniṣads normally enumerate a series of five,⁶ breath, eye, ear, mind, and speech, but these are sometimes reduced to four or less; thus the Jaiminīya Upaniṣad Brāhmaṇa repeatedly dwells on the series, speech, mind, sight, hearing, and the breath or breaths; the cosmic parallels are fire, moon, sun, the quarters (i. e. space), and wind. A different view is that of a passage of the Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad,⁷ where the organs of smell, speech, tongue, eye, ear, mind, hands, and skin are enumerated as the eight Grahas, and the corresponding objects, odour, name, taste, form, sound, desire, action, and touch are set over against them as the Atigrahas, possibly an indication, since Graha may mean seizer, that the soul was fettered by the organs and their activities, an idea carried out in the phrase 'bands of the heart', which is first found in the Chāndogya Upaniṣad.¹ The later term Indriya is first found in the Kauṣītaki Upaniṣad,² when on death the father hands over to his son his speech; smell; eye; ear; tastes; actions; pleasure and pain; bliss, delight, and procreation; movements; mind; and intellect (*prajñā*), where the usual later enumeration of ten with mind is followed, with one exception. In the Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad³ we find the skin as the uniting-place of touch; the tongue of tastes; the nose of odours; the eye of forms; the ear of sounds; the mind of conceptions (*saṁkalpa*); the heart of knowledge; the hands of actions; the generative organ of pleasure; the anus of procreation; the feet of movements; and speech of the Vedas; but the name, Indriya, is not used. The normal later total of ten with mind, including the heart, as Indriyas is found in the Praçna,⁴ in a passage which also enumerates the five subtle elements, the five gross elements, intellect, individuation, thought, brilliance, and breath.

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⁴ x. 8. 9; in ver. 44 we have one of the earliest declarations of the Ātman doctrine.

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⁵ BAU. ii. 2. 3.

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⁶ Possibly the source of the five Buddhist Skandhas; see Stcherbatsky, *The Central Conception of Buddhism*, p. 72. See JUB. ii. 1 f.; iii. 1 f.

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⁷ iii. 2. 2-9, where Prāṇa seems to mean sense of smell, Apāna odour, but the text is doubtless corrupt, despite the agreement of the recensions; cf. Deussen, *Phil. of Up.*, pp. 277 f.

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¹ vii. 26. 2; KU. vi. 15.

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² ii. 15.

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³ iv. 5. 12; ii. 4. 11.

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⁴ iv. 2. A late hymn (AV. xix. 9. 5) has the five Indriyas with Manas.

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It is of importance in the history of Indian philosophy to note the development of the sense of Manas, 'mind'. In the earliest period, and in the Brāhmaṇas, and even in the Upaniṣads, mind is a vague term⁵ denoting consciousness generally, whether feeling,⁶ willing, or thinking, and it can be used as a synonym for Prajāpati, when it is sought to reduce that figure to something more abstract and less mythological. From that use it is later sometimes definitely minimized to mean the power which forms ideas and decisions, but it is probably in the wider and less precise sense that it still appears in all the old lists of the breaths beside speech, eye, ear, and breath. The more limited meaning is possible in cases where mind is said to be the uniting place of conceptions, the heart of knowledge, or mind discriminates names, and intellect (*prajñā*) deals with thoughts, what is to be understood, and desires.⁷ On the other hand, there clearly evolves itself, as in Epicharmos' doctrine: νοῦς ὁρῇ καὶ νοῦς ἀκούει, τἄλλα κωφὰ καὶ τυφλὰ the idea that the presence of the mind, attention in fact, is necessary to see, to hear, and so forth. Desire, judgement, belief, doubt, unbelief, firmness, weakness, modesty, knowledge, fear, all these depend on the mind. Mind therefore is regarded as forming into ideas the impressions of the senses, sight, hearing, taste, smell, and touch, and it then—as will motived by desire—transforms the ideas into resolves, which are carried out by the organs of action. It is the mind which drives man to beget on his wife a son,¹ the Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad² also says. Similarly the mind is the cause of all action of every kind, sacred study, or the gaining of wealth. In the metaphor of the chariot and the driver, the body and the soul, in the Kaṭha³ the intellect is the charioteer, mind the reins, and the senses are only the horses. One of the selves in the doctrine of five selves in the Taittirīya Upaniṣad⁴ is expressly called the mind-made self, and its object is sacrificial activity. The Maitrāyaṇīya Upaniṣad⁵ develops the chariot metaphor further; the whip is nature, the horses the organs of action, the reins the organs of intellect, and the driver is mind who with his whip stirs the steeds to action under the control of the reins.⁶

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⁵ Oldenberg, *Weltanschauung der Brāhmaṇa-texte*, pp. 69 ff. The early term *kratu* denotes will (*vaça*) as directed by intellect. The word *man* specially denotes to think that a thing is so and so; *dhī* to meditate on it.

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⁶ e. g., JB. i. 269; BAU. iii. 2.7.

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⁷ BAU. ii. 4. 11; iv. 5. 12; Kauṣ. i. 7.

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¹ AU. iii. 2; Kauṣ. iii. 7; BAU. i. 5. 3.

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² iv. 1. 6; *see* i. 5. 3; Maitr. vi. 3.

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³ iii. 3.

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⁴ ii. 3.

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⁵ ii. 6; for the Epic view of Manas see Deussen, *Gesch. d. Phil.* I. iii. 59-63; for the Buddhist, C. Rhys Davids, *Buddhist Manual of Psychological Ethics*², pp. lxxi ff., which, however, is very speculative and unduly modernizes; Keith, *Buddhist Philosophy*, pp. 85, 89, 161, 168 f.; Stcherbatsky, *The Central Conception of Buddhism*, pp. 15, 72. See also JUB. i. 33. 4 f.; ÇB. iv. 6. 7. 5; BAU. iii. 2; KU. iii. 6; JUB. iv. 26.

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⁶ The contrast with the Platonic metaphor in the *Phaidros* is as obvious as the parallel.

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The mind is specially concerned with Saṁkalpas, a term which appears only in a late passage of the Rigveda,⁷ but is later frequent. The root idea is putting in order, so that a Saṁkalpa or conception may be equally well an idea or a decision, though in fact the word is frequently used with an implication of will. Mind is the abode of all Saṁkalpas,⁸ but with the usual inconsistency we have Saṁkalpa ranked above mind, the product above the function.⁹ Mind is fundamental; what one desires with it is Kratu, conscious will.

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⁷ x. 164. 5. Often with Kāma, ‘desire’; AV. iii. 25. 2; CU. viii. 1. 5; 2; BAU. i. 5. 3.

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⁸ BAU. ii. 4. 11 (*dhyāna* in Kauṣ. iii. 3).

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⁹ CU. vii. 4.

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Beside mind we find sometimes the term Citta, which in the Pāli Canon is often a synonym for mind.¹⁰ The term *cit* denotes from the Rigveda on to notice something, whether by the sense organs or by mental activity; in the Chāndogya¹¹ we find Citta, what is noticed, placed above Saṁkalpa which in its turn is superior to mind; a contrast is drawn between the man who knows much and has no Citta, and who is accordingly little regarded, and him who has Citta and, therefore, is in high repute. In the sense of thought as an activity Citta is later in use, beside Citti and Cetas, and occasionally mind and Citta or Cetas are directly identified.¹² The term Citta becomes of special importance later in the Yoga system.

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¹⁰ *Dīgha Nikāya*, i. 21. Cf. Keith, *Buddhist Philosophy*, p. 85.

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¹¹ CU. vii. 5.

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¹² VS. xviii. 2; CU. iii. 6. 8; VS. xxxiv. 3.

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Vijñāna, discriminating knowledge, which is made a synonym of mind in the Pāli Canon, is sometimes merely a function of mind,¹³ but it also occurs not rarely in the older Upaniṣads with a distinct implication of a superior form of knowledge to the mere action of mind; thus hearing, thinking, and discriminating, or seeing, thinking, and discriminating, are enumerated, and in the final doctrine, which denies the possibility of knowing that which knows all, the term used is *vijñā*.¹ But this idea is not formally developed, in accordance with the whole spirit of the Upaniṣads.

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¹³ ÇB. xii. 9. 1. 14. It is used of mind and the four senses in JB. i. 269.

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¹ CU. vii. 13. 1; 15. 4; 25. 2; BAU. iii. 4. 2; ii. 4. 14; iv. 5. 15; it ranks above Dhyāna, CU. vii. 7. Vijñāna is in KU. iii. 9 apparently ranked with Buddhi above mind. In Buddhism it is sometimes given a higher rank; Oldenberg, *Buddha*⁶, pp. 258 f., 264. In JB. i. 269 it is used to denote the functions of eye, ear, smell, tongue, and mind.

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On the side of feeling the terminology of the Upaniṣads marks a great advance in the normal employment of Sukha to denote pleasure generically and Duḥkha, based upon it, for misery. A generic term to cover both forms of feeling is not found before the Vedanā of the Pāli texts. But we have the definite statement² that, when a man experiences pleasure, he acts, when he experiences pain, he refrains from action, while the Kauṣītaki³ asserts that pleasure and pain are felt by means of the body.

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² CU. vii. 22. Cf. *priyāpriye*, CU. viii. 12. 1; *hṛdayajña*, *ahṛdayajña*, vii. 2. 1; *suhārdasa*, *durhārdasa*, JB. i. 269.

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³ i. 7.

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Of more philosophical interest are efforts made to render more precise the functions of the senses. Thus the Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad⁴ in the doctrine above cited, of eight graspers, or apprehenders (*grahas*), and eight that are beyond (*ati*) the graspers, gives as pairs Prāṇa and Apāna, the former being used to smell odours; speech and names; the tongue and tastes; the eye and visible forms (*rūpa*) (i. e. coloured extension); the ear and sounds; the mind and desires; the hands and action; and the skin and feelings of touch.⁵ In the Kauṣītaki⁶ we have speech and name as its external correlate; breath (i.e. smell) and odour; eye and visible form; the ear and sound; the tongue and tastes; the two hands and action; the body and pleasure and pain; the organ of generation and bliss, delight, and procreation; the two feet and movements; and the intellect and thoughts, what is to be understood, and desires. The Jaiminīya Upaniṣad Brāhmaṇa⁷ has a series of ten: mind and matters requiring examination (*parīkṣya*); speech (i. e. the tongue)⁸ and tastes; breath and odours; the eye and visible forms; the ear and sounds;

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⁴ iii. 2. 2–9.

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⁵ ii. 4. 11; iv. 5. 12 of the same text have further identifications; see above, p. 554.

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⁶ i. 7 (breath and names and mind and names are also given according to genders); cf. ii. 15, where there are variants in the two texts, see Hume's notes; in iii. 6 (see below) mind replaces intellect in one version, doubtless correctly.

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⁷ iv. 26.

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⁸ So in JB. i. 269, where Prāṇa covers smell (as in ÇB. x. 5. 2. 15; BAU. i. 3. 3; CU. i. 2. 2; AU. i. 3. 4; KU. i. 7; ii. 5, &c.), and beside ear, eye, smell, and tongue we find mind which discriminates *suhārdasa* and *durhārdasa*, that pleases and displeases the heart. The distinction of functions of mind into sense-perception and the functions of heart and mind (Barua, *Prebuddh. Ind. Phil.*, p. 178) attributed to Yājñavalkya and Mahidāsa is clearly not found either in the BAU. or AA. As in JB., *l. c.*, mind and heart are related as activity and organ in Buddhism; Rhys Davids, *Buddhist Manual of Psychological Ethics*², pp. lxxxvi f.; Keith, *Buddhist Philosophy*, pp. 87, 196.

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the skin and contacts (*saṁsparça*); the hands and actions; the belly and hunger; the penis and joys; and the feet and roads. These ten are for man either heavens or hells, according to their operation.

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Beyond these parallelisms the relation of sense and object is left undetermined. The use of the expressions Graha and Atigraha might be held to suggest the view that sense seeks out its object and masters it, and the same doctrine may be found in the Aitareya¹ and Kauṣītaki Upaniṣads.² In the Kaṭha Upaniṣad³ we find that the objects are placed above the senses, which might be the sense of the first element in Atigraha, but also that the senses are the steeds and the objects their field of action. A more penetrating analysis is to be found in another passage of the Kauṣītaki Upaniṣad,⁴ where a set of ten senses⁵ and their objects is drawn up, similar to that above cited. In it the objects are described as the external existential elements, Bhūtamātrā, correlated to the senses. The process of knowledge is then described by the metaphor of one mounting the object by means of intellect, Prajñā—which for the Kauṣītaki is the *prius* from which both senses and objects are derived—and thus attaining it. The senses are declared in similar detail to be unconscious without the presence of intelligence; the rule is applied even to mind, which here stands in the place of an organ and has as its object thoughts, what is to be understood, and desires. The passage, however, is characteristic of the somewhat complex and late character of the Upaniṣad, for the reason given why the other senses are unable to act without intellect is the fact that mind, in the absence of intellect, is elsewhere. Stress is laid on the necessary connexion of existential elements and intellect-elements, Prajñāmātrā; if there were no existential elements, there would be no intellect-elements and *vice versa*, and without the co-operation of both, no appearance (*rūpa*) whatever would be brought about, the term appearance doubtless standing here as an example of visual cognition and applying to all the other forms of cognition enumerated. At the same time insistence is laid on the fact that there is no ultimate diversity; as the felly rests on the spokes, and the spokes in the hub, so the existential elements rest on the intellect elements, and they again are fixed in Prāṇa, which is identified by the Upaniṣad with the intellect-self, Prajñātman.⁶

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¹ i. 3.

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² iii. 4.

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³ iii. 10 and 4.

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⁴ iii. 5 ff.

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⁵ Viz. speech and names; breath (smell) and odours; eye and forms; ear and sounds; tongue and tastes; hands and actions; body and pleasure and pain; organ of generation and bliss, &c.; feet and movements; mind and thoughts, &c.

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⁶ Deussen (*Sechzig Upanishad's*², p. 42) declares that the two are the expression of will, as unconscious and conscious (citing his *Elemente der Metaphysik*, Pt. II, chap. iv).

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This doctrine obviously is more metaphysical than psychological in interest, and goes a very little way to solve the question of the nature of perception or sensation. This is further borne out by the failure to make clear what is meant by senses as opposed to objects; later we find in the Sāṅkhya⁷ a distinct recognition of the difference between function and the material organ, the faculty of hearing, for example, and the gross ear, but such a distinction is nowhere hinted at in the Upaniṣads, and it is uncertain how the matter was regarded in them. In the later texts we find two different theories represented: on the one hand, in the Sāṁkhya philosophy¹ there is a consistent and harmonious materialism of process which, however, is made conscious only by the intervention of the Puruṣa, which is the equivalent in that system of the Ātman of the Vedānta. On the other hand, in the Vedānta, as interpreted by Gauḍapāda,² stress is laid on the fact that ultimately the visions of a dream and those of our waking state cannot be absolutely distinguished: if the dream apparitions are truly produced by the activity of the Ātman, so in the case of waking states the objects are equally produced by the Ātman: the thing and its representation condition each other: each separately has no existence: they exist only in the Ātman, a position which, though differentiated by Çaṅkara from the idealism of the Buddhist Vijñānavāda, tends indefinitely to merge into it.

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As against these clear theories, which recognize the problem of ideal and real or even material factors in knowledge and supply their varying solutions, we have in Buddhist texts³ of the earlier period a theory of contact which in the Milindapañha⁴ is frankly materialist and was doubtless so *ab initio*, but which at any rate seems not to have appreciated the real question involved. It is to this confused species of thought that we must in the main turn in considering the views of the Upaniṣads: the haziness of their ideas is shown conclusively by the fact that often, as later in Buddhism, organ and function seem hardly consciously to be separated in their conception of the activities of sense. Neither realism nor idealism can be said to be yet clearly held. If, as we have seen, in the Kauṣītaki Upaniṣad⁵ we find all existential elements, &c., referred to and made dependent on consciousness, i. e. apparently a subjective idealism, yet in the Mādhyandina recension of the Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad⁶ we expressly hear of the Ātman that after death it is not possessed of empirical consciousness, because it is not in contact with Mātrā, which is most naturally interpreted as a realist or materialist conception, somewhat like that of the Sāṁkhya, such consciousness arising from the contact of the mind and matter, but the term Mātrā may have a wider sense of all empirical existence.

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Similarly there is abundant evidence of a naïve realism, which places side by side the facts of the macrocosm and the microcosm without suggestion that there is any but a real relation. The parallelism of the cosmic order (*adhidaivata*) with the disposition of man (*adhyātma*) is constant and wearisome; the space within the heart is parallel to cosmic space;¹ the breath of man to the wind,² the speech to fire, the eye to the sun, the ear to the moon, the mind to the lightning;³ there are five cosmic spaces, five gods of nature, five classes of beings, and correspondingly we have five vital airs, five senses, five parts of the body;⁴ to name, form, and action in the world correspond speech, sight, and man in the individual;⁵ there is Dharma, law, and truth for the world and for the man, and the macrocosm and the microcosm are interrelated in an indissoluble union of reciprocal service and support.⁶ The general attitude of the Upaniṣads must, therefore, be described as realistic, and, accordingly, not incompatible with a rejection of the subjective idealism of the Vijñānavādins.

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Here and there this interpretation suggests itself with special force, as when it is expressly made clear that the Ātman is the real active force in seeing, in smelling, in speaking, in hearing, in thinking, and the senses are but means,⁷ or again the Ātman is pictured like the ocean as the abode of all the sense activities.⁸ From the Sāṁkhya view the Upaniṣads are distinguished in an important respect, the frank recognition accorded by them of the activity of the Ātman,⁹ while in the Sāṁkhya view the Puruṣa has really no activity, though paradoxically all consciousness is made to depend on the imaginary connexion of the Puruṣa with Prakṛti.

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⁷ But only in the late Sāṁkhya Sūtra, ii. 23; *cf.* Vijñānabhikṣu on i. 62 and v. 104; Garbe, *Sâṁkhya-Philosophie*², p. 320.

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¹ Oltramare, *L'histoire des idées théosophiques*, i. 271 ff.

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² Māṇḍūkya Kārikā, ii. 1–18; iv. 67; cf. AU. i. 3. 12.

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³ C. Rhys Davids, *Buddhist Psychology*, pp. 61 ff.; the account is speculative and the conjecture (p. 60) as to the significance of BAU. iii. 9. 20 purely fanciful. See Keith, *Buddhist Philosophy*, pp. 88 ff.

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⁴ p. 60.

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⁵ iii. 8.

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⁶ iv. 5. 14 (Kāṇva) omits the statement; Deussen, *Sechzig Upanishad's*², p. 485, n. 1. Cf. iv. 3. 9; in dream sleep the soul is in contact with matter, Mātrā.

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¹ CU. i. 8. 3.

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² CU. iv. 3. 1.

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³ KU. ii. 12 ff.

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⁴ TU. i. 7.

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⁵ BAU. i. 6.

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⁶ BAU. ii. 5.

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⁷ CU. viii. 12. 4.

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⁸ BAU. ii. 4. 11.

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⁹ e.g. BAU. iii. 7 *and passim*. The Vaiśeṣika school accepts the real activity of the self. See also above, § 6; Keith, *Indian Logic and Atomism*, pp. 239 ff.

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There is, naturally enough, no trace in the Upaniṣads of any clear appreciation of the distinction between mere sensation and ideas such as Dignāga made distinct in his doctrine of sensation as without operation of abstract thought (*kalpanāpoḍha*) as opposed to definite cognition (*savikalpaka*),¹⁰ though, in a sense, this distinction might be held to be latent in the contrast noted above of the senses and the mind as sources of knowledge. This fact renders it most improbable, *a priori*, that¹¹ ‘from the very beginning Buddhism had established this difference: *vijñāna* and its synonyms, *citta*, *manaḥ*, represent pure sensation, the same as the *kalpanāpoḍha pratyakṣa* of Dignāga, and *sañjñā* corresponds to definite ideas’. The realization of the possibility thus of treating Vijñāna in the scheme of the five Skandhas must have been slow; it is emphatically not reached by the Pāli texts of the Canon,¹ and, like all refined conceptions, can be attributed to early Buddhism only at the expense of historical truth.

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¹⁰ Keith, *Indian Logic and Atomism*, pp. 70 ff.

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¹¹ Stcherbatsky, *The Central Conception of Buddhism*, p. 19 (cf. p. 105). Neglect of history and philology has led the same scholar into the inaccurate view (p. 48) that Duḥkha means unrest among the elements (*dharmas*) which Buddhism alone admits to be real; Duḥkha clearly expresses the result of the instability of existence, not the instability. Both popularly and theoretically *cakṣur duḥkham* means that vision is sorrow, not that vision is unrest. The translation of *ārya-satya* as ‘Āryan facts’ adopted (*ibid*. p. 48, n. 3) is philologically objectionable, because we have not the slightest ground for belief that in the time when the phrase arose Ārya had any ethnic connotation at all.

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¹ Cf. C. Rhys Davids, *Buddhist Psychology*, pp. 52 ff.; Keith, *Buddhist Philosophy*, pp. 84 ff.; Oltramare, *L'histoire des idées théosophiques*, ii. 161 ff.

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Naturally it might be expected that from an examination of the relation of the Ātman to the questions of time and space some light would be cast on the aspect in which the Ātman was viewed. But unfortunately the account of time in the Upaniṣads is quite valueless from the point of view of philosophy: in the Atharvaveda we have Kāla set forth as the highest principle of the universe, and the waters and even Prajāpati are derived from it.² In the Upaniṣads we have little more than this: an affectedly obscure passage in the later part of the Maitrāyaṇīya Upaniṣad³ exalts time as being the Brahman, the highest principle, the source of all that is; the Çvetāçvatara⁴ mentions time, nature, necessity, accident, material, and spirit as various rival theories of being, but declares time as past, present, and future to be inferior to the Brahman; and the Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad⁵ derives time from the Brahman, and declares it to be lord of the past and the future. In the view of Çaṅkara,⁶ while time is absolutely non-existent in the true sense of existence, since all but the one is illusion, time, space and causality are in themselves on the standpoint of the lower knowledge truly real; but it is perfectly clear that in the case of the Upaniṣads the nature of time has not received any real investigation.

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² xix. 53, 54. For epic views, cf. Barua, *Prebuddh. Ind. Phil.*, pp. 198 ff.

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³ vi. 14–16 where time begins with the sun, a piece of shallow mysticism. Before that is impartite (as in ÇU.) non-time.

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⁴ vi. 5, 6; i. 2.

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⁵ iii. 8. 9; iv. 4. 15, 16.

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⁶ Cf. Frazer, *Indian Thought, Past and Present*, pp. 97, 98.

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A more favourable view of the achievement of early Indian philosophy is taken by F. Otto Schrader,⁷ who contends that the distinction between the ordinary or empiric and a higher or transcendental time can be traced back to the Kāla hymns of the Atharvaveda and is recognizable in the epic in such phrases⁸ as ‘Time leads me in time’. With this distinction he connects the declaration of the Maitrāyaṇīya Upaniṣad regarding the time that has parts, and is later than the sun and the stars, and the non-time which is without parts, and is earlier, and the distinction later made between time which cooks, or matures, all beings and him in whom time is matured. Later doubtless we do find developed the doctrine that the changing time which we observe in daily life is only time as an effect (*kāryakāla*), the cause of which is a time without sections (*akhaṇḍakāla*) and unchanging, and that there must be a sphere or condition which is totally unaffected by time, though time exist in it as an instrument. But there seems no real reason why we should ascribe any of these developed conceptions to the Upaniṣad period.¹

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⁷ *Ueber den Stand der indischen Philosophie zur Zeit Mahāvīras und Buddhas*, pp. 17–30; *Introduction to the Pāñcarātra*, pp. 65 f. Oldenberg (*Weltanschauung der Brāhmaṇatexte*, p. 40) recognizes that in the AV. Kāla may merely mean ‘the right moment’.

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⁸ Mahābhārata, xii. 227. 29. The phrase seems to be incapable of bearing any serious meaning.

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¹ For later views on time, see Keith, *Buddhist Philosophy*, pp. 163–8, 239; *Indian Logic and Atomism*, pp. 232 ff.; *Karma-Mīmāṁsā*, pp. 53 ff.; *Sāṁkhya System*², pp. 57, 61, 99. For an unsuccessful modern attempt to restate the problem of space and time, see Alexander, *Space, Time and Deity*.

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The same remark applies even more strongly to space, the conception of which can hardly be said to be fully apprehended in the Upaniṣads. The term Ākāça, which is rendered ‘ether’ in accordance with the established usage, denotes in the opinion of Böhtlingk² the empty space, the elements Vāyu and Ākāça, representing wind and atmosphere, corresponding to the Greek ἀήρ, there being no idea to correspond with the ether of the Greek view. The Ākāça was conceived, in his view, as empty space, the atmosphere as opposed to the wind not being regarded as corporeal. Whether this view is correct cannot be determined with certainty from the evidence: it can be made compatible with whatever is said regarding Ākāça, but on the other hand it is not clear that this conception is always adequate. The term Ākāça first appears in the Brāhmaṇa style, and denotes room or space through which one can pass or into which one can thrust a finger.³ Further, the space between the sky and the earth when they separated is the Antarikṣa or atmosphere,⁴ and, in contrast to the wind, Vāyu, which as an element is normally rendered air, at the cost of some confusion of idea, the atmosphere is regarded as something empty, being compared in the Taittirīya Saṁhitā⁵ to not-being. On the other hand, just as not-being is in a sense something concrete, the Ākāça is more than mere space. Man, the Kauṣītaki⁶ tells us, is born from the Ākāça as from a womb; when fire heats the Ākāça, then rain falls, in the view of the Chāndogya;⁷ the Taittirīya⁸ makes the Ākāça born from the self, and from the Ākāça the wind is born. Yet in it are the sun and the moon, lightning, stars and fire; by means of it one calls, hears and answers; in it a man is born, and has joy; in it he meets a woman.⁹ Thus the Ākāça approaches the sense of space, though a material space, but it seems that it does not denote space in the most general sense, but rather the space between the sky and the earth, which is around us.¹⁰ The idea is evidently a considerable advance on the mythological presentation of the quarters as divinities, which tends here and there to pass over into an attempt to express space as opposed to time, symbolized by the seasons.¹¹ The combination of the terms, Diç and Ākāça, appears in the Maitrāyaṇīya Upaniṣad,¹² which describes Ākāça as a lotus flower whose leaves are the four quarters and the four intermediate quarters or cardinal points. We have, however, in the fact that ether is treated regularly as one of the five elements a warning against regarding it as essentially distinct in the view of the Upaniṣads from the other more obvious material elements.¹ Yet it must be noted that in Buddhism no serious advance was made in attempting to understand the nature of space; it was for some unintelligible reason excluded from non-derived Rūpa,² and, when the Andhakas claimed that the room between objects was perceptible, this view was rejected, a defect which has been traced to the failure of Buddhism to investigate the true function of mind.³

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² BSGW. 1900, pp. 149–51. Cf. Garbe, *Sâṁkhya-Philosophie*², pp. 268 f.

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³ AB. iii. 42. 1; ÇB. iii. 3. 2. 19; in the body, Garbha Up. 1 (cf. AA. ii. 3. 3); Majjh. Nik. iii. 242.

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⁴ ÇB. vii. 1. 2. 23; xiv. 7. 1. 19.

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⁵ v. 4. 6. 4.

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⁶ i. 6.

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⁷ vii. 11.

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⁸ ii. 1.

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⁹ CU. vii. 12; Kena 25.

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¹⁰ Oldenberg, *Weltanschauung der Brāhmaṇatexte*, pp. 38 f.

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¹¹ ÇB. x. 2. 6. 2 f.

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¹² vi. 2.

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¹ So also the Ākāça is the body of the Ātman like fire, wind, moon, and stars, BAU. iii. 7. 12; *cf.* iv. 4. 5.

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² C. Rhys Davids, *Buddhist Manual of Psychological Ethics*², pp. liv, lxvi.

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³ *Buddhist Psychology* (1924), pp. 274 ff. See also Keith, *Buddhist Philosophy*, pp. 94 f., 160, 168 f., 185 f.; *Indian Logic and Atomism*, pp. 235 ff.; *Karma-Mīmāṁsā*, pp. 53 ff.; *Sāṁkhya System*², pp. 43, 99.

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The position with regard to causality is the same. In the Sāṅkhya system and in the Buddhist the category of causality is regarded as truly existing, and the Sāṅkhya quite seriously applies the doctrine of causality as enabling it to determine the nature of its final principles: the things of empirical life are referred ultimately to one ground in nature, Prakṛti, while again the unfolding of nature is essentially relative to some principle for whose advantage it takes place, which is the Puruṣa. In the Upaniṣads a theory of causality is not to be found, and the early texts have not the term, Kāraṇa; nor is this remarkable: in effect the Brahman is essentially above all cause: when the categories of place, time, substance, and cause disappear, then the Brahman remains over, as it is said in a very late text.⁴ The Chāndogya Upaniṣad⁵ uses the idea of root and shoot to convey the idea of derivation.

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⁴ Sarvasāropaniṣad.

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⁵ vi. 8. 4, 6.

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Imperfect, however, as are the views of the Upaniṣads on these points, the defects of their theories must not be exaggerated. The amount of progress made in developing speculation on these questions for many centuries after was very slight, as can be seen from even a brief glance at the Buddhist theory of sense as developed in the Pāli Nikāyas. In that theory the chief difference is unquestionably the effort to do without a self at all, which was clearly one aspect of the Buddhist faith, though by no means the only aspect and certainly in the long run not the most important. But apart from the *odium theologicum*⁶ it is impossible to grant this attempt any real validity at all:⁷ it would have been easy to show that the conception of the Ātman attained by the Brahmans was inadequate, but it was merely a retrogression to solve the problem by ignoring its existence: there is nothing in the Nikāyas to suggest the most moderate competence in treating of the matter, the whole Buddhist position being rendered easy by the illegitimate assumption, whenever necessary, of the subject which is denied. It is an elementary fact that a sensation is nothing if not an experience for an individual being, and, while for a definite scientific purpose we are doubtless free, if we will, to ignore the subjective factor, if we carry this ignoring into the field of philosophy, we deal with a false abstraction; nor is it less false because it has appealed to the enthusiastic, but confused mind of William James.¹ The Upaniṣads frankly do not face the question of memory, but leave it a possibility. But even in the Abhidhamma the problem of reinstatement and the conditions of reinstatement are not raised as matters calling for definition.² If even we go to a far later period, a formula³ like ‘the upspringing of potential *cittas*, not empty and mutually disconnected, but each fraught with the informing *satti* of this or that among former *citta continua*’, appears both clumsy and question-begging as a substitute for the conception of a real unity in multiplicity, since a *citta continuum* is clearly impossible without such a unity.

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⁶ *Cf.* Rhys Davids, *Buddhist India*, pp. 251 ff.

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⁷ It may be urged that the view of the Buddhists has an analogy—imperfect indeed—in modern psychology (Walleser, *Das Problem des Ich*, p. 74). But this proves the essential point that modern psychology is, as developed, an empirical science and therefore abstracts from its data by ignoring the transcendental aspect of the ‘I’ element. When as in Buddhism this aspect is absolutely denied, a process legitimate in science is introduced with fatal results into philosophy.

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¹ In the various developments of his theory of pragmatism.

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² C. Rhys Davids, *Buddhist Psychology*, p. 142; cf. pp. 236 ff., and for a criticism of the Bergsonian view there adopted, B. Edgell, *Theories of Memory*, pp. 114 ff.

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³ *Ibid.* p. 198.

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Nor is any progress made in the analysis of consciousness. It is true⁴ that in place of the occasional remarks of the Upaniṣads we find in the Buddhist texts interminable repetitions of the same facts regarding all the senses which are, therefore, more definitely recognized than in some portions of the Upaniṣads, but any real progress in defining sense perception remains to be pointed out. On the contrary, we have the old view which makes no clear distinction if any at all between the organ and the sensation, and as late as the Milindapañha, as we have seen, sensation is expressed in terms of mere material contact. The position of mind, Mano, remains precisely what it was in the Upaniṣads: it is wholly erroneous⁵ to compare it with the *sensus communis* of Aristotle, whose two special functions,⁶ that of self-consciousness and of consciousness of the common sensibles, by no means correspond with those of Mano, which is rather in origin a power without which the senses would in effect not perceive at all, and which in a more effective psychology might have been developed into the psychical representative of sensation conveyed through the physiological apparatus.⁷ Even the position of touch as in some sense the most fundamental of the senses which is claimed for the Dhammasaṅgaṇi can hardly be accepted as in any way a really scientific theory, as it is only enunciated in company with an extraordinarily unintelligible doctrine of the position of what is somewhat hypothetically interpreted as the cohesive element.⁸ The primitive nature of the process of consciousness as conceived in the Nikāyas is obvious from the stereotyped account of the origin of knowledge.¹ Through the eye and visible form arises visual consciousness : the collision of the two factors is contact : conditioned by contact arises feeling : what one feels one perceives : what one perceives one thinks about : what one thinks about one is obsessed withal. The crudeness and valuelessness of the theory is obvious at once from the very fact that it is wholly impossible to understand what precise sense was attributed to the several terms, for the explanations of the scholiast are in all likelihood nothing but the interpretations of later generations of thinkers, who had to do their best to make the most out of the tradition of the text. The Buddhists too remain with the Upaniṣads on the basis of the dwelling of the soul or its equivalent in the heart,² which is thus brought into the theory of sensation. What is indeed of interest is not the development of doctrine in the Nikāyas, which give us only a few changes in terminology such as the metaphor of the doors of the senses,³ but the extraordinary persistence in Buddhism of the psychology of the Upaniṣads.

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⁴ *Ibid.* p. 63.

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⁵ *Ibid.* p. 68.

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⁶ *De An.* ii. 6; iii. 1, 2; *de Somno* 2; *de Mem.* 1.

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⁷ Cf. the hint in BAU. i. 5. 3; Mahābhārata, xiv. 22. 16.

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⁸ Contrast C. Rhys Davids, *op. cit.*, pp. 163–75, with *Buddhist Manual of Psychological Ethics*², pp. lxi ff.

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¹ Majjhima Nikāya, i. 111. It is, however, to be noted that in the Paṭiccasamuppāda series is found the order : consciousness, name and form, the six spheres, contact, feeling, desire, &c. The hopeless contradiction of view is disposed of in the *Manual* (ed. 2) in the words (p. lxxxii), ‘This mysterious old rune must not further complicate our problem’, and in the *Psychology* it is passed over with due contempt. But to establish doctrines by ignoring the most important part of the evidence does not further research. See also Keith, *Buddhist Philosophy*, pp. 196 ff.

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² *Buddhist Manual of Psychological Ethics*², p. lxxxvi ; Wallesser, *Die philosophische Grundlage des älteren Buddhismus*, p. 114 ; S. Z. Aung, *Compendium of Philosophy*, pp. 277 ff.

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³ But the CU. iii. 13. 1 has *suṣayaḥ* for the entrances into the heart of eye, ear, speech, mind, and air.

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In addition to the mind and the sense organs, the soul possesses the breaths or vital airs. Prāṇa, originally ‘breath’, then used often as a name for the absolute, is in the Upaniṣads a constant expression for the whole sum of the organs of sense, and at the same time a special one breath, beside eye, ear, mind, and speech. It, however, in the growing development of the doctrine of mind and the organs of sense is gradually reduced to minor importance, and becomes concerned not with the intellectual aspect of the soul, but with the principle of life as opposed to intellect. The single Prāṇa in this aspect is divided into five, which, however, are also sometimes given as two,⁴ Prāṇa and Apāna, as three,⁵ these with Vyāna, or four,⁶ these with Udāna. The Jaiminīya Upaniṣad Brāhmaṇa gives Prāṇa, Apāna, Vyāna, Samāna, Avāna, and Udāna ; or seven in the head, or nine, including two below, and a tenth in the navel.⁷ The precise sense of these terms has been much disputed, but it is not open to serious doubt that alone Prāṇa or Apāna may mean breath simply, whether in or out, and therefore Prāṇa may mean smell.⁸ In contrast, however, they are on the one hand expiration, on the other inspiration. Apāna, however, has the definite sense of the downward wind, which presides over evacuation in not a few passages; it also often denotes smell. Vyāna is the bond of union of the two, that is either the power which maintains life when neither expiration nor inspiration takes place, or the breath connecting the upper and the lower breaths. Samāna is not clearly defined: it is said to connect expiration and inspiration, which seems needless; or to assimilate food. Udāna conducts the soul from the body on death, or leads in deep sleep to the Brahman.

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⁴ KU. v. 3.

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⁵ BAU. iii. 1. 10.

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⁶ BAU. iii. 4. 1.

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⁷ JUB. ii. 5.

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⁸ Ewing, *JAOS.* xxii. 249–308, and *The Hindu Conception of the Functions of Breath*; Oertel, *JAOS.* xvi. 236 ; Macdonell and Keith, *Vedic Index*, ii. 48 ; Keith, *Aitareya Āraṇyaka*, p. 217, n. 4 ; Caland, *ZDMG.* lv. 261 ff. ; lvi. 556 ff.; Oldenberg, *Weltanschauung der* *Brāhmaṇatexte*, pp. 64 ff. The later view of Sadānanda's *Vedāntasāra*, §§ 94–8, is preluded by Maitr. ii. 6.

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But, besides these psychical and physiological elements, in the later view, the soul has, as individual, certain other permanent entities, the elements, and a mind-disposition attached to it. It is clearly¹ in one place regarded at death as being connected with earth, water, wind, ether, and fire and its opposite, and also with desire and its opposite, anger and its opposite, and justice and its opposite, as well as with the organs. The same idea seems in metaphorical form to be found in the view² that for rebirth the waters are five times offered in sacrifice as faith, the Soma, rain, food, and seed to become a man. The term Liṅga found in a verse added here is apparently used technically to denote the entity which transmigrates as early as the Kaṭha³ at least, and in the Maitrāyaṇīya Upaniṣad⁴ it has its full technical sense. Much more often, however, we hear of the moral qualities and power of remembrance of the self which go on the journey of transmigration.

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¹ *BAU.* iv. 4. 5.

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² *CU.* v. 3–10; *BAU.* vi. 2. 1–16. These passages (Deussen, *Phil. of Up.*, pp. 280–2) are inadequate to show that the corporeal element of the Liṅga was as yet clearly recognized. It is so first in Maitr. vi. 10; here we, however, must recognize the full force of the Sāṁkhya, to which system its presence in the Vedānta may be due (cf. Çaṅkara on *Brahma Sūtra*, iii. 3. 1; Deussen, *System des Vedānta*, p. 399).

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³ vi. 8; *ÇU.* vi. 9.

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⁴ vi. 10; Deussen, *Sechzig Upanishad's*², p. 337.

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Of the gross body we learn that the seat of the breaths, of the mind, and even of the organs of sense is really in the heart, where in sleep the organs remain and where in death they gather: nay, the heart is even identified with the Brahman, and is essentially its home: the name *hṛdayam* is derived from *hṛdy ayam*, ‘he here in the heart’.⁵ In the golden lotus of the heart is the ether in which heaven and earth, sun, moon, and stars are enclosed, into which the soul enters in sleep, and in which the immortal golden Puruṣa resides.¹ It is the cavity in which the Brahman is concealed. Round the heart are the veins 72,000 in number,² and these, by another turn of thought, are conceived as of five colours, uniting with the rays of the sun similarly coloured and thus connecting the sun and the heart. In deep sleep the soul glides into the veins and through them it becomes one with the heart. At death the soul is conceived as passing out by the veins, and the rays of the sun, which the wise find open to them, while the entrance is closed to the ignorant.³ By yet another turn of thought⁴ the conception is reached that only one vein leads to the sun out of 101, the vein in question leading to the head, presumably in connexion with the fact that there is the suture, the Brahmarandhra,⁵ through which in the process of creation the Brahman is supposed to enter the body as spirit. Later accounts such as that of the Praçna⁶ merge the two versions of 72,000 and 101 veins into one, the 101 veins having each 100 branches, each of which has 72,000 sub-branches, in all 727,210,201.

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⁵ *CU.* viii. 3. 3. Cf. *BAU.* iv. 4. 22; v. 6; *KU.* ii. 20, &c. In *BAU.* iii. 9. 20 the heart knows colours, doubtless through the mind which is seated there. This is the only possible significance of the contrast between it and the eye which depends on forms while they depend on the heart; there is no distinction between primary and secondary qualities in question. From the connexion of mind with the heart is derived the Theravādin (BSOS. iii. 353) view which places a *hadaya-vatthu* as the organ of mind, evidently the older Buddhist view as opposed to the refinement of the Sarvāstivādin (contrast Stcherbatsky, *The Central Conception of Buddhism*, pp. 17 f.). Heart is placed side by side with mind as concerned with knowledge in *BAU.* ii. 4. 11; iv. 5. 12, i.e. it is the place of intellect.

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¹ CU. viii. 1. 3.

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² BAU. ii. 1. 19; cf. iv. 2. 3; 3. 20.

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³ CU. viii. 6. 1; cf. BAU. iv. 4. 8, 9; Muṇḍ. i. 2. 11.

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