The Religion and Philosophy of the Veda and Upanishads v2.c40.s8.22

v2.c40.s8.22

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