The Religion and Philosophy of the Veda and Upanishads v2.c40.s8.87

v2.c40.s8.87

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