The Religion and Philosophy of the Veda and Upanishads v2.c40.s8.91

v2.c40.s8.91

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