The Religion and Philosophy of the Veda and Upanishads v2.c41.21

v2.c41.21

The actual proof of influence must, therefore, be derived from internal evidence, the comparison of the two systems. Garbe lays stress on the fact that Xenophanes teaches that the universe is one (εἷς θεὸς ἔν τε θεοῖσι καὶ ἀνθρώποισι μέγιστος), eternal and without change, and that Parmenides writes in verse, and holds that reality is due alone to this universal being, neither created nor to be destroyed, and omnipresent, that everything which is subject to change is unreal, and that thinking and being are identical.¹ He admits that the identity of thinking and being, and the insistence on the unreality of the universe, can be proved as a definite doctrine in India only from texts later than Parmenides; but he insists that the doctrines are implicit in the Upaniṣads, and that they, therefore, may justly be deemed to have been the sources of the Eleatic philosophy. It might be added that the two philosophies are alike in the fact that they both realize that the nature of the absolute must be deemed in some way to be intellectual, however little either is able to make the nature of that intellectual character intelligible.