The Religion and Philosophy of the Veda and Upanishads v2.c41.23

Language: English

v2.c41.23.1

When these resemblances are pointed out, however, all that can be said for the theory is said: there is no ground to assume borrowing: the clearness of the position of Parmenides regarding the nature of the one is much more pronounced than the view of the Upaniṣads, and the identification of thought and the object is carried beyond the views of the Upaniṣads, while by his view of truth and opinion as distinct Parmenides anticipates Indian thought. It is, therefore, far more probable that the Greek and the Indian views were of independent origin: the Greek bears already the mark of definiteness which is only evolved centuries later in the Indian thought, and it is also aided by its freedom from the mythological connexions, which weigh so heavily on the thought of the Upaniṣads. The fact that the Brahman is identified with thought is by no means the same thing as the idea that thought and its object are identical, a doctrine of Parmenides² which duly modified is brought to its most complete form in the theory of Aristotle.³ Nor is it of any value to cite the fact that Thales's view of the origin in water of everything is much later than the Vedic conception of the waters as the primeval form of existence. The idea is not only Babylonian but is a singularly simple one, as found in primitive religion, and must have been natural to primitive man: it is even possible to trace in theory the mode in which he arrived at this result.

v2.c41.23.2

Similarly it is idle to compare the primitive matter (ἄπειρον) of Anaximander, which is indefinite and into which things pass again as they have emerged from it, new worlds arising and passing away, with the matter of the Sāṁkhya school: apart from the fact that the nature of the Sāṁkhya is not shown to be as old a conception as Anaximander, and that it is essentially possessed of three constituents, and even rectifying the theory by placing in the position of Prakṛti the vague conception of the Brāhmaṇas as to the primitive nature of the universe, the parallelism is far too weak to be of any value as proof.

v2.c41.23.3

In the case of Herakleitos the argument is even more unsatisfactory: the doctrine of the constant flux of things (πάντα ῥεῖ) is certainly comparable with the movement of nature in the Sāṅkhya system and to some degree in Buddhism, and his belief in the innumerable annihilations and re-creations of the universe may be compared with the view of the Sāṁkhya of the destruction and re-creation of the world.¹ But, apart from the fact that the comparison of the doctrine of constant movement with the Sāṁkhya system of the development of Prakṛti is far from important, in view of the complete distinction between the two ideas of development, it must be pointed out once more that the Sāṁkhya system is not proved to be, and most probably was not by any means, as early as the system of Herakleitos, and the doctrine of the periodic destruction of the universe, which is probably caused in India by the doctrine of transmigration, is not recorded in one of the older Upaniṣads, and is clearly a late development; Garbe himself rejects the theory that it is known to the Atharvaveda.² It is hardly necessary to add that it is quite out of the question to regard Empedokles as borrowing from India his view that nothing can arise from nothing: the same view is undoubtedly held by the Sāṁkhya, but is as emphatically not normally held by the Upaniṣads.

v2.c41.23.4

Nor is it of any importance that the character of that teacher as a prophet, a magician, a believer in purification, and a mystic is comparable with certain types of Indian sage. The view that the world is incapable of producing similar figures under similar or even different circumstances is one which must be proved first before mere similarities prove anything, and Empedokles’ claim to be a god, degraded to earth, is un-Indian, being derived from the Orphic doctrine of man’s defilement. The fact that a dislike to flesh as food sprung up among the believers in transmigration like Empedokles is perfectly true:³ it is, however, striking that in India itself the belief was of more tardy appearance as at all general than the date of Empedokles,⁴ and was not so far as we can see caused by the doctrine of transmigration. The great sage, Yājñavalkya, with whose name the doctrines of the Upaniṣads are mainly connected, was a beef-eater with decided views as to the condition in which he ate it. It is also argued that the position of the gods in the view of Demokritos, who holds with Empedokles that nothing arises from nothing, is precisely the position of the gods in Indian thought, as seen in the Upaniṣads, where they cease to be anything more considerable than a number of superior beings, not very essentially different from men. But this argument is clearly of no weight.