Indian Philosophy v1.c12: Chapter II

Indian Philosophy v1.c12

Language: English

Chapter II

v1.c12.1

*Page 64.*—The hymns included in the Ṛg Veda, it is generally held, were composed in the north-west of India. See Macdonell: *Sanskrit Literature*, p. 40.

v1.c12.2

*Page 66.*—Arnold takes as the main criteria of the fivefold division, metre, language and vocabulary.

v1.c12.3

*Page 67.*—Regarding the age of the Veda, Professor Winternitz sums up the results of his investigations thus:—

1. Buddhism and Jainism presuppose the whole of the Veda. If, as it is probable, the origin of the Jaina religion goes back to Pārśva, the predecessor of Mahāvīra, the Veda must have been completed and considered as the sacred texts of Brahmanism as early as the eighth century B.C.

v1.c12.5

2. The hymns of the Ṛgveda are older than all the rest of Indian literature.

v1.c12.6

3. The origin and growth of the Ṛgveda-Saṃhitā requires a long time, several centuries.

v1.c12.7

4. The Ṛgveda-Saṃhitā is considerably older than the Atharvaveda-Saṃhitā and the Yajurveda-Saṃhitā.

v1.c12.8

5. All the Saṃhitās are older than the Brāhmaṇas.

v1.c12.9

6. Both the Brāhmaṇas and the Upaniṣads need a long time for their development.
7. The close relationship between the language of the Vedic Saṃhitās on the one hand and Avesta and Old Persian on the other, does not allow us to date the beginning of the Vedic period back into a hoary age of many thousands to say nothing of millions of years B.C.
8. On the other hand, the facts of political, religious and literary history require a period of at least a thousand years and probably more between the earliest hymns of the Ṛgveda and the latest parts of the old Upaniṣads and the rise of Buddhism.
9. It is not possible to give any definite date for the beginning of Vedic poetry. We do not know more for certain than that Vedic literature began at some unknown time in the past and extended up to the eighth century.
10. But it is more probable that this unknown time of the beginning of the Vedic literature was nearer 2500 or 2000 B.C. than to 1500 or 1200 B.C. (Calcutta Review, November 1923.)

v1.c12.10

The recent finds at Harappa in the Punjab and Mohenjo Daro in Sind throw additional light on the antiquity of the Indian civilisation. We have now definite archæological evidence to show that 5000 years ago, the peoples of Sind and the Punjab were living in well-built cities and had a relatively developed civilisation with a high standard of art and craftsmanship and a developed system of writing. The Punjab and Sind antiquities include "houses and temples massively built of burnt brick and provided with well-constructed water conduits covered by marble slabs." Besides a variety of potteries, both painted and plain, some fashioned by the hand and some turned on the wheel, toys and bangles of blue glass, paste and shell, we have a number of engraved and inscribed seals bearing inscriptions in a hitherto unknown pictographic script. Sir John Marshall, the Director-General of Archæology, writes that these discoveries "have established once for all the existence on Indian soil in the third millennium B.C. of a civilisation as highly developed and seemingly as widespread as the Sumerian culture of Mesopotamia, with conclusive evidence of a close contact between the two." Though it is too soon to say anything definite about the connection of India and Mesopotamia in the third millennium B.C., these finds may perhaps furnish some clue to the Dravidian problem.

v1.c12.11

Page 72.—The word "deva" is connected with the Latin deus and is referred to a root meaning "to shine." The Nirukta definition is late.

v1.c12.12

Pages 73-4.—Yāska states in his Nirukta that many of the Vedic mantras admit of ādhibhautika (physical), ādhidaivika (religious) and ādhyātmika (spiritual) interpretations. Agni, for example, signifies fire on the physical plane, the priest god on the religious, and the great effulgence of God on the spiritual plane. When the natural forces were addressed, the devotee had in mind the underlying power and not the physical fact.

v1.c12.13

*Page 75, n. 1.*—The language spoken in the early Vedic period was a prior stage of what in a later age and probably in a different locality became Sanskrit (classical).

v1.c12.14

*Page 78.*—Ṛta is a conception that goes back to the Indo-Iranian period.

v1.c12.15

*Page 85.*—Indra was already known in the Indo-Iranian period. See Keith: *The Religion and Philosophy of the Veda*, vol. i, p. 133.

v1.c12.16

*Page 89.*—In the hymn to Vāk (x. 125), we find the conception of an immanent word, a force which dwells and operates in all things and in which unconsciously all men have their being.

v1.c12.17

*Page 99.*—In the R.V., where the interest is mainly cosmological, “sat” means the world of objects or experience and “asat” refers to the non-being or the primitive undifferentiated condition of things, which is the antecedent of the present world-order; cp. also *Tait. Up.*, ii. 7, where “sat” or the world of name and form is said to be born of “asat” or non-being.

v1.c12.18

*Page 102.*—In the Orphic cosmogony, the idea is found that in the beginning was the primeval water, from it arose an egg, and out of this proceeded the first creature, the god Phanes. See Nilsson: *A History of Greek Religion*, p. 73.

v1.c12.19

*Page 107.*—The ideas of iṣṭa (or what is given in sacrifice) and pūrta (or what is given as presents to the priests) (R.V., x. 14. 8) contain the germs of later ceremonialism. Iṣṭāpūrta is said to have a distinct substantial being with which we get united after death. It stands for the merit or demerit which we earn by our pious activities. The doctrine of karma is much influenced by this idea.

Cites (2)

Ṛgvedasaṃhitā — Sanskrit
Taittirīyopaniṣad — Sanskrit