Pramāṇa · Search · About · API

Indian Philosophy v1.c8.s14: VII Eschatology

Indian Philosophy v1.c8.s14

Language
English

Contents

VII Eschatology

v1.c8.s14.2.1

In the Brāhmaṇas we do not find any one view about the future life. The distinction between the path of the fathers and that of the devas is given.³ Rebirth on earth is sometimes looked upon as a blessing and not an evil to be escaped from. It is promised as a reward for knowing some divine mystery.⁴ But the most dominant view is that of immortality in heaven, the abode of the gods. "He who sacrifices thus obtains perpetual prosperity and renown and conquers for himself a union with the two gods Āditya and Agni and an abode in the same sphere."⁵ Particular sacrifices enable us to reach the spheres of particular gods.⁶ Even the stars are regarded as the abode of the dead. It is individual existence, though in a better world, that is the aim still. "In the Brāhmaṇas immortality, or at least longevity, is promised to those who rightly understand and practise the rites of sacrifice, while those who are deficient in this respect depart before time to the next world where they are weighed in a balance,¹ and receive good and evil according to their deeds. The more sacrifices any one has offered, the more ethereal is the body he obtains, or as the Brāhmaṇa expresses it,² the more rarely does he need to eat.

v1.c8.s14.2.2

In other texts, on the contrary,³ it is promised as the highest reward that the pious man shall be born in the next world, with his entire body, sarva tanūḥ.⁴ Thus far the difference between the Vedic and the Brāhmaṇical views is that while according to the Ṛg-Veda the sinner is reduced to nothing while the virtuous obtain immortality, in the Brāhmaṇas both are born again to undergo the results of their actions. As Weber puts it: "Whereas in the oldest times immortality in the abodes of the blessed, where milk and honey flow, is regarded as the reward of virtue or wisdom, whilst the sinner or the fool is, after a short life, doomed to the annihilation of the personal existence, the doctrine of the Brāhmaṇas is that after death all are born again, in the next world, where they are recompensed according to their deeds, the good being rewarded and the wicked punished."⁵ The suggestion is that there is only one life after this, and its nature is determined by our conduct here. "A man is born into the world which he has made."⁶ "Whatever food a man eats in this world by that food he is eaten in the next world."⁷ Good and evil deeds find their corresponding rewards and punishments in a future life. Again: "Thus have they done to us in yonder world, and so we do to them again in this world."⁸ Gradually the idea of an equalising justice developed.

v1.c8.s14.2.3

The world of the fathers, as in the Ṛg-Veda, was one of the ways, but the distinction arose between the Vedic gods and their world and the way of the fathers and their world of retributive justice. We have not yet the idea of a recurrence of births in the other world and expiations for actions done on earth. But the question cannot be avoided whether the wicked suffer eternal punishment and the good enjoy eternal bliss. "To men of the mild disposition and reflective spirit of the Indians it would not appear that reward and punishment could be eternal. They would conceive that it must be possible by atonement and purification to become absolved from the punishment of the sins committed in this short life. And in the same way they could not imagine that the reward of virtues practised during the same brief period could continue for ever.” When we finish experiencing our rewards and punishments, it is suggested that we die to that life and are reborn on earth. The natural rhythm by which life gives birth to death and death to life leads us to the conception of a beginningless and endless circuit.¹ The true ideal becomes redemption from the bondage of life and death or release from saṃsāra. “He who sacrifices to the gods does not gain so great a world as he who sacrifices to the Ātman.”² “He who reads the Vedas is freed from dying again and attains to a sameness of nature with Brahman.”³ Death with birth for its cause seems to have become a thing to be avoided.

v1.c8.s14.2.4

Later we find the conception that those who merely perform rites without knowledge are born again and repeatedly become the food of death.⁴ In another passage⁵ there is suggested the Upaniṣad conception of a higher state than that of desire and its fulfilment, the condition of true immortality. “This soul is the end of all this. It abides in the midst of all the waters; it is supplied with all objects of desire; it is free from desire, and possesses all objects of desire, for it desires nothing.” “By knowledge men ascend to that condition in which desires have passed away. Thither gifts do not reach nor austere devotees who are destitute of knowledge. For one who does not possess this knowledge does not attain that world by gifts or by rigorous abstention. It pertains only to those who have such knowledge.”⁶ The Brāhmaṇas contain all the suggestions necessary for the development of the doctrine of rebirth. They are, however, only suggestions, while individual immortality is the main tendency. It is left for the Upaniṣads to systematise these suggestions into the doctrine of rebirth. While the conceptions of karma and rebirth are unquestionably the work of the Aryan mind, it need not be denied that the suggestions may have come from the aborigines, who believed that after death their souls lived in animal bodies.

v1.c8.s14.3

³ Ibid., vi. 6. 2. 4.

v1.c8.s14.4

⁴ Ibid., i. 5. 3.1 4.

v1.c8.s14.5

⁵ Ibid., xi. 6. 2. 5.

v1.c8.s14.6

⁶ Ibid., ii. 6. 4. 8.

v1.c8.s14.7

¹ xi. 2. 7. 33.

v1.c8.s14.8

² x. 1. 5. 4.

v1.c8.s14.9

³ iv. 6. 1. 1; xi. 1. 8. 6; xii. 8. 3. 31.

v1.c8.s14.10

⁴ Weber quoted in J.R.A.S., i. 1865, 306 ff.

v1.c8.s14.11

⁵ Ibid.

v1.c8.s14.12

⁶ Śat. Brāh., vi. 2. 2. 27. Kṛtaṁ lokaṁ puruṣo'bhiyāyate.

v1.c8.s14.13

⁷ Śat. Brāh., xii. 9. 11.

v1.c8.s14.14

⁸ Śat. Brāh., ii. 6.

v1.c8.s14.15

¹ See Aitareya Brāh., iii. 44.

v1.c8.s14.16

² xi. 2. 6.

v1.c8.s14.17

³ x. 5. 6. 9.

v1.c8.s14.18

⁴ Śat. Brāh., x. 4. 3. 10. See also x. 1. 4. 14; x. 2. 6. 19; x. 5. 1. 4; xi. 4. 3. 20.

v1.c8.s14.19

⁵ x. 5. 4. 15.

v1.c8.s14.20

⁶ Śaṃkara refers to this passage in his Commentary on the Vedānta Sūtras to show how near to his own view this position is.

v1.c8.s14.21

In spite of suggestions of a higher ethics and religion, it must be said that the age was, on the whole, one of Pharisaism, in which people were more anxious about the completion of their sacrifices than the perfection of their souls. There was need for a restatement of the spiritual experience, the central meaning of which was obscured by a legalistic code and conventional piety. This the Upaniṣads undertake.

v1.c8.s14.22

REFERENCES.

v1.c8.s14.23

BLOOMFIELD : The Atharva-Veda, S.B.E., vol. xliii. EGGELING : Śatapatha Brāhmaṇa, S.B.E., vol. xii., Introduction. HOPKINS : The Religions of India, chap. ix.

Cites (2)