A Constructive Survey of Upanishadic Philosophy c13.s6: VI. Essays and Works
A Constructive Survey of Upanishadic Philosophy c13.s6
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VI. Essays and Works
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There are a number of important essays and systematic treatises connected with either a part or the whole of Upanishadic Philosophy. We must begin by noting a somewhat brilliant idea in Otto Wecker's *Der Gebrauch der Kasus in der älteren Upanishad-literatur*, Tübingen, 1905, wherein by a consideration of the various cases in ten of the principal Upanishads he comes at a chronological order of the Upanishads relative to the age of Pāṇini. This is rather an important idea; for, Pāṇini seems to have flourished before the Upanishadic era had faded away, and therefore, some Upanishads wherein the Pāṇinian uses do not occur may safely be taken to be pre-Pāṇini, while others where they do occur may be taken to be post-Pāṇini. With this important hint, Wecker arranges the Upanishads in four groups; Group one consists of the Bṛihadāraṇyaka, the Chhāndogya, and the Kaushītaki; Group two, of the Aitareya, the Taittirīya, and the Kaṭha; Group three, of the Kena, and the Īśa; Group four, of the Svetāśvatara and the Maitri. The first two are evidently pre-Pāṇini, the third possibly pre-Pāṇini, while the last is post-Pāṇini. In fact, this procedure of Wecker, in which he tries to arrive at a date of the Upanishads from a grammatical point of view is far more valid than that which avails itself of the presence or absence of the idea of Transmigration which we have noted in the first chapter of this work. One wonders why the idea of Incarnation has not been similarly requisitioned for such purposes. In an essay on *The Dramatic Element in the Upanishads* in the Monist, 1910, Charles Johnston discusses certain dialogues from the Bṛihadāraṇyaka, the Chhāndogya, and other Upanishads. A. H. Ewing writes a study in Upanishadic psycho-physics by considering the *Hindu conception of the function of Breath*. Dr. Betty Heimann offers a review of the Upanishadic speculations on deep-sleep in his *Die Tiefschlaf-Spekulation der alten Upanishaden*, 1922, while Rumball has written an essay on *The Conception of Sin in the Upanishads*, Open Court, 1909. We thus see how a searching analysis of the Upanishads has been made in the interest of the different studies pursued by Scholars.
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Similar is the case with certain other essays on Upanishadic subjects. We have already pointed out in our Preface how in his *Die Sāmkhya-Philosophie*, Leipzig, 1894, Richard Garbe goes into a detailed survey of the relation of the Upanishads to the Sāmkhya system, and comes to the conclusion that the Sāmkhya system originated in the mid-Upanishadic period. Dr. Macnicol's chapter on the Theism of the Upanishads in his work on *Indian Theism* is a very clever analysis of the theistic teaching of the Upanishads. Macnicol's thesis is that we may suppose that the Upanishads maintain the theistic theory, because, as he says, the doctrine of Māyā is unknown to the Upanishads. Macnicol comes to the conclusion that the Upanishadic theory of God is theistic-mystic, instead of pantheistic: "Dr. Caird in his luminous exposition of the closely parallel speculation of Plotinus has distinguished the body of ideas to which it appears to me the reflection of the Upanishads belongs as Mysticism from what is properly to be denominated Pantheism" (p. 59). We cannot go with Dr. Macnicol when he says that the Doctrine of Māyā is unknown to the Upanishads; but we do agree with him when he speaks about the mystic trend of Upanishadic doctrine, though a mysticism need not always be a mere theism. Professor John McKenzie's *Hindu Ethics*, Oxford, contains an excellent essay on the Ethics of the Upanishads (pp. 67-99). We entirely agree with Mr. McKenzie that the Upanishadic ethical thinking is conducted in full view of the wider implications of human existence, namely, in other words, that the Upanishadic Ethics reposes on a solid Metaphysical basis: but we do not agree that the Upanishadic morality is ultimately unreal, or only Antinomian. A survey of the various views on Upanishadic Ethics in our Chapter VI would surely disprove all such partial views.
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Of the strictly philosophical essays on Upanishadic subjects, we have, in the first place, Josiah Royce's essay on the Mystical Conception of Being, as illustrated primarily from the Upanishads, in his *World and the Individual*. Royce tells us that he dwells so long on the Upanishads, because, as he says, "they contain already the entire story of the mystic faith so far as it had a philosophical basis" (p. 175). Royce characterises the mystical method as immediacy, and though he is not himself in sympathy with mysticism, nobody could have explained the mystic position better than Royce has done. Prof. Radhakrishnan's *Reign of Religion in Contemporary Philosophy*, McMillan, 1920, ends with a chapter on "Some suggestions for an approach to Reality based on the Upanishads ”. We might see from this how Prof. Radhakrishnan himself regards the Upanishads as capable of giving us a point of view in contemporary thought. Prof. G. H. Langley, of Dacca University, writes an essay on the *Conception of the Universal Spirit in the Upanishads, and its identity with the Individual Spirit* in the *Indian Philosophical Review*, edited by A. G. Widgery and R. D. Ranade, April, 1920. Herein also he points out how the Upanishads differ from Kant. Not that Kant himself, according to Prof. Langley, is ultimately right, “for Kant regards that the Self in synthesising the given intuitions distorts the representations of the real object which give rise to them. On the other hand, Croce must be regarded as nearer the truth than Kant, when he says that the Self in synthesising is not distorting that which is given in experience, but is exercising only the essential function of spirit in revealing its true nature ” ( pp. 126-127 ). Finally, Dr. Barua in his *Pre-Buddhist Philosophy*, Calcutta, 1921, goes into a very detailed analysis of all the Thinkers of India before the days of Buddha, and naturally has to consider *in extenso* the teachings of Upanishadic philosophers like Uddālaka, Yājñavalkya, Pippalāda, and others. The great difficulty in the case of these Upanishadic Philosophers is, however, to clinch their personalities and doctrines, and if this could be successfully done, a volume on the “ Philosophers of the Upanishads ” could well be written on the lines followed by Dr. Burnet in his *Early Greek Philosophy*. Rudiments of such a possible work have been already indicated in the first chapter of the present volume.
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It is to the great credit of the Christian Missions in India that they should have instituted research in various departments of Indian thought, and the Upanishads have not escaped their close attention. Even though the views that they take are bound to be in the interest of Christianity, nobody could question the labour they bestow upon the subjects they deal with. Slater’s book on *Studies in the Upanishads*, Madras, 1897, is a very good and clever production ; only Slater does not suppose that the Upanishads are capable of supplying the idea of a universal religion :
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“ If the dream of a universal religion be true—and we have but one science of the universe; and if the Fatherhood of God and the Brotherhood of man be true, there can be but one bond of spiritual union for such a family—that religion cannot possibly be based on the Upanishads. If you make them your religion, then you must be content to see it confined to a small corner of the globe, and to a select coterie even in that corner. For if, as it has often been urged, this ancient system can be properly understood only in the original Sanskrit, then true religion at its highest, depends, not only on superior intellect, but also on special linguistic talent, and talent to study a dead language! The thing, at lowest, is impracticable ” (pp. 72). We fail to see what connection the idea of a universal religion has with language; it has to do only with spirit, and not with the expression of it in any language. H. D. Griswold’s treatise on *Brahman: a study in the History of Indian Philosophy* discusses at length the doctrine of Brahman in the Upanishads, and considers its religious, ethical, and philosophical consequences. Urquhart’s *Upanishads and Life*, Calcutta, 1916, the argument of which work he also pursues further in his larger book on *Pantheism and the Value of Life*, discusses the theism and the pessimism of the Upanishads, their metaphysical inadequacy, their religious and ethical effects, and ends with the message of Christianity for India.
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Of the more systematic works on Upanishadic Philosophy as a whole, we have to mention first A. E. Gough’s *Philosophy of the Upanishads*, London 1882, which is probably the earliest of the kind, and which is a brilliantly written work, though it has a somewhat unsympathetic tone. Gough’s view about the relation of Śaṅkara to the Upanishads is that his philosophy may be supposed to be a legitimate outcome of the teachings of the Upanishads—an opinion which has been challenged by critics who point out that Śaṅkara’s philosophy is not the legitimate outcome of the teachings of the Upanishads. Deussen’s *Philosophy of the Upanishads*, which has been translated by the Rev. A. S. Geden, 1906, is the next most systematic work on the Upanishads.
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Having spent a number of years on his "Sechzig Upanishad's", Deusen could speak with a master's voice on the central teachings of the Upanishads. Deussen's work is entirely indispensable to students of Upanishadic thought. Prof. Radhakrishnan's *Philosophy of the Upanishads*, a separate print from his *Indian Philosophy* Vol. I., which has lately appeared, is a masterly and running survey of the teachings of the Upanishads, and comes from the hand of one who is deeply read in Western thought. Dr. S. K. Belvalkar and R. D. Ranade's *Creative Period of Indian Philosophy* which will be published under the patronage of the University of Bombay, has been in the Press for some time past, and gives a detailed analysis of the contents of the various Upanishads arranged in their chronological and stratificatory order. There is also a very exhaustive survey in that book of a Century of Minor Upanishads, most of which have never been hitherto translated, and some of which have never been even printed.
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There remain, however, two masterly treatises on the Philosophy of the Upanishads, one by Oltramare and the other by Oldenberg. Oltramare's *L'Histoire des Idées théosophiqes dans l'Inde*, Paris, 1907, contains a full account of Upanishadic philosophy in French, pp. 63-131. Oltramare first discusses such topics as Brahman, the Individual Soul, and the Identity of the Brahman with the Individual Soul. Then he proceeds to tell us how to know the Individual Soul is to know Brahman. He proceeds next to the question of the individualisation of Brahman, as well as the relation of the World to Brahman and Soul. Further, Oltramare proceeds to discuss the doctrines of Samsāra and Moksha. Under these headings, he discusses such problems as the Mechanism of Metempsychosis, Works and Salvation, Knowledge and Salvation, and finally, the Meaning of Salvation. Lastly, he winds up by discussing the new tendency of religious thought in the Upanishads, as well as by an examination of the intellectual and moral influence of the Upanishads. Oldenberg's *Die Lehre der Upanishaden und die Anfänge des Buddhismus*, Göttingen, 1915, pp. 374, is entirely worthy of the veteran scholar. In part one of this work, Oldenberg discusses the old Upanishads; in part two, the new Upanishads and the beginnings of Sāmkhya and Yoga; while in part three, he discusses the beginnings of Buddhism. After a preliminary chapter discussing such topics as the Land and Folk, the pre-historic back-ground, the Vedic gods, Death and the other world, and so forth, Oldenberg goes to the central conceptions of the Upanishads, namely those of Brahman and Ātman, and their identification. He then discusses the problem of the relation of the Absolute to the World, and the meaning of the One and the Many. He proceeds next to discuss the question of the Absolute in itself, and the problem of the Personal and the Impersonal. He then applies himself to the question of "Seelenwanderung", as well as to that of the Worth of Existence. He proceeds to discuss the question of Emancipation, the relation of Knowledge and Works, and the problem of the knowability of the Absolute. He ends his first part by a review of the literary form of the Upanishads, namely the prose and poetry of the Upanishads, their dialogues, and such other similar matters. In part two, he considers the beginnings of Sāmkhya and Yoga, wherein he discusses such problems as the Guṇas, the Purusha and the Prakṛiti, the discipline of Prāṇa, the Āsanas, and Miracles. In part three, he discusses the origin of Buddhism in a survey spreading over about sixty pages. We might easily see from these contents of Oltramare's and Oldenberg's works that, like their great predecessor in the field, Deussen's Philosophy of the Upanishads, they are fully philosophical in tone, and grapple with the central problems of Upanishadic thought. But they aim less at construction than at mere exposition, and they have been written from the standpoint of the philosophy of the past. It might be easily seen, therefore, how a constructive presentation of Upanishadic Philosophy from the standpoint of contemporary thought was the necessity of the hour.