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A Constructive Survey of Upanishadic Philosophy c4: Chapter I. The Background of Upanishadic Speculation

A Constructive Survey of Upanishadic Philosophy c4

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English

Contents

Chapter I. The Background of Upanishadic Speculation

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1. In the History of Indian Thought, every revival of the study of the Upanishads has synchronised with a great religious movement. When, about two thousand four hundred years ago, the author of the Bhagavadgītā tried for the first time to synthesise the truths of Upanishadic philosophy in that immortal Celestial Poem, it was evidently with the desire of giving a new impulse to religious thought and thus laying the foundations of a truly mystical religion which should prove the guiding light of all mystical activities for ages to come. Then, about twelve hundred years later, when for a second time the architectonic builders of Vedāntie philosophy came to construct their Systems of Reality out of the material placed at their disposal by the Upanishadic Seers, there was again witnessed a phenomenon of a new religious revival, this time the religious revival taking the shape more of an intellectual than of a purely mystical religion. In the twentieth century to-day, after the lapse of another twelve hundred years, under the impact of Western civilisation and Western culture, supported by the infinite progress of modern science and an all-round study of the philosophies and religions of the world, we in India, who are the inheritors of a great spiritual past that has been left to us by our Upanishadic ancestors, stand face to face with a very difficult problem, namely, that of reconciling mysticism with intellectualism in such a way that any thought-construction that we might put forth on the basis of the eternal truths of Ātmanic experience suggested to us by the Upanishads, might harmoniously synthesise the claims of Science and Philosophy and Religion, so that our philosophical view of reality may not be disturbed but may only be supported by the advance of modern science, and both our scientific and philosophic views be made to redound in such a way to the glory of God that "the highest link of Nature's chain may only be seen to be tied to the foot of Jupiter's chair." The present writer believes that the Upanishads are capable of giving us a view of reality which would satisfy the scientific, the philosophic, as well as the religious aspirations of man; because they give us a view which may be seen to be supported by a direct, first-hand, intuitive, mystical experience, which no science can impeach, which all philosophy may point to as the ultimate goal of its endeavour, and which may be seen at once to be the immanent truth in the various forms of religion which only quarrel because they cannot converge.

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2. It would be interesting to trace in a very brief outline the relation of these "Mystical texts" called the Upanishads to the earliest poetry of the Aryan race, namely the Rigveda, which must be regarded as having preceded them by a period of over a thousand years. In the first place, we must note that the Rigveda is a great hymnology to the personified forces of nature, and thus represents the earliest phase in the evolution of religious consciousness, namely, the objective phase of religion. The Upanishads, on the other hand, mark the subjective phase

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The Upanishads and the Rigveda.

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of religion. There are no hymns to gods or goddesses of nature in the Upanishads, but on the contrary, they contain a scientific search for the Substratum underlying the phenomenal forces of nature. There are neither any offerings of prayers to gods in the Upanishads, nor is there visible, throughout the Upanishadic period, any inordinate fear of the wrath of these natural forces personified as gods. In other words, we may say that as we go from the Vedic period to the Upanishadic period, there is visible at every stage the process of a transference of interest from God to Self. When the individual Self has become the universal Self, when, in short, the Ātman has been realised, whom and what may anybody fear? For whom and what may any offerings be made? For whom and what may anybody pray to divinity? In a word, we may say, that as we pass from the Vedas to the Upanishads, we pass from prayer to philosophy, from hymnology to reflection, from henotheistic polytheism to monotheistic mysticism. Then, secondly, we must not fail to notice the progress that was already being made towards the conceptions of cosmogony even in certain hymns of the Rigveda itself. If we just take into account such a hymn as Rigveda x. 88, where the seer inquires what was the "hylē" out of which the heavens and the earth were built eternally firm and what it was upon which the Creator stood when he upheld the worlds, or yet again hymns like x. 5 and x. 27, where the conceptions of Being and Not-being in a cosmological sense are being already broached, or even that famous agnostic hymn of creation x. 129, where the primal existent is declared as being superior to both Being and Not-being and where the cognisant activity of the Creator himself is called in question, we may say that a beginning was made even at this Rigvedic period of the real philosophical impulse which passing through the Brāhmaṇic period was to gather force at the beginning of the Upanishadic period. Thirdly, from the psychological point of view, we may say that while the Rigveda may be regarded as a great work of emotion and imagination, the Upanishads may be regarded as a work of thought and reason. There are many passages in the Rigveda, especially in the hymns to Varuṇa, which have a close analogy to the devotional psalms of the Bible both in point of language and ideas—passages which are rarely to be met with in the literature of the Upanishads; on the other hand, in the Upanishads, we have more or less the coolness of intellectual argument exhibiting itself in a systematic search after the Ultimate Reality. Thus it happens that while there are to be met with in the Rigveda many hymns which express the meek submission of the suppliant devotee asking for gracious forgiveness from a divinity which is the creation of his own imagination, the Upanishads say in bold terms: "Seek not favour from any such divinity; reality is not the divinity which you are worshipping—nedam yad idam upāsate; the guardian of order is not outside; natural and moral order does not come from without; it springs from the Ātman, who is the synthesis of both outside and inside, who is veritably the ballast of nature, who is the unshakable bund that prevents the stream of existence from flowing recklessly as it lists."

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3. When we pass from the age of the Rigveda to the age of the Atharvaveda, we pass from the universe of hymns to the universe of incantations. Goblins, ghosts, sorcerers, witches, diseases and death, take the place of the god of thunder, the god of rain, the god of celestial and terrestrial fire, the god and goddess of light. The

The Upanishads and the Atharvaveda

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Atharvaveda is veritably a store-house of the black art of the ancients. There is no doubt some relieving feature to the Mantraśāstra of the Atharvaveda, when auspicious charms take the place of destructive charms. But the general impression which the Atharvaveda leaves upon our mind is that of the blood-sucking activity of the ghoulish demon which saps the fountains of both devotion and reason, and leaves us in the arid wastes of witcheries and incantations. It is a far cry from the Atharvaveda to the Upanishads. The two are almost as poles apart. No doubt there can be found in the Atharvaveda some sort of philosophical reflection as in the hymns to Kāla xix. 53-54, nor can we say that the Upanishads contain no trace whatsoever of the Atharvic influence so far as incantations and charms are concerned, but the general distinction is quite clear, that when we pass from the Atharvaveda to the Upanishads, we pass from the domain of incantations to the domain of philosophy. We must not forget, however, to mention the few blemishes on Upanishadic thought that are to be found in the Bṛhadāraṇyaka and the Kaushītaki, which show the influence of a degraded order of customs even in the reign of philosophy. When as in Bṛhadāraṇyaka vi. 4 we read of helps towards securing the love of a woman, or the destruction of the lover of a wife, or the fulfilment of the desire for procreation, or yet again when in Kaushītaki ii, we read of means for the magical obtainment of a rich treasure, or securing the love of any man or woman, or yet again of charms which may prevent the death of children during one’s life-time, or finally of the “ Daiva Parimara ” taught in that Upanishad by means of which the enemies die round about us as the effect of the charms exercised against them, we have to remember that these are the only specimens of blemishes on an age otherwise wholly devoted to philosophical and mystical reflection, and that, as the poet expresses it, instead of marring the beauty of Upanishadic thought, like spots on the face of the moon they only heighten the beauty of the philosophic reflection—*malinam api himāmśor lakshma lakshmīm tanoti*.

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4. When we come to the age of the Brāhmaṇas, we come to an age of ceremonialism and ritualism. As the chief topic of the Atharvaveda is incantation, similarly the chief topic of the Brāhmaṇas is sacrifice. It passes one’s understanding how the original purity of the hymnology of the Rigveda should have been so much sullied in the age of the Brāhmaṇas, which only try to foist a superstructure of meaningless ceremonialism upon the hymnology of the Veda, and press into their service passages and texts from the Vedas which they utilise in such a way as to support the not-very-glorious life of the sacrificer. Curious indeed are the ways in which the Brāhmaṇa passages mingle together legends, exegeses, dogmas, philological and philosophical speculations so as to exhibit the efficacy of the Mantras for the practical life of the sacrificer. It is a pitiful phenomenon to notice how at the time of the Brāhmaṇas so much intellect should have been wasted on the formulation of the details of the various sacrificial rites : it only reminds one of the wheels within wheels of the scholastic interpretations of Christian dogma in the Middle Ages. The spirit of the Upanishads is, on the other hand, barring a few exceptions here and there, entirely antagonsitic to the sacrificial doctrine of the Brāhmaṇas.

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The halting attitude of the Muṇḍaka in regard to the efficacy of Brāhmaṇic ritualism is an exception to the general Upanishadic reaction in favour of philosophical thought against the barren and empty formalism of the Brāhmaṇa literature. While, in one passage, the Muṇḍaka tells us that the only way towards securing the goal of human life consists in blindly following the routine of sacrificial and ritualistic works enjoined upon us by our ancestors (S. 1. a), in another passage closely following upon the one which we are discussing, we are told that "Sacrifices are like those unsteady boats on the ocean of life which may take one at any time to the bottom of the sea. Those who regard sacrifices as the highest good of human life, go again and again from old age to death. Living in the midst of darkness, these soi disant wise men move about to and fro like blind men led by the blind. They regard themselves as having reached the goal of their life even while living in the midst of ignorance. Full of desire, they fall down from their places in the heavens as soon as their merit is exhausted. Thinking that sacrifice is the highest end of human life, they cannot imagine that there is any other end. Having enjoyed in the heavens the reward of their good works, they descend down to this world, or to a lower world still.

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It is only those who practise penance and faith in a forest, who tranquil their passions, lead the life of knowledge and live on alms,—it is only these that go to the immortal Ātman by the door-way of the Sun" (S. 1. b). The Upanishads which stand for knowledge as against the Brāhmaṇical philosophy of works very rarely exhibit even this halting attitude towards ritualism to be met with in the Muṇḍaka. Their general tone is to try to find out the philosophical end of human life. Even so early as at the time of the Chhāndogya, the efficacy of the "inner sacrifice" had come to be definitely recognised: "Our real sacrifice consists in making oblations to the Prāṇa within us. One who does not know this inner sacrifice, even if he were to go in for a formal sacrifice, throws oblations merely on ashes. On the other hand, he who knows this inner sacrifice is relieved of his sins as surely as wool is burnt in a flame of fire. Knowing this inner sacrifice, even if a man were to do acts of charity for a Chāṇḍāla, he may verily be regarded as having sacrificed to the Universal Soul" (S. 2. a). The Kaushītaki again tells us definitely, referring probably to the custom at the time of the Āraṇyakas to perform acts of mental sacrifice, that "the ancient sages did not go in for a formal sacrifice knowing that an endless sacrifice was going on all the while within themselves" (S. 2. b).

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We thus see how the Brāhmaṇical idea of sacrifice comes to be modulated in the days of the Upanishads so as ultimately to be entirely transformed into a new conception of sacrifice altogether—that of a mental sacrifice—which is helpful to the process of the acquisition of spiritual knowledge. On the whole, it may not be untrue to say that the futility of works was definitely recognised at the time of the Upanishads which tried to substitute a philosophy of knowledge for the Brāhmaṇical philosophy of works.

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5. The Vedas, the Brāhmaṇas and the Upanishads have all of them been recognised from times immemorial as "Śruti" or Revelation. Let us try to find out what the real meaning of this expression is. It has been customary among all religious to regard their basal works as being revealed to them by God. Some regard their religious works as having been revealed to them in the midst of light and thunder, either from without or within. Others regard them as having been delivered to them in the form of significant sounds. In this way have the Bible and the Koran, like the Vedas and the Upanishads, been regarded as revelations of God to man. The real meaning of Revelation seems to the present writer to be not any external message delivered to man from without, but a divine afflatus springing from within, the result of inspiration through god-intoxication. It was for this reason that St. Paul said that it was not he but God that spoke through him. It was for this reason that Jesus Christ advised his disciples to take no thought as to what they were going to speak, but that they should speak straightway and then God would speak through them. It was for this reason likewise that Plato explained in his *Ion* the origin of poetical composition through the afflatus of god-intoxication: “The authors of those great poems do not attain to excellence through the rules of any art, but they utter their beautiful melodies of verse in a state of inspiration, and, as it were, possessed by a spirit not their own. Thus the composers of lyrical poetry create those admired songs of theirs in a state of divine insanity......Thus every rhapsodist or poet......is excellent in proportion to the extent of his participation in the divine influence, and the degree in which the Muse itself has descended on him. ........And thus it appears to me....that these transcendent poems are not human, as the work of men, but divine, as coming from God.” This passage gives us a very good account of the way in which all poetry, and likewise, all philosophy worthy of the name comes to be produced. It was in this way that we may say that the Vedic seers composed their hymns, and the Upanishadic philosophers set forth intellectual arguments. It is futile to discuss, as the Naiyāyikas and the Mīmāṃsakas later discussed, as to whether the Vedas and the Upanishads are “apaurusheya” or “paurusheya.” The Naiyāyikas maintained that these works were “paurusheya”, that is, composed by God. The Mīmāṃsakas, on the other other hand, believing in the eternity of sound, said that they were "apaurusheya", that is, they were composed neither by man nor by God, but that, in the form of sounds in which they have come down to us, they existed from all eternity. As contrasted with both these schools, the Vedāntins maintain that the Vedas and the Upanishads are "apaurusheya", in the sense that they were inspired by God—*purushaprayatnam vinā prakaṭibhūta*. This last meaning of the word "apaurusheya" comes quite close to the meaning which we have tried to assign to the word Revelation; and thus we may see how the Vedas and the Upanishads must, like the basal literature of all other religions, be regarded as having been composed by seers in a state of god-intoxication.

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6. Let us see what the Upanishads themselves have got to say on the question of the meaning that we have assigned to the term Revelation. The Bṛihadāraṇyaka tells us that "the Ṛigveda, the Yajurveda, the Sāmaveda and the Atharvāṅgirasa have all of them been breathed forth by that great Primeval Being; likewise also have all history, all mythology, all sciences, all Upanishads, all poems, all aphorisms and all the commentaries thereon been breathed forth by that Great Divinity" (S. 3.). It is important to remember that this Upanishadic passage classes the Vedas and the Upanishads on the one hand, with History and Mythology on the other, as being breathed forth by God. Now nobody has regarded the Histories and the Mythologies as "Śruti" or Revelation, even though the Vedas and the Upanishads have been so regarded, and yet the Upanishadic passage classes the two together as being the result of the breathing forth of God. The only meaning, it seems to us, that we can assign to the above passage

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The Upanishadic view of Revelation.

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is that all these great works, whether we take the Vedas and the Upanishads on the one hand, or History and Mythology on the other, may be regarded as having been due to the inspirational activity of God in the minds of those who composed them. It was not the writers of these works that were the authors of them, but it was the Divinity within them that was responsible for their production. We thus have the Upanishadic view of the Upanishads as the result of the inspirational activity of God, the philosophers to whom they are attributed having served merely as instruments for the display of this activity. This is a sort of a new Upanishadic Occasionalism, where the Seer or the Sage serves merely as an occasion for the creative activity of God. Thus, when the sage Śvetāśvatara said, that the Upanishad, which is named after him, was revealed to him through the power of his penance and the grace of God (S. 4. a), and yet again when the sage Triśaṅku uttered his vedānuvachana, which expression might be understood to mean either a " post-illuminational " discourse, or one which was " in consonance with his mystical illumination " (S. 4. b), they are supporting the view of the meaning of Revelation which we have taken above. There is yet again a second view which implies more or less a human participation in the transmission, if not in the composition, of these revealed texts, when, as in the Īśa and the Kena Upanishads, we are made aware of a continuity of philosophical tradition which had come down to the days of the Upanishads (S. 5. a). In the Chhāndogya Upanishad, likewise, we are told that Sages of old were careful to learn spiritual wisdom from their Teachers, for fear that when these Teachers had departed, there would be nobody living who would tell them " what could not be otherwise heard, what could not be otherwise thought, what could not be otherwise known" (S. 5. b). Finally, we have in the Bṛhadāraṇyaka a strange view of the genesis of Revelation, when we are told that the Ṛigveda, the Yajurveda and the Sāmaveda were all of them produced by the God of Death, who having coupled himself with a wife of his own creation, namely Speech, produced the above-mentioned Vedas along with all men and cattle from his union (S. 6)—a view which is quixotic enough for philosophical purposes, unless we understand it as having an anthropologic value, and as being the remnant of an old mythological way of thought which is to be found in plenty in most Brāhmaṇical as well as in some Upanishadic literature. On the whole, it may not be untrue to say that the Upanishads are regarded by the Upanishads themselves as being the work of the inspirational activity of God in the human mind.

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7. Having cleared the Upanishadic view of revelation, let us try to arrange in a chronological order the Upanishads which are going to be the subject-matter of the present Volume. It must be remembered at the outset that we must make a clear division between the Old Upanishads and the New Upanishads, the Old batch comprising the Thirteen Upanishads to be enumerated presently, while the New Upanishads contain such of the remaining Upanishads as can be proved to be authentic by higher literary criticism. The four Upanishads which Dr. Schrader has discovered recently, namely, the Bāshkala, the Chhāgaleya, the Ārsheya and the Śaunaka will not concern us in the present Volume, because their authenticity has not yet been universally accepted. The Mahānārāyaṇopanishad has also been recently proved to be obviously of a later date, and hence it cannot be included in our Older batch of the Upanishads. The Thirteen Upanishads, which will be the subject-matter of the present Volume, may be arranged according to the order of the Muktika canon as Īśa, Keṇa, Kaṭha, Praśna, Muṇḍaka, Māṇḍukya, Taittirīya, Aitareya, Chhāndogya, Bṛihadāraṇyaka, Śvetāśvatara, Kaushītaki and Maitri. This, however, is an order which does not take the chronological sequence of the Upanishads into account, and it thus becomes necessary in the light of modern literary criticism and a historico-philological evaluation of the Upanishads to arrange them in proper chronological perspective.

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The problem has been so thoroughly treated by us elsewhere that it would be redundant to go over once more into the problem of the chronological arrangement of these Upanishads. We shall merely content ourselves with mentioning the conclusions that have been arrived at. Considering the Upanishadic age to have been placed somewhere between 1200 B. C., and 600 B. C., it becomes necessary to distribute the Upanishadic literature into chronological periods within the general limits that have been so fixed. Various tests have been employed as to the chronological arrangement of these Upanishads. (1) The language, the style, the vocabulary, the inflection and other grammatical peculiarities are one obvious test for determining the age of an Upanishad; but this cannot be a final test, because an old Upanishad may have been written in a fairly lucid style, while a newer Upanishad may have been composed in an almost archaic style. (2) Nor is the distinction between prose and verse a sufficient criterion for the chronological arrangement of the Upanishads. It seems to have been taken for granted by critics like Deussen that the oldest of these Upanishads were written in prose, that others which followed them were written in verse, and that a few others that remained came to be written in prose again. This is a gratuitous assumption which in the light of modern criticism does not seem to hold much water.

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(3) A third test, namely that of a successive elaboration of detail, is a fairly good test though it is not absolutely conclusive. Thus it may not be entirely incorrect to find the chronological order of certain Upanishads according to the elaboration of detail of the story of the "War of the Senses" as found in them. This story occurs in the Chhāndogya, the Bṛihadāraṇyaka, the Aitareya, the Kaushītaki and the Praśna Upanishads, and it must be legitimate to argue for the precedence or sequence of any of these Upanishads according to the elaboration of the detail of the story. (4) A fourth and a more difficult test, namely that of a regular ideological development, is not without its use.

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Thus, for example, the development of the idea of the relation of the "Two Souls," the Individual Soul and the Universal Soul, which occurs in the Kaṭhopanishad, the Muṇḍakopanishad and the Śvetāśvataropanishad could be regarded as a legitimate test for the chronological sequence of these Upanishads in that order, inasmuch as in the story of the Kaṭhopanishad the two Souls are regarded as being on a par with each other as enjoying equally the fruits of their action, while in the Muṇḍaka only one is described as tasting of the fruits of action, the other being described simply as an on-looker, while finally in the Śvetāśvatara an addition is made to the conception in the Muṇḍaka, namely that of the unborn Prakṛiti, consisting of the three qualities, the red, the white and the black, which the Individual Soul enjoys, but which the Universal Soul leaves off (S. 7). (5) A fifth test, which is only a particular case of the last test, but which deserves separate mention on account of the importance it has attained at the hands of certain modern writers, especially Prof. Keith, centres itself round the development of the idea of Transmigration in the Upanishads.

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Just as a similar attempt has been made in regard to the chronological arrangement of the Dialogues of Plato on the basis of the development of the doctrine of Ideas as found in them, similarly, an attempt is here made to find out the chronological sequence of the Upanishads on the basis of the development of the idea of Transmigration. It must be remembered, however, that this test comes very often to base itself upon negations, instead of positive assertions. Absence of the idea of Transmigration does not necessarily prove the priority of an Upanishad, because, it may be, that the idea may not form the subject-matter of that Upanishad, while the Upanishad itself may not be amenable to the postulation of that idea. Prof. Keith has argued, and many others have followed him in saying, that the Aitareya Āraṇyaka, especially its older portion, must be regarded as very old indeed, because the idea of Transmigration does not occur in it. These writers seem to argue in a circle, because they hold that the older portion of the Āraṇyaka must be separated from the newer portion on account of the absence of the idea of Transmigration in it, and then they say that the idea of Transmigration must be regarded as late because it does not occur in the older portion.

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Now even supposing that we can succeed in making a division between the older portion and the newer portion of the Aitareya Āraṇyaka, the absence of the idea of Transmigration in the older portion can be regarded as no argument for its chrnonological severance from the newer portion ; while it is necessary to remember that the Fifth Chapter of the Second Section of the Aitareya Āraṇyaka does definitely assert the fact of Transmigration when it describes a man as veritably coming to life after death—a fact which it calls his “third birth”. (6) Finally, the only test which may be regarded as being absolutely definite about the chronological arrangement of the Upanishads is that of inter-quotation. Thus we may say that the Taittirīya is definitely later than the Bṛihadāraṇyaka, inasmuch as the Taittirīya refers to the Bṛihadāraṇyaka in the very words in which this latter Upanishad states the doctrine of “quintuple existence” (S. 8). But this test can have no universal significance because we find only few definite inter-quotations among the Upanishads. Moreover, if we just take into account the different strata of composition in the various Upanishads, and divide each of the Upanishads according to the sub-units of which it may be composed, the problem of a general chronological arrangement of these sub-units becomes a hard one indeed;

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but if we make all the allowance that we can for the existence of these strata in the Upanishads, and judge of the Upanishads as a whole, we may say that the Thirteen Upanishads, which we have mentioned above and which will form the theme of our present Volume, may be classed together into the following five different groups:—

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I. Bṛihadāraṇyaka and Chhāndogya. II. Īśa and Kena. III. Aitareya, Taittirīya and Kaushītaki. IV. Kaṭha, Muṇḍaka and Śvetāśvatara. V. Praśna, Maitri and Māṇḍukya.

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A study of the Bṛihadāraṇyaka and the Chhāndogya may easily lead us to regard them as belonging to the oldest group of the Upanishads. Even though they may be seen to consist of several sub-units, on the whole we may say that they belong to the oldest group. The Upanishads in group II, namely Īśa and Kena, it is customary to relegate to a comparatively late period; but the language, the sentiment and the archaic tone of the Īśā, especially the common material it has with the Bṛhadāraṇyaka and the Kena, which latter may be placed almost in the same category with it, may be regarded as constituting the second group. Of group III, the Aitareya must be regarded as an old Upanishad, but not necessarily as the oldest simply for the reason that has been adduced, namely, that it belongs to the earliest Veda, the Ṛigveda. The Taittirīya goes in the same group with the Aitareya, while the Kaushītaki, even though it may be regarded as on the whole an unoriginal Upanishad, still in the parts which belong to it properly, may be classed along with the Aitareya and the Taittirīya to constitute group III. Group IV is quite definite. The Muṇḍaka comes after the Kaṭha, and the Śvetāśvatara comes after the Muṇḍaka, and even though there is an evident archaism in the Śvetāśvatara and a clear sub-division of it into the first chapter on the one hand, and the other chapters on the other, on the whole it may be said to bring up the rear among these great poetical Upanishads. Of group V, the Praśna which forms quite a pre-conceived unity entirely unlike the other Upanishads, must be regarded as belonging to the latest group; the Maitri whose vocabulary is quite peculiar to itself and which has evidently two or more definite strata in it, must, on account of its mythological and astronomical references, be regarded as coming quite near to the time when the Paurāṇika tradition began; while the Māṇḍukya, which may be said to develop the thought of the Maitri itself in certain respects, namely, in postulating three and a half *moræ*, while the Maitri postulates only three, of the symbol Om, as well as on account of its aphoristic method of thought-presentation, may be regarded as being the last of the Older batch of the Upanishads. It would be hard to determine the exact date of the composition of any of these Upanishads; but the upward and the lower limits of the whole Upanishadic period may be fixed without much difficulty as being between 1200 and 600 B.C., and the later Upanishads of the above canon may be seen to be dovetailed into that next period of Indian Thought, when Buddhism was germinating in India, when the Sāṃkhya and the Yoga were being systematised, and when the Bhagavadgītā was being composed to finally hush the voice of the materialist and the atheist by synthesising the points of theistic significance in the Sāṃkhya and the Yoga, and by gathering together the red-letter pieces of Upanishadic philosophy and welding them all up together into a theistic-mystic poem—the pattern of many similar imitations in days to come.

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8. It would be necessary for us to review briefly the contents of the various Upanishads as arranged chronologically in the above outline, and to set forth in a brief way the main points of interest in those Upanishads from the philosophical point of view. A full analysis of the Upanishads is neither possible nor desirable in this place, but we refer our readers to our History of Indian Philosophy Vol. II. for a full account of the contents of them. In order, however, that our readers may understand and appreciate the problem-by-problem treatment of the Upanishads in the succeeding chapters of this work, it would be necessary for us to introduce them briefly to the contents of the various Upanishads. We may begin by an analysis of the Bṛihadāraṇyaka. This Upanishad contains six chapters, of which the second, the third and the fourth are alone of philosophical consequence, the others containing philosophical matters interspersed with much miscellaneous reflection. In the first chapter, we have a good description of the Cosmic Person considered as a sacrificial horse; then we pass to the theory of Death as the “archē” of all things; and then we have a parable in proof of the supremacy of Prāṇa, which is followed by a number of creationist myths put together at random. In the second chapter, we have the famous conversation between Gārgya, the proud Brahmin, and Ajātaśatru, the quiescent Kshatriya king.

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It is in this chapter likewise that we are introduced for the first time to the great sage Yājñavalkya, who is making a partition of his estate between his wives, as well as to the sage Dadhyach Ātharvaṇa whose philosophical teaching we shall consider at a later stage in this chapter. The sage Yājñavalkya, to whom we are introduced in chapter two, becomes the prominent figure of chapters three and four, and just as in chapter two we see him discoursing with his wife Maitreyī, similarly in chapter three we see him discoursing with a number of philosophers in the court of king Janaka, and in chapter four with king Janaka himself. The philosophical teachings of Yājñavalkya we shall consider somewhat later; but it would be necessary for us here to say something about his personality. An irascible philosopher by nature, as may be seen from the fate to which he subjects Śakalya who was disputing with him in the court of king Janaka, he seems nevertheless to possess the kindness of human feelings, especially in his relations with his wife Maitreyī. Given to bigamy, he nevertheless maintains a strict spiritual relation with Maitreyī, while Kātyāyanī, his other wife, he regards merely as a woman of the world and prizes accordingly.

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Adumbrating as he does his doctrine of immanence to Gārgī when she torments him with question after question, and wanting in chivalry as he seems to us as he proceeds without much ceremony to check her philosophic impudence, he nevertheless appears to be a shrewd man, who, when pressed by the sage Jāratkārava to some deepest questions, takes him by the hand out of the assembly and discourses with him on the topic of *Karman*, and a prudent man likewise who gives *ad hoc* answers to his controversialists, as may be seen from the way in which he ritualistically disposes of the ritualistic questions of Āśvala. A eudæmonist by nature, who supposes that the acceptance of presents is not incompatible with the imparting of philosophical knowledge, and therein maintaining rather the Sophistic view of wisdom, than the Socratic view that a great spiritual teacher must never contaminate himself with the acceptance of presents, Yājñavalkya is, undoubtedly, the greatest philosopher of the Upanishadic times, who, by his consistent philosophical Idealism and by his thoroughgoing practical Ātmanism, may give lessons to many a thinker of the present day. King Janaka, who seems to be an ardent lover of philosophical and spiritual wisdom, falls prostrate at the feet of this great philosopher, offering him his kingdom and his possessions, which the philosopher scarcely avails himself of.

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This king Janaka figures largely in the third and fourth chapters of this Upanishad, in the third chapter being only a spectator of the great controversy in his court, and in the fourth taking the liberty to learn personally from Yājñavalkya himself. It is this king likewise who is also introduced for a while in the fifth chapter of this Upanishad, which contains many other things besides, such as a number of miscellaneous reflections on ethical, cosmological and eschatological matters; while the sixth and the final chapter of the Upanishad contains the celebrated parable of the senses, and we are introduced to the philosopher Pravāhaṇa Jaivali whose celebrated doctrine of "Five Fires" we shall notice below. This last chapter, as has been pointed out above, ends with certain superstitious Brāhmaṇical practices, and contains, among other things, a statement of the genealogical tradition of the Upanishad which may be taken for what it is worth.

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9. The Chhāndogya, which belongs like the Bṛhadāraṇyaka to our group I, is an Upanishad which does not rise to such high literary or philosophical eminence as the Bṛhadāraṇyaka, even though it is quoted and referred to oftener by the later author of the Vedāntasūtras. Chapters six, seven and eight alone are of philosophical importance, the others not coming up to that level at all. The first and the second chapters are merely a Brāhmaṇism *redivivus*, and if we just want to point to portions of the Upanishads in which the Brāhmaṇical liturgy and doctrine exercise the greatest amount of influence, we may point to the first and second chapters of this Upanishad. There is a small cosmological argument here and a little philosophical disquisition there; on the whole, these two chapters contain only such subjects as the significance of Om, the meaning, the kind and the names of Sāman, and the genesis and function of Om. There is, however, one very good satirical piece towards the end of the first chapter of this Upanishad which is worth remarking. It concerns the singing of the Mantras with a material end in view.

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We are told how, once upon a time, Baka Dālbhya, or as he was also called, Glāva Maitreya, had gone to a retired place to recite his Veda, how a white dog appeared before him, how a number of other dogs came to this dog and begged of it to chant certain hymns because they said they were hungry and by its chants the white dog might procure food for them, how the white dog told the other dogs that they might come to it the next morning, how Baka Dālbhya, who was intent upon seeing what this canine recitation of hymns would be like, waited next morning to watch the dogs meet together, how the dogs, as previously settled, came together the next morning, each holding the tail of another in its mouth, as the priests do when they walk in procession at the time of sacrifice each holding the gown of the fore-going priest in his hand, how when they sat down, they began to sing “ Hin! Om, let us eat, Om, let us drink, Om, let the gods procure food for us, O Lord of food, bring food to us, bring it to us, Om.” This seems to us to be a ridicule poured upon the Mantra-singers who went in for their business with the desire of obtaining some material end. It seems to us that this Canine Chant—the Śauva Udgītha as it has been called—may be regarded as a good invective against the Brāhmaṇical belief in externalism, in the interest of the assertion of the supremacy of the spiritual end to any material end whatsoever.

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The third chapter of this Upanishad contains the famous description of the Sun as a great bee-hive hanging in space. It also contains a description of the Gāyatrī Brāhmaṇa-wise, the *bon mots* of Śāṇḍilya, a description of the world as a huge chest, the all-too disconnected instruction of Āṅgirasa to Kṛṣṇa who was the son of Devaki, and finally a piece of heliolatory, with the myth of the emergence of the Sun out of a huge egg. In the fourth chapter we have the philosophy of Raikva, the story of Satyakāma Jābāla and his mother, and the story of Upakosala who in his turn obtains philosophical wisdom from his teacher Satyakāma Jābāla. The fifth chapter contains the eschatological teaching of Jaivali, which is identical in substance with the account to be found in the Bṛhadāraṇyaka, while it also contains the famous synthesis of thought effected by Aśvapati Kaikeya out of the six cosmological doctrines advanced by the six philosophers who had gone to learn wisdom from him. The sixth chapter is evidently the best of all the chapters of the Chhāndogya, and we have here the highly-strung “ identität ” philosophy of Āruṇi, who establishes an absolute equation between individual and universal spirit, for whom, in other words, there is no difference between the two at all. Āruṇi is the outstanding personality of the Chhāndogya, as Yājñavalkya is of the Bṛihadāraṇyaka.

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The Śatapatha Brāhmaṇa tells us that Āruṇi was a very renowned sage of anitiquity, and that Yājñavalkya was a pupil of Āruṇi. The philosophy which Āruṇi advances in the 6th chapter of the Chhāndogya does really entitle him to that position. So far so good : but it seems to us that when once the reputation of Āruṇi as a great philosopher had been established, other Upanishads felt no scruple in utilising him for the development of their own doctrine and we find Āruṇi playing quite a subordinate and unimportant rôle even in such an admittedly late Upanishad as the Kaushītaki. It is unfortunate that authors should feel the necessity of reviving the memory of a great man and turning it to bad account. A Falstaff reborn, as Shakespearian readers know, loses all the interest which he originally had when he first appeared. Even likewise with Āruṇi. He did play a great part, indeed, in the Chhāndogya; but later writers had no scruple in utilising his name, as we have said above, for very unimportant purposes. The seventh chapter of the Chhāndogya contains the famous discourse between Nārada and Sanatkumāra, the main points of which we shall discuss at a later stage of this chapter. Finally, the eighth chapter of this Upanishad contains some very excellent hints for the practical realisation of the Ātman, as well as the famous myth of Indra and Virochana which we shall have occasion duly to notice in a later chapter of this work.

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10. The Īśa and the Kena Upanishads, which form our group II, are both named after the initial words of these treatises, just as the ancient chronicles of Scandinavia are named "Heimskringla" after their opening words. The Īśopanishad is quite a small Upanishad, and yet it contains many hints which show an extraordinarily piercing insight. Within the short compass of 18 verses, it gives us a valuable mystical description of the Ātman, a description of the ideal Sage who stands unruffled in the midst of temptations and sorrows, an adumbration of the doctrine of Karmayoga as later formulated, and finally a reconciliation of the claims of knowledge and works. The most valuable idea that lies at the root of the Upanishad is that of a logical synthesis which it attempts between the two opposites of knowledge and works, which are both required according to that Upanishd to be annulled in a higher synthesis. It is this idea of the logical synthesis of opposites which is an unconscious contribution which the Sage of the Upanishad makes to the development of Indian Thought.

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The Kenopanishad which consists of four sections, two balancing against two, the first two being composed in verse, the last two in prose, exhibits also the division of the subjective and objective approaches to the proof of Ātman, namely, the psychological and the cosmological. The verse part of the Upanishad gives us a psychological argument for the existence of Ātman as the inspirer of the various sense-functions; it also breaks the idols, literally and metaphorically, in favour of the worship of Ultimate Reality conceived as Ātman; and finally it makes an essay in spiritual agniology telling us in a paradoxical fashion that those who know really do not know, and those who do not know may alone be said to know the ultimate reality. The prose part of the Upanishad gives us the famous myth of Indra and the Damsel and advances a cosmological argument for the proof of the Immeasurable Power which lies at the back of the forces of Nature. It teaches us a lesson of humility, inasmuch as it tells us that no man who is not humble may hope to come into the presence of this Power; while it lays the moral foundation for this "esoteric doctrine" when it tells us that austerity, restraint and action are its ποῦ στῶ, the Vedas its limbs, and Truth its shelter. The Upanishad also advises us to find the same reality in objective as well as subjective existence, in the flash of the lightning as in the motion of the mind.

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11. The Aitareya Upanishad, properly so-called, is only a part of the larger Aitareya Āraṇyaka beginning with the fourth section of the second chapter of the Āraṇyaka and going to the end of that chapter. There are three chapters of the Upanishad itself, all of which are important. The first is given to a description of the creation of the world by the primeval Ātman through the intermediary Virāj. The second contains the famous philosophy of "Three Births" probably belonging to the sage Vāmadeva, a Vedic sage mentioned in Ṛigveda IV. 27. 1, whose opinions are cited with approval in the present Upanishad, and whose example is held up before the eyes of one who is desirous of gaining immortality. We shall discuss the philosophy of Vāmadeva at a later stage in this chapter; but we cannot forbear from remarking here that the idea of life after death is definitely introduced in this chapter. Finally, the last chapter of this Upanishad is a very bold statement of the fundamental doctrine of idealistic philosophy that all psychical and cosmical existences must be regarded as the expression of a common principle, namely, intellect.

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The Aitareya, the Taittiriya, and the Kaushitaki Upanishads.

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The Taittirīya is divided into three chapters. In the first chapter occurs the famous physiological description of the "nipple-like" gland which hangs downwards in the brain, and which is regarded as the seat of the Immortal Being. In this chapter likewise occur two famous ethical descriptions, as well as the mystical utterances of Triśaṅku. The second chapter is a collection of miscellaneous points containing, among other things, the first mention of the so-called "Doctrine of Sheaths", as well as a description of the Beatific Calculus. The third chapter takes up the question of the Sheaths from the second chapter and exhibits these as a ladder of metaphysical existences, and ends with that famous mystical monologue in which subject and object and the subject-object relation are all described as being ultimately one.

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The Kaushītaki is divided into four chapters, of which the first is merely an enlarged variant on the description of the path of the Gods and the path of the Fathers, as occurring in the Chhāndogya and the Bṛihadāraṇyaka Upanishads, and the last is again a repetition of the story of Bālāki and Ajātaśatru as occurring in the Bṛihadāraṇyaka. It is only the second and the third chapters of this Upanishad which may be said to belong to the Kaushītaki proper. The second chapter is a collection of quite disconnected units and contains the doctrines of the four philosophers, namely, Kaushītaki who is described as "Sarvajit", or an all-conquering sage, as well as Paiṅgya, Pratardana and Śushkabhṛiṅgāra. Moreover, it contains a description of a number of social customs of the time, which are superstitious and which may therefore be regarded as irreligious. In the third chapter, Pratardana is described as imbibing the principles of philosophy from Indra. Now Indra is only a mythological name, a name of Vedic repute, and we may say that the points of philosophy contained in this chapter belong to Pratardana himself rather than to Indra. Nevertheless, we must consider the story as it is, and take into account the references that are freely made here to Indra’s exploits as found in the Rigveda. Indra tells Pratardana that the only good for mankind here below is to know Him; that He it was who had killed the three-headed son of Tvaṣṭṛ; that He it was who had delivered over the Aruṇmukhas to the jackals; that having broken many a treaty, He it was who killed the sons of Prahlāda in the heaven, the Paulomas in the inter-mundane regions, and the Kālakañjas on earth; and that even though He had done these deeds, not a hair of His body was injured; and that finally any one who understands Indra to be of this nature, and to have performed these exploits, never suffers, even though he may kill his mother or father, or go in for a theft, or destroy an embryo; nor does the bloom ever depart from his face. It is in this conversation also between Indra and Pratardana that Prāṇa comes to be understood first as the principle of life, then as the principle of consciousness, and then is equated with Ultimate Reality, namely the Ātman, and we are told that it is this Ātman who is the cause of all good and evil actions in this world, and that all human beings are merely instruments in His hands.

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12. The Katha, the Muṇḍaka and the Śvetāśvatara Upanishads which form our fourth group are related to each other as no three of the other Upanishads are. They all aim at envisaging the highest philosophical truths in a poetic manner, and thus become the chief sources from which the Bhagavadgītā

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**The Katha, the Mun-** **daka, and the Sveta-** **satara Upanishads.**

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and other philosophical poems later freely borrow, the only difference between the Upanishads being that the Kaṭhopanishad is more or less a metaphysical work, the Muṇḍaka an emotional work, and the Śvetāśvatara a commixture of philosophy and mysticism. All the three Upanishads seem, moreover, to have been written at a time when the Sāṃkhya and the Vedānta had not yet parted ways. Of these the Kaṭha has its natural termination at the end of the first Adhyāya, as may be seen from the repetition of words at the end of the Adhyāya, as well as the “phalaśruti” which is also given at the same place. The second Adhyāya thus seems to be tacked on to the original redaction of the Upanishad, and even though this latter Adhyāya seems to furnish a sequel to the Nachiketas-Death story as may be seen from the last verse of that Adhyāya, as well as from the repetition of words even here, still, as may be seen by reference to Kaṭhopanishad II. 5. 6, Yama seems at this place just to be supplying an answer to the query of Nachiketas in I. i. 29, which suggests that all the intervening portion is a later addition. The Kaṭha, like the Muṇḍaka and the Śvetāśvatara, will be so often quoted in this work that it would be needless for us to discuss its contents at any length. Two of the most prominent features of the Kaṭha are the description of the “Chariot of the Body”, and the death and dream approaches to the problem of reality. The whole of the Kaṭha is surcharged with lofty ideas about the Immortality of the Soul, as well as suggestions for the practical attainment of Ātman. In one passage, the Kaṭha brings out a distinction regarding the realisation of Ātman in the various worlds. While we are dwelling in this body on earth, we can visualise the Ātman only as in a mirror, that is contrariwise, left being to the right and right being to the left. In the world of the fathers, we visualise the Ātman as in a dream, the image leaving a psychical impression indeed, but being unreal. In the world of the Gandharvas, we are told, we see Him as one sees a pebble under water, the image being true but refracted. It is only in the Brahman-world, we are told, that we can distinguish the Ātman from the non-Ātman as light from shade, that is, we can see the Ātman as in broad day-light. This is a valauable contribution which the Kaṭhopanishad makes to Upanishadic thought.

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