A Constructive Survey of Upanishadic Philosophy c5.s4.2

Language: English

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19. We have hitherto considered both the impersonalistic and the personalistic theories of creation, pointing out incidentally the analogies which subsist between the Upanishadic and the Greek theories of cosmogony. Even though, however, the similarities have been pointed out, they have not yet been explained. The problem of the relation of Greek and Indian cosmogonies, and in general, of Greek and Indian philosophies, is a very interesting problem, and it may just be worth our while to attempt a brief solution of it. The problem of the relation of the two philosophies is only a branch of the general Græco-Indian problem of the relation of the two cultures. In an analysis of the two cultures in the various departments, we may say that there are three theories which can be advanced to explain their extraordinary similarities. (1) The Theory of Borrowal either by Greece from India or by India from Greece could find historical justification only after the date of Alexander. Just as Greece left a mark upon Indian progress in the departments of sculpture and numismatics after Alexander's invasion, similarly, India left a deep impression upon the Platonists of Alexandria as seen especially in the all-to Yogic ecsatasy of the Neo-Platonists, and their borrowal of the three qualities πνευματικοί, ψυχικοί, ὑλικοί from Sāmkhya philosophy. But the far more important question in the general Græco-Indian problem is how the two cultures were related before the invasion of Alexander.

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Diogenes, the biographer of Greek philosophers, and Jamblichus, the Neo-platonist, narrate to us stories of the visit to Brahmins of early Greek philosophers, among them philosophers like Thales and Pythagoras. But this fact has yet to be historically proved. The absence of a single reference in Plato to Indian philosophy forbids the truth of such a statement. (2) Thus, in order to explain the many analogies of Comparative Mythology and Comparative Philology, we have to take recourse to a second theory, namely the Theory of Common Origin. The story for example, of the Universal Being as an egg-like sphere, and Phanes, the shining god, coming out of its two lids, namely, the earth and the sky; the bi-partition of the primeval Ātman into two portions, the man and the wo-man, with its analogy in Hebrew literature; and the similar descriptions of the Aśvattha in the Kaṭhopanishad and the Igdrasil in Scandinavian mythology, may all be traced to a time when the European and the Indian Aryans lived together. Similarly, about Comparative Philology.

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The present writer has proved in his essay on "the Comparative Study of Greek and Sanskrit" that the many great analogies of the entire grammatical structure of the two languages could hardly be explained except on the theory of a continued stay together of the two peoples, thus reinforcing from an altogether different point of view the truth of the Theory of Common Origin in certain departments of the two cultures.(3)Finally, there is the Theory of what we may call Independent Parallelism, which is of especial value to us in explaining the analogies of philosophical concepts. We have already noticed how the definitions of the primary substance in the two philosophies are identical; how the query of Hesiod at the beginning of his work corresponds almost exactly to the query at the beginning of the Śvetāśvataropanishad; how the conception of water as the "archē" in the Bṛihadāraṇyakopanishad has its counterpart in the theory of Thales; how the doctrine of air as the final absorbent in the Chhāndogya has its analogue in the theory of Anaximenes; how the Heracleitean conception of the exchange of fire for all things is to be met with in the Kaṭhopanishad; how the earth as the basis of the cosmos as we find it in the Muṇḍakopanishad is echoed in Hesiod; how the conception of Space as the fifth element recognised in the Taittirīyopanishad has its parallel in the theory of Philolaos;

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how the conceptions of Not-Being and Being in the Taittirīya and the Chhāndogya Upanishads have their parallels in the theories of Gorgias and Parmenides; how the Way Up and the Way Down in Taittirīyopanishad are repeated in the theory of Heracleitus; how, finally, the conception of Trivṛitkaraṇa in the Chhāndogya Upanishad has its analogue in the Anaxagorian doctrine of there being a portion of everything in everything. So far about the cosmological resemblances proper. Nor are the extra-cosmological resemblances of the two philosophies less interesting.

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The Pythagorean doctrine of Transmigration and its Indian analogue dating so far back as the days of the Ṛigveda, the Phaedrus myth of the Charioteer and the Horses and an exactly similar myth in the Kaṭhopanishad, the representation of the idea of the Good in Plato as the Sun of the world of ideas having its counterpart in the description in the Kaṭhopanishad of the Ātman as verily the Sun who is the eye of the world and is free from all imperfections, the μὴ ὄν of Plato corresponding phonetically, philologically and even philosophically to the Māya of the Vedānta, Parmeides’s attack in Plato against the Universality of the Idea represented to a word in the famous criticism by Śaṅkara of the Naiyāyika idea of the Universal, the analogy of the Vāk in Ṛigveda to the Logos in Heracleitus, the Stoics, and Greek philosophy generally—all these could not be said to be less interesting specimens of the analogies of Greek and Indian Thought. How may we explain these cosmological, and extra-cosmological, analogies? Not by the Theory of Borrowal, for this cannot be historically proved. Nor by the Theory of Common Origin, because, in spite of the similarities, the philosophical concepts of the two lands are placed in a setting all their own, the Pythagorean theory of Numbers and the Platonic theory of Ideas being as peculiar to Greek thought, as the Upanishadic doctrine of the Turīya and the Mimāṃsaka doctrine of the Sphoṭa are peculiar to Indian thought.

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We must needs take the help of the Theory of the Independent Parallelism of Thought, where no borrowing or common origin could be historically proved. The Gīta conception of God as the A of the Indian alphabet and the Gospel conception of God as the Alpha and Omega of things, and the Kālidasian description of the stream of love as raging all the more on account of hindrances in its path finding its echo in the Shakespearean description of love in the “Two Gentlemen,” are instances how imagination may work absolutely alike in regions of poetry or philosophy. There is nothing to prevent the flights of genius from achieving the same ends wherever it may be placed. Neptune might be discovered by Adams and Leverrier at the same time. Darwin and Wallace might simultaneously discover the principle of Natural Selection. Scott and Amundsen might reach the North Pole at the same moment. What might prevent Philosophers from grasping the same point of view, even though separated by Time and Place?