A Constructive Survey of Upanishadic Philosophy c6.s3.t2.18

c6.s3.t2.18

has been asked by the Seer to move back to the Sun which is its analogue in the makranthropos, the anima to the wind which is its analogue, and the animus has been directed to go to the heaven or to the earth according to its qualities (dharma), or else to move even to the waters or the plants if it so suited it.¹ This verse instead of expressing transmigration proper may be said to be putting forth certain hints towards an animistic or hylozoistic view of the world; but the word dharma which it introduces is a very significant word. It is the earliest trace of a theory of karman, especially as the soul is asked to go to heaven or to earth according to its qualities. But a still more definite passage is found in another hymn of the tenth Maṇḍala of the Ṛigveda, where a hylozoism is advocated with even greater stress. There we definitely know that the whole hymn² is addressed to a departed spirit, and the poet says that he is going to recall the departed soul in order that it may return again and live. The poet says that the spirit which has gone far away to the world of death he will recall and make live once more. The spirit, he continues, "which may have gone to heaven or earth or to the four-cornered globe, which may have been diffused in the various quarters or have taken resort in the waves of the sea or the beams of the light, which may have ensouled the waters or the herbs, or gone to the sun or the dawn, or rested on the mountains, or which may have spread through the whole universe and become identical with the past and the future"—that soul, says the poet, he will recall by means of his song, and make it take on a tenement.