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A Constructive Survey of Upanishadic Philosophy c7: Chapter IV. Roots of Later Philosophies

A Constructive Survey of Upanishadic Philosophy c7

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Chapter IV. Roots of Later Philosophies

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**1. Introductory.** It has been customary among commentators of Upanishadic Philosophy to regard the variegated philosophical texts of the Upanishads as constituting one systematic whole. Thus the many great commentators on the Upanishads, such as those belonging to the schools of Pluralism, Qualified Monism, Monism, Pure Monism and others, have tried to utilise even those passages, whose import is manifestly against the particular doctrines which they are holding, as authoritative texts to prop up their own particular dogmas. The primary cause of such a handling of the Upanishads is a mistaken notion of the meaning of revelation. The Upanishads, like the Ṛigveda, having been regarded as a revelation from God, it seems impossible to these commentators that such a revelation should contain texts which are contradictory of each other. A second reason for the manifest attempt to press all the Upanishadic texts into the service of the particular dogma to which these philosophers are committed is the lack of a historico-critical spirit which refuses to see in the Upanishads the bubbling up of the thoughts of numerous sages of antiquity, each of whom tried to express as naively, as simply, and as directly as possible the thoughts which were uppermost in his mind, and which he regarded as fully descriptive of the view of reality which consciously or unconsciously had sprung up within him. As we shall see in the course of the chapter, the Upanishads supply us with various principles of thought, and may thus be called the Berecynthia of all the later systems of Indian Philosophy. Just like a mountain which from its various sides gives birth to rivers which run in different directions, similarly the Upanishads constitute that lofty eminence of philosophy, which from its various sides gives birth to rivulets of thought, which, as they progress onwards towards the sea of life, gather strength by the inflow of innumerable tributaries of speculation which intermittently join these rivulets, so as to make a huge expanse of waters at the place where they meet the ocean of life. It is thus that we see in the Upanishads roots of Buddhistic as well as Jain Philosophy, of Sāmkhya as well as Yoga, of Mīmānsā as well as Śaivism, of the theistic-mystic philosophy of the Bhagavadgītā, of the Dvaita, the Vīśiṣṭādvaita as well as the Advaita systems. Let no man stand up and say that the Upanishads advocate only one single doctrine. A careful study of the Upanishads, supplemented by a critico-historical spirit engendered by the study of Western thought, will soon reduce to nought all such frivolous notions that there is only one system of thought to be found in the Upanishads. For long the personal equation of philosophers has weighed with them in determining the interpretation of texts so as to suit their own particular dogmas. As against these, it shall be our business in the course of this chapter to point out how from the Upanishads spring various streams of thought, which gradually become more and more systematised into the architectonic systems of later Indian Philosophy.

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2. We shall begin by a consideration of the sources of Buddhism as found in Upanishadic literature. It may be remembered that the end of the Upanishadic period and the beginning of the Bud-

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The Upanishads and Buddhism.

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histic period are contemporaneous, and that the one gradually and imperceptibly merges into the other. When the Chhāndogyopanishad said that in the beginning verily Not-Being alone existed, and that it was later that Being was born from it (S. I. a), we have to understand that a reference was made here to a doctrine which was to become full-fledged in the later denial of existence and the maintenance of a void in Buddhistic literature. When in his commentary on the above passage, Śaṅkarāchārya states that this may refer to the doctrine of the Buddhists, who said that “sadabhāva” alone existed before the creation of anything, he is right in referring it to the doctrine of the Buddhists. The metaphysical maintenance of Not-Being has its psychological counterpart in the maintenance of the theory of the denial of Soul. When the Kaṭhopanishad said, that when a man is dead, various people think variously about the spirit that inspired him, some saying that it still lives, others saying that it has ceased to exist (S. I. b), we have in embryo the “anattā-vāda” of the Buddhists, the theory of a denial of Soul, a theory which the Buddhists probably held in common with the Chārvākas with whom there was no soul except the body.

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Then again, the cry of Nachiketas—that everything that exists exists only for the nonce and never for the morrow, that objects of sensual enjoyment only wear away the vigour of the senses, that life is only as short as a dream, that he who contemplates the delights issuing from attachment to colour and sex may never crave for longevity (S. I. c)—all this may be taken to be equally well the cry of Buddhism, which is almost contemporaneous with the thoughts put into the mouth of Nachiketas, that everything in this world is full of sorrow, “sarvam duḥkham duḥkham,” that every thing that exists is fleeting and evanescent, “sarvam kṣaṇikam kṣaṇikam.” The injunction given in the Bṛihadāraṇyaka that a man who thus becomes disgusted with the world should rise from desires for progeny or wealth, and take to the life of a mendicant (S. 1. d) is only too prophetic of the order of Bhikkus in Buddhism as well as Jainism. When again, the Aitareyopanishad said that all the existence in this world—the five great elements, all the beings that are born from the egg or the embryo or owe their existence to perspiration or germination from the earth, all horses and cattle and men, and finally everything that breathes or moves or flies or is stationary—all these are known by intellect and are based in intellect (S. 1.

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e), we have here enunciated for us the root-principle of the metaphysics and the epistemology of the Vijñānavādins, when we remember that there is only an easy passage from the word “prajñāna” which is actually used in the quotation, to the word “vijñāna,” which the Vijñānavādins use. Finally, when in the conversation between Jaratkārava and Yājñavalkya in the Bṛihadāraṇyaka, Jaratkārava pressed Yājñavalkya to the deepest issue, Yājñavalkya said that it behoved them to retire to a private place and discuss the merits of the question he had asked only in private, and we are told that what passed between Jaratkārava and Yājñavalkya was only a conversation about the nature of Karman, and that they together came to the conclusion that a man becomes holy by holy actions and sinful by sinful actions (S. 1. f)—a thought which was probably later reiterated in the Kaṭhopanishad where we are told that the souls take on a new body in inorganic or live matter according to their works and wisdom (S. 1. g)—a passage where we have once for all laid down for us the principle of Karman which became the inspiration of Buddhistic as well as other systems of philosophy in India, but which appears with a peculiar moral force in Buddhistic as in no other system of philosophy.

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Thus we see that all the main rudiments of Buddhism are present in embryo in the Upanishads: the doctrine of Not-Being, the doctrine of Denial of Soul, a contempt of sense-pleasure bordering upon pessimism, the order of mendicants, the idealistic theory of knowledge, and finally the doctrine of Karman. It is true that with these rudiments Buddhism constructed a philosophy which seems to be fundamentally different from the philosophy of the Upanishads, but which as we have seen, found sufficient inspiration from them to be traceable to them as to a parent.

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3. Like Buddhism, Sāmkhya was also a system of philosophy which was very early to come into existence. Its origin may certainly be traced to Upanishadic literature if not even earlier. It is true that the Sāmkhya, along with its compeer system the Yoga, is mentioned by name only in such a late Upanishad as the Śvetāśvatara (S. 2. a); but the root-ideas of Sāmkhya are to be found much earlier in Upanishadic literature. When in the Chhāndogya we are told that behind all things, there are really three primary colours, namely the red, the white, and the black, and that it is only these three colours which may really be said to exist, while all other things that are constituted out of them are merely a word, a modification and a name, we have the rudiments of the theory of three Guṇas of the later Sāmkhya philosophy--a fact which was made use of in the description of the original Prakṛiti, made up of the red, the white and the dark colours by the Śvetāśvatarapanishad (S. 2. b). We must remember, therefore, that for the origin of the three Guṇas in the Sāmkhya philosophy we have to go to the conception of the three colours in the Chhāndogyopanishad as repeated also in the Śvetāśvataropanishad. Then again, we have an interesting specimen of how Sāmkhya philosophy was yet in the making at the time of the Kathopanishad.

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When we are told in that Upanishad that above the Mind is Buddhi, above the Buddhi is the Mahat Ātman, above the Mahat Ātman is the Avyakta, above the Avyakta is the Purusha, and that beyond and above the Purusha there is nothing else (S. 3. a), and yet again, when we are told, just a little after the verse which we have considered above, that the Mind must be merged in the Jñāna Ātman, the Jñāna Ātman in the Mahat Ātman, and the Mahat Ātman in the Śānta Ātman (S. 3. b), we have evidently to equate the Buddhi of the one passage with the Jñāna Ātman of the other, the Mahat Ātman of the one with the Mahat Ātman of the other, and the Purusha of the one with the Śānta Ātman of the other, only the Avyakta of the first passage which comes in between the Mahat Ātman and the Purusha having been elided in the second scheme for the sake of convenience, or even for the sake of metre. In any case it stands to reason that we may suppose that in these two passages we have enunciated for us Mind and Intellect, the Mahat, the Avyakta, and the Purusha,—categories which play such an important part in the later Sāmkhya philosophy. Then also we have to note that the conception of the Liṅga-śarīra in the later Sāmkhya philosophy is already adumbrated for us in the Praśnopanishad, which reiterates from time to time the nature of the Purusha with sixteen parts. In this body verily is that Being who is made up of sixteen parts, says one passage (S. 4. a);

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another goes on to enumerate the constituents of this Person which are breath, faith, space, air, light, water, earth, the senses, mind, food, power, vidual Soul, is described as bound in the chains forged for him by the Universal Soul (S. 6. b). In this way we get a theistic description of the Godhead, who is endowed with all activity, and the power of creation and government. On the other hand, there are other passages where God is described as living apart from Prakṛiti in a transcendent sphere, while the Individual Soul in the blindfoldment of his ignorance lies by the Prakṛiti and is caught in the meshes of her love (S. 7. a). In a true deistic spirit God is described as only the spectator of actions, as being absolutely free from the influence of qualities and as thus living apart from contamination with Prakṛiti (S. 7. b). We need not point too often that the Śvetāśvatara was written at the time of the parting of the ways between the Vedāntic, the Sāṁkhya and the Yoga Schools of Thought, which explains why we have not in the Śvetāśvatara cut-and-dry doctrines about Nature and God and their inter-relation That the Sāṁkhya and the Vedānta were merged together at the time of the Śvetāśvatara could also be proved by the way in which the Upanishad describes the tawny-coloured being (Kapila) as first created by the Godhead, who is described as looking upon him while he was being born (S. 8. a).

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Much controversy has arisen about the interpretation of the word "Kapila" in the above passage and doctrinaires are not wanting who hold that the Kapila referred to in the above passage was no other than the originator of the Sāṁkhya Philosophy. It need not be denied that the author of the Śvetāśvatara had no idea whatsoever at the back of his mind about the existence of Kapila, the originator of the Sāṁkhya Philosophy, but it is evident from the way in which two other passages from the same Upanishad tell us that the Kapila of the above passage is merely the equivalent of Hiraṇyagarbha, the Intermediary Person, the Logos of Indian Philosophy, who was the first to be created by God, and who was endowed by him with all powers (S. 8. b) ; while what doubt may still be lurking about such a Vedāntic interpretation of the word Kapila, which the author of the Upanishad must have had in mind, may finally be set at rest by the consideration of a last passage from the Śvetāśvatara, where we are told that it was Brahmā, the Creator, who was first created by the Godhead as intermediary between himself and creation (S. 8. c), thus placing beyond the shadow of a doubt the identity of the Kapila Ṛishi of Śvetāśvatara V. 2 with the Hiraṇyagarbha of Śvetāśvatara III. 4 and IV. 12, as well as the Brahmā, the Creator, of Śvetāśvatara VI. 18.

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5. As for the roots of the Yoga system, we must also turn to the Śvetāśvatara, which is its *locus classicus*. There is a passage of a very peculiar interest in the second chapter of the Śvetāśvatara which gives us the rudiments of the practice and philosophy of the Yoga doctrine as later formulated. It may be seen that in the first place it calls our attention to the posture of the body at the time of practising the Yoga. Anticipating the Bhagavadgītā, it tells us that we should hold the trunk, the neck, and the head in a straight line at the time of meditation. No elaborate scheme of Āsanas is yet furnished, which was to form the principal theme of the New Upanishads, especially those pertaining to Yoga which brought Rājayoga into line with Haṭhayoga. Then, secondly, we are advised to control our senses by means of mind, a process equivalent to the later Pratyāhāra. Thirdly, we are told to regulate our breath, implying that it should be made rhythmical, which practice may be called the precursor of the later Prāṇāyāma. Fourthly, we are told that the environment in which one should practise meditation should be pure, and free from sand and fire, as well as sounds and water-pools, and that as far as possible, the meditation should be practised in the recesses of a cave.

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Fifthly, we are informed of the harbingers of a spiritul day-light to come, namely the forms of mist and smoke, the sun and the fire, as well as other appearances which will be discussed in the last chapter of this work. Sixthly, we are led into the secret of the physiological effects produced by the "fire of Yoga". We are told that one who practises Yoga becomes ageless and immortal; and that he feels his body to be light and completely healthy. Lastly, the Śvetāśvatara immediately carries us to the highest result secured by the practice of Yoga, namely, to the state of Samādhi, where the Individual Soul sees the Universal Soul and becomes one with him (S. 9. a), a fact adumbrated in the famous Yoga-Sūtra—*tadā draṣṭuḥ svarūpe avasthānam*. The process of Dhāraṇā and Dhyāna as preparatory to Samādhi are not separately mentioned in this Upanishad for the reason that both of them may be seen to be parts of, and thus capable of being incorporated in, the highest state, namely, that of Samādhi. The Kaṭhopanishad, however, makes mention of Dhāraṇā and tells us that this consists in a continued equanimity of the senses, mind, and intellect, and calls it the highest state of Yoga (S. 9. b); while the Dhyāna is also mentioned in the Śvetāśvatara I. 14, where we are asked to meditate upon the Godhead and to bring him out of the recess of our heart (S. 9. c).

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We thus see that if we just add the Yama and the Niyama of later Yogic philosophy to the various elements of Yoga as mentioned in the old Upanishads, namely, the Āsana, the Prāṇāyāma, the Pratyāhāra, the Dhāraṇā and the Dhyāna, all as preparatory to Samādhi, we have the full-fledged eight-fold scheme of the Yoga, or the Way to Spiritual Realisation. Moreover, the deistic conception of God as advanced in the Yoga-Sūtras, especially in a Sūtra like kleśakarmavipākāśayaiḥ aparāmṛiṣṭaḥ puruṣaviśeṣa Īśvaraḥ, is already present in the Upanishads when, as in the Muṇḍaka, we are told that the Universal Soul merely looks on, while the Individual Soul is engaged in the enjoyment of Prakṛiti, or, as in the Kaṭha, the Godhead is described as being beyond the reach of the sorrows of the world, just as the Sun, who is the eye of the world, is beyond the reach of the defects of vision (S. 9. d). Finally, the physiological basis of Yoga was being already discussed in the days of the Kaushitaki and the Maitri, when it seems an impetus was being given to physiological thought, which, as later advanced by the embryological and other discussions in the Garbhopanishad, was to pave the way for a physiology which was to be at the root of the systems propounded by Charaka, Agniveśa and others. Thus in the Maitri Upanishad an enumeration is made of the seven Dhātus : bone, skin, muscle, marrow, flesh, semen and blood ; of the four Malas, namely, mucus, tears, fæces, and urine ;

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and of the three Doshas, namely, wind, bile, and phlegm (S. 9. e); and in the Kaushitaki Upanishad we are told that the blood-vessels that go from the heart to the Puritat are as small as a hair divided thousand-fold, and that they are either tawny-coloured, or white,or dark, or yellow, or red (S. 9. f). With a little variation these blood-vessels were described, before the time of the Kaushitaki, in the Chhāndogya, as being tawny, white, blue, yellow and red (S. 9. g), and in the Bṛihadāraṇyaka as white, blue, tawny, green and red (S. 9. h). Whatever we may say about the "white" blood-vessels or "yellow" blood-vessels and the rest, it is evident that the authors of these passages knew at least the distinction between the blue and the red blood-vessels, a fact of great physiological importance. It was the study of Yoga which was the cause of the rise of physiological science which was the precursor of the later full-fledged systems of medicine.

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6. The mention of blood-vessels and the Purītat takes us to another subject, namely, the source of certain Nyāya-Vaiśeṣika doctrines as found in the Upanishads. It may easily be seen that the Upanishads are in a sense entirely different in their tenor and argument from the systems that go under the names of Nyāya-Vaiśeṣika. While the business of the Vaiśeṣika philosophy is to make a catalogue of ultimate existences in Nature, and of Nyāya philosophy to discuss the nature of dialectic and its aberrations, the Upanishads aim at stating as simply as possible the metaphysical doctrine of Ātman. The only point of contact, it seems, between the Nyāya-Vaiśeṣika on the one hand and the Upanishads on the other, so far as their metaphysics is concerned, is the conception of the *Summum Bonum* or Moksha which the Nyāya-Vaiśeṣika systems derive from the Upanishads. Moreover the Nyāya-Vaiśeṣika systems of philosophy require a highly developed stage of logical thought which would care more for the instrument of knowledge than for knowledge itself. Hence we do not find many traces of the Nyāya-Vaiśeṣika doctrine in the Upanishads. But the doctrine of the Purītat as advanced in the Upanishads has been bodily taken by the Nyāya and Vaiśeṣika systems of philosophy, and a change for the better has been also introduced in that doctrine by those systems. While the Bṛihadāraṇyakopanishad tells us, probably for the first time in the history of Upanishadic Thought, that at the time of sleep, the Soul moves by the Nāḍis to the Purītat, in which it takes lodgment and causes the physiological action of sleep (S. 10. a), the Nyāya philosophy takes up this idea from the Bṛihadāraṇyaka, only substitutes Mind for Soul, and says that it is the Mind which thus moves through the arteries to the Purītat, and it is only when the Mind is lodged in the Purītat that sleep occurs. The principal reason for the change thus introduced by the Nyāya Philosophy seems to be, probably, that one could easily predicate sleep about the Mind, but could never predicate it about the Soul, which must be regarded as always un-sleeping! Secondly, the Vaiśeshika philosophy itself, particularly in its enumeration of the Dravyas, namely the five different Elements along with Kāla, Manas and Ātman, the Dik being included in the Ākāśa, is indebted to many passages from the Upanishads where the five Elements are mentioned along with other conceptions, as for example, to the passage in the Śvetāśvatara where we are told that the Ātman is the Time of Time, and that the Elements, namely, earth, water, fire, air and ether are merely his handiwork (S. 10. b). Finally, when the Chhāndogya Upanishad says that it is the Ākāśa or ether which is the carrier of sound,—for we are told, it is by Ākāśa that man calls, it is by Ākāśa that man hears, it is by Ākāśa that man is able to hear the echo of a sound (S. 10. c),—we are introduced to a conception which later played such an important part in the Naiyāyika philosophy when it defined Ākāśa by its principal mark, namely, that of being the carrier of sound. The Mīmānsā doctrine, on the other hand, it may be remembered by the bye, is more scientifically correct than the Upanishadic-Naiyāyika doctrine when it tells us that it is the air which is the carrier of sound and not ether—a fact corroborated by modern science.

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7. The Mīmānsā school of thought, by the very nature of its ritualistic problems, has not much in common with Upanishadic philosophy, whose business it is to consider the nature of the Ultimate. But there is one very important philosophical doctrine of the Mīmānsakas which has been advocated by the Īśāvāsyopanishad. This Upanishad tells us that "those who walk on the path of ignorance, namely, that of works, go to pitchy darkness; while those who walk on the path of knowledge go to greater darkness still. Ignorance leads to the one result, while knowledge leads to the other. This is what we have heard from the Sages, who have told us about the nature of ignorance and knowledge. But he, who knows both the path of ignorance and the path of knowledge together, by his knowledge of the one is able to cross the bund of death, and by his knowledge of the other to attain to immortality" (S.11). This very important quotation from the Īśāvāsyopanishad tells us the way of synthesis out of the conflicting claims of works and knowledge. On the one hand, mere works are insufficient, on the other, mere knowledge is insufficient. The Pūrva Mīmānsā which advocates the one and the Uttara Mīmānsā which advocates the other may both be said to take partial views. As against both these the Īśāvāsyopanishad tells us that he who knows how to reconcile the claims of both works and knowledge is able to extricate himself from the evils inherent in either and to enjoy the advantages of both by going beyond both of them. We know how in later times there was a very great conflict between the schools of Prabhākara, Kumārilabhaṭṭa and Śaṅkara, the first maintaining that absolution could be attained only by means of works,—and knowledge itself he regarded as work,—the second maintaining that absolution could be attained only by a combination of knowledge and works, and the third maintaining that absolution must be attained only by knowledge. The Īśāvāsyopanishad puts forth an idea which supports neither the doctrine of Prabhākara on the one hand, nor the doctrine of Śaṅkara on the other, but only the doctrine of Kumārilabhaṭṭa that absolution is to be obtained by a combination of knowledge and works, while it even goes beyond Kumārilabhaṭṭa in asserting that both knowledge and works are to be negated in the higher synthesis of realisation. As Kumārilabhaṭṭa said a bird could not fly in the heaven merely by one wing, but only by means of both wings together, similarly, says the Īśāvāsya, man must reconcile the claims of both knowledge and works to be able to soar in the regions of the Infinite, the synthesis of soaring being even superior to the fact of equipoise. We thus see how the Īśāvāsyopanishad puts forth a theory which later became the pivot of the doctrine of the moderate Mīmāṃsakas, supporting as it does neither the doctrine of the ultra-Mīmāṃsakas, nor that of the ultra-Vedāntists.

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8. As for the roots of Śaivism in the Upanishads, we must turn again to the Śvetāśvatara. Even though Umā as a heavenly damsel is mentioned so far back as the Kenopanishad, still, for a detailed and systematic philosophy of Śaivism, we must necessarily turn to the Śvetāśvatara. It is true that the conception of Rudra-Śiva was being developed since the days of the Ṛgveda and the Atharvaveda;

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The Upanishads and Saivism.

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but it is only when we come to the time of Śvetāśvatara that we find the doctrine of Śiva placed on a more or less philosophical foundation. We are told in this Upanishad that "it is the God Īśa who supports both the mutable and the immutable, the manifest and the unmanifest. As contrasted with Him is the powerless Ātman, who is bound on account of his being the enjoyer of the fruits of action; but that, when this Ātman knows the Īśa, he is relieved of his bonds, namely, the Pāśas" (S. 12. a). The philosophy of Paśu, Pati, and Pāśa is thus to be already seen in an embryonic stage in the Śvetāśvatara. "Rudra is the only Lord God. They do not maintain another God. He who rules these worlds by means of his powers, standing before every man's face, and destroying the created world in anger at the time of the Great End (S. 12. b)—He is the Lord Śiva, who, hidden in all beings, is the sole enveloper of the universe, who is like the very subtle film at the top of ghee, by the knowledge of whom alone comes freedom from the meshes of ignorance" (S. 12. c). "Verily does the God spread manifold the meshes in his hands, and move on the surface of this globe. He creates and recreates and maintains his sovereignty over all the worlds" (S. 12. d). In this fashion is the God Rudra, who is identified with Śiva or Īśa, magnified in the Śvetāśvatara as the only Lord God who is the Supreme Soul of Souls and who is the Governor of the universe, by the knowledge of whom alone the individual Soul, who is bound down in the meshes of ignorance, can attain absolution. This was the manner in which the Śvetāśvatara paved the way for later Śaivism, its theistic way of glorification, suffused with a trinitarian monism, becoming the pivot of the doctrines of Kāśmir Śaivism and Southern Śaivism.

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9. When we come to discuss the relation between the Upanishads and the Bhagavadgītā, we must observe at the outset that a full discussion of this problem cannot be attempted at the short space at our disposal in this chapter. The problem is so interesting and so wide that a full discussion of it could be attempted only in a separate treatise. It is necessary for us nevertheless to indicate the main lines of the relation between the Upanishads and the Bhagavadgītā at this place. There is an amount of truth in the famous verse which tells us that "the Upanishads are like a cow, Kṛṣṇa like a milk-man, Arjuna like the calf that is sent to the udders of the cow before milking, and the Bhagavadgītā like the milk-nectar that is churned from the udders of the cow." As illustrations of the way in which the Bhagavadgītā borrows ideas, phrases and even sentences from the Upanishads, we have to note how the verse from the Kaṭhopanishad which tells us that "the Ātman is never born nor is ever killed, he neve comes from anything, nor becomes anything, he is unborn, imperishable, eternal, has existed from all eternity, and is not killed even when the body is killed" (S. 13. a) is reproduced almost word for word in Bhagavadgītā II. 20; as well as that other verse from the Kaṭha which tells us that "when a killer thinks he is killing and when the killed thinks he is being killed, neither of them verily knows, for the Ātman is neither killed nor ever kills," (S. 13. b) is reproduced in those very words in Bhagavadgītā II. 19. Then again we see how a verse from the Kaṭhopanishad which tells us that "the Ātman is not even so much as heard of by many, that even hearing Him people do not know Him, that the speaker of the Ātman is a miracle, that the obtainer of Him must have exceeding insight, that he who comes to know him after being instructed by such a wise man is himself a miracle" (S. 13. c) is paraphrased and adopted in Bhagavadgītā II. 29; while another verse from the same Upanishad "What word the Vedas declare, what word the penances busy themselves about, what word inspires the life of spiritual discipleship, that word, briefly I tell thee, is Om" (S. 13. d) is also reproduced almost word for word in Bhagavadgītā VIII. 13. Finally, the conception of Devayāna and Pitṛiyāṇa, the path of the Gods and the path of the Fathers (S. 13. e), which the Upanishads, as we have seen, themselves borrowed from the Vedas, was handed over by them to the Bhagavadgītā, which, in a very crisp description of the two paths (VIII. 24-25), tells us, in the very same strain as the Upanishads, that those who move by the path of the Gods move towards Brahman, while those who go by the path of the Fathers return by the path by which they have gone.

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10. So far we have considered the passages from the Bhagavadgītā and the Upanishads which are substantially identical from the point of view of either phraseology or ideology. We shall now consider those passages and ideas from the Upanishads which the Bhagavadgītā has borrowed, transformed, and developed, so as to suit its own particular philosophy. The verse from the Īśāvāsyopanishad which tells us in a spirit of apparent contradiction that "a man should spend his life-time only in doing actions, for it is only thus that he may hope to be untainted by action" (S. 14. a), has supplied the Bhagavadgītā with an idea so prolific of consequences that the Bhagavadgītā has deemed it fit to erect a whole philosophy of Karmayoga upon it. As we may also point out in the chapter on the Ethics of the Upanishads, this passage supplies us with the means as well as the goal of moral life, without giving us the connecting link between them. As we shall see later, the principal theme of the Bhagavadgītā is to teach a life of activity coupled with the effects of actionlessness through the intermediate linkage of un-attachment to and indifference to the fruits of action. Secondly, when in the Muṇḍakopanishad we find the description of the Cosmic Person with fire as his head, the sun and the moon as his eyes, the quarters as his ears, the Vedas as his speech, air as his Prāṇa, the universe as his heart, and the earth as his feet (S. 14. b), we have in embryo a description of the Viśvarūpa which later became the theme of the famous Eleventh Chapter of the Bhagavadgītā on the transfigured personality of Kṛṣṇa. It is true at the same time that the Muṇḍakopanishad probably borrows the idea from the Purushasūkta, but it is equally true to say that it supplies the Bhagavadgītā with a text upon which the latter enlarges, and evolves the conception of the Cosmic Person, who fills all, who is all-powerful, to whom the past and the future are like an eternal now, submission to whom and assimilation to whom constitute the ends of mortal endeavour. Then, thirdly, while the Kaṭhopanishad gives us a scheme of psychological and metaphysical existences mixed together in a famous passage where it declares that beyond the senses are the objects, beyond the objects is mind, beyond the mind is intellect, beyond the intellect is Mahat, beyond the Mahat is the Avyakta, and finally beyond the Avyakta is the Purusha, beyond whom and outside whom there is nothing else (S. 14. c), the Bhagavadgītā simplifies the scheme very much by retaining only the psychological categories and doing away with the metaphysical, for the simple reason that it understands the passage to have a psychological rather than a metaphysical significance. Thus, when the Bhagavadgītā in III. 42 tells us that beyond the senses is mind, that beyond the mind is intellect, and that beyond intellect is the Purusha, it drops out altogether the categories of the objective world,—the Mahat and the Avyakta,—retains only the psychological categories and simplifies the scheme immensely. Finally, the devotional impulse which beats in the heart of Nārada when he implores Sanatkumāra to initiate him into spiritual wisdom (S. 15. a), as well as the equally fervent emotional attitude of Bṛhadratha when he requests Śākāyanya to lift him out of the mire of existence like a frog from a waterless well (S. 15. b),—which emotional attitudes may be seen to be strangely in contrast with the otherwise generally dry intellectual argumentation of the Upanishads,—become later almost the foundation-stone for the theistic-mystic philosophy of the Bhagavadgītā, in which the dry intellectualism and the speculative construction of the Upanishads disappear, and we have the rare combination of poetry and philosophy which makes the "Upāsanā" of the Śvetāśvatara (S. 15. c), or "Bhakti" to God as to Guru (S. 15. d) the *sine quâ non* of a truly mystic life, whose end is the realisation of God.

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11. In one important respect, however, the Bhagavadgītā takes a position almost antagonistic to the position advanced in the Upanishads. In the Kaṭhopanishad, we have the description of "the eternal Aśvattha tree with its root upwards and branches downwards, which is the pure immortal Brahman, in which all these worlds are situated, and beyond which there is nothing else" (S. 16). In this passage we are

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The Asvattha in the Upanishads and the Bhagavadgita.

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told that the Aśvattha tree is the Brahman itself, and that it is imperishable. On the other hand, the Bhagavadgītā, at the opening of its 15th Chapter, tells us that " the Aśvattha tree has its root upwards and branches downwards. Its leaves are the Vedas. It sends out its branches both downwards and upwards, which are nourished by the Guṇas. The sensual objects are its foliage. Yet again, its infinite roots spread downwards in the form of action in the human world. It is not possible to have a glimpse of that tree here in this fashion. It has neither end, nor beginning, nor any stationariness whatsoever. After having cut off this Aśvattha tree, which has very strong roots, by the forceful weapon of unattachment, we should then seek after that celestial abode from which there is no return, and reach the primeval Person, from whom all existence has sprung of old " (XV. 1-4). We are not concerned here to discuss the merits or demerits of this description of the Aśvattha tree in the Bhagavadgītā. We shall not consider the contradictions that are introduced in this description, but we are concerned here only to find how far this description from the Bhagavadgītā agrees with the description in the Kaṭhopanishad. It may be noted at once that there is an agreement between the Upanishad and the Bhagavadgītā so far as the Aśvattha tree is regarded as having its root upwards and its branches downwards. But, while the Upanishad teaches that the Aśvattha tree is real, and identical with Brahman, and therefore impossible of being cut off, the Bhagavadgītā teaches that the Aśvattha tree must be regarded as unreal, and as identical with existence, and therefore that it is necessary to cut off this tree of existence by the potent weapon of non-attachment. The two descriptions seem to be almost at daggers drawn. It may be noticed by students of comparative mythology that the descriptions of the Aśvattha tree in the Upanishad and in the Bhagavadgītā have an analogue in the description of the tree Igdrasil in Scandinavian mythology. It is important to notice also that the description of the Igdrasil agrees with that of the Upanishads in making the tree identical with Reality, and therefore having a real concrete existence. On the other hand, it agrees with the Bhagavadgītā in making the actions, the motives, and the histories of mankind the boughs and branches of this tree of existence. We cannot do better than quote in this place Carlyle’s famous description of the tree Igdrasil: “All Life is figured by them as a Tree. Igdrasil, the Ash-tree of Existence, has its roots deep down in the kingdoms of Hela or Death; its trunk reaches up heaven-high, spreads its boughs over the whole Universe; it is the Tree of Existence. At the foot of it, in the Death-kingdom, sit Three nornas Fates,—the Past, Present, Future; watering its root from the Sacred Well. Its ‘boughs,’ with their buddings and disleafings,—events, things suffered, things done, catastrophes,—stretch through all lands and times. Is not every leaf of it a biography, every fibre there an act or word? Its boughs are Histories of Nations. The rustle of it is the noise of Human Existence, onwards from of old. It grows there, the breath of Human Passion rustling through it;—or storm-tost, the stormwind howling through it like the voice of all the gods. It is Igdrasil, the Tree of Existence. It is the past, the present and the future; what was done, what is doing, what will be done; the infinite conjugation of the verb To do.” It is unfortunate that the Scandinavian description should have placed the roots of the Ash tree deep down in the kingdoms of Hela or Death, and even though its trunk is described as reaching up heaven-high, it were much to be wished that its roots had come from the region of the life eternal. In that respect, both the Bhagavadgītā and the Upanishads have a distinct advantage over the Scandinavian mythology.

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12. We must not forget, however, to discuss the merits of a question which has assumed some importance at the hands of certain modern interpreters of the Bhagavadgītā and the Upanishads, especially because it seems to us that these interpreters have raised a dust and complain that they cannot see. In the Chhāndogya, there is the mention of a Kṛiṣhṇa who was the son of Devakī, and these interpreters feel no difficulty in facilely identifying him with Kṛiṣhṇa, the son of Devakī, who was the divine hero of the Mahābhārata. We shall see how futile such an identification is. But before we go on to this discussion, we must state first the meaning of the passage where the name of Kṛiṣhṇa, the son of Devakī, occurs. In the third chapter of Chhāndogya, there is a passage which stands by itself, the purport of which is to liken a man to a sacrificer and thus institute a comparison between the human life and the sacrificer’s life. What happens in the case of the life of a sacrificer? When he undertakes to perform a sacrifice, he is first disallowed to take food, or to drink water, or in any way to enjoy. This constitutes his Dīkṣhā. Then, secondly, there are certain ceremonies called the Upasadas in that sacrifice, in which he is allowed to eat and drink and enjoy himself. Thirdly, when such a sacrificer wishes to laugh, and eat and practise sexual intercourse even while the sacrifice is going on, he is allowed to do so if he just sings the hymns of praise called the Stutaśastras. Fourthly, he must give certain Dakiṇās or gifts to the sacrificial priests in honour of the sacrifice that he is performing. Fifthly, he pours out the Soma libation which is equivalent to a new birth of the sacrificer. Finally, the sacrificer takes the Avabhṛitha bath at the end of the sacrificial ceremony which puts an end to the sacrifice. These are the stages through which a sacrificer’s life passes. Now we are told in the passage which we are discussing that Ghora Āṅgirasa, the reputed teacher of Kṛiṣhṇa who was the son of Devakī, institutes a comparison between the life of a sacrificer and the life of a man in general. At the initial stage of a man’s life, he has to serve merely as an apprentice, and cannot eat and drink and enjoy on certain occasions. Secondly, another stage opens before him, namely, when he can eat and drink and enjoy himself. Thirdly, when he grows a little older, he can laugh and eat and practise sexual intercourse. Fourthly, the price which he has to pay for leading a holy life is that he should cultivate the virtues, namely, penance, liberality, straightforwardness, harmlessness, and truthfulness. Fifthly, when he has procreated, we may say he is born again in his child. The final act of the human drama takes place when death lets down the curtain, and the man is on the point of departing from his life. At such a critical time, says Ghora Āṅgirasa to Kṛiṣhṇa—and we are told that when this knowledge was imparted to Kṛiṣhṇa he never thirsted again for further knowledge—man must take refuge in these three thoughts : Thou art the indestructible ; Thou art the unchangeable ; Thou art the very edge of life (S. 17). From this passage a number of modern critics have argued that the Kṛiṣhṇa, the son of Devakī, who is mentioned in this passage, must be regarded as identical with Kṛiṣhṇa, the son of Vasudeva, who, as we have pointed out, is the divine hero of the Mahābhārata. Mr.

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Grierson in the "Encyclopædia of Religion and Ethics" points out in a very facile fashion, that "Kṛṣṇa Vāsudeva, who was the founder of the new monotheistic religion, was the pupil of a sage named Ghora Āṅgirasa, who taught him so that he never thirsted again." In answer to such an identification of Kṛṣṇa, the son of Vasudeva, and Kṛṣṇa, the pupil of Ghora Āṅgirasa, we have to point out that this is merely an assertion without proof. It passes our understanding how for the simple reason that Kṛṣṇa, the pupil of Ghora Āṅgirasa, was the son of Devakī as mentioned in the Chhāndogya, he could be identified with Kṛṣṇa, the son of Devakī, of the Mahābhārata, where no mention is made whatsoever of Ghora Āṅgirasa who was the teacher of Kṛṣṇa in the Chhāndogya. Such a fact cannot be easily ignored in a work like the Mahābhārata which is expected to give us everything about the divine warrior Kṛṣṇa, and not leave the name of his teacher unmentioned. If the Kṛṣṇa of the Chhāndogya is to be identified with the Kṛṣṇa of the Mahābhārata, for that matter why should not we identify the Hariśchandra of the Aitareya Brāhmaṇa who had a hundred wives with the Hariśchandra of mythology who had only one wife? Mere similarity of name proves nothing.

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It fills one with humour that a new facile philosophy of identifications Brāhmaṇa-wise should have been instituted in modern times by a host of critics of no small calibre when they would raise a huge structure of mythico-imaginary identifications by rolling together the god Viṣṇu of Vedic repute, Nārāyaṇa the Cosmic God, Kṛṣṇa the pupil of Ghora Āṅgirasa, and Vāsudeva the founder of a new religion, and thus try to prove that the sources of the religion of the Bhagavadgītā are to be found in the teaching of Ghora Āṅgirasa! There would seem to be some meaning, however, in the attempted identification of the Kṛṣṇa of the Chhāndogya with the Kṛṣṇa of the Bhagavadgītā, when, in verse 4 of the passage we are discussing, we are told that the gifts which such a sacrificer should make to priests are those of the following virtues : Tapas, Dānam, Ārjavam, Ahinsā and Satyavachanam. This list is closely similar to the list of virtues enumerated in the Bhagavadgītā XVI.1-2, where the same virtues are enumerated along with a number of other virtues, and almost in the same order. But this fact also proves nothing, because, as we have pointed out in the preceding paragraphs, the Bhagavadgītā is a congeries of quotations, phrases, and ideas borrowed from the Upanishads, and it is only by accident, as we may say, that the five virtues mentioned above should have been enumerated in the Upanishadic passage where Kṛṣṇa, the son of Devakī, is also mentioned.

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There is a story about the Delphic Oracle that a number of trophies were hung round about the temple in praise of the god who had saved so many souls at different times from shipwreck in the midst of waters. A philosopher went to the temple and asked, Yea, but where are those that are drowned ? Similarly may we say about the virtues in the Chhāndogya passage which are identical with the virtues in the passage from the Bhagavadgītā. True, that the virtues enumerated in the Chhāndogya almost correspond to the virtues enumerated in the Bhagavadgītā ; but, why, for the world, should not the essence of the teachings of Ghora Āṅgirasa have been incorporated into the Bhagavadgītā, when the Upanishad passage tells us that at the last moment of a man's life, he should take resort to these three thoughts : Thou art the indestructible, Thou art the unchangeable, Thou art the very edge of life ? Why should not the Bhagavadgītā have profited by these three expressions : Akshita, Achyuta and Prāṇasaṁśita? Why should it have left us merely with the advice that a man should utter Om at the time of his death and meditate upon God? Finally, we may say that the burden of the proof of the identification of the two Kṛṣṇas falls upon those who make the assertion, and so far as their arguments have gone, we do not think that they have, in any way, proved the identification at all.

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13. The relation of the Upanishads to the Brahmasūtras is no less interesting and no less important than the relation of the Upanishads to the Bhagavadgītā. In fact, the whole of the philosophy of the Vedānta in its various schools has been based upon these three foundation-stones, namely, the Upanishads, the Brahmasūtras, and the Bhagavadgītā, and thus it may easily be expected that the interrelation of the Brahmasūtras to the Upanishads from which they were derived must constitute an equally important problem. Bādarāyaṇa, the author of the Brahmasūtras, borrows so frequently and so immensely from the Upanishads, in fact, all his aphorisms are so much rooted in the texts of the Upanishads, that it would be impossible either to understand or to interpret the Brahmasūtras without a perpetual reference to the texts of the Upanishads. As to whether he taught the dualistic Vedānta or the qualified monistic Vedānta, or the monistic Vedānta, it is not our business here to discuss; but it must be remembered that each of the three great schools of Vedāntic philosophy, namely, the schools of Madhva, Rāmānuja, and Śaṅkara, interprets the Brahmasūtras as well as the Upanishads in its own way. The Śuddhādvaita, the Dvaitādvaita and other interpretations of the philosophy of the Brahmasūtras and the Upanishads are merely varied combinations of the ultimate positions reached in these three main systems of philosophy. Hence, when we have discussed how far the Upanishads sanction the difference between the Dvaita, the Viśiṣṭādvaita and the Advaita schools of philosophy, we have exhausted all the different fundamental conceptions of the Vedānta, from whose permutation and combination all the other systems are derived. And even while we are discussing these three main schools of Vedāntic philosophy, a number of fundamental propositions arise, difference in the treatment of which constitutes difference in the systems themselves. Thus the main problems which these philosophers have to answer are these: What is the nature of God? Is He different from, included in, or identical with the Absolute? In other words, are the theological conception of God and the philosophical conception of the Absolute one and the same? What is the relation of the Individual to the Universal Soul in these systems? Do these systems maintain the reality of creation, or, do they suppose that, after all, creation is only an appearance and an illusion? What is the doctrine of Immortality in these systems? What do these systems say about the immanence and transcendence of God? How can we define the Absolute—in positive terms, in negative terms, in both, or in neither? The answer to these and other problems of the same kind constitutes the *fundamentum divisionis* of the systems themselves. We shall see how the three great schools of Vedāntic philosophy find answers for these problems according to their different lights in the texts of the Upanishads.

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14. The dualistic school of philosophy initiated by Ānandatīrtha finds justification for its maintenance of the doctrine of the entire disparateness of the Individual and the Universal Souls in such a passage as the one from the Kaṭha, which tells us that " in this world there are two Souls which taste of the fruits of action, both of which are lodged in the recess of the human heart, and which are as different from each other as light and shade " (S. 18. a), corrected, as later, in the passage from the Muṇḍakopanishad which tells us that " there are two birds, companions and friends, both sitting on the same tree, of which one partakes of the sweet fruits of the tree, while the other without eating merely looks on " (S. 18. b). The difficulty in the passage from the Kaṭhopanishad which we have quoted above is—how can we regard the Universal Soul as enjoying the fruits of action? The enjoyment of the fruits of action could be predicated only about the Individual Soul and not about the Universal Soul which must be regarded as above such enjoyment. Hence, it was probable, that the Muṇḍaka Upanishad relieved the Universal Soul of the burden of the enjoyment of the fruits of such action, and laid the fact of enjoyment at the door of the Individual Soul. In any case, it is worth while noting that the Individual Soul is in the above two passages spoken of as being entirely distinct from the Universal Soul, and as being probably dependent upon it. These are the texts, which, like the later one from the Bhagavadgītā " there are two Persons in this world, the Mutable and the Immutable; the Mutable is all these beings, while the Immutable is the one who exists at the top of them " (XV. 16), have been quoted in support of their doctrine of the entire disparateness of the Individual and the Universal Souls by the followers of Madhva. Then, again, when they speak about

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