A Constructive Survey of Upanishadic Philosophy c7.19.2

c7.19.2

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.