A Constructive Survey of Upanishadic Philosophy c7.8

c7.8

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.