Reading section 34

The crux of this doctrine is in the theory of Maya. If Maya appertains to Brahman, if it exists by his will, then why is it an evil, why is release to be desired? Ought not the individual souls to serve Brahman's purpose, and would not it be better served by living gladly in the phenomenal world than by passing beyond it? But such an idea has rarely satisfied Indian thinkers. If, on the other hand, Maya is an evil or at least an imperfection, if it is like rust on a blade or dimness in a mirror, if, so to speak, the edges of Brahman are weak and break into fragments which are prevented by their own feebleness from realizing the unity of the whole, then the mind wonders uneasily if, in spite of all assurances to the contrary, this does not imply that Brahman is subject to some external law, to some even more mysterious Beyond. But Sankara and the Brahma-sutras will not tolerate such doubts. According to them, Brahman in making the world is not actuated by a motive in the ordinary sense, for that would imply human action and passion, but by a sportive impulse:[776] "We see in every-day life," says Sankara, "that certain doings of princes, who have no desires left unfulfilled, have no reference to any extraneous purpose but proceed from mere sportfulness. We further see that the process of inhalation and exhalation is going on without reference to any extraneous purpose, merely following the law of its own nature. Analogously, the activity of the Lord also may be supposed to be mere sport, proceeding from his own nature without reference to any purpose."[777] This is no worse than many other explanations of the scheme of things and the origin of evil but it is not really an explanation. It means that the Advaita is so engrossed in ecstatic contemplation of the omnipresent Brahman that it pays no attention to a mere by-product like the physical universe. How or why that universe with all its imperfections comes to exist, it does not explain.

Yet the boldness and ample sweep of Sankara's thought have in them something greater than logic,[778] something recalling the grandeur of plains and seas limited only by the horizon, nay rather those abysses of space wherein on clear nights worlds and suns innumerable are scattered like sparks by what he would call God's playfulness. European thought attains to these altitudes but cannot live in them for long: it demands and fancies for itself just what Sankara will not grant, the motive of Brahman, the idea that he is working for some consummation, not that he was, is and will be eternally complete, unaffected by the drama of the universe and yet identical with souls that know him.

Even in India the austere and impersonal character of Sankara's system provoked dissent: He was accused of being a Buddhist in disguise and the accusation raises an interesting question[779] in the history of Indian philosophy to which I have referred in a previous chapter. The affinity existing between the Madhyamika form of Buddhist metaphysics and the earlier Vedanta can hardly be disputed and the only question is which borrowed from the other. Such questions are exceedingly difficult to decide, for from time to time new ideas arose in India, permeated the common intellectual atmosphere, and were worked up by all sects into the forms that suited each best. In the present instance all that can be said is that certain ideas about the unreality of the world and about absolute and relative truth appear in several treatises both Brahmanic and Buddhist, such as the works of Sankara and Nagarjuna and the Gauda-padakarikas, and of these the works attributed to Nagarjuna seem to be the oldest. It must also be remembered that according to Chinese accounts Bodhidharma preached at Nanking in 520 a doctrine very similar to the _advaita_ of Sankara though expressed in Buddhist phraseology.

Of other forms of Vedantism, the best known is the system of Ramanuja generally called Visishtadvaita.[780] It is an evidence of the position held by the Vedanta philosophy that religious leaders made a commentary on the Sutras of Badarayana the vehicle of their most important views. Unlike Sankara, Ramanuja is sectarian and identifies his supreme deity with Vishnu or Narayana, but this is little more than a matter of nomenclature. His interpretation is modern in the sense that it pursues the line of thought which leads up to the modern sects. But that line of thought has ancient roots. Ramanuja followed a commentator named Bodhayana who was anterior to Sankara, and in the opinion of so competent a judge as Thibaut he gives the meaning of Badarayana in many points more exactly than his great rival. On the other hand his interpretation often strains the most important utterances of the Upanishads.

Ramanuja admits no distinction between Brahman and Isvara, but the distinction is abolished at the expense of abolishing the idea of the Higher Brahman, for his Brahman is practically the Isvara of Sankara. Brahman is not without attributes but possessed of all imaginable good attributes, and though nothing exists apart from him, like the antithesis of _Purusha_ and _Prakriti_ in the Sankhya, yet the world is not as in Sankara's system merely Maya. Matter and souls (_cit_ and _acit_) form the body of Brahman who both comprises and pervades all things, which are merely modes of his existence.[781] He is the inner ruler (antaryamin) who is in all elements and all human souls.[782] The texts which speak of Brahman as being one only without a second are explained as referring to the state of pralaya or absorption which occurs at the end of each Kalpa. At the conclusion of the period of pralaya he re-emits the world and individual souls by an act of volition and the souls begin the round of transmigration. Salvation or release from this round is obtained not by good works but by knowledge and meditation on the Lord assisted by his grace. The released soul is not identified with the Lord but enjoys near him a personal existence of eternal bliss and peace. This is more like European theism than the other doctrines which we have been considering. The difference is that God is not regarded as the creator of matter and souls. Matter and souls consist of his substance. But for all that he is a personal deity who can be loved and worshipped and whereas Sankara was a religious philosopher, Ramanuja was rather a philosophic theologian and founder of a church. I have already spoken of his activity in this sphere.

4

The epics and Puranas contain philosophical discussions of considerable length which make little attempt at consistency. Yet the line of thought in them all is the same. The chief tenets of the theistic Sankhya-Yoga are assumed: matter, soul and God are separate existences: the soul wishes to move towards God and away from matter. Yet when Indian writers glorify the deity they rarely abstain from identifying him with the universe. In the Bhagavad-gita and other philosophical cantos of the Mahabharata the contradiction is usually left without an attempt at solution. Thus it is stated categorically[783] that the world consists of the perishable and imperishable, _i.e._, matter and soul, but that the supreme spirit is distinct from both. Yet in the same poem we pass from this antithesis to the monism which declares that the deity is all things and "the self seated in the heart of man." We have then attained the Vedantist point of view. Nearly all the modern sects, whether Sivaite or Vishnuite, admit the same contradiction into their teaching, for they reject both the atheism of the Sankhya and the immaterialism of the Advaita (since it is impossible for a practical religion to deny the existence of either God or the world), while the irresistible tendency of Indian thought makes them describe their deity in pantheistic language. All strive to find some metaphysical or theological formula which will reconcile these discrepant ideas, and nearly all Vishnuites profess some special variety of the Vedanta called by such names as Visishtadvaita, Dvaitadvaita, Suddhadvaita and so on. They differ chiefly in their definition of the relation existing between the soul and God. Only the Madhvas entirely discard monism and profess duality (Dvaita) and even Madhva thought it necessary to write a commentary on the Brahma-sutras to prove that they support his doctrine and the Sivaites too have a commentator, Nilakantha, who interprets them in harmony with the Saiva Siddhanta. There is also a modern commentary by Somanaradittyar which expounds this much twisted text agreeably to the doctrines of the Lingayat sect.

In most fundamental principles the Sivaite and Saktist schools agree with the Visishtadvaita but their nomenclature is different and their scope is theological rather than philosophical. In all of them are felt the two tendencies, one wishing to distinguish God, soul and matter and to adjust their relations for the purposes of practical religion, the other holding more or less that God is all or at least that all things come from God and return to him. But there is one difference between the schools of sectarian philosophy and the Advaita of Sankara which goes to the root of the matter. Sankara holds that the world and individual existences are due to illusion, ignorance and misconception: they vanish in the light of true knowledge. Other schools, while agreeing that in some sense God is all, yet hold that the universe is not an illusion or false presentment of him but a process of manifestation or of evolution starting from him.[784] It is not precisely evolution in the European sense, but rather a rhythmic movement, of duration and extent inexpressible in figures, in which the Supreme Spirit alternately emits and reabsorbs the universe. As a rule the higher religious life aims at some form of union or close association with the deity, beyond the sphere of this process. In the evolutionary process the Vaishnavas interpolate between the Supreme Spirit and the phenomenal world the phases of conditioned spirit known as Sankarshana, etc.; in the same way the Sivaite schools increase the twenty-four _tattvas_ of the Sankhya to thirty-six.[785] The first of these _tattvas_ or principles is Siva, corresponding to the highest Brahman. The next phase is Sadasiva in which differentiation commences owing to the movement of Sakti, the active or female principle. Siva in this phase is thought of as having a body composed of _mantras_. Sakti, also known as Bindu or Suddhamaya, is sometimes regarded as a separate _tattva_ but more generally as inseparably united with Siva. The third _tattva_ is Isvara, or Siva in the form of a lord or personal deity, and the fourth is Suddhavidya or true knowledge, explained as the principle of correlation between the experiencer and that which is experienced. It is only after these that we come to Maya, meaning not so much illusion as the substratum in which Karma inheres or the protoplasm from which all things grow. Between Maya and Purusha come five more _tattvas_, called envelopes. Their effect is to enclose and limit, thus turning the divine spirit into a human soul.

Saktist accounts of the evolutionary process give greater prominence to the part played by Sakti and are usually metaphysiological, if the word may be pardoned, inasmuch as they regard the cosmic process as the growth of an embryo, an idea which is as old as the Vedas.[786] It is impossible to describe even in outline these manifold cosmologies but they generally speak of Sakti, who in one sense is identical with Siva and merely his active form but in another sense is identified with Prakriti, coming into contact with the form of Siva called Prakasa or light and then solidifying into a drop (Bindu) or germ which divides. At some point in this process arise Nada or sound, and Sabda-brahman, the sound-Brahman, which manifests itself in various energies and assumes in the human body the form of the mysterious coiled force called Kundalini.[787] Some of the older Vishnuite writings use similar language of Sakti, under the name of Lakshmi, but in the Visishtadvaita of Ramanuja and subsequent teachers there is little disposition to dwell on any feminine energy in discussing the process of evolution.

Of all the Darsanas the most extraordinary is that called Rasesvara or the mercurial system.[788] According to it quicksilver, if eaten or otherwise applied, not only preserves the body from decay but delivers from transmigration the soul which inhabits this glorified body. Quicksilver is even asserted to be identical with the supreme self. This curious Darsana is represented as revealed by Siva to Sakti and it is only an extreme example of the tantric doctrine that spiritual results can be obtained by physical means. The practice of taking mercury to secure health and long life must have been prevalent in medieval India for it is mentioned by both Marco Polo and Bernier.[789]

5

A people among whom the Vedanta could obtain a large following must have been prone to think little of the things which we see compared with the unseen of which they are the manifestation. It is, therefore, not surprising if materialism met with small sympathy or success among them. In India the extravagances of asceticism and of mystic sensualism alike find devotees, but the simple philosophy of Let us eat and drink for to-morrow we die, does not commend itself. Nevertheless it is not wholly absent and was known as the doctrine of Brihaspati. Those who professed it were also called Carvakas and Lokayatikas.[790] Brihaspati was the preceptor of the gods and his connection with this sensualistic philosophy goes back to a legend found in the Upanishads[791] that he taught the demons false knowledge whose "reward lasts only as long as the pleasure lasts" in order to compass their destruction. This is similar to the legend found in the Puranas that Vishnu became incarnate as Buddha in order to lead astray the Daityas. But though such words as Carvaka and Nastika are used in later literature as terms of learned abuse, the former seems to denote a definite school, although we cannot connect its history with dates, places or personalities. The Carvakas are the first system examined in the Sarva-darsana-sangraha, which is written from the Vedantist standpoint, and beginning from the worst systems of philosophy ascends to those which are relatively correct. This account contains most of what we know about their doctrines,[792] but is obviously biassed: it represents them as cynical voluptuaries holding that the only end of man is sensual enjoyment. We are told that they admitted only one source of knowledge, namely perception, and four elements, earth, water, fire and air, and that they held the soul to be identical with the body. Such a phrase as _my body_ they considered to be metaphorical, as apart from the body there was no ego who owned it. The soul was supposed to be a physical product of the four elements, just as sugar combined with a ferment and other ingredients produces an intoxicating liquor. Among verses described as "said by Brihaspati" occur the following remarkable lines:

"There is no heaven, no liberation, nor any soul in another world, Nor do the acts of the asramas or castes produce any reward. If the animal slain in the Jyotishtoma sacrifice will go to heaven, Why does not the sacrificer immolate his own father? While life remains let a man live happily: let him feed on butter even if he runs into debt. When once the body becomes ashes, how can it ever return?"

The author of the Dabistan, who lived in the seventeenth century, also mentions the Carvakas in somewhat similar terms.[793]

Brahmanical authors often couple the Carvakas and Buddhists. This lumping together of offensively heretical sects may be merely theological animus, but still it is possible that there may be a connection between the Carvakas and the extreme forms of Mahayanist nihilism. Schrader[794] in analysing a singular work, called the Svasamvedyopanishad, says it is "inspired by the Mahayanist doctrine of vacuity (_sunya-vada_) and proclaims a most radical agnosticism by asserting in four chapters (_a_) that there is no reincarnation (existence being bubble-like), no God, no world: that all traditional literature (_Sruti_ and _Smriti_) is the work of conceited fools; (_b_) that Time the destroyer and Nature the originator are the rulers of all existence and not good and bad deeds, and that there is neither hell nor heaven; (_c_) that people deluded by flowery speech cling to gods, sacred places, teachers, though there is in reality no difference at all between Vishnu and a dog; (_d_) that though all words are untrue and all ideas mere illusions, yet liberation is possible by a thorough realization of _Bhavadvaita_." But for this rather sudden concession to Hindu sentiment, namely that deliverance is possible, this doctrine resembles the tenets attributed to the Carvakas.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 736: In the Sarva-darsana-sangraha, the best known compendium of Indian philosophy.]

[Footnote 737: J.C. Chatterji's definition of Indian philosophy (in his _Indian Realism_, p. 1) is interesting. "By Hindu philosophy I mean that branch of the ancient learning of the Hindus which demonstrates by reasoning propositions with regard to (_a_) what a man ought to do in order to gain true happiness ... or (_b_) what he ought to realize by direct experience in order to be radically and absolutely freed from suffering and to be absolutely independent, such propositions being already given and lines of reasoning in their support being established by duly qualified authorities."]

[Footnote 738: See Chatterji's work above cited.]

[Footnote 739: It is this idea which disposes educated Hindus to believe in the magical or sacramental power of mystic syllables and letters, though the use of such spells seems to Europeans incredible folly.]

[Footnote 740: See especially Garbe, _Die Sankhya Philosophie_, 1894; and Keith, _The Sankhya System_, 1919, which however reached me too late for me to make any use of it.]

[Footnote 741: _E.g._ in the Bhagavad-gita and Svetasvatara Upanishads. According to tradition Kapila taught Asuri and he, Pancasikha, who made the system celebrated. Garbe thinks Pancasikha may be assigned to the first century A.D.]

[Footnote 742: This appears to be the real title of the Sutras edited and translated by Ballantyne as "The Sankhya Aphorisms of Kapila."]

[Footnote 743: Or topics. It is difficult to find any one English word which covers the twenty-five tattvas, for they include both general and special ideas, mind and matter on the one hand; special organs on the other.]

[Footnote 744: Sankh. Pravac. I. 96.]

[Footnote 745: Garbe, _Die Sankhya Philosophie_, p. 222. He considers that it spread thence to other schools. This involves the assumption that the Sankhya is prior to Buddhism and Jainism.]

[Footnote 746: Ears, skin, eyes, tongue and nose.]

[Footnote 747: Voice, hands, feet, organs of excretion and generation.]

[Footnote 748: Verse 40.]

[Footnote 749: Cf. the Buddhist Sankharas.]

[Footnote 750: Sankh. Kar. 62.]

[Footnote 751: Sankh. Kar. 59-61.]

[Footnote 752: Sankh. Pravac. I. 92-95.]

[Footnote 753: Sankh. Pravac. V. 2-12.]

[Footnote 754: Thus Sankh. Pravac. V. 46, says Tatkartuh purushasyabhavat and the commentary explains Isvara-pratishedhad iti seshah "supply the words, because we deny that there is a supreme God."]

[Footnote 755: Nevertheless the commentator Vijnana-Bhikshu (c. 1500) tries to explain away this atheism and to reconcile the Sankhya with the Vedanta. See Garbe's preface to his edition of the Sankhya-pravacana-bhashya.]

[Footnote 756: VI. 13.]

[Footnote 757: V. 5.]

[Footnote 758: Isvara is apparently a purusha like others but greater in glory and untouched by human infirmities. Yoga sutras, I. 24-26.]

[Footnote 759: It is a singular fact that both the Sankhya-karika-bhashya and a treatise on the Vaiseshika philosophy are included in the Chinese Tripitaka (Nanjio, Cat. Nos. 1300 and 1295). A warning is however added that they are not "the law of the Buddha."]

[Footnote 760: See Jacobi, _J.A.O.S._ Dec. 1910, p. 24. But if Vasubandhu lived about 280-360, as is now generally believed, allusions to the Yogacara school in the Yoga sutras do not oblige us to place the sutras much later than 300 A.D. since the Yogacara was founded by Asanga, the brother of Vasubandhu.]

[Footnote 761: I find it hard to accept Deussen's view (_Philosophy of the Upanishads_, chap. X) that the Sankhya has grown out of the Vedanta.]

[Footnote 762: See _e.g._ Vishnu Purana, I. chaps. 2, 4, 5. The Bhagavad-gita, though almost the New Testament of Vedantists, uses the words Sankhya and Yoga in several passages as meaning speculative truth and the religious life and is concerned to show that they are the same. See II. 39; III. 3; V. 4, 5.]

[Footnote 763: It is perhaps hardly necessary to add that there has been endless discussion as to the sense and manner in which the soul is God.]

[Footnote 764: Brihad Aran. IV. 4. 6; _Ib._ I. iv. 10. "I am Brahman."]

[Footnote 765: See above Book II. chaps. V and VI.]

[Footnote 766: Chand. Up. III. 14.]

[Footnote 767: Chand. Up. VI.]

[Footnote 768: See Deussen, _Philosophy of the Upanishads._]

[Footnote 769: Ato'nyad artam. Brihad Ar. III. several times.]

[Footnote 770: Maitrayana. Brah. Upanishad, VI. 20. "Having seen his own self as The Self he becomes selfless, and because he is selfless he is without limit, without cause, absorbed in thought."]

[Footnote 771: There is nothing to fix the date of this work except that Kumarila in commenting on it in the eighth century treats it as old and authoritative. It was perhaps composed in the early Gupta period.]

[Footnote 772: Keith in _J.R.A.S._ 1907, p. 492 says it is becoming more and more probable that Badarayana cannot be dated after the Christian era. Jacobi in _J.A.O.S._ 1911, p. 29 concludes that the Brahma-sutras were composed between 200 and 450 A.D.]

[Footnote 773: Such attempts must have begun early. The Maitrayana Upanishad (II. 3) talks of Sarvopanishadvidya, the science of all the Upanishads.]

[Footnote 774: See above, p. 207 ff.]

[Footnote 775: The same distinction occurs in the works of Meister Eckhart ({~DAGGER~} 1327 A.D.) who in many ways approximates to Indian thought, both Buddhist and Vedantist. He makes a distinction between the Godhead and God. The Godhead is the revealer but unrevealed: it is described as "wordless" (Yajnavalkya's _neti_, _neti_), "the nameless nothing," "the immoveable rest." But God is the manifestation of the Godhead, the uttered word. "All that is in the Godhead is one. Therefore we can say nothing. He is above all names, above all nature. God works, so doeth not the Godhead. Therein are they distinguished, in working and in not working. The end of all things is the hidden darkness of the eternal Godhead, unknown and never to be known." (Quoted by Rufus Jones, _Studies in Mystical Religion_, p. 225.) It may be doubted if Sankara's distinction between the Higher and Lower Brahman is to be found in the Upanishads but it is probably the best means of harmonizing the discrepancies in those works which Indian theologians feel bound to explain away.]

[Footnote 776: Vedanta sutras, II. 1. 32-3, and Sankara's commentary, _S.B.E._ vol. XXXIV. pp. 356-7. Ramanuja holds a similar view and it is very common in India, _e.g._ Vishnu Pur. I. chap. 2.]

[Footnote 777: See too a remarkable passage in his comment on Brahma-sutras, II. 1. 23. "As soon as the consciousness of non-difference arises in us, the transmigratory state of the individual soul and the creative quality of Brahman vanish at once, the whole phenomenon of plurality which springs from wrong knowledge being sublated by perfect knowledge and what becomes then of the creation and the faults of not doing what is beneficial and the like?"]

[Footnote 778: Although Sankara's commentary is a piece of severe ratiocination, especially in its controversial parts, yet he holds that the knowledge of Brahman depends not on reasoning but on scripture and intuition. "The presentation before the mind of the Highest Self is effected by meditation and devotion." Brah. Sut. III. 2. 24. See too his comments on I. 1. 2 and II. 1. 11.]