Chapter VIII (2)

In this view there lies a contradiction which could not escape the keen penetration of a reflective spirit. Brahman is intended to be not only the intellectual but also the material basis of the world. It is regarded as absolutely non-material, eternal, and unchangeable, and yet the material, changeable world is to rise out of it; the sensible out of the non-sensible and the material out of the immaterial. In order to remove this dualism and contradiction which the orthodox doctrine introduced into Brahman, the speculation of the Brahmans seized upon a means which if simple was certainly bold: they denied the whole sensible world; they allowed matter to be lost in Brahman. There is only one Being; this is the highest soul (_paramatman_, p. 131), and besides this there is nothing: what seems to exist beyond this is mere illusion. The world, _i.e._ matter, does not exist, but only seems to exist, and the cause of this illusion is Maya or deception. Of this the sensible world is a product, like the reflection of the moon in water, and the mirage in the desert. Nature is nothing but the play of illusion, appearing in splendour and then disappearing. It is deception and nothing else which presents various forms to men, where there is only unity without distinction. The movement and action of living beings is not caused by the sparks of Brahman dwelling in them--for Brahman is consistently regarded as single and at rest--but by the bodies and senses, which being of themselves appearance and deception, adopt and reflect the deception of Maya. By this appearance the soul of man is kept in darkness, _i.e._ in the belief that the external world exists, and the man is subject to the emotions of pain and joy. In his actions man is determined by appearance and by the perception arising out of appearance. In truth Brahman alone exists. It is only deception which allows the soul to believe that it has a separate existence, or that the perceptible world exists, or that there is an existent manifold world. This deceptive appearance of the world, which seems to darken the pure Brahman as the clouds darken the brightness of the sun, must be removed by the investigation which teaches us the truth, that the only existing being is the highest being, the world-soul. In this way the delusion of a multiform world disappears. As the sunlight dispels mists, true knowledge dispels ignorance, and destroys the glamour of Maya. This knowledge is the way to liberation and the highest salvation. The liberation of men from appearance, from the senses and the world of the sense, from the emotions arising from these, is the knowledge that this world of the senses does not exist, that the soul of a man is not separated from the highest soul. Thus man finds the direct path from the sensible world, the body and separate existence, to Brahman, by active thought which penetrates deception. The sage declares: "It is not so, it is not so;" he knows that the highest soul is all, and that he himself is Brahman. Recognising himself as the eternal, changeless Brahman, he passes into the world-soul; he who knows Brahman reposes in it beyond reach of error. As the rivers flowing to the ocean disappear in it, losing their names and form, so the man of knowledge liberated from his name and his form passes into the highest eternal spirit. He who knows this highest Brahman is freed from trouble and sin; from the bonds of the body and the eye; he is lost in Brahman, and becomes himself Brahman.[374]

We cannot but acknowledge the capacity of the Indians for philosophic speculations, and the vigour of thought which for the first time in history maintained the thesis that our senses deceive us; that all which surrounds us is appearance and deception--which denies the whole world of things, and in opposition to the evidence of the tangible and actual world, boldly sets up the inward capacity of knowledge, as a criterion against which the evidence of the senses is not to be taken into consideration. For a long time the actual world had been resolved into the transcendental world of gods and saints; this is now contracted into a simple substance, beyond and besides which nothing exists but appearance. Instead of the appearance of the sensible world, in which there is no being, there exists one real being, the one invisible world-soul, which allows the corporeal world to arise into appearance from it like airy bladders, and then again to sink back whence it came. This universal deity is conceived as a being at rest; its activity and development into a sensible world is only apparent. It is a Pantheism which annihilates the world; matter and nature are completely absorbed by the world-soul, are plunged and buried in it; the soul of a man is a being only apparently separated from the world-soul. From these notions the mission of a man becomes clear. He must turn from appearance; he must unite with the world-soul by recognising the fact that all perceptions and emotions come from the world of phenomena, and therefore do not really exist; he must rise to the conception that only Brahman exists, and that man is Brahman. If from an ancient period the Indians were of opinion that they could draw down the gods to men by the holy spirit ruling in their prayers and sacrifices--if the mortification of the flesh in penances can give divine power and force to men--their philosophy is no more than consistent, when by recognising the worthlessness of sensible existence it allows Brahman to wake in the human spirit, and thus re-establishes the unity of man with Brahman.

The system of the Vedanta carried out the idea of Brahman so consistently that the entire actual existence of the world is thus annihilated. When once interest in speculation had been aroused, the reaction against positions of this kind was inevitable. The reality of actual things, the existence of matter, the certainty of the individual existence, must be defended against such a doctrine. On these factors was founded a new system, of which the founder in the tradition of the Brahmans is called the Rishi Kapila. The name Sankhya given to this system means "enumeration," "consideration." It maintains that reason alone is in a position to lead man to a right view, to truth and liberation.[375] It also exhibits the boldness arising from the fanciful nature of the Indians; and as the Vedanta took up a position on the idea of Brahman in order to wrest the world from its foundations, the Sankhya system stands on the idea of the soul (_purusha_) and of nature or matter (_prakriti, pradhana_). These two alone have existed from the beginning, uncreated and eternal. Nature is uncreated and eternal, creative and without cognition; the soul is also uncreated and eternal; it is not creative but has cognition. All that exists is the effect of a cause. The effect is limited in time and extension, subject to change, and can be resolved into its origin, _i.e._ into its cause. As every effect supposes a cause, every product supposes a producing force, every limited an unlimited. If the limited or product is pursued from cause to cause, there results the unlimited, eternal, creative, _i.e._ producing, nature as the first cause of all that is produced and limited. But beside nature there exists a second first cause. Nature is blind, _i.e._ without cognition; "light cannot arise out of darkness," intelligence cannot be the effect of nature. The cause of intelligence is the soul, which though completely distinct from nature exists beside it. Nature is eternal and one; the soul is also eternal, but manifold. Were the soul one, it could not feel pain in one man at the same time that it feels joy in another. The soul exists as the plurality of individual souls; these existed from the beginning, and are eternal beside nature. But they also entered into nature from the beginning. Their first case is the primeval body (_linga_), which consists essentially of "I-making" (_ahankara_), _i.e._ individualisation, and the primeval elements; the second material body consists of the five coarse elements of ether, air, light, water, earth. Neither the soul nor the primeval body dies, but only the material body.[376] The primeval body accompanies the soul through all its migrations; the material body is created anew at the regenerations, _i.e._ the soul and the primeval body are constantly clothed anew with new materials. The soul itself is uncreated, unchangeable amidst all mutations, and eternal, but it does not carry the consciousness of itself from one body to another. The soul is not creative; it exercises no influence on nature; it is only perceptive, observant, cognising, only a witness of nature. Nature is illumined by the proximity of the soul, and the soul gives witness of nature; nature takes its light from the soul, just as a white crystal appears red in the proximity of a red substance.[377]

The object of human life is to obtain liberation from the fetters of the body which bind the soul. The office of true knowledge is to set the soul free from the body, from nature. Man must grasp the difference of the soul and the body; he must understand that beside the body and nature, the soul is a completely self-existent being. The union of the soul and the body is nothing but deception, error, appearance. "In truth, the soul is neither bound nor free, nor a wanderer; nature alone is bound or free or migratory."[378] The soul seems to be bound to nature, but is not so. This appearance must be removed; the soul must recognise that it is not nature. When the soul has once penetrated nature it turns from it, and nature turns from the soul. The "unveiling of the spirit" from the case of nature is the liberation of the soul; by knowledge "release is brought about; by its opposite bondage."[379] By conceiving the absolute independence of the soul, man sets himself free from nature and his body; the idea of this independence is release. With this idea the man of knowledge surrenders his body; he is no longer affected or disturbed by it; even though his natural life continues, he looks on the body only "as on the movement of the wheel by virtue of the impulse once communicated to it."[380]

In spite of the sharp contrast in which the doctrine of Kapila stands to the system of the Vedanta, it works, in the last resort, with analogous factors, only it applies them differently. The soul and nature were put in the place of Brahman and Maya. Instead of the one intelligent principle, which the Vedanta establishes in the world-soul, Kapila maintains the plurality of individual spirits. In the Vedanta, it is true, nature exists as an illusion only: still it is a factor, which though it is also appearance, is nevertheless an existence, and in the last resort exists in Brahman; it has ever to be overcome anew, and thus in this system of unity, the basis is really a dualism. In the Sankhya doctrine nature is actually and materially existent; but the intelligent principle has to discover that this actually existent matter is, in truth, not existent for it, and cannot fetter the soul. If in the orthodox system the illusion of nature is to be annihilated by the free passage of the individual into Brahman, the doctrine of Kapila requires in the same way that man should rise to the idea that he is not nature, that the body is not his being, that he is not matter; it requires that man should be conscious of his freedom from nature, that he should return to his independence, in the same way as the Vedanta requires the absorption into Brahman. Then in the one case, as in the other, the individual escapes the restless movement of the world. In both systems the connection of the spirits and nature is only apparent, and the power of this deception in the spirit is removed by knowledge. Both proceed from the idea of an eternal being, self-contained, at rest, unmoved, self-sufficient; this the Vedanta ascribes to Brahman, while the Sankhya explains it as the nature of the soul. Nevertheless there is an important difference. In the Sankhya the intellectual principle is not the divine world-soul, which permits everything to emanate from itself and return to itself; it is the individual self, and besides this and material nature there is no real being, no real essence. If in the Vedanta liberation is the identification with the world-soul or the Godhead, liberation in the Sankhya is the retirement of the soul into itself. According to the Vedanta the liberated man says, I am Brahman; according to the Sankhya, I am not body nor nature.[381]

In the certainty of conviction which the Sankhya doctrine opposed to the orthodox system, in the clearness with which it drew out the consequences of its point of view, in the boldness of scepticism concerning the gods and revelation, in the courage with which it protested against the regulations of the priests, and the whole religious tradition of the people, lies its importance. By following the rules of the Veda, so said the adherents of this philosophy, no peace can be obtained; the means prescribed by the Veda are neither pure nor of sufficient efficacy. How could it be a pure act to shed blood?--how could sacrifices and ceremonies be of sufficient force? If they really conferred the blessing of heaven, it could only be for a short time; the blessing would merely last till the soul assumed a new body. Temporal means could not give any eternal liberation from evil. The adherents of Kapila explained the gods, including Brahman, to be souls, not much distinguished from the souls of men; the more advanced denied their existence altogether. There was no supreme soul, they said, and no god. Even if there were a god, he must either be free from the world, or connected with it. He cannot be free, for in that case nothing would move him to creation, and if he were connected with the world he would be limited by it, and could not be omniscient.[382] Thus not only were the whole doctrine of Brahman and the whole system of gods overthrown, but the authority of the Veda was annihilated on which the Brahmans founded their belief no less than the worship by sacrifice, and with it all revelation, all the positive basis of religious life. The doctrine of Kapila found adherents. From orthodox scholasticism the Indian philosophy very rapidly arrived at rationalism and scepticism, though the latter, like the correct system, moved in scholastic forms and ended with an unsolved dualism.

While in this manner one constructive system superseded the other, the formal side of knowledge did not remain without a keen and penetrating examination. The objects and means of knowledge were tested; men occupied themselves with fixing the categories of the idea, of doubt, of contradiction, of fallacies, of false generalisation, and conversion; and at last inquiries were made into the syllogism and the members of it, and more especially into the categories of cause and effect. Researches of this kind quickly grew into a system, the Nyaya or logic, which chiefly used the results of the theory of knowledge to establish the authority of the Veda, and overthrow the arguments brought against the revelation of it.[383] In themselves, at any rate in the late form in which we have them, the logical researches of the Indians are scarcely behind the similar works of modern times in the acuteness and subtilty of their categories.

In the period between the years 800 and 600 B.C. the valley of the Ganges must have been filled with the stir of intellectual life. No doubt the times were long past when the ancient hymns of the Veda were sung at the place of sacrifice, when the poems of victory and the heroic deeds of men--the Epos in its original form--were recited at the courts of princes or the banquets of the military nobility--the Kshatriyas. The contest of the Brahmans and the Kshatriyas was also over; the Brahmans had not only gained currency for their teaching in the sphere of religion and the state, but had already developed it to its consequences. They put before the princes and the people the canon of correct life, of purity, of sins and penalties, of punishments beyond the grave and regenerations, and held up the true law to the state. They revised the Epos from their point of view; they established the ritual, they justified every declaration and every ordinance in it from the Veda, the sacred history; they explained the words and the sense of the Veda; they went beyond the opposition of schools and authorities to independent examination of the idea of Brahman, of the causes and connection of the world, and to speculative philosophy. They have so far succeeded that no nation has devoted its interest and power to religion to the same degree as the Indians. The longer they lingered in the magic world of gods and spirits, into which they were plunged by the sacrifices, legends, and doctrines of the Brahmans, the more familiar they became with these dreams, the more passive must they have grown to the actual and prosaic connection of things, the more indifferent to the processes going on in the world of reality. Hence in the end the Indians knew more of the world of the gods than of the things of the earth; they lived in the next world rather than in this. The world of fancy became their fatherland, and heaven was their home. The more immutable the limits of the castes, the heavier the taxation of the state, the greater the caprice of the officers, the less the space left for the will or act of the individual, the more uniform the life,--the more did the people become accustomed to seek their fears and hopes in the kingdom of fancies and dreams, in the world to come. Excluded from action in the state, the Indians turned the more eagerly to the questions of worship and dogma; for that was the only sphere in which movement found nothing to check it, and the separation of the people into a number of tribes, the mutual exclusiveness of the castes and local communities limited the common feeling of the nation on the Ganges to the faith which they all acknowledged.

FOOTNOTES:

[345] Lassen, "Ind. Alterth." 2, 80.

[346] M. Müller, "Hist. Anc. Skt. Lit." p. 469 ff.

[347] "Rigveda," 1, 162, according to M. Müller's translation, _loc. cit._ p. 553 ff.

[348] "Çatapatha-Brahmana," 13, 3, 1, 1, in M. Müller, _loc. cit._ p. 37 ff.

[349] "Ramayana," ed. Schlegel, 1, 11 ff. A. Weber, "Vorles." s. 126^2.

[350] "Vishnu-Purana," ed. Wilson, p. 470, 471. Lassen, "Ind. Alterth." 2^2, 319, 346, 963, 1001.

[351] M. Müller has placed the period of the origin of the Brahmanas in the period from 800 to 600 B.C.--very successfully, so far as I can see. The collection of the Atharvan will belong to the end of this period, but not merely on the internal ground of the increase in the ceremonial brought about with and through the Brahmanas. The book of the law consistently cites the triple Veda; the sutras of the Buddhists and the Epos as consistently cite four. That the magic formulas of Atharvan and Angiras are quoted in Manu 11, 33, and not those of the Atharvaveda, seems also to prove that the latter collection was not made when the citations were written. Cp. A. Weber, "Vorl." s. 165^2.

[352] "Rigveda," 10, 9, 5-7.

[353] "Atharvaveda," 5, 19, 2, 1-5.

[354] Darmesteter, "Haurvatat," p. 74.

[355] "Atharvaveda," 2, 9.

[356] "Atharvaveda," 1, 25, 2, 8, quoted by Grohmann in Weber's "Ind. Stud." 9, 391, 403, 406 ff. If Takman is called Deva, this is due to the connection in which he is placed with Varuna. Varuna sends diseases as punishments, dropsy, as a water-god, but fever also, and thus Takman can be called the son of Varuna.

[357] "Rigveda," 1, 50, 11, 12; 10, 97.

[358] Kuhn in his "Zeitschrift f. v. s." 13, 140 ff., where the coincidence of the German language is pointed out.

[359] M. Müller, "Hist. Anc. Skt. Lit." p. 230 ff.; 245 ff. A. Weber, "Vorles." s. 48^2.

[360] Burnouf, "Introduction," p. 456. M. Müller, _loc. cit._ p. 305. Lassen, _loc. cit._ 2^2, 474.

[361] In the Brahmanas we only find traces of a quinquennial or sexennial cycle. A. Weber, in "Z. D. M. G." 15, 132. The worship of the Nakshatras, or houses of the moon, _i.e._ the division of the sky into 27 (later 28) parts by means of certain constellations as marks, is first found in a developed form in Buddha's time, as is proved by Burnouf and A. Weber ("Abh. d. Berl. Akad.," 1861, s. 320). Weber does not believe in the Indian origin of these stations of the moon; he regards them as Semitic, and borrowed from Babylonia, _loc. cit._ s. 363. The inquiry at what time these marks for the course of the moon according to the position of the stars were made astronomical has led to various results. Biot regards the year 2357 B.C. as the earliest point (the original number of 24 stations was increased to 28 about the year 1100 B.C.). A. Weber thinks that the period between 1472 and 536 B.C. is the space within which the observation of the Jyotisha was fixed ("Studien," 2, 240, 413, 414. "Abh. d. Berl. Akad." 1860, s. 284; 1861, s. 354, 364), and shows that the use of these houses of the moon in China, in the order usual there, cannot be proved before 250 B.C. The Chinese order corresponds to the latest Indian arrangement of the Nakshatras, cf. "Ind. Stud." 9, 424 ff., whereas the length given in the Jyotisha for the longest and shortest day, suits the position of Babylon, _loc. cit._ 1861, s. 361. The Veda knows the Nakshatras as stars but not as stations of the moon, though they are known as the latter in the Brahmanas. The Vedic names of several of the gods who preside over the stations (Aryaman, Bhaga, etc.) prove a tolerably ancient origin for the Nakshatras. The civic computation of time among the Buddhists is founded on them. Hence we may assume that this division of the sky was perhaps current among the Indians in the tenth century B.C.

[362] A. Weber, in "Abh. d. Berl. Akad." 1861, s. 291.

[363] Manu, 3, 162; 6, 50.

[364] A. Weber, "Vorl." s. 224 ff. The first traces of astrology in the strict sense besides the mention in the book of the law are found in the sutras of the Buddhists, _e.g._ in Burnouf, _loc. cit._ p. 140, 141, if we do not prefer the accounts of the Greeks to those legends which were written in Magadhi (Pali) the native language of Magadha, and the central Ganges in general, and have come down in the form which they received in the middle of the third century B.C., but also contain fragments of far greater antiquity. In any case, preference must be given to the simple sutras (Burn. _loc. cit._ p. 232), and these lay great stress on the astrology and soothsaying of the Brahmans. After this we meet with numerous traces of astrology in the Epos; but the law-book of Yajnavalkya is the first to command the worship of planets.

[365] M. Müller, _loc. cit._ p. 109 ff.

[366] Muir, "Sanskrit Texts," 3, 245 ff.

[367] A. Weber, "Indische Studien," 9, 2, 72, 74.

[368] Manu, 1, 33-40, 61, ff.

[369] Manu, 9, 31-34; 313-322.

[370] "Ramayana," ed. Schlegel, 1, 51-65. In this extended form this episode may, it is true, have first arisen at a much later time, as is shown by the mention of Vishnu and Çiva, and the Yavanas (Greeks). If in spite of these additions which are not important, I confidently place it at this date, I do so because the importance of the penitent and his power over the gods, the creation of beings by the penance of saints, _i.e._ the degradation of the gods, must be placed before the appearance of Buddha. This is the essential hypothesis for the religion which the doctrine of Buddha found in existence. In the Mahabharata this legend is told more briefly. Muir, "Sanskrit Texts," 196 ff.

[371] A. Weber, "Ind. Stud." 1, 414.

[372] The Sankhya system, which Buddha found in existence, presupposes the Vedanta system. The latter system must therefore have been in existence before Buddha; Roer, "Lecture on the Sankhya Philosophy," Calcutta, 1854, p. 19. The Vedanta is expressly mentioned in Manu, 2, 160, as belonging to the study of the Veda. The names Mimansa and Nyaya are also mentioned in Manu, but only in the final part, which is very loosely connected with the whole (12, 109, 111).

[373] Colebrooke, "Miscellaneous Essays," 1, 325 ff. M. Müller, "Beiträge zur Kenntniss der indischen Philosophie" in Z. D. M. G. 6, 6, 7.

[374] Colebrooke, "Transactions of the Royal Asiatic Society," II, 1. Vans Kennedy, "Asiatic Journal," 1839, p. 441 ff. Köppen, "Religion des Buddha," s. 57 ff. Wuttke, "Geschichte des Heidenthums," 2, 257, 281, 399

[375] It is in the later Upanishads that we first find the doctrine of Kapila called by the name Sankhya, Weber, "Vorles." s. 212; "Ind. Stud." 9, 17. As with the Vedanta system, so also with the Sankhya: in the Sankhya-Karika we have only a very late and compressed exposition in 72 çlokas; but as Buddhism is founded on this system we are more certain about the earlier form of it than in the case of the Vedanta.

[376] Burnouf, _loc. cit._ p. 511.

[377] Roer, "Lecture," p. 15; Köppen, "Religion des Buddha," s. 65.

[378] "Sankhya-Karika," çl. 63.

[379] "Sankhya-Karika," çl. 44. Burnouf, _loc. cit._ p. 520, 522.

[380] "Sankhya-Karika," çl. 67. By the side of this keen scepticism the system of the Sankhya allows the gradation of creatures as fixed by the Brahmans to remain, and the migration of souls with some slight modifications. The lowest stage is formed by the minerals; above these are the plants, reptiles, birds, wild animals, domestic animals. These are followed by men in the order of the castes; and then come the regenerations in the form of demons, Piçachas, Rakshasas, Yakshas and Gandharvas; and last in the form of Indra, Soma, Prajapati, Brahman. Barthelemy St. Hilaire, "sur le Sankhya," p. 286.

[381] Köppen, _loc. cit._ s. 69.

[382] Roer, "Lecture on the Sankhya Phil." p. 14; "Introduction to the Çvetaçvatara-upanishad," p. 36; cf. "Sankhya-Karika," çl. 53-55. Muir, "Sanskrit Texts," 3, 133 ff.

[383] Muir, _loc. cit._ 3, 108 ff.