Essays on the Gita, First Series (Arya Publishing House, 1922)

that which led to the philosophy of the IJttara ]V^mansa,^_ the Brahmayada, between those who dwelt in the tradition of the Vedic hymns and the Vedic sacrifice and those who put these aside as a lower knowledge and laid stress on the lofty meta- physical knowledge which emerges from the Upanishads. For the pragmatic mind of the Veda- vadins the Aryan religion of the Rishis meant the * Jaimini*s idea of liberation is the eternal Brahmaloka in which the soul that has come to know Brahman still possesses a divine body and divine enjoyments. For the Gita the Brahmaloka is not liberation; the soul must pass beyond to the supracosmic status. SANKHYA, YOGA AND VEDANTA Strict performance of the Vedic. sacrifices and the use of the sacred Vedic mantras in order to possess all human desires in this world, wealth, progeny, victory, every kind of good fortune, and the joys of immortality in Paradise beyond. For the idealism of the Brahmavadins this was only a preliminary preparation and the real object of man, true purushdrtha, began with his turning to the know- ledge of the Brahman which would give him the true immortality of an ineffable spiritual bliss far beyond the lower joys of this world or of any inferior heaven. Whatever may have been the true and original sense of the Veda, this was the distinc- tion which had long established itself and with which therefore the Gita has to deal.

Almost the first word of the synthesis of works and knowledge is a strong, almost a violent censure and repudiation of the Vedavada, “this flowery word which they declare who have not clear discernment, devoted to the creed of the Veda, whose creed is that there is nothing else, souls of desire, seekers of Paradise, — it gives the fruits of the works of birth, it is multifarious with specialities of rites, it is directed to enjoyment and lordship as its goal/* The Gita even seems to go on to attack the Veda itself which, though it has been practically cast aside, is still to Indian sentiment intangible, inviolable, the sacred origin and authority for all its philosophy and religion. “The action of the three gunas is the subject matter of the Veda ; but do thou become free from the triple guna.

O Arjuna.” The Vedas in the widest terms, **all the Vedas*', — which might well include the Upanishads also and seems to include them, for the general term ^ruti is used later on, — are declared to be unnecessary for the man who knows. “As much use as there is in a well with water in flood on every side, so much is there in all the Vedas for the Brahmin who has the knowledge.” Nay, the &Tjpj:ures are even a stumbling-block ; for the letter of the Word — perhaps because of its conflict of texts and its various and mutually dissentient interpreta- tions — bewilders the understanding, which can only find certainty and concentration by the light within. “When thy intelligence shall cross beyond the whorl of delusion, then shalt thou become indifferent to Scripture heard or that which thou hast yet to hear, gantdsi nirvedam grotavyasya grutasya cha. When thy intelligence which is bewildered by the Sruti, grutivipratipannd, shall stand unmoving .and stable in Samadhi, then shalt thou attain to Yoga.** So offensiye_is „all this to conventional rel^ious sentiment that attempts are naturally made by the convenient and indispensable human faculty of text-twisting to put a different sense on some of these verses, but the meaning is plain and hangs together from beginning to end. It is confirmed and emphasised by a subsequent passage in which the knowledge of the knower is described as passing beyond the range of Veda and Upanishad, gabda- brahmdtivartate.