Sacred Books of the East, Vol. 15 — The Upanishads, Part II (Muller, page scans)

12. That syllable Na (no) is full for oneself*. If a man says No to everything, then his reputation

‘A gatha is likewise in verse, for instance, prata# pratar anritam te vadanti. |

* A kumbya is a metrical precept, such as, brahmaffryasy4po- sanam karma kuru, diva ma svapsth, &c.

* Such as arthavddas, explanatory passages, also gossip, such as is common in the king’s palace, laughing at people, &c.

‘ As diametrically opposed to the flowers and fruits which represent the true. Comm.

® Then that man is left empty here on earth for that enjoyment. Comm.

* He who always says No, keeps everything to himself.

11 Aranyaka, 3 Adhyaya, 7 Khanda, I. 231

would become evil, and that would ruin him even here.

13. Therefore let a man give at the proper time
only, not at the wrong time. Thus he unites the
true and the untrue, and from the union of those
two he grows, and becomes greater and greater.

14. He who knows this speech of which this (the
mahaduktha) is a development, he is clever. A is the
whole of speech, and manifested through different
kinds of contact (mutes) and of wind (sibilants), it
becomes manifold and different.

15. Speech if uttered in a whisper is breath, if
spoken aloud, it is body. Therefore (if whispered)
it is almost hidden, for what is incorporeal is almost
hidden, and breath is incorporeal. But if spoken
aloud, it is body, and therefore it is perceptible, for
body is perceptible.

1. This (nishkevalya-sastra) becomes perfect as
a thousand of Brzhatis. It is glory (the glorious
Brahman, not the absolute Brahman), it is Indra.
Indra is the lord of all beings. He who thus knows
Indra as the lord of all beings, departs from this
world by loosening the bonds of life '—so said Mahi-
dasa Aitareya. Having departed he becomes Indra
(or Hirazyagarbha) and shines in those worlds ’*.

1 The commentator explains visrasA by ‘merging his manhood in the identity with all,’ and doing this while still alive. Visras is the gradual loosening of the body, the decay of old age, but here it has the meaning of vairdgya rather, the shaking off of all that ties the Self to this body or this life.

* The fourteen worlds in the egg of Brahman. Comm. Some hold that he who enters on this path, and becomes deity, does not

232 AITAREVA-ARANYAKA.

2. And with regard to this they say: ‘If a man
obtains the other world in this form (by meditating
on the praza, breath, which is the uktha, the hymn
of the mahavrata), then in what form does he obtain
this world? ?’

3. Here the blood of the woman is a form of
Agni (fire); therefore no one should despise it. And
the seed of the man is a form of Aditya (sun) ;
therefore no one should despise it. This self (the
woman) gives her self (skin, blood, and flesh) to
that self (fat, bone, and marrow), and that self
(man) gives his self (fat, bone, and marrow) to this
self (skin, blood, and flesh). Thus? these two grow
together. In this form (belonging to the woman
and to fire) he goes to that world (belonging to the
man and the sun), and in that form (belonging to
man and the sun) he gces to this world (belonging
to the woman and to fire ’).

1. Here (with regard to obtaining Hirazyagarbha) there are these Slokas:

arrive at final liberation. Others, however, show that this identifica- tion with the uktha, and through it with the praza (breath) and Hiramyagarbha, is provisional only, and intended to prepare the mind of the worshipper for the reception of the highest knowledge of Brahman.

’ The last line on page 246 should, I think, be the penultimate line of page 247.

* The body consists of six elements, and is hence called sha¢- kausika. Of these, three having a white appearance (fat, bone, and marrow), come from the sun and from man; three having a red appearance, come from fire and from the woman.

* It is well therefore to shake off this body, and by meditating on the uktha to obtain identity with Hiramyagarbha. Comm.

Ii Aranyaka, 3 Adhyaya, 8 Khanda, 6. 2 33

2. The fivefold body into which the indestructible
(praza, breath) enters, that body which the harnessed -
horses (the senses) draw about, that body where the
true of the true (the highest Brahman) follows after,
in that body (of the worshipper) all gods! become

one.

3. That body into which goes the indestructible
(the breath) which we have joined (in meditation),
proceeding from the indestructible (the highest
Brahman), that body which the harnessed horses
(the senses) draw about, that body where the
true of the true follows after, in that body all gods
become one.

4. After separating themselves from the Yes and
No of language, and of all that is hard and cruel,
poets have discovered (what they sought for); de-
pendent on names they rejoiced in what had been
revealed 2,

5. That in which the poets rejoiced (the revealed
nature of praza, breath), in it the gods exist all
joined together. Having driven away evil by means
of that Brahman (which is hidden in praza), the
enlightened man goes to the Svarga world (becomes
one with Hirazyagarbha %, the universal spirit).

6. No one wishing to describe him (prava, breath)
by speech, describes him by calling him ‘woman,’
‘neither woman nor man,’ or ‘man’ (all such names
applying only to the material body, and not to praza
or breath).

1 The worshipper identifies himself by meditation with praza, breath, which comprehends all gods. These gods (Agni and the

rest) appear in the forms of speech, &c. Comm. ? The praza, breath, and their identity with it through meditation

or worship. Comm, § Sarviahammant hiramyagarbha iti sruteh, Comm.

234 AITAREYA-ARANYAKA.

7. Brahman (as hidden beneath prava) is called
the A; and the I (ego) is gone there (the worshipper
should know that he is uktha and prAvza).

8. This becomes perfect as a thousand of Brzhatt
verses, and of that hymn, perfect with a thousand
Brzhati verses, there are 36,000 syllables. So many
are also the thousands of days of human life’. By
means of the syllable of life (the a) alone (which is
contained in that thousand of hymns) does a man
obtain the day of life (the mahavrata day, which com-
pletes the number of the days in the Gavamayana
sacrifice), and by means of the day of life (he
obtains) the syllable of life.

9. Now there is a chariot of the god (prdza)
destroying all desires (for the worlds of Indra, the
moon, the earth, all of which lie below the place of
Hirazyagarbha). Its front part (the point of the
two shafts of the carriage where the yoke is fastened)
is speech, its wheels the ears, the horses the eyes,
the driver the mind. Prdza (breath) mounts that
chariot (and on it, i.e. by means of meditating on
Praza, he reaches Hirazyagarbha).

10. This has been said. by a Ashi (Rv. X, 39, 12):—

1t. ‘Come hither on that which is quicker than
mind,’ and (Rv. VIII, 73, 2) ‘Come hither on that
which is quicker than the twinkling of an eye,’ yea,
the twinkling of an eye?.

PGi, 2a ak, ay

* The commentator remarks that the worship and meditation on the uktha as praza, as here taught, is different from the pramavidya, the knowledge of praza, taught in the KAandogya, the Brhadara- nyaka, &c., where prama or life is represented as the object of meditation, without any reference to the uktha or other portions of the Mahavrata ceremony. He enjoins that the meditation on

11 Aranyaka, 3 Adhyaya, 8 Khanda. 235

the uktha as praza should be continued till the desired result, the identification of the worshipper with prama, is realised, and that it should afterwards be repeated until death, because otherwise the impression might vanish, and the reward of becoming a god, and going to the gods, be lost. Nor is the worship to be confined to the time of the sacrifice, the Mahavrata, only, but it has to be repeated mentally during life. There are neither certain postures required for it, nor certain times and places. At the time of death, however, he who has become perfect in this meditation on uktha, as the emblem of praza, will have his reward. Up to a certain point his fate will be the same as that of other people. The activity of the senses will be absorbed in the mind, the activity of the mind in breath, breath in the activity of life, life with breath in the five elements, fire, &c., and these five elements will be absorbed up to their seed in the Paramatman or Highest Self. This ends the old birth. But then the subtile body, having been absorbed in the Highest Self, rises again in the lotus of the heart, and passing out by the channel of the head, reaches a ray of the sun, whether by day or by night, and goes at the northern or southern course of the sun to the road of Arfis or light. That Aréis, light, and other powers carry him on, and led by these he reaches the Brahma-loka, where he creates to himself every kind of enjoyment, according to his wish. He may create for himself a material body and enjoy all sorts of pleasures, as if in a state of waking, or he may, without such a body, enjoy all pleasures in mind only, as ifin a dream. And as he creates these various bodies according to his wish, he creates also living souls in each, endowed with the internal organs of mind, and moves about in them, as he pleases. In fact this world is the same for the devotee (yogin) and for the Highest Self, except that creative power belongs truly to the latter only. At last the devotee gains the highest knowledge, that of the Highest Self in himself, and then, at the dissolution of the Brahma-loka, he obtains complete freedom with Brahman.

226 AITAREYA-ARANYAKA.

FOURTH ADHYAYA.

First KHAwpa.

With this adhydya begins the real Upanishad, best known under the name of the Aitareya-upanishad, and often separately edited, commented on, and translated. If treated separately, what we call the fourth adhydya of the second Aranyaka, becomes the first adhyAya of the Upanishad, sometimes also, by counting all adhyayas from the beginning of the Aitareya-dramyaka, the ninth. The divisions adopted by Sayaza, who explains the Upanishad as part of the Arazyaka, and by Sankara, who explains it independently, vary, though Sayama states that he follows in his commentary on the Upanishad the earlier commentary.of Sankara. I have given the divisions adopted by Sayaza, and have marked those of Sankara’s by figures in parentheses, placed at the end of each paragraph. The difference between this Upanishad and the three preceding adhyayas is easily perceived. Hitherto the answer to the question, Whence this world? had been, From Praza, praza meaning breath and life, which was looked upon for a time as a sufficient explana- tion of all that is. From a psychological point of view this praza is the conscious self (praghatman); in a more mythological form it appears as Hiramyagarbha, ‘the golden germ,’ sometimes even as Indra. It is one of the chief objects of the pramavidy4, or life- knowledge, to show that the living principle in us is the same as the living principle in the sun, and that by a recognition of their identity and of the true nature of préza, the devotee, or he who has rightly meditated on praza during his life, enters after death into the world of Hirazyagarbha.

This is well expressed in the Kaushitaki-upanishad III, 2, where Indra says to Pratardana: ‘I am Prama; meditate on me as the conscious self (pragfiatman), as life, as immortality. Life is praza, praza is life. Immortality is préza, praza is immortality. By praza he obtains immortality in the other world, by knowledge (pragfia) true conception. Praza is consciousness (pragfia), con- sciousness is prama.’

This, however, though it may have satisfied the mind of the Brahmans for a time, was not a final solution. That final solution of the problem not simply of life, but of existence, is given in the Upanishad which teaches that Atman, the Self, and not Prama, Life, is the last and only cause of everything. In some places this

11 Aranyaka, 4 Adhyaya, I Khanda, 4. 237

doctrine is laid down in all its simplicity. Our true self, it is said, has its true being in the Highest Self only. In other passages, however, and nearly in the whole of this Upanishad, this simple doctrine is mixed up with much that is mythological, fanciful, and absurd, arthavada, as the commentators call it, but as it might often be more truly called, anarthavada, and it is only towards the end that the identity of the self-conscious self with the Highest Self or Brahman is clearly enuntiated.