But we return to the point which just now chiefly interests us. Whether Sankara's interpretation of the chapter, and especially of section 6, be right or wrong, so much is certain that we are not entitled to view all those texts which speak of the soul going to the world of Brah- man as belonging to the so-called lower knowledge, be- cause a few other passages declare that the sage does not go to Brahman. The text which declares the sage free from desires to become one with Brahman could not, without due discrimination, be used to define and limit the meaning of other passages met with in the same Upanishad even — for as we have remarked above the Brzhadara?zyaka contains pieces manifestly belonging to different stages of development ; — much less does it entitle us to put arbitrary constructions on passages forming part of other Upanishads. Historically the disagreement of the various accounts is easy to understand. The older notion was that the soul of the wise man proceeds along the path of the gods to Brah- man's abode. A later — and, if we like, more philosophic — conception is that, as Brahman already is a man's Self, there is no need of any motion on man's part to reach Brahman. We may even apply to those two views the terms apara and para — lower and higher — knowledge. But we must not allow any commentator to induce us to believe that what he from his advanced standpoint looks upon as an inferior kind of cognition, was viewed in the same light by the authors of the Upanishads.
We turn to another Upanishad text likewise touching upon the point considered in what precedes, viz. the second Brahma^a of the third adhyaya of the Brzhadara/^yaka. The discussion there first turns upon the grahas and ati-
cxii vedanta-s6tras.
grahas, i.e. the senses and organs and their objects, and Ya^avalkya thereupon explains that death, by which everything is overcome, is itself overcome by water; for death is fire. The colloquy then turns to what we must consider an altogether new topic, Artabhaga asking, * When this man (ayam purusha) dies, do the vital spirits depart from him or not ? ' and Ya^avalkya answering, ' No, they are gathered up in him ; he swells, he is inflated ; inflated the dead (body) is lying/ — Now this is for vSankara an important passage, as we have already seen above (p. lxxxi) ; for he employs it, in his comment on Ved.-sutra IV, 2, 13, for the purpose of proving that the passage Br/. Up. IV, 4, 6 really means that the vital spirits do not, at the moment of death, depart from the true sage. Hence the present passage also must refer to him who possesses the highest knowledge ; hence the ' ayam purusha ' must be ' that man,' i. e. the man who possesses the highest knowledge, and the highest knowledge then must be found in the preceding clause which says that death itself may be conquered by water. But, as Ramanu^a also remarks, neither does the context favour the assumption that the highest knowledge is referred to, nor do the words of section 11 contain any indication that what is meant is the merging of the Self of the true Sage in Brahman. With the interpretation given by Ramanu^*a himself, viz. that the pra/zas do not depart from the giva. of the dying man, but accompany it into a new body, I can agree as little (although he no doubt rightly explains the ' ayam purusha ' by ' man ' in general), and am unable to see in the passage anything more than a crude attempt to account for the fact that a dead body appears swollen and inflated. — A little further on (section 13) Artabhaga asks what becomes of this man (ayam purusha) when his speech has entered into the fire, his breath into the air, his eye into the sun, &c. So much here is clear that we have no right to understand by the 'ayam purusha' of section 13 anybody different from the ' ayam purusha ' of the two preceding sections ; in spite of this 5ankara — according to whose system the organs of the true sage do not enter into the elements, but are directly
Introduction. Cx111
merged in Brahman — explains the ' ayam purusha ' of sec- tion 13 to be the ' asa/^yagdamn,' i. e. the person who has not risen to the cognition of the highest Brahman. And still a further limiting interpretation is required by the system. The asa/^yagdamn also — who as such has to remain in the sa^sara — cannot do without the organs, since his £lva when passing out of the old body into a new one is invested with the subtle body ; hence section 13 cannot be taken as saying what it clearly does say, viz. that at death the different organs pass into the different elements, but as merely indicating that the organs are abandoned by the divinities which, during lifetime, presided over them !
The whole third adhyaya indeed of the Brzhadara/zyaka affords ample proof of the artificial character of vSankara's attempts to show that the teaching of the Upanishads follows a definite system. The eighth brahma;^a, for in- stance, is said to convey the doctrine of the highest non- related Brahman, while the preceding brahma/zas had treated only of l^vara in his various aspects. But, as a matter of fact, brahma^a 8, after having, in section 8, represented Brahman as destitute of all qualities, proceeds, in the next section, to describe that very same Brahman as the ruler of the world, * By the command of that Imperishable sun and moon stand apart/ &c. ; a clear indication that the author of the Upanishad does not distinguish a higher and lower Brahman in wSankara's sense. — The preceding brahma;za (7) treats of the antaryamin, i. e. Brahman viewed as the internal ruler of everything. This, according to vSankara, is the lower form of Brahman called l^vara ; but we observe that the antaryamin as well as the so-called highest Brahman described in section 8 is, at the termination of the two sections, characterised by means of the very same terms (7, 23 : Unseen but seeing, unheard but hearing, &c. There is no other seer but he, there is no other hearer but he, &c. ; and 8, 11 : That Brahman is unseen but seeing, unheard but hearing, &c. There is nothing that sees but it, nothing that hears but it, &c). — Nothing can be clearer than that all these sections aim at describing one and the same being, and know nothing of the distinctions made by the developed
CX1V VEDANTA-SUTRAS.
Vedanta, however valid the latter may be from a purely philosophic point of view.
We may refer to one more similar instance from the KMndogya. Upanishad. We there meet in III, 14 with one of the most famous vidyas describing the nature of Brahman, called after its reputed author the vSa^ilya-vidya. This small vidya is decidedly one of the finest and most characteristic texts ; it would be difficult to point out another passage setting forth with greater force and elo- quence and in an equally short compass the central doctrine of the Upanishads. Yet this text, which, beyond doubt, gives utterance to the highest conception of Brahman's nature that S&ndilyaLS thought was able to reach, is by vSankara and his school again declared to form part of the lower vidya only, because it represents Brahman as possess- ing qualities. It is, according to their terminology, not ^ana, i. e. knowledge, but the injunction of a mere upasana, a devout meditation on Brahman in so far as possessing certain definite attributes such as having light for its form, having true thoughts, and so on. The Rdmanu^as, on the other hand, quote this text with preference as clearly describing the nature of their highest, i. e. their one Brah- man. We again allow that vSankara is free to deny that any text which ascribes qualities to Brahman embodies abso- lute truth ; but we also again remark that there is no reason whatever for supposing that wSa/zdftlya, or whoever may have been the author of that vidya, looked upon it as anything else but a statement of the highest truth accessible to man.
We return to the question as to the true philosophy of the Upanishads, apart from the systems of the commen- tators.— From what precedes it will appear with sufficient distinctness that, if we understand by philosophy a philo- sophical system coherent in all its parts, free from all contradictions and allowing room for all the different state- ments made in all the chief Upanishads, a philosophy of the Upanishads cannot even be spoken of. The various lucubrations on Brahman, the world, and the human soul of which the Upanishads consist do not allow themselves to be systematised simply because they were never meant to
Introduction. Cxv
form a system. Skndilyas views as to the nature of Brahman did not in all details agree with those of Ya^Tza- valkya, and Uddalaka differed from both. In this there is nothing to wonder at, and the burden of proof rests alto- gether with those who maintain that a large number of detached philosophic and theological dissertations, ascribed to different authors, doubtless belonging to different periods, and not seldom manifestly contradicting each other, admit of being combined into a perfectly consistent whole.
The question, however, assumes a different aspect, if we take the terms ' philosophy ' and 'philosophical system,' not in the strict sense in which 5ankara and other commentators are not afraid of taking them, but as implying merely an agreement in certain fundamental features. In this latter sense we may indeed undertake to indicate the outlines of a philosophy of the Upanishads, only keeping in view that precision in details is not to be aimed at. And here we finally see ourselves driven back altogether on the texts themselves, and have to acknowledge that the help we receive from commentators, to whatever school they may belong, is very inconsiderable. Fortunately it cannot be asserted that the texts on the whole oppose very serious difficulties to a right understanding, however obscure the details often are. Concerning the latter we occasionally depend entirely on the explanations vouchsafed by the scholiasts, but as far as the general drift and spirit of the texts are concerned, we are quite able to judge by our- selves, and are even specially qualified to do so by having no particular system to advocate.
The point we will first touch upon is the same from which we started when examining the doctrine of the Sutras, viz. the question whether the Upanishads acknowledge a higher and lower knowledge in vSarikara's sense, i. e. a knowledge of a higher and a lower Brahman. Now this we find not to be the case. Knowledge is in the Upanishads frequently opposed to avidya, by which latter term we have to under- stand ignorance as to Brahman, absence of philosophic knowledge ; and, again, in several places we find the know- ledge of the sacrificial part of the Veda with its supple-
cxvi vedanta-s6tras.
mentary disciplines contrasted as inferior with the knowledge of the Self; to which latter distinction the Mundaka. Up. (I, 4) applies the terms apara and para vidyL But a formal recognition of the essential difference of Brahman being viewed, on the one hand, as possessing distinctive attributes, and, on the other hand, as devoid of all such attributes is not to be met with anywhere. Brahman is indeed sometimes described as sagu?za and sometimes as nirgu^a (to use later terms) ; but it is nowhere said that thereon rests a distinc- tion of two different kinds of knowledge leading to altogether different results. The knowledge of Brahman is one, under whatever aspects it is viewed ; hence the circumstance (already exemplified above) that in the same vidyas it is spoken of as sagu/za as well as nirgu^a. When the mind of the writer dwells on the fact that Brahman is that from which all this world originates, and in which it rests, he naturally applies to it distinctive attributes pointing at its relation to the world ; Brahman, then, is called the Self and life of all, the inward ruler, the omniscient Lord, and so on. When, on the other hand, the author follows out the idea that Brahman may be viewed in itself as the mysterious reality of which the whole expanse of the world is only an outward manifestation, then it strikes him that no idea or term derived from sensible experience can rightly be applied to it, that nothing more may be predicated of it but that it is neither this nor that. But these are only two aspects of the cognition of one and the same entity.