Part 1 — INTRODUCTION. (continued 3)

Closely connected with the question as to the double nature of the Brahman of the Upanishads is the question as to their teaching Mâyâ.—From Colebrooke downwards the majority of European writers have inclined towards the opinion that the doctrine of Mâyâ, i.e. of the unreal illusory character of the sensible world, does not constitute a feature of the primitive philosophy of the Upanishads, but was introduced into the system at some later period, whether by Bâdarâyana or Sa@nkara or somebody else. The opposite view, viz. that the doctrine of Mâyâ forms an integral element of the teaching of the Upanishads, is implied in them everywhere, and enunciated more or less distinctly in more than one place, has in recent times been advocated with much force by Mr. Gough in the ninth chapter of his Philosophy of the Upanishads.

In his Matériaux, &c. M. Paul Régnaud remarks that 'the doctrine of Mâyâ, although implied in the teaching of the Upanishads, could hardly become clear and explicit before the system had reached a stage of development necessitating a choice between admitting two co-existent eternal principles (which became the basis of the Sâ@nkhya philosophy), and accepting the predominance of the intellectual principle, which in the end necessarily led to the negation of the opposite principle.'—To the two alternatives here referred to as possible we, however, have to add a third one, viz. that form of the Vedânta of which the theory of the Bhâgavatas or Râmânujas is the most eminent type, and according to which Brahman carries within its own nature an element from which the material universe originates; an element which indeed is not an independent entity like the pradhâna of the Sâ@nkhyas, but which at the same time is not an unreal Mâyâ but quite as real as any other part of Brahman's nature. That a doctrine of this character actually developed itself on the basis of the Upanishads, is a circumstance which we clearly must not lose sight of, when attempting to determine what the Upanishads themselves are teaching concerning the character of the world.

In the same light we have to view numerous other passages which set forth the successive emanations proceeding from the first principle. When, for instance, we meet in the Katha Up. I, 3, 10, in the serial enumeration of the forms of existence intervening between the gross material world and the highest Self (the Person), with the 'avyâkrita,' the Undeveloped, immediately below the purusha; and when again the Mundaka Up. II, 1, 2, speaks of the 'high Imperishable' higher than which is the heavenly Person; there is no reason whatever to see in that 'Undeveloped' and that 'high Imperishable' anything but that real element in Brahman from which, as in the Râmânuja system, the material universe springs by a process of real development. We must of course render it quite clear to ourselves in what sense the terms 'real' and 'unreal' have to be understood. The Upanishads no doubt teach emphatically that the material world does not owe its existence to any principle independent from the Lord like the pradhâna of the Sâ@nkhyas; the world is nothing but a manifestation of the Lord's wonderful power, and hence is unsubstantial, if we take the term 'substance' in its strict sense. And, again, everything material is immeasurably inferior in nature to the highest spiritual principle from which it has emanated, and which it now hides from the individual soul. But neither unsubstantiality nor inferiority of the kind mentioned constitutes unreality in the sense in which the Mâyâ of Sa@nkara is unreal. According to the latter the whole world is nothing but an erroneous appearance, as unreal as the snake, for which a piece of rope is mistaken by the belated traveller, and disappearing just as the imagined snake does as soon as the light of true knowledge has risen. But this is certainly not the impression left on the mind by a comprehensive review of the Upanishads which dwells on their general scope, and does not confine itself to the undue urging of what may be implied in some detached passages. The Upanishads do not call upon us to look upon the whole world as a baseless illusion to be destroyed by knowledge; the great error which they admonish us to relinquish is rather that things have a separate individual existence, and are not tied together by the bond of being all of them effects of Brahman, or Brahman itself. They do not say that true knowledge sublates this false world, as Sa@nkara says, but that it enables the sage to extricate himself from the world—the inferior mûrta rûpa of Brahman, to use an expression of the Brihadâranyaka—and to become one with Brahman in its highest form. 'We are to see everything in Brahman, and Brahman in everything;' the natural meaning of this is, 'we are to look upon this whole world as a true manifestation of Brahman, as sprung from it and animated by it.' The mâyâvâdin has indeed appropriated the above saying also, and interpreted it so as to fall in with his theory; but he is able to do so only by perverting its manifest sense. For him it would be appropriate to say, not that everything we see is in Brahman, but rather that everything we see is out of Brahman, viz. as a false appearance spread over it and hiding it from us.

The last important point in the teaching of the Upanishads we have to touch upon is the relation of the jîvas, the individual souls to the highest Self. The special views regarding that point held by Sa@nkara and Râmânuja, as have been stated before. Confronting their theories with the texts of the Upanishads we must, I think, admit without hesitation, that Sa@nkara's doctrine faithfully represents the prevailing teaching of the Upanishads in one important point at least, viz. therein that the soul or Self of the sage—whatever its original relation to Brahman may be—is in the end completely merged and indistinguishably lost in the universal Self. A distinction, repeatedly alluded to before, has indeed to be kept in view here also. Certain texts of the Upanishads describe the soul's going upwards, on the path of the gods, to the world of Brahman, where it dwells for unnumbered years, i.e. for ever. Those texts, as a type of which we may take, the passage Kaushît. Up. I—the fundamental text of the Râmânujas concerning the soul's fate after death—belong to an earlier stage of philosophic development; they manifestly ascribe to the soul a continued individual existence. But mixed with texts of this class there are others in which the final absolute identification of the individual Self with the universal Self is indicated in terms of unmistakable plainness. 'He who knows Brahman and becomes Brahman;' 'he who knows Brahman becomes all this;' 'as the flowing rivers disappear in the sea losing their name and form, thus a wise man goes to the divine person.' And if we look to the whole, to the prevailing spirit of the Upanishads, we may call the doctrine embodied in passages of the latter nature the doctrine of the Upanishads. It is, moreover, supported by the frequently and clearly stated theory of the individual souls being merged in Brahman in the state of deep dreamless sleep.

It is much more difficult to indicate the precise teaching of the Upanishads concerning the original relation of the individual soul to the highest Self, although there can be no doubt that it has to be viewed as proceeding from the latter, and somehow forming a part of it. Negatively we are entitled to say that the doctrine, according to which the soul is merely brahma bhrântam or brahma mayopadhikam, is in no way countenanced by the majority of the passages bearing on the question. If the emission of the elements, described in the Chândogya and referred to above, is a real process—of which we saw no reason to doubt—the jîva âtman with which the highest Self enters into the emitted elements is equally real, a true part or emanation of Brahman itself.

After having in this way shortly reviewed the chief elements of Vedântic doctrine according to the Upanishads, we may briefly consider Sa@nkara's system and mode of interpretation—with whose details we had frequent opportunities of finding fault—as a whole. It has been said before that the task of reducing the teaching of the whole of the Upanishads to a system consistent and free from contradictions is an intrinsically impossible one. But the task once being given, we are quite ready to admit that Sa@nkara's system is most probably the best which can be devised. While unable to allow that the Upanishads recognise a lower and higher knowledge of Brahman, in fact the distinction of a lower and higher Brahman, we yet acknowledge that the adoption of that distinction furnishes the interpreter with an instrument of extraordinary power for reducing to an orderly whole the heterogeneous material presented by the old theosophic treatises. This becomes very manifest as soon as we compare Sa@nkara's system with that of Râmânuja. The latter recognises only one Brahman which is, as we should say, a personal God, and he therefore lays stress on all those passages of the Upanishads which ascribe to Brahman the attributes of a personal God, such as omniscience and omnipotence. Those passages, on the other hand, whose decided tendency it is to represent Brahman as transcending all qualities, as one undifferenced mass of impersonal intelligence, Râmânuja is unable to accept frankly and fairly, and has to misinterpret them more or less to make them fall in with his system. The same remark holds good with regard to those texts which represent the individual soul as finally identifying itself with Brahman; Râmânuja cannot allow a complete identification but merely an assimilation carried as far as possible. Sa@nkara, on the other hand, by skilfully ringing the changes on a higher and a lower doctrine, somehow manages to find room for whatever the Upanishads have to say. Where the text speaks of Brahman as transcending all attributes, the highest doctrine is set forth. Where Brahman is called the All-knowing ruler of the world, the author means to propound the lower knowledge of the Lord only. And where the legends about the primary being and its way of creating the world become somewhat crude and gross, Hiranyagarbha and Virâj are summoned forth and charged with the responsibility. Of Virâj Mr. Gough remarks (p. 55) that in him a place is provided by the poets of the Upanishads for the purusha of the ancient rishis, the divine being out of whom the visible and tangible world proceeded. This is quite true if only we substitute for the 'poets of the Upanishads' the framers of the orthodox Vedânta system—for the Upanishads give no indication whatever that by their purusha they understand not the simple old purusha but the Virâj occupying a definite position in a highly elaborate system;—but the mere phrase, 'providing a place' intimates with sufficient clearness the nature of the work in which systematisers of the Vedântic doctrine are engaged.

We have above been obliged to leave it an open question what kind of Vedânta is represented by the Vedânta-sûtras, although reason was shown for the supposition that in some important points their teaching is more closely related to the system of Râmânuja than to that of Sa@nkara. If so, the philosophy of Sa@nkara would on the whole stand nearer to the teaching of the Upanishads than the Sûtras of Bâdarâyana. This would indeed be a somewhat unexpected conclusion—for, judging a priori, we should be more inclined to assume a direct propagation of the true doctrine of the Upanishads through Bâdarâyana to Sa@nkara—but a priori considerations have of course no weight against positive evidence to the contrary. There are, moreover, other facts in the history of Indian philosophy and theology which help us better to appreciate the possibility of Bâdarâyana's Sûtras already setting forth a doctrine that lays greater stress on the personal character of the highest being than is in agreement with the prevailing tendency of the Upanishads. That the pure doctrine of those ancient Brahminical treatises underwent at a rather early period amalgamations with beliefs which most probably had sprung up in altogether different—priestly or non-priestly—communities is a well-known circumstance; it suffices for our purposes to refer to the most eminent of the early literary monuments in which an amalgamation of the kind mentioned is observable, viz. the Bhagavadgîtâ. The doctrine of the Bhagavadgîtâ represents a fusion of the Brahman theory of the Upanishads with the belief in a personal highest being—Krishna or Vishnu—which in many respects approximates very closely to the system of the Bhâgavatas; the attempts of a certain set of Indian commentators to explain it as setting forth pure Vedânta, i.e. the pure doctrine of the Upanishads, may simply be set aside. But this same Bhagavadgîtâ is quoted in Bâdarâyana's Sûtras (at least according to the unanimous explanations of the most eminent scholiasts of different schools) as inferior to Sruti only in authority. The Sûtras, moreover, refer in different places to certain Vedântic portions of the Mahâbhârata, especially the twelfth book, several of which represent forms of Vedânta distinctly differing from Sa@nkara's teaching, and closely related to the system of the Bhâgavatas.

The present translation of the Vedânta-sûtras does not aim at rendering that sense which their author may have aimed at conveying, but strictly follows Sa@nkara's interpretation. The question as to how far the latter agrees with the views held by Bâdarâyana has been discussed above, with the result that for the present it must, on the whole, be left an open one. In any case it would not be feasible to combine a translation of Sa@nkara's commentary with an independent version of the Sûtras which it explains. Similar considerations have determined the method followed in rendering the passages of the Upanishads referred to in the Sûtras and discussed at length by Sa@nkara. There also the views of the commentator have to be followed closely; otherwise much of the comment would appear devoid of meaning. Hence, while of course following on the whole the critical translation published by Professor Max Müller in the earlier volumes of this Series, I had, in a not inconsiderable number of cases, to modify it so as to render intelligible Sa@nkara's explanations and reasonings. I hope to find space in the introduction to the second volume of this translation for making some general remarks on the method to be followed in translating the Upanishads.

I regret that want of space has prevented me from extracting fuller notes from later scholiasts. The notes given are based, most of them, on the tîkâs composed by Ânandagiri and Govindânanda (the former of which is unpublished as yet, so far as I know), and on the Bhâmatî.

My best thanks are due to Pandits Râma Misra Sâstrin and Ga@ngâdhara Sâstrin of the Benares Sanskrit College, whom I have consulted on several difficult passages. Greater still are my obligations to Pandit Kesava Sâstrin, of the same institution, who most kindly undertook to read a proof of the whole of the present volume, and whose advice has enabled me to render my version of more than one passage more definite or correct.