INDIAN PHILOSOPHY.*
[* The Six Systems of Indian
Philosophy. By The Right Hon. F. Max Muller, K.M. Longmans Green and Co. 39
Paternoster Row, London. 1899. Syo. Pp. xxxii. And 618. Price 18 Shillings.]
The
Student of Sanskrit or of Philosophy had till not to look for any information
concerning Indian Philosophy either in the original Sanskrit Texts themselves,
in the stray or disconnected essays scattered through the works of Wilson,
Colebrooke, or Goldstucker, or in Duesson’s Allgemeine Geschichte der
Philosophie1 [1 As
an introduction to this book is affixed a translation of Madhusuddhana
Saraswati’s Prasthana Bheda, a very valuable resume of Indian systems of
Philosophy] which appeals perhaps to a
different public and in which the evolution and historical character of Indian
Philosophy cannot in the nature of things occupy more than a subsidiary place.
Between the voluminous though excellent essays of a few Sanskritists on one or
two departments of Indian Philosophic Thought on the one hand, and the
extremely sketchy and sometimes positively mischievous accounts of the whole
range of Indian Philosophy in such books as Monier Williams’ “Brahminism and
Hinduism” and “Indian Wisdom,” and Weber’s “History of Indian
Literature,” on the other, it has always been an insuperable trouble to the
Student of Indian Philosophy that he could not refer with ease for any
information on branches of Indian Philosophy to an authoritative book that
would be at once concise and exhaustive, adequate in treatment, clear and
sympathetic in exposition. Such an ideal book was being felt as a sorry want
ever since the impulse given to the study of Sanskrit Philosophy by the
publication of Duesson’s “Elements of Metaphysics,” and Max Muller’s “Three
lectures on the Vedanta Philosophy.” This want we might boldly say has in a
way been remedied by the publication of Prof. Max Muller’s “Indian
Philosophy” of which this article is a review. Prof. Max Muller, that
Nestor among Sanskritists now living, has set himself, in the present book, to
the work of showing the evolution of the main lines of Indian Philosophic
thought as presented to us in the six systems of Indian Philosophy, and the
historical growth and collateral developments of some schools of thought side
by side with one another as in the case of the Vedanta and Sankhya. We will see
therefore that to the author who is able to impose upon himself such a weighty
task a sound linguistic training is as much essential as a deep acquaintance
with the Schools of modern and ancient European Thought. If we may judge from
his previous works, as a scholar that could breathe with perfect ease and
calmness in an atmosphere that is so rarified as that of Hegel, Schopenhauer,
Kant2 [2 See Kant’s
Critique of Pure Reason translated by Max Muller with an introduction by Ludwig
Noire. Macmillan and Co.] and
Descartes, as a student that has studied with abiding attention all the
intricate problems connected with the growth and development of every important
religion under the Sun, as a navigator that can steer with a composure that
comes only of an infallible skill in the art, all the boisterous seas of early
Indian Philosophy, and more than all as an expounder that is in good sympathy
with whatever he gives an account of, that would speak as a strong adherent
would do, and never distort, caricature, color, or twist any system he is
speaking about, Max Muller’s competency for this truly responsible work should
raise him above others in the English-knowing world. It is therefore not
surprising that this book of Max Muller’s should have been looked forward to
with expectation for some time. It should be in the hands of all students of
Indian Philosophy who would be sure to welcome the book now that it appears.
There is a good index at the end of the volume though here and there are
flagrant omissions, and the whole book is attractively got up. The printing is
clear and the price is not very moderate. In the body of the book there are
many mistakes which indeed should be a surprising feature to students
accustomed to Max Muller’s previous works. That Max Muller, whose immense use
as a Vedic scholar and a student of the World’s philosophies and religions to
the world of letters can be best measured by the turn that Sanskrit studies
have taken in European Universities,2 [2 See Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason translated by Max
Muller with an introduction by Ludwig Noire. Macmillan and Co.] and who would be the last man to spare any troubles
on behalf of a book which should mark an era in the study of Indian Philosophy
just as his “History of Ancient Sanskrit Literature,” in Vedic studies3 [3
Vide H.G. Buhler’s speech in the Ninth international
Congress of Orientalists held in 1892.]
and on the correctness of, and sound presentation in which so much depends,
should complain of the weakness of his old age, and ask forgiveness at the
hands of his readers for mistakes that might have escaped his notice, really
overcomes us with a feeling of sadness and regret as we open the book and
remember that Mr. A.E. Gough, despite his kindness in reading a revise of Max
Muller, alone and unassisted, in his vigorous days, was doing as perfectly as
any proficient in proof examining. It has always been a matter of very rare
curiosity for one to be able to find even slight topographical misprints, much
less mistakes of fact in the professor’s books. Unfortunately our book has a
little too much of errors of both descriptions, as compared with his previous
works. The only reparation we have for all this, and it is more than a
reparation, is his own touching words in the preface (p. XXI) “a man of
seventy-six has neither the eyes nor the memory which he had at twenty-six, and
he may be allowed to appeal to younger men for such help as he himself in his
younger days has often and gladly lent to his Guru and fellow labourers.”4
[4 for the same strain of
moving complaint, see also Max Muller’s Psychological Religion. New issue 1898.
Preface p. XVI.] We will advert to all
such mistakes in the course of our review. Prof. Max Muller after sketching in
the preface the backbone of the Indian Philosophies, so to speak, namely the
Advaitism of Sankara, and Kapila’s creed, and justly vindicating the right view
each maintains from its own standpoint, speaks about the importance of the
study of Indian philosophy:- “And if hitherto no one would have called himself
a philosopher who had not read and studied the works of Plato and Aristotle, of
Descartes and Spinoza, of Locke, Hume, and Kant in the original, I hope that
the time will come when no one will claim that name who is not acquired at
least with the two prominent systems of ancient Indian Philosophy, the Vedanta
and the Sankhya” (p. XVII). Regarding the six main systems he has dwelt on, and
their prominent apostles, he has been very careful to give a complete view and
to represent them as a follower himself would. And thus he says “If we want our
friends to love our friends, we do not give a full account of their qualities
but we dwell on one or two o the strong points of their character. This is what
I have tried to do for my old friends, Badarayana, Kapila and the rest” (p.
XVIII) and elsewhere says again “It is in the Walhalla of real philosophers
that I claim a place of honor for the representatives of the Vedanta and the
Sankhya.” (p. XVII). Whatever seemed in the exposition of a system not likely
to appeal to European tastes or sympathies, that, he says, he has sedulously
avoided, though we do not know if in a book of such magnitude, claiming to
traverse the ground of the whole philosophic literature existing in India, this
would be a proceeding not prejudicial to the interests of Sanskrit Scholarship.
And there are other blemishes also especially in the treatment of the later
developments of each cardinal system, to which we will direct the attention of
the reader when we take chapter after chapter for review. Professor Max Muller
gives as his opinion, and in this he echoes the views of that out and out,
radical, Sankhyan expositor5 [5 His commentary on the Vedanta Sutras is now being
translated by Ganganath Jha. M.A.] of the
Vedanta of the sixteenth century, Vignanabhikshu, whom the most keen-witted of
pundits of the present day will not approach without tremor and a sense of
diffidence, that there is no doubt there has been ever from the beginning of
philosophical thought in India extending to the remotest past, a common amount
of floating parcels of plastid philosophic matter which every ingenious thinker
was ready to shape as he will and add them as bricks to the edifice he reared.
This idea is what one should have expected from Max Muller after his extensive
study ranging over the whole realm of Indian Philosophy, and he expresses it in
a markedly fine style, “The longer I have studied the various systems, the more
have I become impressed with the view taken by Vignana Bhikshu and others, that
there is behind the variety of the six systems, a common fund of what may be
called national or popular philosophy, a large Manasa lake of Philosophical
thought and language, far away in the distant North, and in the distant Past,
from which each thinker was allowed to draw for his own purposes.” (p. XVIII)
The truth of this can well be brought home to the mind of any one who wishes to
think seriously, by taking into consideration the four primordial elements or
rather the basic pillars of primary philosophic efforts in India, as shadowed
forth by the principal and undoubtedly archaic Upanishads, in the pregnant
terms Atman and Brahman, Prakriti and Purusha, how out of these four main lines
of ideas, two important schools evolved, the Sankhya and the Vedanta as
represented in Badarayana6 [6 How much alloy of Kapila he meant to possess is yet
open to question. Sankara his expounder is a consistent adherent to the
Upanishad doctrines. He heads the latest recession of a school represented by
Gaudapada and others. Which of the two, Ramanuja or Sankara, portrays
Badarayana correctly cannot be settled satisfactorily in the absence of any
other work of Badarayana venting his views. If consistent logic, sharp
intellection and a faithful, sensible and unswerving interpretation of the
Upanishads are taken into consideration, Sankara indeed is Ramanuja’s superior.
No doubt the Upanishads are older than the Brahma Sutras and represent as such
an earlier view. Vide Thibaut’s introduction to the Sariraka Bhashya of
Sankara. Sacred Books of the East.]
and Kapila, and how by squaring, cubing and halving each respectively or by
combining and permuting both in various proportions, with some existing terms
deleted and new ones added, was brought into existence the various other
schools of philosophic activity adorning the Sutra and Purana, nay even still
later periods, such as Sankara’s unflinching Monism, Ramanuja’s
Visishtadwaitism,7 [7 As
regards the Chit, Achit, and Icwara (Padarthatritayam) and the Sankhyan
complexion of his cult, see Vedantatattvasara of Ramanuja.] Vidyaranya’s and Vachaspathi Vignana Bhikshu’s
clever amalgam of Sankya and Vedanta which borders upon that of Ramanuja, the
Pacupatha system which is little else but Ramanuja inoculated with a goodly
dose of Sankhya, not to speak of Yoga, as given to us in Patanjali’s theism,
Vaiseshika, Nyaya and a mixture of the two latter, Nyaya-Vaiseshika and the
latter modern developments therefrom. But it is all the same for a scientific
students of philosophy to say, that all the existing systems have emanated or
developed from a beginning of complex fancies in the minds of the ancient
Hindus regarding the aetiology and eschatology of things, sometimes by slow
growths in independent directions, and often by an interblending and
intertwining of branches with new suckers shooting forth from the resultant
tangle, as to think as Vignana Bhikshu8 [8 Vide Sankhya Pravachana Bhashya, and for an almost
similar view see Annie Besant. ‘Four Great Religions of the World.’] suggests in a spirit of Orthodox piety or
enlightened liberation, whichever it may be, that all the various philosophies
have behind them a common fund of truth, and the Nyaya, Vaiseshika, Yoga,
Sankhya, and Vedanta are but steps in the ladder of spiritual progress both in
a cosmic and psyche sense [viz. the various stages reached in the objective
world of intellectual efforts by philosophers who formulated independent
systems corresponded with stages or milestones in the subjective growth of the
Soul in each human individual], Nyaya indicating the lowest rung while Vedanta
the highest. Vignana Bhikshu’s view may be tersely epigrammatized, if we parody
Prof. Haeckel’s well-known biogenetic law, and understand by his phylogeny, the
summary of the different distinct mental steps arrived at by various
philosophies in the Indian philosophic world, as a Monad’s spiritual ontogeny
is recapitulated by World’s phylogeny or Phylogeny reflects Ontogeny. In any
case after looking into the unique structure of every Indian philosophic dogma,
and the relations that link it with every other system living near it, we must
conclude that there has been a persisting course of evolution of thought
through centuries, much the same as the parinama9 [9
See Madhava’s Sarvadarsana Sangraha.] of Icwara
postulated by Ramanuja. Prof. Max Muller deplores towards the end of the
preface the neglect into which the study of some philosophies such as Yoga have
fallen and hence adds most feelingly10 [10 Compare also his pupil Kielhorn’s remarks in the
introduction to Nagoji Bhatta’s Paribhashendusekhara.] “It is feared, however, that even this small
remnant of philosophical learning will vanish in one or two generations, as the
youths of the present day, even if belonging to orthodox Brahminic families, do
not take to these studies as there is no encouragement” (p. XX) and yet he
rejoices that there are modern Hindus now rising who “after studying the
history of European Philosophy, have devoted themselves to the honorable task
of making their own national philosophy better known to the world at large.” In
this connection after pointing out that “a mixing up of philosophical with
religious and theosophical propaganda, inevitable as it is said to be in India,
is always dangerous,” he enumerates a number of Journals as being instrumental
in guiding people aright and in deterring them from mixing up philosophical
creed with sectarian religious littleness, and among which “The Light of Truth”
is brought in as one. I shall quote the sentence itself, “But such Journals as
the Pundit, the Brahmavadin, the Light of Truth, and
lately the Journal of the Buddhist Tax Society, have been doing most valuable
service “and further on he continues referring to Texts and Translations and to
the necessity of bringing to light the non-Sanskrit philosophical literature
that exists in the South of India, in such rapturous terms, “What we want are
Texts and Translations and any information that can throw light on the
chronology of Indian Philosophy. Nor should their labor be restricted to
Sanskrit Texts. In the South of India there exists a philosophical literature
which, though it may show clear traces of Sanskrit influence, contains also
original indigenous elements11 [11 See inter alia my communication, “The University and
the Vernaculars.” The Madras Mail. March 12th 1897.] of great beauty and of great importance for
historical purposes. Unfortunately few scholars only have taken up, as yet, the
study of the Dravidian languages and literature, but young students who
complain that there is nothing left to do in Sanskrit Literature, would I
believe, find their labors amply rewarded in that field” (pp. XX.XXI). These
are the words in which he is referring to the study of indigenous Tamil works
on Philosophy, Literature and what not, and no need that we should emphasis too
strongly if South India and its native literary activity have even been absent
from his thoughts when thinking of an historical evolution of Indian
Philosophies, extant and extinct. The only other reference he makes to the
Siddhanta Deepika is in the chapter on the Mimamsa, where, in the course of our
review we will direct appropriately the reader’s attention to it.
The
books is divided into nine chapters. The first or the introductory chapter
deals with the physical and other material environments in which the Hindus
found themselves placed that helped a good deal for such a rich harvest of
philosophic speculations in India, and with the natural facilities afforded by
physical features and the want of keen competition for the necessaries of life
among the Hindus, tending to stimulate them to think seriously about Soul and
God, the subjectivation of the Human Individual and the objectivity of the
puzzling Kosmos. The second chapter gives an account of the Vedas and the Vedic
gods, and seeks to fathom in their inmost depths for the latent springs of the
future philosophical fermentation of India and to explain how the potential
germs imbedded in them blossomed up into the vague philosophic surmises of the
Upanishads epoch and into the systematized philosophical systems of the Sutra
period. This brings us to the third chapter entitled “The systems of
Philosophy” where in the main he endeavors to find out the common ground work
of the six main systems of Philosophy and to point to the necessity of a
mnemonic literature being present in the absence of writing, when pupils
originally learnt the respective systems in retired Asramas in forests by
getting by rote a collection of well-arranged aphorisms constructed with due
reference to minimize the labor of memory, supplemented by oral running
commentaries from their preceptors, Chapter IV gives an excellent summary of
the Uttaramimamsa of Badarayana as conceived and explained by Sankara, with a few remarks on Ramanuja’s
system. Chapter V deals with the Purvamimamsa whose old name is Nyaya, since in
it was originally developed those elements of Indian Logic, which migrated in
succession to Gotama’s Nyaya system, Badarayana’s creed in the hands of its later
adherents, and up to the Nadiya recension of the Nyaya school disfiguring it to
such a length that it lost sight of the original philosophic aim it set before
itself and covered itself with a thick mist of verbal acrobatism or
word-jugglery. Or perhaps as Max Muller thinks, the particular materials which,
to the exclusion of others, the Purvamimamsa drew from the common fund of
philosophical store were also drawn upon by various other schools as necessity
arose. In Chapter VI he gives an account of the Sankhya, prefacing it with a
short summary of the later Vedantic developments with which the Sankhya was
freely mixed. Chapter VII has for its subject “Yoga and Sankhya,” discusses the
relation between these two, and ends with an analysis of the Yoga, and the
bearing of the Sankhya on it. In Chapter VIII Nyaya and Vaiseshika are touched
upon, with a fairly good account of the Nyaya in its later stages, and an
excellent resume of the Indian Logic. The indissolubleties between the Nyaya
and the Vaiseshika are very well sketched. In Chapter IX which is the last
chapter, the Vaiseshika as an independent system is taken into consideration,
and the Indian atomic philosophy and the so called “qualities” postulated by
Kanada are examined. The closing section gives a thoughtful comparative view of
all the six systems, with the points of contrast between them and showing the
underlying unity of conception running through them through sometimes imbedded
far below the surface. Whatever we may to have to say as regards the
completeness or anything like exhaustiveness in the treatment of the various
systems adopted in the present work, one cannot but admire the almost Indian
fashion in which the philosophies are presented to the readers without any
perversion, distortion, or coloring and the broad-minded sympathy and extreme
reverence for productions of the Past evidenced in his exposition of the Indian
systems. More than all, not content with explaining the philosophy with the
skill and clearness of a true philosophy, the Professor on every occasion is
anxious to trace the primary thoughts, difficulties, and aspirations that
surged within the breasts of Kapila, Badarayana and the rest, which might have
ended in the six grand systems of philosophy as the final solutions of problems
presenting themselves to those thinkers in this inexplicable dreams of life.
Prof. Max Muller wants to find beneath the apparently cold philosophies of
Kapila and Badarayana which were evidently the culminating upshot of a whole
period or a series of periods of philosophic incubation, the living motives,
the way out of human troubles, losses or despondency and the incipient
thoughts, conceived by those thinking people in a purely resigned spirit
hankering after the Truth. He creates sympathies in us to like our old
philosophers, since the same problems which assail us in thinking moments,
confronted them, and the possible solutions that struck them as ways out of the
difficulty they have handed down to posterity. And therefore they were all
human from top to toe and meant these as a method of consoling reflection when
we open our eyes to the Gordian knot of this world presented to our senses.
There
is nothing striking in the Introductory chapter for people that have been
already used to Max Muller’s other works12 [12 Vide also Max Muller’s History of Ancient Sanskrit
Literature Chapter IV and his “India, what can it teach us?”], especially his four courses of Gifford lectures on
Natural, Physical, Anthropological and Psychological Religion, and hi Hibbert lectures
on the Religions of India, for, in it we get only a connected presentation of
his early views appertaining to the growth of philosophical thoughts in India
almost necessitated by its ancient geographic and economic conditions. The
peace and plenty which people in India enjoyed in olden times coupled with a
prodigal supply of food which Nature lavished without much labor on the part of
the inhabitants, gave them little care to mind the problems of everyday wants
and left them nothing whatever of the modern heat of politics, and thus
surrounded as they were by a luxuriant vegetation, tropical groves and pleasant
streams, Nature quickened their minds to a multitude of speculations about the
mystery, variety and unity of the visible Kosmos, which culminated after
numberless generations in the solid systems of philosophy, the glory of the
Indian peoples. That this was so, is evident when we look into the internal
historical evidences supplied by the antecedent conditions that gave birth to
Buddhism, the intellectual life in ancient India as reflected in the
Swetaswatara, Kaushitaki and other Upanishads, and the post-Buddhistic history
given us in the Tripitaka, Brahmajalasutta and the like. The assistance of the
Mahabharata also may be called in here, as affording us a splendid glimpse of
the domestic life lead by the Hindus in those hoary days. More than all, the
accounts of Megasthenes, the ambassador of Seleucus Nicator at the court of
Chandragupta, and of Hiouen-thsang, the Chinese pilgrim who visited India at
what may be called the Renaissance period of Sanskrit Literature, give us their
own share of evidence as to the philosophic and almost unpolitical atmosphere
in which the people of ancient India breathed. Thus Prof. Max Muller after
summing up all the evidence has to say, “As far back as we can trace the
history of thought in India, from the time of king Harsha and the Buddhist
pilgrims back to the descriptions found in the Mahabharata, the testimonies of
the Greek invaders, the minute accounts of the Buddhists in their Tripitaka,
and in the end the Upanishads, themselves, and the hymns of the Veda, we are
met everywhere by the same picture, a society in which spiritual interests
predominate and throw all material interests into the shade, a world of
thinkers, a nation of philosophers” (p. 42).
In
the second chapter an account of the Vedas is given as the literary document in
which philosophy had not as yet been differentiated from religion, or at least,
in the Samhita portion of which even a forecast is hardly possible of the
apparent distinction between religion and philosophy inaugurated imperceptibly
in the Upanishads and reaching its noonday vigor in the Sutra period. The
various steps by which the chaos of Vedic philosophy was reduced to the cosmos
of the Sutra-period Schools are lucidly sketched, with philological notes on
various words found in the Vedas that became in aftertimes, the key-stones of
various philosophic systems. The syncretism and the henotheism of the Samhitas
and the Brahmanas, as well as the polytheistic tendencies found in the earlier
portions of some of the Rig-Vedic hymns, are succeeded by the pantheism and
monotheism of the Upanishads, nay, in some instances, by utterances pointing to
a positive belief in monism. When speaking about the three classes of Vedic
gods, of the sky, of the mid-air and of the earth , he alludes to the curious
fact of the absence of anything like Star-worship in India to any prominent
extent, and then goes on “A few of the stars only, such as were connected with
human affairs, determining certain seasons, and marking the time of rain
(Hyades), the return of calmer weather (Pleiades), or the time for mowing
(Krittikas), were noticed and named, but they never rose to the rank of the
high gods.” (p. 49) Professor Max Muller is evidently making here an erroneous
distinction between the Pleiades and the Krittikas which both, on the other
hand, refer to the same widely extended groups.13 [13 See Newcomb’s Popular Astronomy p. 456, Also
B.G. Tilak, Orion or Researches into the Antiquity of the Vedas.] The distinction between syncretism and henotheism
which puzzled and confounded Prof. Weber is well worth noting. Several gods in
the Vedas owing to their position in Nature were seen to perform the same acts,
and hence a Vedic poet might well take upon himself to say that Agni acted not
only with Indra or Savitri but that in certain of his duties Agni was Indra and
was Savitri. The number of dual and triple gods that were thus addressed as
working in unison for the time will be brought within the phase of worship
known as syncretism and it is to be carefully distinguished from henotheism
which addresses for the moment either Indra or Agni or Varuna as the only God
in existence with an entire forgetfulness of all other gods. And this
distinction is very interesting to us since it was a pons asinorum to
Prof. Weber in the study of comparative mythology, and he actually mistook the syncretism
of Prof. Max Muller for his henotheism, and began blaming him on that account.
In a way therefore we could see how the syncretism of the Vedic poets should
lead to the later monotheistic theology, and the henotheistic phase to monistic
philosophy which in the hands of Sankara rose to be a wonderful engine of
influence. He points to two suktas from the Rig Veda, 14 [14
I shall quote them at length here: -]
and
finds in the first of them the germs of monotheism and in the second of
Advaitism. He also translates for us “The Hymn to the Unknown God” from the Rig
Veda, which though other scholars believe was intended for the individualised
god, Prajapati, Max Muller maintains to be the expression of a yearning after
one supreme Deity, who had made Heaven and Earth, the Sea, and all that in them
is. This is one of the very few hymns in the Rig Veda pointing in a decided
manner to the third of the Indian mind after a monotheistic conception to start
with. And from the monotheistic Prajapati sprang conceptions of Brahman (neut),
unmanifested and absolute, and Brahma (masc) manifested and phenomenal, and an
emanation from Nirgunam Brahman, useful from a Vyavaharic point of view
for the popular worship of minds full of overflowing devotion towards a “Father
in Heaven.” The Nasadiya hymn of the Rig Veda gives us a clue to the mind of
the Vedic poet who constantly oscillated between a personal and impersonal or
rather a super personal cause form whence the Universe emanated. The term
That One, was applied to the Deity as abolishing
ideas connected with the male or female sex, with a personal and proper name,
limited ipso facto and therefore not fit to fill the place which was to
be filled by an unlimited and absolute power, as the primary cause of all
created things. The various meanings of Brahman, Atman, Tadekam, and the
etymology of Brahman from Brib are elaborately discussed. Max Muller dissents
from the opinion of Prof. Weber that “the logos-idea had no antecedents in
Greece to account for it” but was influenced by the Vedic Vach. He says “To say
nothing else, Vach is a feminine, Logos15 [15
For the historical antecedents of the Logos, see Max
Muller Theosophy pp 384, et Seq.] a masculine,
and that involves more than a difference of grammatical gender” (p. 74) and a
little further on adds “it is quite true that Prof. Weber was careful to add
the clause ‘that he did not intend to give any opinion on this question,’ but,
after such a confession it is hardly becoming to him that those who have given
an opinion on this questions, had derived their information from him. Though
Prof. Max Muller, in duty bound, deplores the conduct of Prof. Weber, it is all
of a piece with what I previously described of him.16 [16
See my article on “Modern Oriental Scholarship.”
Siddhanta Deepika, Vol II.] In connection with
this question of Logos, Prof. Max Muller thrushes out the subject of
intellectual intercourse between the Hindus and the Greeks in olden days and
the limits of possibilities of an exchange of philosophical thought between the
two countries, and then reverts to the derivation of Brahman in the following
words, “I prefer to begin with Brahman as a synonym of Brih in Brihaspati,
meaning word or speech, and to admit by the side of it another Brahman, meaning
that which utters or drives forth (Prachya vayati) or manifests or creates,
that which is the universal support (Skambha) or force (Daksha), in fact
Brahman such as we find it afterwards, whether as a neuter, Brahman or for more
popular purposes, as a masculine, Brahma” (p. 92). In this he differs from
Duesson who proposes for the word a ritualistic origin and from many an another
scholar giving or suggesting ever so many possible conjectures. He also believes
a remote connection may be scented in point of significance between the Greek
Logos and the Indian Brahman considering the relations17 [17
Vide Sankara’s Scholia on The Vedanta Sutras 1,3,28.]
mind and speech bore to one another in the eyes of the Hindu. And he concludes
the chapter, after looking to the meaning and occurrence in the Vedas of the
words Atman and the rest, with the lines. “a belief in that Prajapati, as a
personal od, was the beginning o monotheistic religion in India, while the
recognition of Brahman and Atman as one constituted the foundation of all the
monistic philosophy of that country” (p. 96).
“The systems of philosophy” is the
subject of the 3rd chapter. The aim of this chapter is to present
the common philosophical ideas shared by all the schools. Such ideas were to be
found in the most pronounced form in the classical Upanishads, and having them
as the foundations the superstructure of many systems was raised. These
germinal notions may be enumerated in the following order, 1. Metempsychosis
(Samsara) 2. Immortality 3. The so-called ‘pessimism’ 4. Karman. 5.
Infallibility of Veda 6. The three gunas, Satva, Rajas and Tamas. A resume of
the main philosophical systems and their important tenets is given from
Madhusudhana Sarasvati’s Prasthanabhedha, a comparatively modern treatise.
After a preliminary account of the various systems, Madhusudhana discovers
behind the multiple of thought comprising, 1. The Arumbha Vada, 18 [18
under this we might bring Nyaya, Vaiseshika and
Mimamsa.] 2. Parinama Vada19 [19
under this we may mention the Sankhya, Yoga,
Pasupata, and Pancharatra Systems, and the Visishtadvaita of Ramanuja.]
and 3. Vivarta Vada20 [20 We
have under this heading the purely Monistic School of the Advaitin Sree Sankaracharya
and his later followers Vidyaranya, Madhusudhana, Vachaspathi Miera,
Sureshwaracharya and the rest. The still later schools of Vignanabhikshu and
others who were of the “Monistic Sankhya” cult may also be brought under this
head.] Commenting on the description of Nyaya
in Prasthana Bheda, Max Muller says, “No one could understand why such things
as doubt, example, wrangling &c., could possibly be called categories or Praedicabalia,
and it is no wonder that Ritter and others should have spoken of the Nyaya with
open contempt, as they have done, if such things were represented to them as
the categories of Indian Logic” (p. 160). This remark fairly indicates the
pitfalls that lie in the path of a Sanskritist who undertakes translations of
Sanskrit philosophical works without previous general philosophic culture. We
cannot resist remembering in this connection the remarks of Prof. Garbe21
[21 Sankhya Sutra Vritti or Aniruddha’s
commentary and the original parts of Vedanta Mahadeva’s commentary to the
Sankhya Sutras edited by R. Garbe Biblioth, Indic. Series. Preface p.VI.]
against Drs. Ballantyne and Hall as translators of the Sankhya aphorisms of
Kapila, and those elsewhere of Max Muller pointing to Dr. Rajendra Lal Mitra’s
version of Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras with Bhoja Raja’s commentary. He says the
six Padarthas22 [22 They
are 1. Dravya 2. Guna 3. Karman 4. Samanya (the highest is Satta) 5. Visesha 6.
Samavaya, and to which may be added 7. Abhava.]
of Kanada cannot all be translated by the term categories, because the word
Padartha is not rightly translated by category when we apply it to Samavaya.
But even if we doubtfully render the sixth and the seventh as categories, the
term would of course be quite mischievous when applied to the Padarthas of
Gotama. The latter find their place mostly under Prameya.23 [23
Meaning not so much what has to be proved or established, as what forms the
object of our knowledge.] And Madhusudhana winds up, after cataloguing in some
detail all the systems, as “This, the Vedanta, is indeed the principal of all
doctrines, any other doctrine is but a compliment of it, and therefore it alone
is to be reverenced by all who wish for liberation, and this according to the
interpretation of the venerable Sankara – this is the secret!” “Here” as Max
Muller rightly says “we see clearly that Madhusudhana considered the Vedanta
philosophy as interpreted by Sankara, if not as the only true one, still as the
best of all philosophies.” After giving an account of the Prasthana Bheda and
its contents, a list of books of reference is suggested for students who might
not know Sanskrit. We should think the list is not rich and allows no choice on
the part of the student to select from, in addition to some of the books being
not very good of their kind. But of course the bibliography he gives in some of
the later chapters when dealing with the systems individually and separately is
ample, Max Muller after giving, or rather reproducing an account from
Madhusudhana’s book, introduces us to the Brihaspati Sutras, a book that is now
lost to us and the existence of which we are now led to infer, both from the
account given in the Maitrayaniya Upanishad, of Brihaspati teachings the Asuras
pernicious doctrines calculated to do spiritual harm to them and the short
estimate given of that philosophy in the chapter on the Charvaka system in the
Sarvadarsana Sangraha24 [24 Cowell
and Gough. Sarvadarsana Sangraha pp. 2-12. Charvaka System.]
of Madhava. The Brihaspati Sutras informs us of the cult of the Laukayatikas
and the Charvakas, materialists and atheists. About the Vaikhanasa Sutras we
find an allusion made by Bhaskaracharya25 [25 Scholia
on Brahma Sutras III, 3, 5, 3.] and they were
possibly intended for Vanaprasthas. Max Muller is almost silent about them. The
Bhikshu Sutras, quoted by Panini26 [26 Panini.
Ashtadhyayi IV.3.110.] is referred to, intended it
would seem according to Max Muller for Brahmanic mendicants, though identified
by Taranatha Tarkavachaspati27 [27 Siddhanta
Kaumudi edited with a commentary named Sarala by T. Tarkavachaspati Vol. I, p.
592.] with the Vedanta Sutras. These Sutras
are now entirely lost for us. The dates of the whole literature of the Sutras
are in great uncertainty. We cannot be sure always when the Sutras attained
their literary written down form after undergoing through generations of years
countless changes at the hands of every devoted student and receiving
accretions in all ways. The latest of them namely the Sankhya Sutras can be set
down at the 14th century A.D. Not that the Sankhya philosophy is
modern is the inference we are warranted in making from such a recent date, but
that a body of Sankhyan doctrines were in the air from a very ancient time,
perhaps as ancient as the Brahmana period, because their existence is testified
to by Icvarakrishna’s28 [28 Popularly,
Sankhya Karikas with a commentary by Gaudapada and also with another gloss by
Vachaspathi Micra.] Karikas, and the Tattva Samasa,
though some contend that the latter is a modern work, and others29 [29
This is Max Muller’s view.]
urge that in it are contained the original Sankhya aphorisms themselves though
receiving some additions from a later generation or the commentator, and that
the doctrines so existing in the mouths of the Sankhyan votaries received their
final literary form in the 14th century A.D. The most ancient Sutras
existed as accepted doctrines long before the time of Buddha and began to take
their literary form and be fixed as such in the memory of men belonging to
particular schools, from the sixth century B.C. up till the second century B.C.
We cannot be sure of setting more definite limits in the matter of dates and so
can merely say that the dogma and cult of each school must have been reduced
from their amorphous state to the formulated condition in which we find it in
the Sutras presented to us at the time indicated above. It goes without saying
that even after the literary shackles of the Sutra-form were put upon them,
they were never invaded by that petrification, which cripples thoughts and
allows no more reformation, addition or amplification, till comparatively very
recent times. All the time after the 2nd century B.C., they have
been receiving ever so many changes as each Asrama of disciples handled them,
thought about them and began to work upon them. This would explain why
sometimes, as in the Yoga-Sutras of Patanjali, apparently incongruous
statements appear from the hand of the same fictitious author, and why the
tenets expounded in one chapter do not tally with what are taught in the next.
The name of the author is tackled on to the Sutras as a sort of respect shown
to the original thinker or compiler, and they go on growing from generation to
generation. We know in the Brahma Sutras, there are places in which it is said
explicitly that Badarayana says so and so. No author would speak of himself in
the third person and the explanation we have given would throw light upon such
apparent anomalies which ever appear in the Sutra literature of India. So to
speak, if we may compare the period of metaphysical activity which
characterised India in the sixth century B.C. and in which for the first time
the various codes of systems got to the first stage of literary
crystallization, to a fermenting vat, Buddha we may term as one of the very
proliferous yeast-cells. The gymnosophist Nirgrantha or Gnathipura was once of
the older cells in this vat and many an other cell was active when the vat was
fermenting, and with the subsidy of fermentation some of them died, a few among
which leaving a trace of their life-history, while a large number have survived
with their progeny thriving and very healthy. About the common philosophical
fund underlying all philosophies, we may with pleasure note that Prof. Max
Muller appears quite just in his observations and completely defensive in
guarding the Indian cause. Because when speaking about the so-called element of
“Pessimism” with which foreigners have charged the Indian Philosophy, be in
right in retorting that the Indian Philosophers are by no means dwelling for
ever on the miseries of life, and they are not always whining and protesting
that life is not worth living. They simply state that they received the first
impulse to philosophical reflection on viewing the suffering in the world. And
in Max Muller’s words “considering that the aim of all Indian Philosophy was
the removal of suffering, which was caused by nescience, and the attainment of
the highest happiness, which was produced by knowledge, we should have more
right to call it Eudemonistic than Pessimistic” (p. 140). When
the cause of the apparent suffering which necessitates the Indian Philosopher
to look to the true springs of happiness, considering that sorrow, weariness,
disappointment and pan appertain to the flesh, is inquired into, all the
philosophic cults have but one answer to give, though in different ways or
forms. The Vedanta gives Avidya, 30 [30 Nescience.] the
Sankhya Aviveka, 31 [31 Nondiscrimation.] the Nyaya,
Mithyagmana 32 [32 False Knowledge.] and so on, and to
break this Bandha of ignorance by genuine Gnana is the consoling work of
philosophy. About the Gunas as a common factor in all philosophies in India, we
have only to say they are made up of three constituents which correspond33
[33 In this manner: - Hegel’s Thesis
to the Indian Sattva, his Antithesis to the Indian Tamas, and Synthesis
to Rajas.] in a near way with Hegel’s
Thesis, Antithesis and Synthesis. In the most general sense they represent no
more than a series comprising three terms, the two extremes standing for Raja
and Tamas, and the middle term for Sattva. Tension between these qualities,
according to Indian Philosophy, produces activity and struggle. Equilibrium
leads to temporary or final rest. This principle is applied over and over again
in systems that recognise a Cosmic Parinama or Evolution, such as the Sankhya,
where every step in the building of the Cosmos is explained by an application
of the principle of the preponderance or equality of the Gunas. Prof. Max
Muller’s vindication of the ultimate Duhkha-Nivarana of every one
of the Indian Philosophies, be it the Purva Mimamsa’s service in lessening the
ordinary afflictions of man by means of sacrifices, the Uttara-Mimamsa’s
removal of Nescience through Vidya, the Sankhya’s promise of a complete
cessation of all pain by the liberation of the Purusha, the Yoga’s reaching
Kaivalya by Samadhi, the Vaiseshika’s final cessation of all pain by the
promise of a knowledge of Truth and Gotama’s holding out Apavarga from the
complete destruction of all pain by means of logic, against the charge of
Pessimism brought against it by undiscerning critics who have no brains to feel
that philosophy is not after all suicide, is very just and sympathetic, and it
shows in the author a true insight into the very core and tenor of the Indian
Philosophy. What strikes us always as par excellence about the Professor
is the almost Hindu devotional spirit that lights up his weighty words and the
genuine feeling of a real Vedantin or rather an Indian philosopher that
inspires his words and giver a reverent charm to his earnest expositions.
We now
pass to the 4th Chapter which treats of the Vedanta or Uttara
Mimamsa. All through the chapter he takes as the type of the Vedanta School,
Sankara, since he is an Ultra-Monist and represents the ancient tradition and
spirit of the Upanishads, though there may be two opinions if he is portraying
Badarayana rightly, and is a consistent logician carrying with unflinching
precision the results to their final and legitimate conclusion when once the
premises are granted. The account which Max Muller gives of the Vedanta is very
clear and takes up all its recondite and obscure points one by one and clears
them up in a way that will appeal in European readers. The moot point of the
origin of Nescience is well touched upon. Speaking about Badarayana, Max Muller
says, “He is to us a name, and an intellectual power, but nothing else. We know
the date of his Commentator Samkara34 [34 Vide,
however, System des Vedanta of Duessen, p. 37; Also Fleet. Indian Antiquary,
Jan. 1897, p. 41; Again Mr. Pathaka in the Indian Ant. XI, 174. Mr. Telang
fixes Sankara’s date as early as 590 A.D.]
in the 8th Century A.D. or 7th Century A.D. and we know
that another commentator was even earlier. We also know that Bodhayana’s
commentary was followed by Ramanuja. It is quite possible that Bodhayana, 35
[35 Thibaut Vedanta-Sutras with
Sankara’s Commentary S.B.E. p. XXII. We must note however here that
Dramidabhashya, a commentary on Bodhayana is supported by Sankara sometimes. Vide.
Sankara on Chandogya Upanishad-V.V.R.] like
Ramanuja, represented a more ancient and faithful interpretation of
Badarayana’s Sutras, and that Sankara’s philosophy in its unflinching Monism is
his own rather than Badarayana’s. But no manuscript of Bodhayana has yet been
discovered.” We do not know what Max Muller means by the possibility of
Ramanuja’s representing a more ancient and faithful interpretation of
Badarayana, on the reason of his having Bodhayana, another interpreter, before
him. If on this argument there is a possibility for Ramanuja’s to reflect an
ancient interpretation of Badarayana, the possibility is twice in the case of
Sankara, because he has going before him Gandapada, 36 [36
The stemma of Sankara is found in the verse.]
Upavarsha
and others, Gaudapada is the author of a Bhashya37 [37 An
edition of the book is extant, translated and annotated by Wilson and
Colebrooke.] on the Sankhya-Karika of
Icvarakrishna, and the grand Guru of Sankara. Possibly he is older than
Bodhayana who is little else but a figment of fancy to us in the absence of any
works ascribed to him or contemporary evidence. And Upanishads is the one
mentioned in Kathasaritasagara38 [38 Vive
Tawney’s Translation of Somadeva’s Kathasarithsagara Biblioth. Ind. Series.]
as the teacher of Panini though about the identity Max Muller entertains some
doubt. As such when once the identity is granted the commentator Upanishads
must be shifted to the Sutra period itself, which means considerably prior in
times to Bodhayana. We see therefore that Sankara was a prominent teacher
of the Monistic School which had its paramparas as much before as
afterwards. In fact we find in Gaudapada’s Karikas39 [39 Mandukya
Upanishad with Gaudapada-Karika and Sankara-Bhashya. Anandashrama Series. The
following are some of the Slokas from the Karikas of Gaudapada in which we find
the most emphatic utterances of Monism and the theory of Maya:-
on
the Mandukya Upanishad distinct ideas about Maya, about
and about Advaitism in Sankara’s sense. So that
Sankara does not deserve any credit as the exclusive of the Monistic Theory. He
was essentially an excellent expounder, but buckled also with the strong armor
of aggressive controversy, and therefore, represented a recension only of the
Monistic School that had its beginnings in the dateless past. About Upavarsha
we know that he was Panini’s preceptor and one of Sankara’s Acharya Varga.
In this way we see that on the score of antiquity Sankara has more historical
persons to support his cult.46 [46 What has often been quoted as the shortest summary of
the Vedanta in a couple of lines represents the Vedanta of Sankara, not of
Ramanuja:-
And if for one or two Sutras of Badarayana, Ramanuja’s
explanation would fit in better, three times the number of it could be shown in
the same book where Sankara’s would do so best. Our concluding evidence of
fidelity to the original meaning and the rest, must rest only on our knowing
the real view of Badarayana, which must be a sphinx defying solution till we
get at another book of Badarayana’s giving us a clearer insight into his views.
As it is, it is indiscreet to venture on guesses. Thibaut, on whose introduction
to his Translation of the Brahma Sutras so much devolves, had, as his
Pundit-friends to assist him at translating Sankara’s Scholia, two
Visishtadwaitins,41 [41 Their names are, I believe, Rama Misra Sastrin and Yagneswara Sastrin.
Thibaut. Vedanta Sutras with Sankara Bhashya. Introduction.] both Professors in the Benares Sanskrit College.
The case, one can imagine, will be entirely different, if a scholar like
Duessen, Max Muller or the late M. N. Dvivedi, who will combine with previous
philosophic training splendid independent capacities for translation, would go
to the work as a monist. As a matter of fact, Duessen’s interpretation of the
Sutras is at entire variance with Thibaut’s. After all, whether ancient or
modern as in science so in philosophy, there ought to be progress in thought
and the evidence of it is to be sought in the works of men standing the test of
every logical proof, every right inquiry, every zealous argument. If
Ramanuja who lived as late as the 13th
century A.D. could quote the name of a phantom-commentator Bodhayana, to
testify to whose existence there is not a vestige of historical evidence left,
and if thereby he could claim priority of teaching and faithfulness of
interpretation of the Vedanta Sutras, how much more should Sankara, a thinker
who lived as old as the 8th century A.D., who could claim among his
Guru-Parampara, a grand-preceptor in Gaudapada and a hoary commentator in
Bhagavad Upavarsha, do so for his views? Sankara’s philosophy cannot be said
therefore to be his own in as much as Ramanuja’s cannot be. Both represented
independent streams of tradition and the streams must have taken their rise in
ancient days. Both must have had their own Paramparas. Both were Huxley’s
suddenly necessitated for the support of Darwin’s growing effete. Sankara’s
philosophy, even if said to be at variance with Badarayana’s, can claim a still
greater antiquity, nay the greatest antiquity, because it reflects the
Upanishads in the most correct and consistent manner.42 [42
Max Muller. Theosophy, p. 113. “If we take the
Upanishads, as a whole, I should say that Sankara is the more thorough and
faithful exponent of their Teaching.”] About the
strength of his views and the unapproachable power of his arguments I need not
speak here, because Max Muller himself speaks about them very elaborately in
the book under review and elsewhere with overflowing admiration.
Prof.
Max Muller in discussing the identity or otherwise of the Vyasa of the
Mahabharat and the Vyasa of the Brahma Sutras, wants to make a case out of the
different styles of the two works, and so he says “Vyasa or Krishna Dvaipayana
is the name given to the author of the Mahabharata, and no two styles can well
be more different than that of the Vyasa of the Mahabharata, and that of Vyasa,
the supposed author of the so-called Vyasa-Sutras” (p.153.) If other things
pointed to the identity between the two, this cannot be taken as any argument
to disprove it, since we know there are various things to determine the diction
of an author, such as the nature of the subject, the form in which he chooses
to write, the literary style he has perfected at a particular stage in his
life. We have seen how S.P. Pandit43 [43 Vide Malavikagnimitra of Kalidasa by S.P.Pandit,
Bombay Sanskrit Series, Introduction.]
in his edition of Malavikagnimitra has
exploded Prof. Wilson’s wrong views and shown that the Kalidasa of
Malavikagnimitra and that of Raguvamsa and Sakuntala though apparently various,
yet, judging from the sameness of imagery between the two, and noting that the
surface differences of style in their books are explained by stages in the
growth of the perfection of literary manner, were really one. And we have
another living example in the variant styles of Taranatha Tarka Vachaspathi. Any
good Sanskrit student must perceive the difference of style in his
Asubodha-Vyakaranam, a work written in Sutra-form which cannot boast of
literary grace by any means, from his ordinary mode in the Encyclopedic
Lexicon, Vachaspatya, marked by ease, flow, elegance and nervousness. The same
may be said of the disparity of diction patent between Vidyaranya’s Panchadasi
and his Jivanmukti Viveka. The difference of style is no complete test,
whatever may be said of evidences otherwise adduced. Prof. Max Muller’s
linguistic explanations to why the name Vyasa should become connected with the
Mahabharata and with the Brahma Sutras by pointing to its meaning as a noun
viz, ‘compilation’ or ‘arrangement,’ is we believe given in playful humor. It
is a curious thing in the Indian world of letters, we would urge to the
attention of Max Muller, that the name of every great person connected with any
classical movement or work, is often such as can bear a meaning enlightening as
about the labors of the owner of the appellation, so that the meaning of an
author’s name suiting his work, should not lead us to vague surmises about his
non-existence, and about the presence of a modus operandi alone
regarding the writing of a book, or the
way in which it was handed down. Any way we must rest content with the
reflection that these were the names suggested by adherents, or contemporary
men, to the author in consonance with his acts, in place of his true name. This
amphiboly of names is not a rare thing in Sanskrit Literature. Other things
being equal therefore we may leave the disparity of style etc. between the
Mahabharata and the Vyasa Sutras quite out of account, as it makes a hair of
difference either in supporting or weakening a view. On P. 154, occurs the
statement “Vachaspati Misra declares that the Bhikshu Sutras are the same as
the Vedanta Sutras and that the followers of Parasara were in consequence
called Parasarins.” Evidently Max Muller is making a mistake here, it is
Taranatha Tarka Vachaspathi”44, [44 of course Taranatha bases his note on the works of
Bhattoji Dikshita, Nagoji Bhatta and Gnanendra Sarasvati. Vide his edition of
Siddhanta Kaumudi, Vol 1. P. 592.]
and not Vachaspathi Micra that declares the identity of Bhikshu and the Vedanta
Sutras. The occurrence of Vachaspathi in both the names has been the cause of
the mistake in Max Muller’s book, because he himself rightly gives the
reference on P. 113, note 2. When discussing the relative age of the Vedanta
Sutras and the Bhagavat Gita, Max Muller quotes a passage from the latter in
which occurs the expression Brahma Sutras and to which a wrong reference
is given. It is the 4th sloka45 [45 The Passage is this:-
of Chapter XIII
and not the 3rd one as pointed out by Max Muller. Max Muller takes
this Brahma Sutras to refer to the Vyasa Sutras and he has forgotten
that Sankara who was the most ancient commentator46 [46 It has latterly been urged sometimes by Dravidian
students that Sreekantha was anterior to Sankara, but we must keep this view,
at the most, in abeyance till better contemporary evidence is brought to light.
I will take up this question in a future number. See however Siddhanta Deepika,
vol. 2, p. 250. et seq.] whose works have reached us of both Bhagavat
Gita and Brahma Sutras and who therefore was in a better position to judge of
reference and like, explains
by
though Anandagiri who is a
later scholiast on Sankara suggests as an alternative explanation, also a
reference to
He
suggests as the greatest concession made to the antiquity of the Gita that it
may be contemporaneous with the Brahma-Sutras. We should think with Sankara
that the expression ‘Brahma Sutras’ does not refer to the Vedanta Sutras but to
a different subject altogether. Professor Max Muller does not give us any
cogent proof to substantiate his statement, rather the very theory he propounds
goes against him48. [48 For
Max Muller advances that under the same name, different bodies of religious
tenets may appear in successive generations when mnemonic literature was the
only resource. So even granting as Max Muller urges, that the Gita referred to
the Brahma Sutras, it may be to a code of doctrines which were essentially
different from the later Vyasa Sutras, since a body of doctrines undergoes ever
so many changes before they reach their final literary form. As such the
Professor’s suggestion does not hold water in either way. Assuming a reference
to “Brahma Sutras” which is quite unlikely, it ought to have been to a body of
doctrines of that name analogous to or different from the later Vyasa Sutras,
but which might possibly have been the original germs that developed into the
mature Vyasa Sutras.] The hazy conjectures he makes
even defying the view of native commentators are not supported by the evidence
of any literary document. We have not the requisite space to travel over the
question even fairly adequately to support Sankara’s interpretation.49
[49 cf.
Weber’s Indian Lit. p. 242. Also Lassen’s Preface to his edition of Schlegel’s
Gita, p. XXXV.] For one aspect of the same question
which leads us to Sankara’s view, we will refer the reader to Telang’s able
treatment of it in his edition of the Bhagavad Gita50 [50
ibid Introduction pp. 31 et seq. and ante.] in the Sacred
Books of the East. After a careful examination of the internal and external
evidences, he comes to the conclusion that the Gita belongs to a period very anterior
to that of the Sutras, that in the one we have the chaotic and plastid germs of
an amorphous conglomerate of the various philosophical schools, while in the
other we find systems distinctly marked out and ready made, and that in fact
one belongs to the Upanishad and Brahmana period and the other to the later
Sutra period, when not only definite philosophical systems, but also law books
were formed. Max Muller is, beyond doubt, echoing Sankara and truly
representing the Vedanta when he says, “But we must remember that it is the
highest object of the Vedanta to prove that there is only one true
reality namely Brahman, and that the manifoldness of the visible world is but
the result of that Nescience which the Vedanta is meant to destroy” (p.
192). He repeats the same Advaitic, or Brahmavadin’s view when he says “It is
the very object of the Vedanta philosophy to expel, and annihilate this Avidya
and replace it by Vidya.”51 [51 op.
cit. p. 199; cf. also Max Muller.
Three Lectures on the Vedanta, p. 62.] On p. 203,
the Professor informs us, “As long as creation is conceived as a making or
fashioning of matter, it does not exist for Badarayana. Creation with
Badarayana would be nothing but the result of Nescience.” ‘Is this Ramanuja’s
view’, we would ask, who believes that God is the real Karta of a Noumenal
Cosmic Evolution, and if it were not, it is a serious puzzle if he is
representing Badarayana correctly. What to Sankara, and of course to Badarayana
is Vyavaharartham, is Satyam to Ramanuja. Later on, in p. 220, Max Muller
states,” It sometimes seems as if Sankara and Badarayana had actually admitted
not only two kinds of knowledge, but two Brahmas also, Sagunam and Nirgunam,
with or without qualities, but this would again apply to a state of Nescience or
Avidya only.” Surely this militates against the supposition that Ramanuja is a
faithful interpreter of Badarayana. Speaking about the highest point reached by
Indian philosophers, Max Muller exclaims “None of our philosophers, not
excepting Heraclitus, Plato, Kant or Hegel, has ventured to erect such a spire
never frightened by storms or lightnings. Stone follows on stone in regular
succession after once the first step has been made, after once it has been
clearly seen that in the beginning there can have been but One, as there will
be but One in the end, whether we call it Atman or Brahman **** We cannot but
admire the boldness with which the Hindu Metaphysician52 [52
Evidently Max Muller has in mind Sankara.]
impressed with the miseries and evanescence of the world, could bring himself
to declare even the Logos to be but the result of Avidya or Nescience, so that
in the destruction of that Avidya could be recognised the highest object, and
the summum bonum (Purushartha) of man. We need not praise or try to
imitate a Colosseum, but if we have any heart for the builders of former days,
we cannot help feeling that it was a colossal and stupendous effort. And this
is the feeling that I cannot resist in examining the ancient Vedanta.53
[53 For the same stain of admiring
veneration vide also Max Muller. Psychological Religion pp. 281, 311, 313, 314,
319.] Other philosophers have denied the reality of the
world as perceived, but no one has ventured to deny at the same time the
reality of what we call the Ego, the senses and the mind and their inherent
forms” (p. 240). As regards the mistake that has prevailed in construing
Sankara wrongly, the Professor feelingly adds “The danger with Sankara’s
Vedantism was that what to him was simply phenomenal, should be taken for
purely fictitious. There is however as great a difference between the two as
there is between Avidya and Mithyagnana. Maya is the cause of a phenomenal, not
of a fictitious world; and if Sankara adopts the Vivarta instead of the
Parinama doctrine, there is always something on which the Vivarta or Illusion
is at work, 54 [54 I
would advise the reader in support of Max Muller’s true interpretation, to look
up Sankara’s gloss on the Vedanta Sutras III, 2, 3., where the Sutras
distinctly speak of Maya.] and which can not be
deprived of its reality” (p. 243). After giving an account of the historical
character of Ramanuja’s doctrines and the claim his exposition has on our
attention, and demonstrating also to us that Ramanuja was one of the legitimate
orthodox interpreters of the Brahma Sutras, Max Muller continues, “We ought
therefore to look on Ramanuja as a perfect equal of Sankara, so far as his
right of interpreting Badarayana’s Sutras, according to his own opinion, is
concerned * * *. The individual philosopher is but the mouth-piece of
tradition, and that tradition goes back further and further, the more we try to
fix it chronologically” (p. 245); again “In the absence of any definite
historical materials it is quite impossible for us to say whether, in the
historical development of the philosophy at the time of Badarayana and
afterwards, it was the absolute Monism as represented by Sankara that took the
lead, or whether the more temperate Monism as we see it in Ramanuja’s
commentary that exercised an earlier sway.” (pp. 248 et seq). Alluding
afterwards to the archaic nature of the doctrines held forth in Ramanuja’s
system, our book states, “But it does not follow that this whether heretical
or orthodox55 [55 The
italics are my own.] opinion was really first propounded by
Ramanuja * * *”. The only possible view that can be maintained by an impartial
critic who looks to the true cult of Badarayana, is advanced when the Professor
remarks on page 250, “Dr. Thibaut therefore seems to me to be quite right when
he says that both Sankara and Ramanuja pay often less regard to the literal
sense of the words and to tradition than to their desire of forcing
Badarayana to bear testimony to the truth of their own philosophical theories.”
Max Muller is mistaken in believing that in India Ramanuja wields a very large
amount of influence over the people, but as a mater of fact Sankara’s followers
would exceed in point of number56 [56 Vide
Duessen. Elements of Metaphysics, p. 324, “Of a hundred Vedantins (I have it
from a well-informed person who is himself a zealous adversary of Sankara, and
follower of Ramanuja [evidently Duessen means Mr. Rama Misra Sastry of the
Benares Sanskrit College – V.V.R.]) fifteen perhaps adhere to Ramanuja, five to
Madhva, five to Vallabha, and seventy-five to Sankaracharya.”]
all men of other following put together. As regards his own individual opinion
and conviction about the Vedanta, Max Muller says in great cheer, “At the same
time I make no secret that all my life I have been very fond of the Vedanta,
nay, I can fully agree with Schopenhauer and quite understand what he meant
when he said, ‘* * * it (the study of the Upanishads) has been the solace of my
life, it will be the solace of my death. Schopenhauer was the last man to write
a random and to allow himself to go into ecstasies over so-called mystic and
inarticulate thought. And I am neither afraid nor ashamed, to say that I
share his enthusiasm for the Vedanta, and feel indebted to it for much that has
been helpful to me in my passage through life57”. [57
The italics are my own; of Max Muller Vedanta
Philosophy, concluding part of the third lecture.]
We do not know if we want, as the latest testimony to the consoling influence
of Advaitism, any more explicit confession from such an aged scholar, given for
scores of years to studying our philosophy. For more explicit statements,
setting Sankara as the keenest and most consistent logician and the most
pregnant philosopher of the world has ever seen, are would refer the reader to
Max Muller’s Theosophy58 [58 “Whatever
we may think of this philosophy, we cannot deny its metaphysical boldness and
its logical consistency. If Brahman is all in all, the One without a second,
nothing can be said to exist that is not Brahman. There is no room for anything
outside the Infinite and the Universal, nor is there room for two Infinites,
for the Infinite in nature and the Infinite in man. There is and there can be
one Infinite and one Brahman only; this is the beginning and end of the
Vedanta, and I doubt whether Natural Religion can reach or has ever reached a
higher point than that reached by Sankara, as an interpreter of the
Upanishads.” – Max Muller. Theosophy, p. 311 infra “From a purely
logical point of view, Sankara’s position seems to me impregnable, and when so
rigorous a logician as Schopenhauer declares his complete submission to
Sankara’s arguments, there is no fear of their being upset by other logicians.”
– ibid p. 281. supra; cf.
also pp. 319, 315 and 314. {Also inter alia his Three Lectures on the
Vedanta Philosophy.] In the opinion of Max Muller,
Ramanuja is not a consistent philosopher59 [59 ibid.
pp. 313, 319 and 191.] or unflinching logician, since
he is obliged to act the part of an egg-dancer, by trying to weave the popular
conceptions of divinities, gods and goddesses into Advaitism, and thereby
making his system, hardly a well-knit logical or philosophical whole.
With an account of the main points of
Ramanuja’s teaching we are taken to Chapter V, which deals with the Purva
Mimamsa philosophy, if philosophy it may be called. In instituting a sort of
comparison between the life-history of the Vedanta-Sutras and the Purva
Mimamsa, Max Muller observes, on P. 259, “It is clear that while Badarayana
endeavoured to introduce order into the Upanishads, and to reduce their various
guesses to something like a system, Jaimini undertook to do the same for the
rest of the Veda, the so-called Karma-Kanda or work-portion, that in all that
had regard to sacrifice as described chiefly in the Brahmana”; and again on P.
260, “And as philosophy existed independent of the Upanishads, and through
Badarayana attempted to make peace with the Upanishads, we must consider that
sacrifices also existed for a long time without the Brahmanas, such as we
possess them, that they grew up without being restrained by generally binding
authorities of any kind, and that at a later time only, after the Brahmanas had
been composed, and had acquired some kind of authority, the necessity began to
be felt of reconciling variant opinions and customs, as embodied in the
Brahmanas and elsewhere, giving general as well as special rules for the
performance of every kind of ceremony.” The latter observation really savours
of the rule and compass work of a carpenter. It is exceedingly unjust for one
to approach these ancient treatises with pre-conceived theories, and to try to
make the origin, progress and the like of ceremonies and sacrifices treated of
in the Brahmanas, and the method of their performance and its justification in
the Purva-Mimamsa, fit in with the fancies of the orientalist. The inference we
are warranted in making, from the observation of Max Muller’s, is that there
was a time when the Brahmanas existed without any bearing on sacrifice, without
any influence over ritualistic acts. This in the nature of things cannot have
been when once we seriously inquire what the Brahmanas were meant for. But, no
doubt, it is likely that in the domain of metaphysical speculations a different
phenomenon might occur. Schools of thought independent of those the Upanishads
take cognizance of, might have existed in the brains of some impulsive souls.
We can conceive, as a possibility, and even as a probability, that colonies of
thought remained, without receiving the sanction of any sacred canon, outside
the pale of Asramas, where expositions of the Upanishads went on for countless
generations at the hands of the Rishis; but metaphysical speculations which
could go on untrammelled without shocking the theological susceptibilities of
the Indians, as testified to by the history of philosophic thought in India,
are something entirely different from ritualistic observances, sacrificial
liturgies and periodic religious rites which had a particular spiritual end in
view necessitating their performance, and to a scrupulous adherence to which,
with unswerving attention, even to the minutest details, the Brahmins of all
days have been remarkable. We must make a distinction between philosophical
speculations which can go on unimpeded, and deeds of a religious nature which
anticipated rewards and so on in the other world. Over such religious rites
with the most momentous consequences, the Brahmanas wielded authority in
appointing times for their celebration, in instructing the clergy for the
proper conduct of the sacrificial services, in ordaining that particular series
of hymns from the Samhitas should be chanted, chorally or antiphonally, in the
sacrificial pavilion. In the matter of the sacrificial performances, through
which the Hindus believed to conquer the sting of Death, and which was so dear
to his pious nature, it is most unphilosophical to believe, that he would have
gone on without any compelling sacred authority to regulate them, without an
inviolable scriptural dictate ordaining injunctions to carry out with the
utmost religiosity every minute detail of the sacrificial services, in the
spiritual efficacy of which he so much believed. In fact, he did want a
sacrificial almanac, so to say, to which he might appeal without difficulty as
an authority, how and when the sacrifices were to be performed. Such a
sacrificial code exactly was, what the Brahmanas meant to supply. It is
ill-conceivable, therefore, how the Brahmanas can at anytime have existed as
theoretical books, void of any authority and having no sway over the doings of
sacrificers. We may on the whole conclude that, as far as India is concerned, it
passes one’s reason, and even fancy, to reflect that sacrifices were in vogue
at any time without the superintending and controlling authority of the
Brahmanas, or that the Brahmanas existed at all without having an unassailable voice
in most sacrificial doings, that Jaimini attempted to effect a reconciliation
between the sanction less rites of happy-go-lucky Brahmins and the uncurbed
theoretical rules finding an eccentric utterances in the Brahmanas; though we
may sometimes grant with not a little reservation, that Badarayana’s efforts
were towards effecting a reconciliation between some of the uncanonical
doctrines propounded by men who were outside the influence of the Upanishads,
and the Upanishads themselves. Here again it is questionable if the Upanishads
ever remained without exercising the most imperative supremacy in the
particular Asramas in which they were severally taught. What is most probable
is, that the Brahmanas varied with the Asramas in which they were the ruling authority,
and the Purva Mimamsa sought to find in them a common thought inspiring all
acts, and to harmonise, codify, and justify any differences that existed
between observances of two different parts. If the Brahmanas had been composed
independently of the sacrifices which the Brahmins were performing, who
composed them and what were their intention in doing so? And where were the
real rules, which were used as liturgies for the Brahmin’s sacrificial
services, if the Brahmans exercised no controlling authority of any kind in
regulating them? We can hardly imagine there was a time when the Brahmanas and
the sacrifices did not exist side by side for independent of any bearing on
sacrifices, one cannot surmise what they existed for, and what good purpose can
have been served by compiling treatises of rules for sacrifices which had no
binding authority on the sacrifices of any people, nay, of any Asrama. If we
assume Max Muller’s theory, it is hardly possible for us to puzzle out, what earthly
interest the authors of the Brahmanas can have had, in compiling them at a time
when not sacrifices existed to take heed of them, when, in fact, nobody cared
to near what they had to say, and what non-human kind of gentlemen those
compilers ought to have been, to theorise and dogmatise about things which had
little to do either with mundane or celestial matters.
On page 274, a curious mistake
occurs in the sentence “For instance, we read that trees or serpents performed
a sacrifice, or that an old fox sang foolish songs fit for the Madras.”
What is mean here is not Madras but Mâdras. Adverting to the
short-sightedness of those who charge others, that do not agree with their own
views of God, worship and final absolution, with irreligion, Max Muller says
“Modern Vedantists also are so enamoured of their own conception of Deity, that
is of Brahman or Atman, that they do not hesitate, like Vivekananda, for
instance, in his recent address on Practical Vedanta, 1896, to charge those who
differ from himself with atheism.” If this virtue of tolerance, to which Max Muller is asking the attention of those
who differ from him, is understood and followed, there will not be at the
present day half as much quarrel and useless controversy about religious
tenets, that stock the pages of many a useless pamphlet now circulating in
South India. A reference to Siddhanta Deepika, 1898 p. 94, is given on p. 267 infra
of his book when the Professor, after giving, according to the principles of
logic followed sometimes by commentators on early Mimamsa, the five members of
an Adhikarana, 60 viz, Vishaya, 61 Samsaya, 62
Purvapaksha, 63 Siddhanta, 64 and Samgati, 65 [60=case,
61=subject to be explained,
62=doubt,
63=the first side or
prime facie view,
64=the demonstrated conclusion,
65=the connection.]
takes a practical example from the commentary on the first and second sutras of
the Mimamsa, to illustrate their application and use and the reference is
evidently to the translation of Srikanta Bhashya on the Vedanta sutras by Mr.
A. Mahadeva Sastry, in which we get fertile examples of full adhikaranas. On
the page 1 to which Max Muller refers, we get as Adhikarana 2 of IInd Adhayaya,
the case of Sutra, II, I, 3. “Thereby has yoga been answered.” No doubt we get
a very good idea of what a syllogism is like in Indian logic, from this
Adhikarana, though there are other Adhikaranas to which we might profitably
refer our readers for a better illustrating example of the Indian syllogism of
five terms. Speaking about the question ‘Has the Veda a super-human origin?’
Professor Max Muller exhibits to us some of the leading principles by which the
votaries of the Mimamsa were guided in arguing out the subject. He says that
the Hindus show a decided advance in religious thought, nay, in philosophical
musings, because they have begun to doubt even in those early days the
infallibility and superhuman origin of the Veda and sought to establish it by a
serious course of subtle arguments. The Mimamsa philosopher, according to him,
would have argued that as no writer could relate his own death, therefore, Deuteronomy
must be considered the work of a superhuman writer. “Inspiration in the
ordinary sense of the word would not have satisfied these Indian orthodox
philosophers, for, as they truly remark, this would not exclude the possibility
of error, because however true the message might by when given, the human
recipient would always be a possible source of error as being liable to
misapprehend and misinterpret such a message” (p. 271). So that for everything,
the Mimamsakas wanted to make sure of the limits of human knowledge; and the
infallibility and super humans origin of the Veda was established on pure
principles of reasoning and inference, in their own way, of course. Against the
charge that, in no sense, the Purva-Mimamsa, in fact any phase of Indian
thought, can be brought under a system of philosophy according to European
canons, Prof. Max Muller’s defence is well worth reading. He says having in
mind his European brethren, “Our idea of a system of philosophy is different
from the Indian conception of a Darsana. In its original meaning philosophy as
a love of wisdom, comes nearest to the Sanskrit Jignasa, a desire to know, if
not a desire to be wise. If we take philosophy in the sense of an examination
of our means of knowledge (Epistemology), or with Kant as an enquiry into the
limits of human knowledge, there would be nothing corresponding to in in India
* * * *. But we have only to waive the claim of infallibility put forward by
Badarayana in favour of the utterances of the sages of the Upanishads, and
treat them as simple human witnesses to the truth, and we should then find in
the systematic arrangement of these utterances by Badarayana a real philosophy,
a complete view of the Kosmos in which we live, like those that have been put
forward by the great thinkers of the philosophical countries of the world,
Greece, Italy, Germany, France and England.” Now coming to Jaimini’s ethics,
the reward which the sacrificer received for performing sacrifices, did not
accrue from any superintending Lord of the Cosmos or Brahman, but issued, as a
result, or an invisible something, something Apurva or Miraculous, of the deed
which represented the reward inherent in good works; or in other words,
according to Jaimini, for the moral government of the world, no Lord in
necessary. Here we see then that Jaimini differs from Badarayana. This was not
atheism, as some accuse the Purvamimamsa cult as tending to, but was an attempt
to clear the Lord from those charges of cruelty or undue partiality which have
so often been brought against Him by the unthinking multitude. And in the
Professor’s words, it “was another attempt at justifying the wisdom of God, an
ancient Theodicea, that whatever we may think of it, certainly did not deserve
the name of atheism.” The Mimamsakas merely tried to justify the ways of God in
their own way. The account that is given of the Mimamsa philosophy in the book,
is called from Madhava’s Nyaya-Mala-Vistara, 66 [66 Also
cf. Cowell and Gough’s Sarvadarsana Sangraha, pp. 178-202. The portion relating
to logic was predominant in Jaimini’s Sutras. Later on, this aspect was
developed more in the Nadiya School of Nyaya. In fact, Jaimini’s system is
sometimes known as Nyaya.] a sort of modern
digest embodying in good form and lucid arrangement, what is said by Jaimini in
his Mimamsa Sutras, and also the later developments in the hands of
commentators, Kumarila Bhatta 67 [67 They
were scholiasts on Jaimini and their views are diametrically opposed to each
other. Kumarila Bhatta is sometimes associated with Sankara in extirpating
Buddhism.] and Prabhakara. Though the
ritualistic side of the system is not a welcome study for one who is of a
philosophic bent of mind, we must remember that curiously enough larger space
is devoted, to what we in modern phraseology might call Scientific Method, such
as the subject of the Pramanas, or the authoritative sources of knowledge, the
relation between word and thought, and similar things. It is true that most of
these questions find a repetition in the Nyaya, Sankhya, Yoga, and even Vaiseshika.
Just as the later Mimamsa of Kumarilla and Prabhakara exclusively devoted
itself to the meaning and utility of sacrifices, leaving the logical portion
comparatively in the shade, a reverse phenomenon assailed the Nyaya, depriving
it, in its medieval form, of its philosophical character, and making of it a
sort of hair-splitting logic, a limbo of sophistic casuistry. The Pramanas
recognised by Jaiminiar (1) Pratyaksha 68 [68 Sense-perception
when the organs are actually in contiguity with an object.]
(2) Anumana 69 [69
Inference or the apprehension of an unseen member of
a known association (Vyapathi) by the perception of another seen member.]
(3) Upamana 70 [70 Comparison,
knowledge arising from resemblance.] (4) Arthapatti 71 [71 Presumption,
such knowledge as can be derived of a thing not itself perceived, but implied
by another.] (5) Sabda 72 [72 Verbal
information derived from authoritative sources.] and (6) Abbava 73 [73
Not-being, when we infer dryness of the soil from
the not-being or absence of clouds or rain.]
The last, which is recognised only by the Mimamsakas of Kumarilla Bhatta’s
following, is but a subdivision of Anumana.
Now we come to a very important
system of Indian Philosophy and that is the Sankya. It is treated of in an
exemplary and elaborate manner in Chapter VI. The Chapter is prefaced with an
account of the later Vedanta mixed with Sankhya. But the account is very meagre
and has very much disappointed our expectations. We had hoped that it would
receive the treatment it deserved at the hands of a scholar who is, perhaps,
the best well-meaning student of Indian Philosophy at the present day, and the
capacity be possesses as a comparative student of all the world’s philosophies
would have been immensely useful to us, if he had chosen to dwell fully on
these later developments of the Vedanta which are inextricably mixed with
Sankhya, nay, with the Yoga, in various degrees. To such latter-day off-shoots
belong the tenets preached by Brahmananda Saraswati 74 [74
The author of the Laghuchandrika, a commentary on
the Brahma-Sutras, on advanced Nyaya principle, recently published at
Kumbakonam, Tanjore District.] Madhusudana
Saraswati 75 [75 The
author of a commentary on the Brahma-Sutras and the Gita and of the Prasthana
Bheda, previously referred to.] Vachaspathi Misra 76
[76 The author of Bhamati, a gloss on
Sankara’s Brahma-Sutra-Bhashya, of the Sankhya Tattva Kaumudi, a commentary on
Ievara Krishna’s Sankhya-Karika, and of the Nyaya-Varttika-Tatparya-Tika, a
commentary on Udyotakara’s Nyaya Varttika.]
Vignanabhikshu 77 [77 Wrote
the Sankhya Pravachana Bhashya, the most authoritative commentary on the
Sankhya Sutras, a Bhashya on the Brahma Sutras, the Yoga-Varttika, well-known
as one of the stiffest books in Sanskrit, and also a commentary on the
Swetasvatara Upanishad.] Vallabha 78 [78 The
author of commentary on the Brahma Sutras and the founder of the Suddhadvaita
School.] Sureswara 79 [79 Sureswara,
the author of the colossal Vartika on Sankara’s Scholia to the Brihadaranyaka
Upanishad.] Srikantha 80 [80 Author
of a commentary on the Brahma Sutras, claimed by some as anterior to Sankara’s
Vide J. M. Nallaswamy Pillai’s translation of Sivagnanabotham, Introduction,
pp. iii. et. seq.] Amalananda 81 [81 Amalananda,
author of Vedanta Kalpataru, a
on Vachaspathi Misra’s Bhamati.]
Vidyaranya 82 [82 Vidyaranya,
in addition to being the author of Panchadasi, a philosophic treatise, and Jivanmukti
Viveka, is the writer also of
He is sometimes identified with Madhava
the author of Sarvadarsana Sangraha, and sometimes with Sayana the author of
the commentary on the Rig Veda. One thing only we can be certain about, and
that is, that Sayana, Madhava, and Vidyaranya are the names of only two
brothers, and in the present state of our lack of knowledge, it is unsafe to
guess which particular names belonged to any one of these brothers. See inter
alia, Krishna Sastry’s article on the Vijayanagar Kings. Epigraphia Indica,
Vol. III.] Appaya Dikshita 83 [83
Appayya Dikshita, author of Parimala, a
on Amalananda’s Vedanta Kalpataru and of
Siddhantalesasangraha, an independent philosophical work. His Sivatattvaviveka
is an excellent digest of the Saiva-Siddhanta philosophy.]
and hosts of other men, not even the names of them being mentioned. But, no
doubt, the general analysis of the mixture that is found in the later Vedanta
and in the later Sankhya, displays a fund of critical acumen and discrimination
of judgment, rarely met with among students of philosophy. Of the medieval
Vedantists above mentioned many, nay, most were avowedly of Sankara’s
following, introducing changes and innovations, of course as suited their
fancy, while the rest were carried away by Sankhyan predilections. The terms
Avidya, Maya, Pragna, Siva, Icvara and Prakriti underwent in these hands of
these philosophers amazing diversity of explanations. On P.282, in expounding
the doctrine of the later Vedanta, which, looking to the context and the method
of explanation, refers evidently to that of Vidyararanya in his Panchadasi, Max
Muller says, “The Omniscient, but personal Iswara is there explained as a
reflection of Maya, but as having subdued her, while the individual soul,
Pragna or Jiva, is represented as having been subdued by Avidya, and to be
multiform, owing to the variety of Avidya.” This is a flagrant mistake.
According to Vidyaranya, in fact the majority of later Vedantists, Iswara is
not a reflection of Maya, in which case the statement makes no sense, but
Iswara is a reflection of Brahman in Maya 84. [84
Panchadasi. Tattva Viveka Prakarana, Slokas 15 and 16. I shall quote from the
Panchadasi, Vidyaranya’s own words:-
This
view of Vidyaranya’s is what Max Muller is presumably thinking about. The
following statement occurs in p. 285 supra, “I suggested once before that this
very peculiar style of the Sutras would receive the best-historical
explanation, if it could be proved that they represent the first attempts at
writing for literary purposes in India.” We should think, on the other hand,
that it is more probable that writing had nothing to do with the style of the
Sutras at all, in view of the fact that even at the present day, Sutras are
learnt by rote, supplemented by oral teaching from the Guru, and only the heavier
commentaries are read out from manuscripts. The probability therefore lies
more on the side of the view that Sutras were introduced to minimise the labour
of students when the mnemonic literature had become unmanageable, than on the
side that the Sutra style was in some way necessitated by the introduction of
writing at the time.
The Sankhya system is in a sense
compact, in so far as all we could know of it are contained in a few books
alone. Foremost there is Kapila’s Tattva Samasa referred to by Vignana Bhikshu
in his Sankhya Pravachana-Bhashya, next we have Icvarakrishna’s Sankhyakarikas
having three commentaries, one the Bhashya of Gaudapada, the other the Sankhya
Tattva Kaumudi of Vachaspathi Misra and the third the commentary of Narayana
Tirtha, and lastly we have the modern Sankhya Sutras, about the literary
authorship of which there is a good deal of doubt, though some think (advanced
originally by Balasastri of Benares in the Pundit) that Vignanabhikshu was the author, with three
commentaries, one by Aniruddha called Aniruddha vritti 85, [85
Sankhya-Sutras with Aniruddha’s and Vedantin Mahadeva’s commentaries with
Translation, by Dr. Garbe, Bib. Ind. Series.]
the other by Vignanabhikshu called Sankhyapravachanabhashya 86 [86
A very good edition of it has recently been brought
out by Dr. Garbe in the Harvard University Oriental Series in English
characters.] and the last by Vedantin Mahadeva 85.
All through the discussion in which Prof. Max Muller enters, in trying to
ascertain the date of Gaudapada, the Tattva Samasa and the Sankhya-Sutras, he
does not make any mention of Aniruddha or his commentary on the Sankhya Sutras.
The latter commentator cannot be passed over in silence, in speaking of the
dates of the developmental stages of the Sankhya system, since he is one of the
important commentators of the Sankhya-Sutras whose sentences are quoted ipsissima
verba by Vignana Bhikshu. Professor Max Muller apparently wants to make out
that the modern Sankhya Sutras were the latest recension of the Sankhya
doctrines which had been handed down from the Upanishad period through ever so
many channels of books, tradition, contemporary authors and the like. It would
much strengthen the case he wants to support, viz, that the modern Sankhya
Sutras may have often changed their dress of language in the hands of the
previous disciples, before they received their final literary form, if he could
show the relation between the Sutras in Vignanabhikshu’s and Aniruddha’s
commentaries. There is good reason to believe that the Sutras followed in
Vignanabhikshu’s commentary is different from those in Aniruddha’s commentary.
Granted that it is so, it would lend the weight of an argument to support Max
Muller’s view, that the Sutras were undergoing many changes in the shape of
accretions and omissions, and even thorough modifications of language, because,
if within the limited space of time that divided Vignanabhikshu from Aniruddha
there could be so much difference introduced into the text of the Sutras, how
much more should have been the case in the wide interval that divided
Vignanabhikshu from the fermenting period when Kapila evolved his doctrines? I
hope to investigate shortly this striking difference in the apparently
identical text of the Sankhya-Sutras used by Aniruddha and by Vignanabhikshu,
and think of using the results of such investigation in ascertaining the true
character of the Tattva-Samasa. On the p. 303 Max Muller states, “Of course we
must leave it an open question for the present whether the extreme monistic
view of the Veda 87, [87 Does
Max Muller mean by this the Vedanta or the Upanishads? – V.V.R.]
was die to Sankara, or whether like Ramanuja, he also could claim the authority
of Purvacharyas, in his interpretation of Badarayana’s Sutras”. Max Muller has
evidently forgotten the historical Gaudapada, who in his Karikas on the
Mandukya Upanishad, shadows forth Sankara’s Monism as patently as is
conceivable, and the stemma of Sankara we have given elsewhere should give the
Professor an idea of Sankara’s Purvacharya Parampara, not to mention the names
of other eminent teachers referred to by name in his Scholia on the Vedanta
Sutras itself. The extreme Monistic view was floating in the air, and worked
into the very thought of the thinking Hindus, long, long before Sankara
defended it like a Huxley. Upavarsha and Gaudapada are living characters about
whom we know so much form their works, and not phantom figments that we have to
call up in our minds without knowing anything about their works, history, and
so forth.
It is a moot point whether the
Sankhya ever paid any heed to the authority claimed for the Vedas by ether
philosophers, whether it regarded them with feelings of respect and whether it
cared to comply with what is enjoined in them. But Max Muller wants to effect a
compromise, though not avowing his intention clearly, by asserting “The Sankhya
whatever we may think of its Vedic character, never denies the authority of the
Veda in so many words * * * *. Some scholars think that the recognition of the
supreme authority of the Sruti was an after-though with Kapila, a mere stroke
of theological diplomacy.” Here we must make a distinction between “Not denying
the authority of the Veda in so many words” and “Asserting the authority of the
Veda, in words, but disregarding, disobeying and insulting it actively in
spirit.” The two sentences have a common sense distinction for us, in reality
they meant the same thing for the Sankhyas. “The recognition of the supreme
authority of the Sruti” was not “an after-thought of Kapila,” because he never
recognized it except as a sort of sop for the censorious orthodox theists, and
that too, for form’s sake only, in words; but the flagrant and contemptuous
violation of the Vedas in a decided way, and actually finding fault, with them
on all points, could be seen at every step. “The real theological diplomacy”
never appertained to the Sankhya, but to the Sankhya as explained by the later
commentators. The reason of this is not far to seek, because we know that the
commentators on the Sankhya system were one and all of them Vedantins, and we
may well imagine how anxious they would be to explain away Kapila as consistent
with a submission to an infallible Veda. Max Muller says, “To judge from a
passage in the beginnings of the Sankhya-Karikas it might seem indeed that
Kapila placed his own philosophy above the Veda. But he really says no more
than that certain remedies for the removal of pain enjoined by Veda are good,
and that other remedies enjoined by philosophy are likewise good; but that of
the two, the latter are better, that is, more efficacious.” The first part of
the quotation does not picture Kapila in his true complexions; nor does it give
a correct idea of what Kapila thought of the Veda. Max Muller is certainly
referring to the second Karika of Icvara Krishna when he is ‘judging from a
passage’ and that is,
Here
the Veda is distinctly referred to as
impure, by Icvara Krishna; and not only
impure, but also, ineffectual, defective and so on. This
is explained as alluding
(according to Gaudapada) to
because it is said,
We see therefore what Icvara Krishna meant, and how
Gaudapada understands what the Karikas signify, through anxious to explain away
Kapila in conformity with the Veda; and the later Vedantin, Vachaspathi Micra,
is still more anxious to explain away, although he too is not blind to the impure
imperfections marring the Veda, when it advocates bloody hecatombs. He adds in
his Sankhya Tattvakaumudi,
and thereby feels it is an impure act that in
some sacrifices men should go the length of eating the testes of sheep. Withal,
he does not rest satisfied until he can make out that the sin involved in the
act of killing an innocent animal is slight, by quoting Panchacikhacharya; and
therefore the Siddhantin himself is made to say in the course of his defense of
killing animals for sacrifices that
So much for the first part of the quotation from Max
Muller, but the second part is certainly not the view of Kapila, as Max Muller
wrongly declares, but, if we may so put it, is the view as gathered through the
Claude Lorraine glasses of the commentator’s spectacles. The fact is, Kapila is
uncompromising, and Max Muller wrongly lays the view of Vachaspathi Misra, the
later Vedantin commentator, to Kapila’s charge. But Vignanabhikshu, who is
again a Vedantin commentator of the Sankhya and too liberal in his view to be a
faithful representative of any system, equates the Sankhya and the Vedanta,
finding in the former, statements that are thoroughly endorsed by the Veda
(vide Sankhya Pravachana Bhashya I, 5 infra). In p. 302 ambiguity, nay,
positive mistake in expression ensues by imperfect punctuation in the sentence
“* * and the Sankhya was clearly dualistic when it postulated Nature, not only
as the result of Avidya or Maya, but as something real in the ordinary sense of
the word* * *”. Here “not only as the result of Maya” should be “not, only as
the result of Maya” for, otherwise the sentence makes no sense. 88 [88
After this in Max Muller’s (p. 304) book there is a
reference to Tattvakaumudi v.2. It is a mistake. The reference must be to the
15th Vishaya under Karika II. Vachaspathi Misra whom Max Muller
cites, be it remembered, was not a Sankhyan, but, a stout follower of Sankara,
and he is declared to be a Mithila Brahmin and set down at the 9th
century A.D., by Ganganath Jha. (See his edition of Sankhya-Tattvakaumudi. Sanskrit
Introduction).] Again on p. 395 Max
Muller speaks in a compromising way about the Sankhya’s view of the authority
of the Veda, but I must say once for all that, as a matter of fact, the
Sankhyas do not accord to it the respect with which the Vedantins quote it.
From the way they are quoted, it would appear they are introduced more for the
purpose of showing that they too have the support of the Veda, and that too,
not in very great seriousness, and only as an after-thought. They gladly
counted upon the sanction of the Veda when it had one, by chance, to give, and
quietly ignored it, sometimes aggressively attacked it, nay even advanced their
doctrines more strongly on that account, when the Veda would not chime in with
the Sankhyan cult. The passages in the Sankhya Sutras where from Max Muller, in
p. 306, is desirous of establishing the supposed respect shown by the Sankhyas
to the authority of the Sruti are untenable, since in the Sankhya Sutras, the
Advaitist expositors and reconciles of the Sankhya of a later time, speak a
great deal, more than Kapila.
Max
Muller puts Vachaspati Misra in the middle of the 12th century A.D.,
following Prof. Garbe (p.289), and elsewhere states (p. 479) that “it was not
till the 19th century that Vachaspati Misra finally re-established
the Brahmanic view of the Nyaya in his Nyaya-Vartika-Tatparyatika.” From this
it would seem that the Professor is minded to halt between the 10th
and 12th centuries dating Vachaspathi-Misra, while Ganganath Jha in
the Sanskrit introduction affixed to his edition of Sankhya-Tattva-Kaumudi
urges some new facts in support of placing him more decidedly in the 9th
century A.D. He says 89 [89 Sankhyatattvakaumudi edited by Ganganath Jha.
]
and as regards the mistake
Taranatha Tarka Vachaspathi committed 90 [90 Read also
introduction to Annam Bhatta’s Tarka Sangraha by Athalye, pp, 40 et. seq.]
in placing Vachaspati Misra posterior to Sree Harsha, the author of the
Khandanakhandakadya, because another Vachaspathi was credited with the
authority of the Khandanoddhara, a criticism of Sree Harsha’s work, Mr.
Ganganatha says:
From these it is clear that
Vachaspathi Misra was a Maithila Brahmin and should have flourished about the 9th
century A.D., for Udayanacharya the author of “Parisuddhi”, a commentary on Vachaspathi
Misra’s Tatparya Tika, lived in the reign of Lakshman Sen of Bengal, of whose
era we have just commenced the 8th century. No doubt more than a
century must have elapsed for an author to become sufficiently classic and so
necessitate commentaries. Taranatha Tarka Vachaspathi is mistaking another
Vachaspathi who wrote a criticism on Sreeharsha’s work and who was posterior to
him, for our Vachaspathi Misra. Evidently Tarka Vachaspathi did not note that
in Sree Harsha’s work we meet with a criticism of Udayana’s “Parisuddhi” and of
other works; and therefore if Taranatha had read the work, he ought to have
inferred that Udayana lived anterior to Sreeharsha; this Udayana being a
commentator on Vachaspathi Misra who is mentioned by Gangesa, author of 90
Chintamani, and criticized by him with due respect as Tikakara, must be
considered anterior to Sreeharsha. Of course this Sreeharsha is not the
Sreeharsha mentioned by Bana 91 [91 Tradition identifies Sriharsha in whose Court Bana
flourished with Sreeharsha, the author of Khandanakhandakadya. But Cowell
places the kind in the early part of the 7th century A.D. See Cowell
and Thomas. Harsha Charita, preface p. vii. Evidently therefore the two Harshas
are different.] In P. 319 infra,
when speaking of the arrangement adopted in the Tattva Samasa about the
treatment of the various Sankhyan Tattvas and the rest, occurs the sentence
“Then follow the topics which are twenty-five in number,” and it ought to be
corrected either into “the substances which are twenty-five in number” or if
the topics which are twenty-five in number. (See P. 321 where the number of
topics correctly enumerated is only 24). In discussing about the primary
evolution of Buddhi from Avyakta (Prakriti). Max Muller makes out that it means
Prakriti as illuminated, intellectualized and rendered capable of becoming at a
later time the germ of Ahamkara (distinction of subject and object), Manas and
Indriyas. So, as against the psychological acceptation, he says that Buddhi
must also mean a phase in the Cosmic growth of the universe 92. [92
If we employ the Vedantic terminology, Max Muller’s
suggestion simply tantamounts to a differentiation of Buddhi into Samashti
(cosmic or objective), and Vyashti (subjective or psychic). This distinction
must also effect the Ahamkara phase of the evolution of Avyakta. Of course when
the Ahamkaric stage is reached the differentiation becomes only too patent.] He is most sensible in giving a cosmic explanation,
for, as he says “Though this psychological acceptation is the common
acceptation of Buddhi among native writers on Sankhya, yet sense is more
important than commentaries.” The table on p. 333 is erroneous, as it derives
Prakriti from Purusha and therefore negatives what is said in the Tattva
Samasa. According to Tattva Samasa, Purusha is identified with the Brahman of
the Veda; it is therefore possible that Sankhya in its primary stages was
theistic 93. [93 cf. Kathaka III, 10, and VI,
7, 8; also, Sadanandas Vedanta Sara §128.] The main difference, between
the later Karikas and the Tattva Samasa, which is not touched upon by Max
Muller, is in the derivation of the Panchamahabhutas. In the former they are
derived from the Panchatanamtras while in the latter they are derived direct
from Ahamkara. Commenting on the Maitrayani Upanishad II, 5, Max Muller remarks
“The whole is passage is however obscure, nor does the commentator help us
much, unless he is right in recognizing germs of the later Vedantic ideas of a
Prajapathi, called Visva or Vaisvanara, Taijasa, and Pragna.” We do not know
what he means here by the later Vedantic ideas. This division is already found
in the Mandukya 94 [94 We quote some of the passages at length here:-
Upanishad and Gaudapada’s Karikas to it. We can call
the ideas later Vedantic if we put the Mandukya after Sankara. The account of
evolution given according to Tattwasamasa is very confusing. The Purusha is
represented as super intending Prakriti and hence the efficient cause of
Evolution in a sense. Max Muller’s apology for the existence of the Sankhya as
a philosophy in the world, and his learned discourse “on the Nature of Pain”
from the point of view of Indian philosophers are admirable and well worth reading.
Pointing to the two solutions proposed by the Vedanta and the Mimamsa to rid
man of the trammels and misery of this world, he says that none of the
solutions proposed by other philosophers, either ancient or modern, “seems to
me to have so completely realized what may be called the idea of the Soul as
the Phoenix, consumed by the fire of thought and rising from his own ashes,
soaring towards regions which are more real than anything that can be called
real in this life”, and later on adds, “Does Kapila really work upon perception
and thought as an instrument, ready made by Prakriti for the use of the
Purusha, but remaining inert like a telescope, till it looked through by the
Purusha, or is it the first glance of Purusha at Prakriti in its first state of
Avyakta or chaos, that gives the first impulse to the activity of Prakriti,
which impulse is generally ascribed to the working of the Gunas.” He says he
does not feel competent to pronounce any decided opinion for either view. The
vindication of Sankhya from page 385 to page 398 is exhaustive and fortified
with a good many arguments. The analysis of the human mood or attitude that may
have given rise to the Sankhyan cult, on p. 383, and his thoughtful remarks on
the special mental or psychic difficulties that ought to have harassed the
original founders of the Sankhya, bring the ancient problems nearer to our
heart. The comparison of the Sankhyan Prakriti and Purusha with the Cartesian automaton
and chose pensaute 95 [95 This is superadded by Descartes to the automaton. Prof. Huxley showed
that on the Cartesian assumption all our mental conditions are the symbols in
consciousness of the changes taking place automatically in the organism. See
Huxley. Method and Results, pp. 182-188.]
is very instructive. Descartes theory, in the light if Huxley’s explanation,
approaches nearer the Sankhyan Prakriti and Purusha, if we forget the
reservation which Descartes made in not giving a Purusha to anything else but
man. I hope to deal with this fully in my forthcoming paper on “The teachings
of Prf. Huxley on the Infinite.” The later Sankhyan developments are meagerly
touched; we have to make here the same complaint that Vignanabhikshu and
Vachaspathi Misra are left in the dark as we made in connection with the
Vedanta as developed by its later representatives.
Chapter
VII is entitled “Yoga and Sankhya.” In it are pointed out the common path
travelled over by both Yoga and Sankhya together, and the point from which they
began to diverge, as also the leading tenets as embodied in the Yoga sutras of
Patanjali. Points that may appear somewhat startling or surprising to the
English mind, not accustomed to the rigorous and, sometimes hair-splitting
dialectics pursued by the Indian Logicians, or rather the philosophers that
apply the Indian canons of logic to prove their assertions, are dealt with in a
way that will appeal more readily to Englishmen and other Europeans, because
always the underlying human springs are exposed, and comparison is instituted
between the Greek and Roman philosophers on the one hand and the Indians on the
other. In the philosophical portion, Yoga and Sankhya are one except for the
fact that the Yoga recognizes an Icwara corresponding to the Sagunam Brahman of
the Vedantins, and the Sankhya an absolute Purusha. Less stress is laid by the
Sankhyans on the aspect of meditation, while more of it is inculcated in the
Yoga which has necessitated such an elaborate system of rules and practices to
be observed by the Yogins for their Samadhi leading up to Kaivalya “aloneness.”
In the Sankhya meditation is recommended, though the intellectual method of
reasoning and argumentation leading us up to a true discrimination between the
Purusha and Prakriti is more what Kapila looks to. In this aspect Yoga is
sometimes called the Theistic Sankhya. It is probable that both Yoga and
Sankhya grew out of the same undifferentiated matrix, and the divergence set in
only a little previous to the period of Sanskrit Renaissance, eventually ending
in latter days in a complete divorce between the two systems. The Professor is
right when he says that Rajendra Lal Mitra was wrong in representing the belief
in one system God as the first and the most important tenet of Patanjali’s
philosophy. It was only one of many of the outward steps, which as Bhoja Raja
the commentator on Patanjali adds, “towards fixing the mind on one subject and
of thus in time obtaining Samadhi.” 96 [96 Vide Boja’s Scholia on Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras I, 33,
2.] When comparing Darwin, Kapila and Patanjali, Max
Muller says, “Darwin himself went so far as to maintain most distinctly that
his system of Nature required a creator who breathed life into it in the
beginning.” He is thinking of the concluding lines of Darwin’s “Origin of
Species.” Darwin himself distinctly
tells us in one of his letters that he alluded to such a Creator simply as a
“sop to Cerberus” 97 [97 op. cit from the chapter on ‘Religion’ in “Darwin’s Life and
Letters” in 3 volumes, edited by his son, Francis Darwin.] and to
enlist the sympathies of clergymen and the like in propounding a doctrine which
was sure to shock the religious susceptibilities of men moving in an altogether
different mental groove in their conceptions of a Personal Creator and the
whole creation that was of his making. His own opinions were that of an
Agnostic. “I think” he says “that generally (and more and more as I grow
older), but not always, an agnostic would be the most correct description of my
state of mind” and without doubt, the influence of conclusions deducible from
the theory of Evolution, as Edward Clodd says 98 [98 Pioneers of Evolution, From Thales to Huxley, by
Edward Clodd, pp. 160 et. seq.]
“are fatal to a belief in the Supernatural.” Prof. Max Muller would have found
a better friend to Kapila and Patanjali in people like Dr. A. R. Wallace. About
the Yogic methods of obtaining Samadhi, and the devotional contemplation in
which the Yogins indulge, there is a fine and ungarbled account. There is a
reference to Mr. M. Seshagiri Sastri’s Report of Tamil and Sanskrit
Manuscripts, when Max Muller speaking under the section of Vairagya about the
doubtful nature of the real authorship 99 [99 Vide Tawney’s metrical translation of Bhartrihari’s
Catakas, Introduction.] of
Bhartrihari’s Vairagya Catakas. Max Muller thinks he might have collected
verses from various sources as Subhashitas and made them into a compact Cataka.
In fact Bhartrihari’s work is sometimes actually called Subhashitatrisati for
which Max Muller refers as to Seshagiri Sastri’s Reports (p. 445 infra).
He credits in a way the ‘miracles’ wrought by Kriyayogins though with a good
deal of reservation. The Siddhis which are the outcome of Samyama are
not the last and highest goal of Yoga philosophy as has often been supposed by
Indian and by European Scholars. He says touching on the practices of the
Modern Hindu Yogins “* * * we must also remember that the influence of the mind
on the body and of the body on the mind is as yet but half-explored.” In p. 456
Iyengar appears as Iyangar. 100 [100 The mistake is certainly imported from Gurbe’s
Handbook on “Yoga and Sankhya” in the Encyclopedia of Indo-Aryan Research
series.] In the course of Patanjali’s speculations, we do
not find him locating the mind or the act of perceiving and conceiving, in the
brain, or in the pineal gland, but, in one place he claims the muscle of the
heart “as the seat of the consciousness of thought.” 101 [101
Patanjali. Yoga Sutras III. 34
] Prof. Max Muller doubts on
this score, I believe, it the 34th Sutra, nay, the whole chapter in
which it occurs may not be spurious. He cannot understand what is meant when in
the terms, ‘Vasanas’ and ‘Samvedanam’ Rajendra Lal Mitra 102 [102
Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras with Bhojaraja’s Commentary Biblioth.
Indic Series, Translation by B. L. Mitra, III, 9, and IV, 72.] is able to discover the theory of logoi in
the mind of Patanjali, and when he compares the ‘three adhwans’ through which
objects assail one’s mind to the Universalia aule rem, the Universalia in ve
and the Universalia post rem. The final goal whether of the Yoga, or of
the Sankhya, nay even of the Vedanta and of Buddhism, always challenges
conception. We cannot predicate of it anything except as a state that transcends
everything we know or imagine, and in which there is entire oneness with the spirit
of Nature. If we attempt to speak of the Ultimatum in language that is
necessarily conditioned by the limited nature of our understanding, and by the
binding influence of the law of Causality and of Time and Space, we are sure to
make of if an unmeaning phantasmagoria. To say therefore that the finale
of the Yogins implies nihilism is as absured as to say that the finale
of the Vedantism is atheism. Max Muller is of the same view, and adds speaking
of all our philosophers, “There remains with me a strong conviction that Indian
Philosophers are honest in their reasoning’s and never use empty words. But
there remains much to be done, and I can only hope that if others follow in my
footsteps, they will in time make these old bones to live again. These ancient
Sages should become fellow-workers and fellow-explorers with ourselves in
unknown continents of thought, and we ought not to be afraid to follow in their
track. They always have the courage of their convictions, they shrink from no
consequences if they follow inevitably from their own premises. This is the
reason why I doubt whether the admission of an Icwara or Lord by Patanjali, in
contradistinction to Kapila, who denies that there are any arguments in support
of such a being, should be put down as a mere economy, or as an accommodation
to popular opinion” (p. 473).
“Nyaya
and Vaiseshika” form the subject of the eighth chapter. The information about
the books on later Nyaya is unfortunately not given by Max Muller even to a
fairly good extent, and of course, it is enough for readers who do not think of
extending their studies deeper into Nyaya. Gotama’s Nyaya Sutras which is
commented on by Vathsyayana 103 [103 He is also known as Pakshilaswamin.] is the chief book Prof. Max Muller follows in
giving an account of the Nyaya system. For a comprehensive summary of the
history of the Nyaya philosophy in India, there is not any good book at present
to which the student might refer with advantage. But what Max Muller gives in
his present book, coupled with that given by Mahadeo Rajaram Bodas in his
introduction and preface to Athalye’s edition of Annambhattas Tarka Sangraha
must be sufficient to anybody who seeks general information on the Nyaya. However
to supply the deficiency of the book I shall here give a short account of the
salient points of the history of Nyaya. After the Buddhist Dignaga brought out
a Scholia, explaining Gotama’s Sutras, in Buddhist fashion, came into existence
the starting point wherefrom diversity arose in the plane of what was
previously unity. A whole world of schools was fashioned from time to time, no
two agreeing with each other, giving rise to an amount of polemic dialectics
that is almost inconceivable. The whole movement eventually culminated in the “Nadiya
School,” in which the primary aim of the Nyaya as a philosophy searching after
the Infinite in Nature and joining Man to It was lost sight of, but Logic as a
science began to be developed. Gangesopadhyaya, the author of Chintamani, and Gadadhara,
the author of “Gadadhari” which is sometimes looked upon as a sort of scholia
on Chintamani, were the two leading men of the Nadiya School.first The amount
of commentaries, scholia, and dissertations, dealing with subjects dealt with
in the Chintamani, we can measure only by cart-loads, making the literature on
Indian Logic something very bewildering, and not possible for even a man of
unremitting application to master them in his life-time. In the early Nyaya,
Udyotakara commented on Vatsyayana in his work the Nyaya-Vartika, and a Scholia
on the latter work the Nyaya-Vartika-Tatparya-Tika, was written by Vachaspati
Misra, the well-known Vedantin commentator on Sankara’s Brahma Sutras, Udayana
who lived about the 12th century A.D., wrote a gloss on Vachaspati’s
work called “Paricaddhi.” Udayana and Vachaspathi, and even Gangesa Upadhyaya
were attacked by Sreeharsha in his work called Khandanakhandakadya which is
usually set down later than 14th Century A.D. Khandanoddhara is the
work written by one Vachaspati who lived about the 16th Century and
in which attacks were directed against Sreeharsha’s views. It may be remarked
that Gangeeopadhyaya was the man that gave to the logical portion of the Nyaya
an extremely prominent place, and his work is truly neither Nyaya in the old
sense nor any other philosophy. The book written by him namely Chintamani is an
independent work, which is not indebted to any previous work for the plan or
conception, and what it seeks to do is to divert the Nyaya philosophy, of its
religious element and to develop and perfect the logic which always
preponderated in the Nyaya more than in any other philosophy, because it went
to the Infinite by pure reason, as resting on Pratyaksha, Anumana,
Upamana and Sabda, and which was present though in a less degree
in other philosophies, as for instance in the Sankhya and the Mimamsa. In Chintamani,
the syllogism as such is perfected to a degree unknown anywhere else and as a
consequence, logic reached a finish and exhaustiveness that cannot but vent
itself in hair-splitting sophistry dialectic egg-dancing and ingenious
argumentative feats. Annambhatta, and long previous to him. Sankara Misra (who
was anterior even to Gangesopadhyaya) had begun the independent work of welding
the Nyaya and the Vaiseshika, and making of the mixture an independent system, 104
[104 Of the same
school are Bhashparich chheda with its Commentary Muktavali (of which the
Tarkasangraha is an abstract). Sivaditya’s Saptapadarthi Tarkakaumudi.
Tarkamrita etc. The school may be said to have restored the Nyaya in a sense
after the shock it sustained at the hands of the Nadia School.] retaining the Sapthapadarthas and the atomic theory
of the Vaiseshika, appropriating the logic of the Nyaya wholesale, and
rejecting the rest from both of these. I was obliged to speak so much about
these developments of the Nyaya, since what Max Muller gives about these is
next to meagre, and as a historian of philosophy, he speaks more about the
ancient Gotama-Sutras.
On P.
483, M.N. Dvivedi is mentioned by mistake as the editor and translator of the Yogasarasangraha,
instead Ganganath Jha. The Nihereyasa is, according to Gotama the Summum
Bonum, the Non Plus Ultra of blessedness and this can be realized as
taught by him through a knowledge of the sixteen great topics of the Nyaya
Philosophy. No doubt logic plays a great part also in Jaimini’s philosophy,
though, it is only in the Nyaya and especially its later developments that
logic began to be cultivated almost as an independent branch of thought. The Buddhists
took immense interest in the Nyaya philosophy, and the many recessions we have
in it are due to the first impule given to it at independent exposition by
Dignaga, Dharmakirthi and others. And the hot controversy that ensued between
the Buddhistic and the Brahminic branch of the Nyaya give rise to an immense
number of dialectic publications from both sides, in the centuries following
the Renaissance period of Sanskrit Literature. Gotama’s Sixteen Padarthas were
rejected by the later Naiyayikas, excepting Pramana and Prameya, and we can
easily see that Vitanda, Galpa, Khala and the like deserve a place as topics in
schools, that were given to perfecting Logic as a science, as a branch of
thought. After dealing with the Nyaya according to Gotama, in order to give us
a good glimpse into the attitude of later men as Madhavacharya and others
towards the Nyaya as a system of philosophy. Max Muller takes the account of
the Nyaya from Madhava and discusses it. We must not lose sight of the fact
that as the Nyaya degenerated into logic from being a philosophy, later men who
were commentators and staunch friends of the Nyaya betook to it only as a piece
of dialectic exercise, having their faith elsewhere it any one of the two
prominent systems of philosophy, the Sankhya and the Vedanta, as a whetstone to
sharpen their wits and a peg to hang their culture, learning, and word display
on. People of Vachaspathi Misra’s manner who was a Vedantin by creed and
culture, well represent this division. But of course if any of the higher
philosophic points that may the smothered under a heap of controversial
disquisition; were to be attacked by the Buddhists and others, these people who
were the commentators, whatever their own views might have been in philosophy
or religion, used to defend the Nyaya against the opponents, for the sole sake
of its being a Hindu system. It is also useful to remember that the later Nyaya
principles were much useful to men of any system of philosophy in later times,
as a street training and a powerful instrument in attacking each other, just as
in these days a good logician of any following converts us to his own creed by
the strength of his controversial vigor. The points of resemblance between the
Nyaya and the Vaiseshika, their relations to each other are admirably handled
in the chapter. Indian and Greek Logic are contrasted and their points of
similarly are well emphasized. In p. 500 “Comparison on Anumana” is the heading
of a paragraph which ought to be corrected into “Comparison or Upamana.” Such
mistakes show that Gough whom Max Muller feels bound to thank so much, has done
his work very conscientiously, and well testify to Gough’s unsparing troubles
to run over the proofs. The transformation of sensations into percepts and of
percepts into concepts, falling naturally to the function of Manas, have not born
fully realized by Indian philosophers, though with the European notions they have
assumed larger proportions in importance. Max Muller is of opinion that the
Geed and the Indian logic must each be supposed to be autochthonic till better
information about the inter-relations of the two countries in the beginnings of
the historic period could be lead, though the members of a syllogism are
curiously, enough found both in Aristotle and Gotama. He defends the Nyaya
against the accusations brought against it by Ritter in his “History of
Philosophy.” If the philosophical portion were to be properly sifted and then
looked at if the Indian principles of classification in bringing about the
Sixteen Topics which on account of the wrong translation of some people Ritter
took to be tables of categories were well analyzed, and if the conception of
philosophy from the Hindu point of view were well understood, then the Nyaya
would have struck Ritter as good a system as any European system of philosophy.
In the later or modern Nyaya. Pramana, receives the best attention. Max Muller
strives a good deal, after telling us what all the Indian schools of philosophy
thought of Sphota, to equate it, in significance, conception, and evolution of
meaning to the Greek Logos, and he is most likely right. But the similar
growths in the two countries were only autochthonic. There is fault of syntax
and confusion of idea in the sentence (p. 524). “The opinion that sound exists
always and eternally and is only made manifest by each speaker, which is held
by th Mimausakas, is rejected by Kanada, sounds and words being accepted as
momentary manifestations only of Eternal Sound”. In connection with the meaning
pf Sphota and with the value of sound as the essence of language, or rather
that thoughts cannot exist without words, (an old theory with Max Muller)
Panini who is introduced to us as a philosopher with a cult of his own in
Madhava’s Sarva Darsanasangraha, 105 [105 Cowell and Gough. Sarva Darsana Sangraha, Translation,
Trubner’s Oriental Series pp. 203, et. seq.] is made to bear witness to the validity of the view
of Max Muller. Every system of philosophy, nay, all our Hindu scriptures are
searched for what they have to say on Sphota, till Max Muller gloriously comes out
with the view that the Human Mind, according to himself and Indian philosophy
has its true existence, home and life in the Divine Mind, an idea that is
little more than hinted in the New-Platonic philosophy.
In
the last chapter the Vaiseshika philosophy is brought in and the dates of its
Sutras are discussed in entirety. Max Muller takes up the work of Haribhadra
who was a Brahmin convert to
Jainism and died in 528 A.D. From the treatment the Vaiseshika receives in his
work, from the researchers of Prof. Leumann in Jaina literature, and from the
dates derived from Tibetan sources, brought to light by the Journal of the Buddhist
Text Society, the Vaiseshika Sutras are set down in the first century A.D. The
tenets of the Vaiseshika as given in the Vaiseshika Sutras and their later
recension as given to us in Annambhatta’s book are described. The chief commentator
of the Vaiseshika Sutras, Pracastapada, does not so much as even receive a
mention in the book. According to our Professor, the Greek atomic theory as expounded
by Empedocles and others have nothing to do with the Indian system. Kanada’s
atoms are supposed never to assume visible dimensions till there is a
combination of three double atoms, neither the single nor the double atoms
being supposed to be visible by themselves. This is not the view taken by any
of the Epicurean Philosophers. Therefore the conception is quite peculiar to
Kanada and it distinguishes him from the Greeks as being thoroughly independent
in speculation. The last category of the Vaiseshika philosophy, Samavaya
(Inhesion or Inseparability) is peculiar to the Indian soil. The relationship
and interdependence and inseparability between two halves and a whole for
instance, though known to European philosophies did not receive a name of its
own. This is another of the proofs that our logic is of independent origin, and
worked out by our ancient thinkers in times lost to memory. At the end, the
whole of the Six Systems are summed up, with the object of tracing the common fountain
from which all the rivers have taken their rise. They have all sprung from the same
soil though cultivated by different hands. Vignana Bhikshu is quoted largely to
bear out the Professor’s view. To illustrate with what regard or contempt, each
system of thought was considered at particular periods of Indian philosophic activity
or intellectual life, opinions from the Bhagavat Gita, the Mahabharata down to the
Padmapurana are quoted by Vignana Bhikshu. And to him behind all the manifold
diversity of cults of Indian Philosophy, there is the same attempt to find the Divine
Mystery that pervades the visible universe. They represent various stages
reached by different phases of thought in their endeavors to unravel the
mystery of the apparent disparity of the Universe, and to unite the inner Man
with the outer God.
Whatever
may be thought of the study of Indian Philosophy as a piece of intellectual
training there is no doubt, that to the seriously thinking student, it opens
out vistas that transcend the reach of his vision, and gives him glimpses of the
majestic Enigma of this Cosmic Scheme, setting him thirsting for the real
Light. It is doubtful if the philosophers of any other nation in the world went
the length of seeing in the splendor of the Inner Self the blinding glory of
the pulsating Spirit of Nature. And it is this solemn eloquence that is implied
in the silence, or the dim reservation, of our philosophers, when they have to
touch upon topics appertaining to the Infinite Goal of man and all the passing
Panorama of sound and music, of wail and woe, and sometimes of cheer and
happiness, that rings in the ears of Max Muller with a thousand tongues, when
he exclaims, “To have mounted to such heights, even if we have to descend again
frightened and giddy, must have strengthened the muscles of human reason, and will
remain in our memory as a sight never to be forgotten, even in the lower
spheres in which we have to more in our daily life and amidst our daily duties.
Speaking for myself I am bound to say that I have felt an acquaintance
with the general spirit of Indian philosophy as a blessing from my very youth,
being strengthened by it against all the antinomies of being and thinking, and nerved
in all the encounters with the sceptician and materialism of one our own
Ephemeral philosophy.” 106 [106 The italics are of my own introduction.] This is the testimony of a man who has devoted
years of patient study to mastering our philosophy, and only a true Vedantin
can obtain the comfort and mental quietude he has derived, as necessaries to
brave the fleeting phantoms of this work-a-day world. It is in India alone that
Religion and Philosophy have lived in indissoluble unison, the one nerved with
the freedom of right-thinking from Philosophy and the other mellowed by the
sweetness of spirituality from Religion. Divorce is unknown in India between
Philosophy and Religion, and the fatigue of one soft sister never became the strength
of the other. To us it has always been taught by our ancient Seers that
spiritual realms are not beyond our ken, even when our souls are tabernacle in the
flesh, and that glories of the next world can be sensed in this. But up those
narrow stirs, and steep galleries which we should tread before sighting our
original Home, and breathing the atmosphere that is congenial to our true
natures, we should carry with us the lamp of that maxim that has been uttered
with stately melody, by one of our own earliest Brahmavadins:-
[107 Patanjali, Yoga-Sutras, II, 36.]
V. V. RAMANAN.
