The Sanskrit Epics

by Delphi Classics

  The Çatapatha Brāhmaṇa contains reminiscences of the days when the country of Videha was not as yet Brahmanised. Thus Book I. relates a legend in which three stages in the eastward migration of the Aryans can be clearly distinguished. Māṭhava, the king of Videgha (the older form of Videha), whose family priest was Gotama Rāhūgaṇa, was at one time on the Sarasvatī. Agni Vaiçvānara (here typical of Brahmanical culture) thence went burning along this earth towards the east, followed by Māṭhava and his priest, till he came to the river Sadānīra (probably the modern Gandak, a tributary running into the Ganges near Patna), which flows from the northern mountain, and which he did not burn over. This river Brahmans did not cross in former times, thinking “it has not been burnt over by Agni Vaiçvānara.” At that time the land to the eastward was very uncultivated and marshy, but now many Brahmans are there, and it is highly cultivated, for the Brahmans have caused Agni to taste it through sacrifices. Māṭhava the Videgha then said to Agni, “Where am I to abide?” “To the east of this river be thy abode,” he replied. Even now, the writer adds, this river forms the boundary between the Kosalas (Oudh) and the Videhas (Tirhut).

  The Vājasaneyi school of the White Yajurveda evidently felt a sense of the superiority of their sacrificial lore, which grew up in these eastern countries. Blame is frequently expressed in the Çatapatha Brāhmaṇa of the Adhvaryu priests of the Charaka school. The latter is meant as a comprehensive term embracing the three older schools of the Black Yajurveda, the Kaṭhas, the Kapishṭhalas, and the Maitrāyaṇīyas.

  As Buddhism first obtained a firm footing in Kosala and Videha, it is interesting to inquire in what relation the Çatapatha Brāhmaṇa stands to the beginnings of that doctrine. In this connection it is to be noted that the words Arhat, Çramana, and Pratibuddha occur here for the first time, but as yet without the technical sense which they have in Buddhistic literature. Again, in the lists of teachers given in the Brāhmaṇa mention is made with special frequency of the Gautamas, a family name used by the Çākyas of Kapilavastu, among whom Buddha was born. Certain allusions are also suggestive of the beginnings of the Sānkhya doctrine; for mention is several times made of a teacher called Āsuri, and according to tradition Āsuri is the name of a leading authority for the Sānkhya system. If we inquire as to how far the legends of our Brāhmaṇa contain the germs of the later epic tales, we find that there is indeed some slight connection. Janamejaya, the celebrated king of the Kurus in the Mahābhārata, is mentioned here for the first time. The Pāṇḍus, however, who proved victorious in the epic war, are not to be met with in this any more than in the other Brāhmaṇas; and Arjuna, the name of their chief, is still an appellation of Indra. But as the epic Arjuna is a son of Indra, his origin is doubtless to be traced to this epithet of Indra. Janaka, the famous king of Videha, is in all probability identical with the father of Sītā, the heroine of the Rāmāyaṇa.

  Of two legends which furnished the classical poet Kālidāsa with the plots of two of his most famous dramas, one is told in detail, and the other is at least alluded to. The story of the love and separation of Purūravas and Urvaçī, already dimly shadowed forth in a hymn of the Rigveda, is here related with much more fulness; while Bharata, son of Duḥshanta and of the nymph Çakuntalā, also appears on the scene in this Brāhmaṇa.

  A most interesting legend which reappears in the Mahābhārata, that of the Deluge, is here told for the first time in Indian literature, though it seems to be alluded to in the Atharva-veda, while it is known even to the Avesta. This myth is generally regarded as derived from a Semitic source. It tells how Manu once came into possession of a small fish, which asked him to rear it, and promised to save him from the coming flood. Having built a ship in accordance with the fish’s advice, he entered it when the deluge arose, and was finally guided to the Northern Mountain by the fish, to whose horn he had tied his ship. Manu subsequently became the progenitor of mankind through his daughter.

  The Çatapatha Brāhmaṇa is thus a mine of important data and noteworthy narratives. Internal evidence shows it to belong to a late period of the Brāhmaṇa age. Its style, as compared with the earlier works of the same class, displays some progress towards facility and clearness. Its treatment of the sacrificial ceremonial, which is essentially the same in the Brāhmaṇa portions of the Black Yajurveda, is throughout more lucid and systematic. On the theosophic side, too, we find the idea of the unity in the universe more fully developed than in any other Brāhmaṇa work, while its Upanishad is the finest product of Vedic philosophy.

  To the Atharva-veda is attached the Gopatha Brāhmaṇa, though it has no particular connection with that Saṃhitā. This Brāhmaṇa consists of two books, the first containing five chapters, the second six. Both parts are very late, for they were composed after the Vaitāna Sūtra and practically without any Atharvan tradition. The matter of the former half, while not corresponding or following the order of the sacrifice in any ritual text, is to a considerable extent original, the rest being borrowed from Books XI. and XII. of the Çatapatha Brāhmaṇa, besides a few passages from the Aitareya. The main motive of this portion is the glorification of the Atharva-veda and of the fourth or brahman priest. The mention of the god Çiva points to its belonging to the post-Vedic rather than to the Brāhmaṇa period. Its presupposing the Atharva-veda in twenty books, and containing grammatical matters of a very advanced type, are other signs of lateness. The latter half bears more the stamp of a regular Brāhmaṇa, being a fairly connected account of the ritual in the sacrificial order of the Vaitāna Çrauta Sūtra; but it is for the most part a compilation. The ordinary historical relation of Brāhmaṇā and Sūtra is here reversed, the second book of the Gopatha Brāhmaṇa being based on the Vaitāna Sūtra, which stands to it practically in the relation of a Saṃhitā. About two-thirds of its matter have already been shown to be taken from older texts. The Aitareya and Kaushītaki Brāhmaṇas have been chiefly exploited, and to a less extent the Maitrāyaṇī and Taittirīya Saṃhitās. A few passages are derived from the Çatapatha, and even the Panchaviṃça Brāhmaṇa.

  Though the Upanishads generally form a part of the Brāhmaṇas, being a continuation of their speculative side (jnāna-kāṇḍa), they really represent a new religion, which is in virtual opposition to the ritual or practical side (karma-kāṇḍa). Their aim is no longer the obtainment of earthly happiness and afterwards bliss in the abode of Yama by sacrificing correctly to the gods, but release from mundane existence by the absorption of the individual soul in the world-soul through correct knowledge. Here, therefore, the sacrificial ceremonial has become useless and speculative knowledge all-important.

  The essential theme of the Upanishads is the nature of the world-soul. Their conception of it represents the final stage in the development from the world-man, Purusha, of the Rigveda to the world-soul, Ātman; from the personal creator, Prajāpati, to the impersonal source of all being, Brahma. Ātman in the Rigveda means no more than “breath”; wind, for instance, being spoken of as the ātman of Varuṇa. In the Brāhmaṇas it came to mean “soul” or “self.” In one of their speculations the prāṇas or “vital airs,” which are supposed to be based on the ātman, are identified with the gods, and so an ātman comes to be attributed to the universe. In one of the later books of the Çatapatha Brāhmaṇa (X. vi. 3) this ātman, which has already arrived at a high degree of abstraction, is said to “pervade this universe.” Brahma (neuter) in the Rigveda signified nothing more than “prayer” or “devotion.” But even in the oldest Brāhmaṇas it has come to have the sense of “universal holiness,” as manifested in prayer, priest, and sacrifice. In the Upanishads it is the holy principle which animates nature. Having a long subsequent history, this word is a very epitome of the evolution of religious thought in India. These two conceptions, Ātman and Brahma, are commonly treated as synonymous in the Upanishads. But, strictly speaking, Brahma, the older term, represents the cosmical principle which pervades the universe, Ātman the psychical principle manif
ested in man; and the latter, as the known, is used to explain the former as the unknown. The Ātman under the name of the Eternal (aksharam) is thus described in the Bṛihadāraṇyaka Upanishad (III. viii. 8, 11): —

  “It is not large, and not minute; not short, not long; without blood, without fat; without shadow, without darkness; without wind, without ether; not adhesive, not tangible; without smell, without taste; without eyes, ears, voice, or mind; without heat, breath, or mouth; without personal or family name; unaging, undying, without fear, immortal, dustless, not uncovered or covered; with nothing before, nothing behind, nothing within. It consumes no one and is consumed by no one. It is the unseen seer, the unheard hearer, the unthought thinker, the unknown knower. There is no other seer, no other hearer, no other thinker, no other knower. That is the Eternal in which space (ākāça) is woven and which is interwoven with it.”

  Here, for the first time in the history of human thought, we find the Absolute grasped and proclaimed.

  A poetical account of the nature of the Ātman is given by the Kāṭhaka Upanishad in the following stanzas: —

  That whence the sun’s orb rises up,

  And that in which it sinks again:

  In it the gods are all contained,

  Beyond it none can ever pass (iv. 9).

  Its form can never be to sight apparent,

  Not any one may with his eye behold it:

  By heart and mind and soul alone they grasp it,

  And those who know it thus become immortal (vi. 9).

  Since not by speech and not by thought,

  Not by the eye can it be reached:

  How else may it be understood

  But only when one says “it is”? (vi. 12).

  The place of the more personal Prajāpati is taken in the Upanishads by the Ātman as a creative power. Thus the Bṛihadāraṇyaka (I. iv.) relates that in the beginning the Ātman or the Brahma was this universe. It was afraid in its loneliness and felt no pleasure. Desiring a second being, it became man and woman, whence the human race was produced. It then proceeded to produce male and female animals in a similar way; finally creating water, fire, the gods, and so forth. The author then proceeds in a more exalted strain: —

  “It (the Ātman) is here all-pervading down to the tips of the nails. One does not see it any more than a razor hidden in its case or fire in its receptacle. For it does not appear as a whole. When it breathes, it is called breath; when it speaks, voice; when it hears, ear; when it thinks, mind. These are merely the names of its activities. He who worships the one or the other of these, has not (correct) knowledge.... One should worship it as the Self. For in it all these (breath, etc.) become one.”

  In one of the later Upanishads, the Çvetāçvatara (iv. 10), the notion, so prominent in the later Vedānta system, that the material world is an illusion (māyā), is first met with. The world is here explained as an illusion produced by Brahma as a conjuror (māyin). This notion is, however, inherent even in the oldest Upanishads. It is virtually identical with the teaching of Plato that the things of experience are only the shadow of the real things, and with the teaching of Kant, that they are only phenomena of the thing in itself.

  The great fundamental doctrine of the Upanishads is the identity of the individual ātman with the world Ātman. It is most forcibly expressed in a frequently repeated sentence of the Chhāndogya Upanishad (vi. 8–16): “This whole world consists of it: that is the Real, that is the Soul, that art thou, O Çvetaketu.” In that famous formula, “That art thou” (tat tvam asi), all the teachings of the Upanishads are summed up. The Bṛihadāraṇyaka (I. iv. 6) expresses the same doctrine thus: “Whoever knows this, ‘I am brahma’ (aham brahma asmi), becomes the All. Even the gods are not able to prevent him from becoming it. For he becomes their Self (ātman).”

  This identity was already recognised in the Çatapatha Brāhmaṇa (X. vi. 3): “Even as the smallest granule of millet, so is this golden Purusha in the heart.... That self of the spirit is my self: on passing from hence I shall obtain that Self.”

  We find everywhere in these treatises a restless striving to grasp the true nature of the pantheistic Self, now through one metaphor, now through another. Thus (Bṛih. Up. II. iv.) the wise Yājnavalkya, about to renounce the world and retire to the forest, replies to the question of his wife, Maitreyī, with the words: “As a lump of salt thrown into the water would dissolve and could not be taken out again, while the water, wherever tasted, would be salt, so is this great being endless, unlimited, simply compacted of cognition. Arising out of these elements, it disappears again in them. After death there is no consciousness;” for, as he further explains, when the duality on which consciousness is based disappears, consciousness must necessarily cease.

  In another passage of the same Upanishad (II. i. 20) we read: “Just as the spider goes out of itself by means of its thread, as tiny sparks leap out of the fire, so from the Ātman issue all vital airs, all worlds, all gods, all beings.”

  Here, again, is a stanza from the Muṇḍaka (III. ii. 8): —

  As rivers flow and disappear at last

  In ocean’s waters, name and form renouncing,

  So, too, the sage, released from name and form,

  Is merged in the divine and highest spirit.

  In a passage of the Bṛihadāraṇyaka (III. vii.) Yājnavalkya describes the Ātman as the “inner guide” (antaryāmin): “Who is in all beings, different from all beings, who guides all beings within, that is thy Self, the inward guide, immortal.”

  The same Upanishad contains an interesting conversation, in which King Ajātaçatru of Kāçi (Benares) instructs the Brahman, Bālāki Gārgya, that Brahma is not the spirit (purusha) which is in sun, moon, wind, and other natural phenomena, or even in the (waking) soul (ātman), but is either the dreaming soul, which is creative, assuming any form at pleasure, or, in the highest stage, the soul in dreamless sleep, for here all phenomena have disappeared. This is the first and the last condition of Brahma, in which no world exists, all material existence being only the phantasms of the dreaming world-soul.

  Of somewhat similar purport is a passage of the Chhāndogya (viii. 7–12), where Prajāpati is represented as teaching the nature of the Ātman in three stages. The soul in the body as reflected in a mirror or water is first identified with Brahma, then the dreaming soul, and, lastly, the soul in dreamless sleep.

  How generally accepted the pantheistic theory must have become by the time the disputations at the court of King Janaka took place, is indicated by the form in which questions are put. Thus two different sages in the Bṛihadāraṇyaka (iii. 4, 5) successively ask Yājnavalkya in the same words: “Explain to us the Brahma which is manifest and not hidden, the Ātman that dwells in everything.”

  With the doctrine that true knowledge led to supreme bliss by the absorption of the individual soul in Brahma went hand in hand the theory of transmigration (saṃsāra). That theory is developed in the oldest Upanishads; it must have been firmly established by the time Buddhism arose, for Buddha accepted it without question. Its earliest form is found in the Çatapatha Brāhmaṇa, where the notion of being born again after death and dying repeatedly is coupled with that of retribution. Thus it is here said that those who have correct knowledge and perform a certain sacrifice are born again after death for immortality, while those who have not such knowledge and do not perform this sacrifice are reborn again and again, becoming the prey of Death. The notion here expressed does not go beyond repeated births and deaths in the next world. It is transformed to the doctrine of transmigration in the Upanishads by supposing rebirth to take place in this world. In the Bṛihadāraṇyaka we further meet with the beginnings of the doctrine of karma, or “action,” which regulates the new birth, and makes it depend on a man’s own deeds. When the body returns to the elements, nothing of the individuality is here said to remain but the karma, according to which a man becomes good or bad. This is, perhaps, the germ of the Buddhistic doctrine, which, though denying the
existence of soul altogether, allows karma to continue after death and to determine the next birth.

  The most important and detailed account of the theory of transmigration which we possess from Vedic times is supplied by the Chhāndogya Upanishad. The forest ascetic possessed of knowledge and faith, it is here said, after death enters the devayāna, the “path of the gods,” which leads to absorption in Brahma, while the householder who has performed sacrifice and good works goes by the pitṛiyāṇa or “path of the Fathers” to the moon, where he remains till the consequences of his actions are exhausted. He then returns to earth, being first born again as a plant and afterwards as a man of one of the three highest castes. Here we have a double retribution, first in the next world, then by transmigration in this. The former is a survival of the old Vedic belief about the future life. The wicked are born again as outcasts (chaṇḍālas), dogs or swine.

  The account of the Bṛihadāraṇyaka (VI. ii. 15–16) is similar. Those who have true knowledge and faith pass through the world of the gods and the sun to the world of Brahma, whence there is no return. Those who practise sacrifice and good works pass through the world of the Fathers to the moon, whence they return to earth, being born again as men. Others become birds, beasts, and reptiles.