A History of Sanskrit Literature Part 9

Allied to the didactic poems are the riddles, of which there are at least two collections in the Rigveda. In their simplest form they are found in a poem (29) of the eighth book. In each of its ten stanzas a different deity is described by his characteristic marks, but without being mentioned, the hearer being left to guess his name. Vishnu, for instance, is thus alluded to:--

Another with his mighty stride has made three steps To where the G.o.ds rejoice in bliss.

A far more difficult collection, consisting of fifty-two stanzas, occurs in the first book (164). Nothing here is directly described, the language being always symbolical and mystical. The allusions in several cases are so obscurely expressed that it is now impossible to divine the meaning. Sometimes the riddle is put in the form of a question, and in one case the answer itself is also given. Occasionally the poet propounds a riddle of which he himself evidently does not know the solution. In general these problems are stated as enigmas. The subject of about one-fourth of them is the sun. Six or seven deal with clouds, lightning, and the production of rain; three or four with Agni and his various forms; about the same number with the year and its divisions; two with the origin of the world and the One Being. The dawn, heaven and earth, the metres, speech, and some other subjects which can hardly even be conjectured, are dealt with in one or two stanzas respectively. One of the more clearly expressed of these enigmas is the following, which treats of the wheel of the year with its twelve months and three hundred and sixty days:--

Provided with twelve spokes and undecaying, The wheel of order rolls around the heavens; Within it stand, O Agni, joined in couples, Together seven hundred sons and twenty.

The thirteenth or intercalary month, contrasted with the twelve others conceived as pairs, is thus darkly alluded to: "Of the co-born they call the seventh single-born; sages call the six twin pairs G.o.d-born." The latter expression probably alludes to the intercalary month being an artificial creation of man. In the later Vedic age it became a practice to propound such enigmas, called "theological problems" (brahmodya), in contests for intellectual pre-eminence when kings inst.i.tuted great sacrifices or Brahmans were otherwise a.s.sembled together.

Closely allied to these poetical riddles is the philosophical poetry contained in the six or seven cosmogonic hymns of the Rigveda. The question of the origin of the world here treated is of course largely mixed with mythological and theological notions. Though betraying much confusion of ideas, these early speculations are of great interest as the sources from which flow various streams of later thought. Most of these hymns handle the subject of the origin of the world in a theological, and only one in a purely philosophical spirit. In the view of the older Ris.h.i.+s, the G.o.ds in general, or various individual deities, "generated" the world. This view conflicts with the frequently expressed notion that heaven and earth are the parents of the G.o.ds. The poets thus involve themselves in the paradox that the children produce their own parents. Indra, for instance, is described in so many words as having begotten his father and mother from his own body (x. 54, 3). This conceit evidently pleased the fancy of a priesthood becoming more and more addicted to far-fetched speculations; for in the cosmogonic hymns we find reciprocal generation more than once introduced in the stages of creation. Thus Daksha is said to have sprung from Aditi, and Aditi from Daksha (x. 72, 4).

The evolution of religious thought in the Rigveda led to the conception of a creator distinct from any of the chief deities and superior to all the G.o.ds. He appears under the various names of Purusha, Vicvakarman, Hiranyagarbha, or Praj.a.pati in the cosmogonic hymns. Whereas creation, according to the earlier view, is regularly referred to as an act of natural generation with some form of the verb jan, "to beget," these cosmogonic poems speak of it as the manufacture or evolution from some original material. In one of them (x. 90), the well-known Hymn of Man (purusha-sukta), the G.o.ds are still the agents, but the material out of which the world is made consists of the body of a primeval giant, Purusha (man), who being thousand-headed and thousand-footed, extends even beyond the earth, as he covers it. The fundamental idea of the world being created from the body of a giant is, indeed, very ancient, being met with in several primitive mythologies. But the manner in which the idea is here worked out is sufficiently late. Quite in the spirit of the Brahmanas, where Vishnu is identified with the sacrifice, the act of creation is treated as a sacrificial rite, the original man being conceived as a victim, the parts of which when cut up become portions of the universe. His head, we are told, became the sky, his navel the air, his feet the earth, while from his mind sprang the moon, from his eye the sun, from his breath the wind. "Thus they (the G.o.ds) fas.h.i.+oned the worlds." Another sign of the lateness of the hymn is its pantheistic colouring; for it is here said that "Purusha is all this world, what has been and shall be,"

and "one-fourth of him is all creatures, and three-fourths are the world of the immortals in heaven." In the Brahmanas, Purusha is the same as the creator, Praj.a.pati, and in the Upanishads he is identified with the universe. Still later, in the dualistic Sankhya philosophy, Purusha becomes the name of "soul" as opposed to "matter." In the Hymn of Man a being called Viraj is mentioned as produced from Purusha. This in the later Vedanta philosophy is a name of the personal creator as contrasted with Brahma, the universal soul. The Purusha hymn, then, may be regarded as the oldest product of the pantheistic literature of India. It is at the same time one of the very latest poems of the Rigvedic age; for it presupposes a knowledge of the three oldest Vedas, to which it refers together by name. It also for the first and only time in the Rigveda mentions the four castes; for it is here said that Purusha's mouth became the Brahman, his arms the Rajanya (warrior), his thighs the Vaicya (agriculturist), and his feet the cudra (serf).

In nearly all the other poems dealing with the origin of the world, not the G.o.ds collectively but an individual creator is the actor. Various pa.s.sages in other hymns show that the sun was regarded as an important agent of generation by the Ris.h.i.+s. Thus he is described as "the soul of all that moves and stands" (i. 115, 1), and is said to be "called by many names though one" (i. 164, 46). Such statements indicate that the sun was in process of being abstracted to the character of a creator. This is probably the origin of Vicvakarman, "the all-creating," to whom two cosmogonic hymns (x. 81-82) are addressed. Three of the seven stanzas of the first deserve to be quoted:--

What was the place on which he gained a footing?

Where found he anything, or how, to hold by, What time, the earth creating, Vicvakarman, All-seeing, with his might disclosed the heavens?

Who has his eyes and mouth in every quarter, Whose arms and feet are turned in all directions, The one G.o.d, when the earth and heaven creating, With his two arms and wings together welds them.

What was the wood, and what the tree, pray tell us, From which they fas.h.i.+oned forth the earth and heaven?

Ye sages, in your mind, pray make inquiry, Whereon he stood, when he the worlds supported?

It is an interesting coincidence that "wood," the term here used, was regularly employed in Greek philosophy to express "original matter"

(hule).

In the next hymn (x. 82), the theory is advanced that the waters produced the first germ of things, the source of the universe and the G.o.ds.

Who is our father, parent, and disposer, Who knows all habitations and all beings, Who only to the G.o.ds their names apportions: To him all other beings turn inquiring?

What germ primeval did the waters cherish, Wherein the G.o.ds all saw themselves together, Which is beyond the earth, beyond that heaven, Beyond the mighty G.o.ds' mysterious dwelling?

That germ primeval did the waters cherish, Wherein the G.o.ds together all a.s.sembled, The One that in the goat's [5] source is established, Within which all the worlds are comprehended.

Ye cannot find him who these worlds created: That which comes nearer to you is another.

In a cosmogonic poem (x. 121) of considerable beauty the creator further appears under the name of Hiranyagarbha, "germ of gold," a notion doubtless suggested by the rising sun. Here, too, the waters are, in producing Agni, regarded as bearing the germ of all life.

The Germ of Gold at first came into being, Produced as the one lord of all existence.

The earth he has supported and this heaven: What G.o.d shall we with sacrifices wors.h.i.+p?

Who gives the breath of life and vital power, To whose commands the G.o.ds all render homage, Whose shade is death and life immortal: What G.o.d shall we with sacrifices wors.h.i.+p?

What time the mighty waters came containing All germs of life and generating Agni, Then was produced the G.o.ds' one vital spirit: What G.o.d shall we with sacrifices wors.h.i.+p?

Who with his mighty power surveyed the waters That intellect and sacrifice engendered, The one G.o.d over all the G.o.ds exalted: What G.o.d shall we with sacrifices wors.h.i.+p?

The refrain receives its answer in a tenth stanza (added to the poem at a later time), which proclaims the unknown G.o.d to be Praj.a.pati.

Two other cosmogonic poems explain the origin of the world philosophically as the evolution of the existent (sat) from the non-existent (asat). In the somewhat confused account given in one of them (x. 72), three stages of creation may be distinguished: first the world is produced, then the G.o.ds, and lastly the sun. The theory of evolution is here still combined with that of creation:--

Even as a smith, the Lord of Prayer, Together forged this universe: In earliest ages of the G.o.ds From what was not arose what is.

A far finer composition than this is the Song of Creation (x. 129):--

Non-being then existed not, nor being: There was no air, nor heaven which is beyond it.

What motion was there? Where? By whom directed?

Was water there, and fathomless abysses?

Death then existed not, nor life immortal; Of neither night nor day was any semblance.

The One breathed calm and windless by self-impulse: There was not any other thing beyond it.

Darkness at first was covered up by darkness; This universe was indistinct and fluid.

The empty s.p.a.ce that by the void was hidden.

That One was by the force of heat engendered.

Desire then at the first arose within it, Desire, which was the earliest seed of spirit.

The bond of being in non-being sages Discovered searching in their hearts with wisdom.

Who knows it truly? who can here declare it?

Whence was it born? whence issued this creation?

And did the G.o.ds appear with its production?

But then who knows from whence it has arisen?

This world-creation, whence it has arisen.

Or whether it has been produced or has not.

He who surveys it in the highest heaven, He only knows, or ev'n he does not know it.

Apart from its high literary merit, this poem is most noteworthy for the daring speculations which find utterance in so remote an age. But even here may be traced some of the main defects of Indian philosophy--lack of clearness and consistency, with a tendency to make reasoning depend on mere words. Being the only piece of sustained speculation in the Rigveda, it is the starting-point of the natural philosophy which a.s.sumed shape in the evolutionary Sankhya system. It will, moreover, always retain a general interest as the earliest specimen of Aryan philosophic thought. With the theory of the Song of Creation, that after the non-existent had developed into the existent, water came first, and then intelligence was evolved from it by heat, the cosmogonic accounts of the Brahmanas substantially agree. Here, too, the non-existent becomes the existent, of which the first form is the waters. On these floats Hiranyagarbha, the cosmic golden egg, whence is produced the spirit that desires and creates the universe. Always requiring the agency of the creator Praj.a.pati at an earlier or a later stage, the Brahmanas in some of their accounts place him first, in others the waters. This fundamental contradiction, due to mixing up the theory of creation with that of evolution, is removed in the Sankhya system by causing Purusha, or soul, to play the part of a pa.s.sive spectator, while Prakriti, or primordial matter, undergoes successive stages of development. The cosmogonic hymns of the Rigveda are not only thus the precursors of Indian philosophy, but also of the Puranas, one of the main objects of which is to describe the origin of the world.