Hinduism and Buddhism, An Historical Sketch Volume II Part 34

purushasyabhavat and the commentary explains isvara-pratishedhad iti seshah "supply the words, because we deny that there is a supreme G.o.d."]

[Footnote 755: Nevertheless the commentator Vijnana-Bhikshu (c. 1500) tries to explain away this atheism and to reconcile the San?khya with the Vedanta. See Garbe's preface to his edition of the San?khya-pravacana-bhashya.]

[Footnote 756: VI. 13.]

[Footnote 757: V. 5.]

[Footnote 758: isvara is apparently a purusha like others but greater in glory and untouched by human infirmities. Yoga sutras, I. 24-26.]

[Footnote 759: It is a singular fact that both the San?khya-karika-bhashya and a treatise on the Vaises.h.i.+ka philosophy are included in the Chinese Tripitaka (Nanjio, Cat. Nos. 1300 and 1295). A warning is however added that they are not "the law of the Buddha."]

[Footnote 760: See Jacobi, _J.A.O.S._ Dec. 1910, p. 24. But if Vasubandhu lived about 280-360, as is now generally believed, allusions to the Yogacara school in the Yoga sutras do not oblige us to place the sutras much later than 300 A.D. since the Yogacara was founded by Asanga, the brother of Vasubandhu.]

[Footnote 761: I find it hard to accept Deussen's view (_Philosophy of the Upanishads_, chap. X) that the San?khya has grown out of the Vedanta.]

[Footnote 762: See _e.g._ Vishn?u Puran?a, I. chaps. 2, 4, 5. The Bhagavad-gita, though almost the New Testament of Vedantists, uses the words San?khya and Yoga in several pa.s.sages as meaning speculative truth and the religious life and is concerned to show that they are the same. See II. 39; III. 3; V. 4, 5.]

[Footnote 763: It is perhaps hardly necessary to add that there has been endless discussion as to the sense and manner in which the soul is G.o.d.]

[Footnote 764: Br?ihad aran. IV. 4. 6; _Ib._ I. iv. 10. "I am Brahman."]

[Footnote 765: See above Book II. chaps. V and VI.]

[Footnote 766: Chand. Up. III. 14.]

[Footnote 767: Chand. Up. VI.]

[Footnote 768: See Deussen, _Philosophy of the Upanishads._]

[Footnote 769: Ato'nyad artam. Br?ihad ar. III. several times.]

[Footnote 770: Maitrayan?a. Brah. Upanishad, VI. 20. "Having seen his own self as The Self he becomes selfless, and because he is selfless he is without limit, without cause, absorbed in thought."]

[Footnote 771: There is nothing to fix the date of this work except that k.u.marila in commenting on it in the eighth century treats it as old and authoritative. It was perhaps composed in the early Gupta period.]

[Footnote 772: Keith in _J.R.A.S._ 1907, p. 492 says it is becoming more and more probable that Badarayan?a cannot be dated after the Christian era. Jacobi in _J.A.O.S._ 1911, p. 29 concludes that the Brahma-sutras were composed between 200 and 450 A.D.]

[Footnote 773: Such attempts must have begun early. The Maitrayana Upanishad (II. 3) talks of Sarvopanishadvidya, the science of all the Upanishads.]

[Footnote 774: See above, p. 207 ff.]

[Footnote 775: The same distinction occurs in the works of Meister Eckhart ( 1327 A.D.) who in many ways approximates to Indian thought, both Buddhist and Vedantist. He makes a distinction between the G.o.dhead and G.o.d. The G.o.dhead is the revealer but unrevealed: it is described as "wordless" (Yajnavalkya's _neti_, _neti_), "the nameless nothing," "the immoveable rest." But G.o.d is the manifestation of the G.o.dhead, the uttered word. "All that is in the G.o.dhead is one.

Therefore we can say nothing. He is above all names, above all nature.

G.o.d works, so doeth not the G.o.dhead. Therein are they distinguished, in working and in not working. The end of all things is the hidden darkness of the eternal G.o.dhead, unknown and never to be known."

(Quoted by Rufus Jones, _Studies in Mystical Religion_, p. 225.) It may be doubted if Sankara's distinction between the Higher and Lower Brahman is to be found in the Upanishads but it is probably the best means of harmonizing the discrepancies in those works which Indian theologians feel bound to explain away.]

[Footnote 776: Vedanta sutras, II. 1. 32-3, and San?kara's commentary, _S.B.E._ vol. x.x.xIV. pp. 356-7. Ramanuja holds a similar view and it is very common in India, _e.g._ Vishn?u Pur. I. chap. 2.]

[Footnote 777: See too a remarkable pa.s.sage in his comment on Brahma-sutras, II. 1. 23. "As soon as the consciousness of non-difference arises in us, the transmigratory state of the individual soul and the creative quality of Brahman vanish at once, the whole phenomenon of plurality which springs from wrong knowledge being sublated by perfect knowledge and what becomes then of the creation and the faults of not doing what is beneficial and the like?"]

[Footnote 778: Although San?kara's commentary is a piece of severe ratiocination, especially in its controversial parts, yet he holds that the knowledge of Brahman depends not on reasoning but on scripture and intuition. "The presentation before the mind of the Highest Self is effected by meditation and devotion." Brah. Sut. III.

2. 24. See too his comments on I. 1. 2 and II. 1. 11.]

[Footnote 779: See Sukhtankar, _Teachings of Vedanta according to Ramanuja_, pp. 17-19. Walleser, _Der aeltere Vedanta_, and De la Vallee Poussin in _J.R.A.S._ 1910, p. 129.]

[Footnote 780: This term is generally rendered by qualified, that is not absolute, Monism. But South Indian scholars give a slightly different explanation and maintain that it is equivalent to _Visisht?ayor advaitam_ or the ident.i.ty of the two qualified (_visisht?a_) conditions of Brahman. Brahman is qualified by _cit_ and _acit_, souls and matter, which stand to him in the relation of attributes. The two conditions are _Karyavastha_ or period of cosmic manifestation in which _cit_ and _acit_ are manifest and _Karan?avastha_ or period of cosmic dissolution, when they exist only in a subtle state within Brahman. These two conditions are not different (_advaitam_). See Srinivas Iyengar, _J.R.A.S._ 1912, p. 1073 and also _Sri Ramanujacarya: His Philosophy_ by Rajagopalacharyar.]

[Footnote 781: Compare the phrase of Keats in a letter quoted by Bosanquet, _Gifford Lectures for 1912_, p. 66. "As various as the lives of men are, so various become their souls and thus does G.o.d make individual beings, souls, identical souls of the sparks of his own essence."]

[Footnote 782: This tenet is justified by Br?ihad Aran. Up. III. 3 ff.

which is a great text for Ramanuja's school. "He who dwells in the earth (water, etc.) and within the earth (or, is different from the earth) whom the earth knows not, whose body the earth is, who rules the earth within, he is thyself, the ruler within, the immortal."]

[Footnote 783: Bhag.-gita, XV. 16, 17.]

[Footnote 784: The two doctrines are called _Vivartavada_ and _Parin?amavada._]

[Footnote 785: These are only the more subtle _tattvas_. There are also 60 gross ones. See for the whole subject Schomerus Der caiva-Siddhanta, p. 129.]

[Footnote 786: It also finds expression in myths about the division of the deity into male and female halves, the cosmic egg, etc., which are found in all strata of Indian literature.]

[Footnote 787: An account of tantric cosmology can be found in Avalon, _Mahan. Tantra_, pp xix-x.x.xi. See also Avalon, _Prapancasara Tantra_, pp. 5 ff.; Srinivasa Iyengar, _Indian Philosophy_, pp. 143 and 295 ff.; Bhandarkar, _Vaishn?. and Saivism_, pp. 145 ff.]

[Footnote 788: Sarva-darsana-san?graha, chap. IX. For this doctrine in China see Wieger _Histoire des Croyances religieuses en Chine_, p.

411.]

[Footnote 789: See Yule's _Marco Polo_, II. pp. 365, 369.]

[Footnote 790: See Rhys Davids' note in his _Dialogues of the Buddha on Digha Nikaya_, Sutta V. pp. 166 ff. He seems to show that Lokayata meant originally natural philosophy as a part of a Brahman's education and only gradually acquired a bad meaning. The Arthasastra also recommends the Sankhya, Yoga and Lokayata systems.]

[Footnote 791: Maitr. Up. VII. 8.]

[Footnote 792: See also Suali in _Museon_, 1908, pp. 277 ff. and the article Materialism (Indian) in _E.R.E._ For another instance of ancient materialism see the views of Payasi set forth in Dig. Nik.

XXIII. The Br?ihad Ar. Up. III. 2. 13 implies that the idea of body and spirit being disintegrated at death was known though perhaps not relished.]

[Footnote 793: Translation by Shea and Troyer, vol. II. pp. 201-2.]

[Footnote 794: _Sanskrit Ma.n.u.scripts in the Adyar Library_, 1908, pp.

300-1.]