English
All this was different in ancient times, and particokrlj among a people so remarkably gifted for philosophical abstraction as the Hindus. Long before they b^an to care for the laws of nature, the return of the seasons, the course of the stars, or any other scien- tific or practical subject, their thoughts were fixed on the one great and ever recurring question. What am I? What does all this world around me mean ? Is there a cause, is there a creator — a God ? or is it all illudon, chance, and fate ? Again and again the Rishis ex- press their doubts, and the one knowledge which they value as wonderful and excellent is the knowledge of rot [liyin-cu It cannot be right to class every poem and every verse in which mystic or metaphysical specu- lations occur as modem, simply because they resemble the language of the Upanishads. These Upanishads did not spring into existence on a sudden: like a stream which has received many a mountain torrent, and is fed by many a rivulet, the literature of the Upanishads proves, better than anjrthing else, that the elements of their philosophical poetry came from a more distant fountain. The eindence of lan- guage b the most decisive for settling the relatire age of Vedic hymns; and the occurrence of such a word as taddntm^ then, is more calculated to rouse doubts as to the early date of this hynm than the most abstruse metaphysical ideas which may be discovered in it. Hymns like that ascribed to Dirghatamas (i. 164.) contain, no doubt, many verses full of the most artificial conceptions, the lucu- brations rather of conceited dreamers than of simple and original thinkers. But even in those large coUeC' ANTIQUITY OF PHILOSOPHY-. 567 tive poems there are lines which look likd relics of a better age, and bear the stamp of true and genuine feeling. Thus we read in the 37th verse : — ** I know not what this is that I am like ; turned inward I walk, chained in my mind. When the first-born of time comes near me, then I obtain the portion of this speech." In the 30th verse of the same hymn we read: " Breathing lies the quick-moving life, heaving, yet firm, in the midst of its abodes. The living one walks through the powers of the dead : the immortal IS the brother of the mortal." Sometimes when these oracular sayings have been pronounced, the poet claims his due. " One who had eyes," he says, " saw it ; the blind will not understand it. A poet, who is a boy, he has perceived it ; he who understands it will be the father of his father." In the same hymn one verse occurs which boldly declares the existence of but one Divine Being, though invoked under different names. (Rv. i. 164. 46.) "They call (him) Indra, Mitra, Varuna, Agni; then he is the well-winged heavenly GarutmatJ that which is One the wise call it many ways ; they call it Agni, Yama, M&tari&van." Many of these verses have been incorporated in the Upanishads, and are there explained by later sophists who wish to represent them as a guarantee for the scholastic doctrines of the Ved&nta philosophy. It was in the Upanishads and in the Siitras of VylLsa that most Sanskrit scholars became first acquainted with these quotations from the Veda, and hence, even after they had been discovered in their original place in the hymns of the Rig-veda-sanhitA, a prejudice remained against their antiquity. The ideas which they ex- 568 HYMN TO THE SUPREME GOD. pressed were supposed to be of too abstract a nature for the uneducated poets of the Yedic age* I am far from defending the opinion of those who main- tained the existence of a school of priests and pbilo* sophers in the remotest ages of the world, and wbo discovered the deepest wisdom in the religious mys- teries and mjrthological traditions of the East But the reaction which these extravagant theories has pro- duced goes too far, if every thought which touches on the problems of philosophy is to be marked indis- criminately as a modem forgery, if every conception which reminds us of Moses, Plato, or the Apostles, is to be put down as necessarily borrowed from Jewish, Greek or Christian sources, and foisted thence into the collections of the ancient poetry of the Hindus. There is what Leibnitz called perennis quadam philosophia^ a search after truth which was not con- lined to the schools of priests or philosophers. Its language, no doubt, is less exact than that of an Aristotle, its tenets are vague, and the light which it sheds on the dark depths of human thought resembles more the sheet-lightning of a sombre evening, than the bright rays of a cloudless sunrise. Yet there is much to be learnt by the historian and the philosopher from these ancient guesses at truth; and we should not deprive ourselves of the new sources which have so unexpectedly been opened for studying the his- tory of man, fearful and wonderful as his structure, by casting wanton doubts on all that conflicts with our own previous conclusions. I add only one more hymn, in which the idea of one God is expressed with suca power and decision, that it will make us hesitate before we deny to the Aryan nations an instinctive Monotheism. (Rv x. 121.) BTMN TO THE SUPREME GOD. 569 " In the beginning* there arose the Source of golden light — He was the only bom Lord of all that is. He stablished the earth, and this sky;— Who is the God to whom we shall offer our sacrifice ? He who gives life, He who gives strength ; whose blessing all the bright gods desire ; whose shadow is immortality; whose shadow is death; — Who is the God to whom we shall offer our sacrifice ? He who through His power is the only King of the breathing and awakening world; — He who go- verns all, man and beast; — Who is the God to whom we shall offer our sacrifice ? He whose power these snowy mountains, whose power the sea proclaims, with the distant river — He whose these regions are as it were His two arms; — Who is the God to whom we shall offer our sacrifice? He through whom the sky is bright and the earth firm — He through whom the heaven was stablished — nay, the highest heaven — He who measured out the light in the air; — Who is the God to whom we shall offer our sacrifice ? He to whom heaven and earth, standing firm by His will, look up, trembling inwardly — He over whom the rising sun shines forth ; — Who is the God to whom we shall offer our sacrifice ? Wherever the mighty water-clouds went, where they placed the seed and lit the fire, thence arose He who is the only life of the bright gods; — Who is the God to whom we shall offer our sacrifice ? He who by His might looked even over the water- clouds, the clouds which gave strength and lit the sa- crifice. He who is God above all gods; — Who is the God to whom we shall offer our sacrifice ? May He not destroy us — He the creator of the pp 570 DATE OF THB CHHAKDAS FEBIOD. earth ; or He, the righteous, who created the heavoi; He who also created the bright and mighty waters ;- Who is the God to whom we shall offer our sacrifice?" There is nothing to prove that this hymn is of a particularly ancient date. On the contrary, there are expressions in it, especially the name of Hiran- yagarbha, which seem to belong to a later age. Bat even if we assign the lowest possible date to this and similar hymns, certain it is that they existed during the Mantra period, and before the composition of the BriLhmanas; certain it is that every verse and every syllable was counted in the Anukramanis of the SAtra period. With our received notions on the history of the human mind it may be difficult to account for facts like these ; but fiicts must not be made to evaporate in order to maintain a theory. The difficulty, such as it is, will be felt by all who think seriously and honestly on these problems. But it is better to state this difficulty than to conceal it. Even if we assign all philosophical hymns to the last years of the Mantra period, we have to account, in the 9th century B.C., for thoughts which, like the stems of forest trees, disclose circles within drcH almost impossible to count. There are hymns which are decidedly modern if compared with others* but if the most modem be ascribed to the Man- tra period, what must be the date of the earliest relics of the Chhandas age ?