English
In view of the progressive emphasis upon, and consoli¬ dation of, this ego-centric point of view in the Brhaddranyaka Upanishad,* in the Brahmasutras, such as, and Samkara, in particular, the importance of the Vamadeviya Sukta in the Rgveda cannot possibly be over-esti¬ mated. This point of view is further reinforced by another famous hymn, known as the Vak S&kta.l Here Fo/c,§ the presiding deity over *1. iv. 10. 11. i. 80, t Rgveda, X. 12S. .. J . g Ibid., 8. THE VEDINTA IN THE MAKING 71 speech, is believed to be the seer or author, and represents herself as the- sole creator and governor of all—as one whose glory is too great to be fully encompassed either by heaven or by earth.* Reviewing the growth of Rgvedic thought as embodied in the hymns dedicated to their respective specific gods, the following graded hierarchy may, with a fair degree of accuracy, be made out: (1) Dyaus or Dyava-prthivi, as the god of nature- worship : (2) Varuna, as the moralised deity of awakened moral reflection of a later period; (3) Indra, as the jealous god of the age of conquest and domination; (4) Prajapati, as the God-Creator of the monotheists; and (5) Ekam or the One, as the maximised essence of each of the gods of the pre¬ ceding stages.f The gradation satisfies at once the requirements of logic as well as chronology. Here, as elsewhere, chronological considerations cannot be rigorously followed out on account of the inherent syncretism of Indian thought. The significance of the Rgveda in the making of the Vedanta lies not so much in any positive contribu- * The authorship of this Sukta to Vak, the supposed daughter of a Bsi called Brmhana is, to say the least of it, apocryphal. The more plausible hypothesis is that it is a hymn in honour of Vak, i.e. f wisdom orAo'yosthe plausi¬ bility being reinforced by the consideration that a similar invocation is to be found among the Babylonians, Jews, Greeks, and markedly in Chap. VIII of the Book of Proverbs. I owe this last suggestion to my friend Mr. A. Nag. f C/. Badhakrishnan, Indim PhUosapKy , Vol. I, Ch. II.. 72 A SYSTEMATIC STUDY OF THE VEDANTA \ tion towards it, but in preparing the field for the reception of the Vedanta. Although the main lines, on which Vedantic thought was destined to develop hereafter, lie prefigured herein, the value of the Rgveda is to be measured by what it as¬ pired to be and was not in actuality. It begins with that infantile wonder and its native hue of creative imagination, which is not, as yet, ‘ sicklied o’er with the pale cast of thought.’ Later, reflec¬ tive thought supervenes and seeks to introduce system and order into the reign of lawless mytho¬ logizing and god-making. Once criticism is aroused, the mongrel method of allegorizing is steadily on the wane, until the repugnant elements in that patched-up unity break asunder and dissi¬ pate it altogether. Before the noon-day achieve¬ ments of reflective thought, the twilight of mythopooic activity does admittedly pale away into insignificance, and thus all its findings are safely relegated to a forgotten chapter in the history of human search after truth. Nevertheless the' Rgveda, with all its backwardness, may truly be said to have succeeded in what it seems to have failed in : its twilight of god-making eagerly antici¬ pates the dawn of a new intellectual era. Its failure, if it is to be at all called by that name, is but a triumph’s evidence—an evidence of the per¬ petual urge of reflective thought in the search after truth. In this long and arduous pilgrimage, the truth-seeker is too apt to be deterred on the way- side by alluring allegories and myths masquerading at 1 philosophic truth. Accordingly, in the making THE VEDANTA IN THE MAKING 73 of the Vedanta, no prayer is more to the point than the one that has gone forth from the heart of the Isavasyopamshad : “ The entrance to truth is covered up by a shining disk; that do thou, 0 solar god, remove, so that the true religion may he envisaged.” 3 * * “ fvcstS* qnwnftfo t i nwri wrwhi iu” 10 LECTURE III Prom Authority to Freedom : From Srtjti to Anubhuti The spiritual ferment, that had set in under the fostering care of a free, unfettered spirit of inquiry in the Rgveda, crystallized later as a set of dogmatics. One must hasten to add, however, that these stood, not for a stereotyped set of doctrines, meant to be forced down the throat of the members of a particular Church—for such there was none, but only A6rama or hermitage for seers of revered memory, transmitting from age to age the rich legapy of their mystical intuitions or ecstatic revelations. These stand for that floating mass of experience, drawn upon by successive generations of truth-seekers, and reduced to order or system with the title of Vedanta Philosophy superinduced. These are all the dogmatics of the Vedanta school, conformity to which is never secured by an appeal to an extra- philosophical Authority, obviating the necessity of individual ratiocination ( vicara), or dispensing with the need of private mysticism in thg matter of interpreting religious tenets. Neglecting differ¬ ences of emphasis, what the different schools of Vedanta force into prominence is just the place of <Sruti or Revelation in the Vedanta. But, to the philosopher of the Vedanta school, this appeal to PROM AUTHORITY TO FREEDOM 75 Sruti or faith in Revelation is no mere emotional hypnosis induced by undiluted veneration for Authority, no mere blind or uncriticised faith in dogmas, but a provisional or tentative belief ter¬ minating in an assured conviction, begotten of logi¬ cal ratiocination (vicaranadhyavasdnanirvrttah) ,* as Samkara himself would affirm. The word ‘ dogma, ’ because of its past abuses and aberrations, has come to figure as a veritable * red rag ’ to the bull of free thinking, or the so-called Protestant ‘ right of private judgment.’ The appeal to faith in dogmas may be construed as a return to Authority, which runs directly counter to the spirit of the times, to the very spirit of modernism in thought and culture—modern philosophy itself being ‘ protestantism in the sphere of the thinking spirit,’ the story of a pilgrimage from Authority to Freedom. But freedom from what?—one may pertinently enquire. Not surely an ‘ unchartered freedom ’ to drift endlessly, which, after all, ‘ tires ’ and cannot, humanly speaking, be sought for its own sake. While fully acknowledging that the spirit of Protestantism has not merely an historic justification, but an importance for all times, it is in the fitness of things to take stock at times of the net results, accruing from the exercise of the rights of private judgment in all matters affecting the well¬ being of the spirit. It is, confessedly, difficult in the extreme to withstand the spell of modernism or the witchcraft of the magic word ‘ freedom,’ * Com. on Y. S., I. 1. ii. 76 A SYS'rEMAWC StUt>Y OP fHE VPDINtA which so often hypnotises us, and to take dis¬ passionately our bearings in order to find out if we have not, in the extravagance of our enthusiasm, overshot the mark. It is all the more imperative because all reactions, as we know, have a tendency to be radical, and we may, not infrequently be losing the substance in clutching at the shadow. There is an obvious danger, and not merely an unrelieved tedium, in perpetually sharpening one’s knife when there is nothing to cut; for it may recoil, for aught we know, upon those who wield it. The institu¬ tion of Authority or of dogmas may not, after all, appear to be antagonistic to the ends of free think¬ ing, when their respective relations are viewed in a proper perspective. The function of a dogma, is, in a philosophical reference, mainly limitative or restrictive—prescribing the limits beyond which religious imagination or private mysticism may not, in its indispensable interpretative function, go astray. It works not by mechanical dictation but by illuminating inspiration—not by annexing or annulling the right of private judgment or mysticism, but by appealing and giving ungrudging recognition to these. It functions, in other words, not by invoking to its aid a supernatural machinery of Authority, but by always preferring its appeal to the natural light of reason. Accordingly, one can subscribe to dogmas without being a dogmatist. Indeed, the dogmas truly viewed stand as the capitalised spiritual experience of the race, having an implicit rationality of their’ own and awaiting a rational verification in the personal experience of FROM AUTHORITY TO FREEDOM 7 1 an individual. As it has been wisely observed,* ‘ what is dogma to the ordinary man is experience to the pure in heart.’ Dogma is thus experience in the making, and faith or belief which has an air of dogmatism about it, to begin with, is but reason cultivating itself. Should such a faith offend the dignity of free thinking? Viewed in a truer perspective, therefore, the age-long conflict between Revelationism and Rationalism, between Authority and Free Thinking, between Faith and Knowledge, ceases to have any terror for the Vedantist. The solvent that might even to-day be brought to bear on the situation was enunciated long ago by Samkaracharyya as one of the representative thinkers of the Vedanta school. It need not, indeed, be denied 1 that Samkara took up a fairly submissive attitude in regard to the authority of the Upanishad texts.’t In fact, it would be flying in the face of accredited facts—the modus operandi of Samkara all through and his out¬ spoken utterances with regard to the Sruti— to ignore the force of a criticism that takes, in all conscience, its stand upon crucial and committing statements of the Acharyya himself.