English
Indeed, it is no senseless exaggeration to say that # mi i Introduction 3 every Hindu is suckled at the breast of the Vedantic ethos, but it is just possible to gloat upon a mere possibility with a placid, pathetic contentment, and thus for ever remain a suckling in the realm of mature philosophic thinking. While it is true that of all persons it is the Hindu that has in him, ceteris paribus, the making of a true Vedantist, it is none the less true that a mere potentiality is so often glori¬ fied into an actual possession, and thus rendered abortive. In the sphere of intellectual achieve¬ ments—least of all, in that of philosophic pursuits— there is no established law bf inheritance whereby one can claim to be a born legatee of a philosophic creed; in fact, philosophic persuasion, like freedom, can never be made a gift of, it has always to be earned. It is on account of our indifference to this time-worn maxim—which, in its enunciation, ap¬ proximates an empty platitude or truism and thus escapes notice—that we have come to discount an academic presentation of the Vedanta, and bestow a philosophic consecration on, stray musings and ramblings in Vedanta, bereft of a survival-value. The philosophic pilgrim’s progress lies in cutting straight across this age-long accumulation of weeds, and journeying with resolute steps to the promised land, undeterred by the ignis fastuus of dilettantism. It is not hereby suggested that Vedanta is the close preserve only of academic philosophy-mongers, but what is definitely repudiated is the incidence of di¬ lettantism and desultory reading with which the field is already overgrown. This is, to a certain extent, inevitable; for, in reliance on faulty logic, people so often ascribe the popularity enjoyed by '4 a SYSTEMATIC STUDY OE THE VEDIhTA the Vedanta to the absence of the steel frame of a philosophical system, and, proceeding on that assumption, read Vedanta as literature. Very few people possess an adequate idea of the initial strain on everyday experience, and sustained hard thinking that the Vedanta entails as a rule. Green’s dictum “that we are Hegelian, so to speak, with only a fraction of our thought—on the Sundays of ‘ specu¬ lation,’ not on the week-days of ‘ ordinary thought ’’ applies mutatis mutandis to our de jure claim in relation to Vedanta. Nevertheless it is a striking fact that immersed, as*we are, in the commonsense valuations of our work-a-day life, we can in a moment rise to the sublime heights of the Vedanta, and breathe no less freely in the rarefied atmosphere thereof than we do on the plains. Closely akin to these instances of Vedanta simplified is its representation as an art of life or as a practical science—a science, so to speak, of mysti¬ cism, or even of magic,—making out its sole concern to be a meditatio mortis culminating in the prescript of a happy euthanasia for its devotee. Nor is it unusual to come across the presentation of Vedanta as a Lebensanschauung or a ‘ synoptic ’ view of life based on the varieties of religious experience—of mystical intuitions and ecstatic revelations. This clearly entails a breach in our psychic continuum, and thus calls for a transvaltiation of all values of life, that confessedly break down in the face of these abnormal experiences,—the distinction of * sub¬ normal ’ and ‘ supernormal ’ being altogether point¬ less in a psychological reference. While it is not indeed denied that the Vedanta, of all indigenous INTB0DUCTI0N 5 systems of thought, has evidently a close bearing upon practice, the claims of practice in this regard can easily be overrated a nd the character of Vedanta philosophy, as a whole and in detail, entirely mis¬ represented. Such one-sided emphasis upon practice (kriya) may not indeed crystallize as a definite phi¬ losophic creed of pragmatism; but, then, the main drift of Vedanta philosophy is a sustained protest against the truth-claim of practical considerations, against practice itself laying claim to paramount authority or constitutive validity. In substantiat¬ ing the point one need not invoke the shades of Samkara who has placed on record his concluding reflection on the point. Says he “ barring know¬ ledge not even the faintest odour of activity can fittingly make its way into the Vedanta.”* What explains the vehemence and rigour of the anti- pragmatic attitude in Samkara is his strict fidelity to the spirit of Protestantism in the sphere of philo¬ sophic thinking to which he stood pledged. Indeed, his mission stood for a principle, and this he carried out by setting his face resolutely against the pragma¬ tic abuses and aberrations of the Mlmamsaka school —specifically, by the restoration of reason to its rightful rank in respect of a centrality of reference, and by the repatriation of the purely theoretical impulse from) its subservience to practical considera¬ tion. What Samkara achieved for the Vedanta— an emancipation from its age-long thraldom to mere practice or art—is symptomatic of the func- * famm wnnwntf* ** Com. on V. S. I., 1. iv. 6 A SYSTEMATIC STTJDtf OF THE VEDANTA tion of philosophy itself. But that does in no way entail a divorce of philosophy from life or practice. In fact tlTe best way to sum up the relation of the two would be, as in the present case, to define the Vedanta or Uttaramimamsa as the philo¬ sophy or theory of practice itself. It is a truism that life or practice precedes reflection upon, or criticism of life ( vicdra, immarpsa ); or as one Danish thinker, viz., Kierkegaard, expressed it with the force of an epigram, “ We live forwards, but understand backwards. ’ ’ It would be, however, an entire misreading ot the situation to lay exclusive emphasis on this aspect of theory, and characterise Indian Philoso¬ phy, least of all the Vedanta, as purely intellectual and not moral, as being a matter of outlook merely. Besides the long discredited compartmental view of the mind, which such a characterisation is clearly suggestive of, one wonders if such a charge, and that a serious one, can have any the least pretence to scholarship, or accuracy for the matter of that, in the face of fully accredited facts regarding Indian philosophy. But the very breadth of the indictment is its redeeming feature, and so far at least as the Vedanta is concerned, it falls wide of the mark. It would have been nearer the mark to affirm what the indictment purports to deny, and on that count to frame the charge of loading the dice in favour of the moral or the practical. Complaints have often been made, and not without justice, that Indian philosophy, far from evincing a studied unconcern for the values of life, has given undue prominence to the non-logical or moral values as the shaping force INTRODUCTION 7 and directive agency of the theoretical impulse, which alone, in the opinion of these critics, should have been the informing principle of a philosophical system. By so doing, Indian philosophy, it is con¬ tended, has so often betrayed the intellectual trust reposed in it, and made a premature compromise with the commonsense valuations of life, and thus ended by making a religion of philosophy. No less an authority than Deussen, for example, condemn¬ ed, in no uncertain terms, the Samkhya philosophy t / for its having traced the philosophic epws to practi¬ cal or utilitarian considerations and justified its raison d’Ure as a remedium merely of the three¬ fold miseries of life (as I^varakrishna authoritative¬ ly announces it in the very first karikd).* Here, Deussen, evidently overstates the point, and his avowed sympathy with the Vedantic point of view may have been largely responsible for it. Doubt¬ less it is true that problems of Indian philosophy have been considerably influenced and shaped by practical considerations, or that the roots of the philosophical impulse are discovered, on closer inspection, to be embedded deep down in the soil of life, but that fact does in no way justify an apo¬ theosis of practice as the sole arbiter and determin¬ ant of philosophical truth. Life or practice may have indeed served as the basic foundation of all theory or speculation in India; but the principle, on which the different systems of philosophy have proceeded, albeit unconsciously or instinctively, is that the foundation is not to be seen in the super- • y. wi i ftwnfrrawi mpwiwt frft i g A SYSTEMATIC STUDY OF THE VEDANTA structure raised thereon. Metaphors apart, the conclusion is irresistible that pragmatism as a phi¬ losophical theory, with all its inherent ambiguities and eccentricities, has hardly found favour among the more notable or advanced sections of Indian thought. In a way, no doubt,, (the pragmatic method has been incorporated into all the recognised systems of Indian philosophy, the Darianas, so far as an acknowledged harmony (; sayivcidd) between the cognitive and volitional aspects of our experience is accepted as one of the tests, if not the sole test, of certitude (pramdnya ). Indeed, the power of an element of cognition to prompt an activity in accord therewith* is one of the undiscussed, ultimate postu¬ lates of experience recognised in every system of Indian philosophy, worth the name. What affords a closer comparison is the principle of practical effi¬ ciency (arthaktfiydkdritvam ), which is generally accepted as one of the factors of the existent (sat), though seldom as the sole factor thereof.