English
Although appealing to the authority of scrip¬ tural texts on Omniscience of God and no less devoutly entrenched in orthodoxy than the scholastic divines and their latter-day adherents, the philoso¬ phical theist in Samkara rises equal to the occasion and abstains from ascribing to the Creator, under cover of a preternatural Vila, an ‘ unchartered free¬ dom ’ which ‘ tires ’ even man. Can such a free- 280 A SYSTEMATIC STUDY OF THE VEDANTA dom redound to the glory of God? That there is some determination in the creative act, conceived as Ilia, becomes apparent from various committing statements of Samkara bearing on this point. In his commentary (on II. i. 34) in the same context, he clearly reveals the sense in which he understands the ‘ determination ’ in question, commensurate with the intrinsic nature of a creative spontaneity imported by lila. In accordance with the general law that a cause without co-operating conditions is unthinkable, or that an unconditioned (being) has no causal efficiency, lsvara also must have been limited or determined in the creation of inequalities (among creatures), the determination in question being provided by the merit and demerit of the crea¬ tures about to be created.* Does not this admission stultify, it will probably be asked, the emphatic repudiation of any the least constraint exercised by an end in view? At first sight there seems to be a flagrant contradiction here; but it will be readily seen on the application of one of the well-known canons of interpretation improvised for codes of law, civil or religious, in Hindu thought,— viz., that of general and particular, samanya-vidhi and vi&sha- vidki —that there is no incompatibility of meaning in this present case. So construed it will be ap¬ parent once for all, and with no mere presumptive validity but with full probative force, that by * vtaft fawt i firwi —Com. on Y.S., II. i. xxxiv. ISVARA AS OREATOE AND CREATION AS DILI 281 ' prayojana ’ or end in the earlier reference Samkara evidently means an extrinsic end or determination which limits the Creator ab extra. The karma- seeds, merit and demerit, of creatures do not, how¬ ever, come within the purview of that general res¬ triction. They constitute the materials (<um3PT*i) in a philosophical sense, of creation, and no other hypothetical, amorphous or mythical matter, and in Samkara’s system, Brahman being the efficient ( fafc'HqUWH ) as well as the material cause( b 3T3PI- qnrcqpg) of the world, and there being no manipula¬ tor of an extraneous material co-eternal with Him, these merits and demerits may be said to constitute, figuratively speaking, the very being or embodiment of Ikiara. This point has been well elucidated by the Vedanta-paribhasha : “ Just as there originate differences in the modes of the psychical mechanism, which is the limiting condition of Jwa, on account of the contact of the sense-organs with the (empiri¬ cal) objects, so do arise under stress of the potencies of the karma of creatures about to be created modi¬ fications or specifications, in the form 1 this is now to be created,’ ‘ this is now to be maintained in existence ’ or ‘ this is now to be destroyed,’ in the (primordial) Maya which is the limiting adjunct of the Supreme Lord.”* In both the cases, there is, however, no implication of a foreign or external < rcfrifaifrqiwMw i afaWh i t 'nfircjrff dvnwru’isfrororm 4iui4) miimrw*: i , 36 28& A SYSTEMATIC STUDY OP THE VEDANTA determination. The cognitive relation (as we have already seen in our treatment of the Vedanta Epis¬ temology) does not import any such foreignness in the control exercised by the object on the psychical mechanism; on the contrary, it roundly denies any substantial independence or heterogeneous existence on the part of the object as compared with the con¬ scious subject ( ), and affirms substantial or ultimate .oneness and unity between the knower and the known ( ffRKWfol ). Hence we are perfectly justified in concluding that Samkara repudiates the hypothesis of a foreign determina¬ tion on the part of Ihara or Brahman by his dictum of ‘ reference to the merit and demerit of creatures ’ ( vwjnwl T U ^ U ) in creation. Once we grasp this underlying meaning of Samkara’s procedure in this doctrine of creation (fe:) as Vila, not as hap¬ hazard or chance creation or arbitrary, undeter¬ mined creation, we can hope to appreciate the source of Samkara's inspiration. Nowhere is the peculiar excellence of Saipkara’s fundamental position—the grandeur of a moral idealism or ethical theism— made more manifest than in this striking attitude of his towards the problem of creation. Here, on the one hand, the finality and absoluteness of the claims of morality are respected and, on the other, we have the compatibility of such a standpoint with, and consummation in, the religious point of view together with all its implications—in short, we have, here, in Saipkara’s doctrine of creation a typical embodiment of Ethical Beligion or Theism I8VARA AS CREATOR AND CREATION AS T.TTJ 28# of which he was perhaps the best representative. On the one hand, he fully vindicates the absolute¬ ness or majesty of the Moral Law, and, on the other, makes it subservient to the Lord or Creator whose supremacy or oneness must at all costs be maintain¬ ed. The Law of Karma, he ever reminds us, is supreme and inexorable; even God himself must bow down, and pay his homage, unto it. Even the supreme Lord, omnipotent as he is, cannot, and docs not, make his creatures virtuous or vicious and therefore happy or unhappy, virtue or merit having the significance, in Samkara as notably in Kant, of ‘ worthiness to be happy.’ Admittedly, there are scriptural texts (which have been quoted by Samkara by way of substantiating his own contention) such as these—‘ this Supreme Being or Lord makes one, whom He means to translate into a higher level or existence, do good deeds while He makes one, whom He wishes to degrade, do things that are evil.’* As has been pointed out so often with reference to these quoted texts,—and that not without some semblance of justification—the Advaita-Vedanta of the strictly Samkarite type stands committed to an unequivocal denial of freedom of the will of man. But more is meant here by the author of these texts as well as by Samkara than is apparent on the surface. The text has been doubtless rather unfortunately worded, —although it was worded with specific reference to ■ v* vN ihh smaffl * cfwt sfirftan v* v viromj aNr vrorfh rtqmit Mto* tfn—7<fe SarpkMa's Com. on V.S., H. i. xxxiv. 284 A SYSTEMATIC STUDY OP THE VEElNTA the unitary and sole-sufficing causality of the only Being to which the Vedanta stands pledged, and this it admirably achieves. But what it means to set forth is not physical coercion or compulsion, but moral causation or condition. It implies that this Hierarchical gradation of existence—exemplified by the endless diversities or inequalities of our status or station in life—has a moral basis and that ‘ morality is of the nature of things.’ It imports further that the distribution of happiness or un¬ happiness—which is the inevitable sequence to the attainment of a higher or lower grade of existence (fit*! )—in exact proportion to virtue or vice pre¬ supposes or postulates a God who effects the adjust¬ ment required. This is apparently Kantian out- and-out in conception; but the difference is, as it lias been so often pointed out, the very externalism of the treatment whereby the Kantian God, more or less like the Deus ex machina of the Deists of the eighteenth century, is introduced into the system as ‘ a chief-of-police,' or at best as a Paymaster of the wages of virtue, and not as the author or inspirer of the moral law, immanent, as the very condition of all moral progress and uplift, in the individuals and yet not abrogating their power of free choice and initiation—which is, however, the specific teaching of Advaita-Vedanta, incredible as it may appear at first sight. The introduction of an Ifaara or God in the Vedantic view does not import a breach with, or supersession of, the moral point of view; on the contrary, it comes as a positive supple¬ mentation to, or fulfilment of, the moral. That such an interpretation of the text in question is not merely ISVARA AS CREATOR AND CREATION AS UlA 28g a conjectural or presumptive one is at once apparent from Samkara’s own pronouncement in the context in which he cites the text as an answer to the query : “ What is the authority for the statement that TSvara as conditioned or limited creates this sarnsarah or mundane existence with its gradation of good, bad, and indifferent, or high, low and mediocre? ’* The whole point of such introduction of God is the guarantee it offers of the co-ordination and interdependence of the natural and the moral order. Thus the natural and the moral realm remain no longer two non-communicating spheres, but arc securely grounded, once for all, in the nature of God who, as an essentially moral being, is the uniting principle of both. So conceived, morality does no longer appear as an excrescence upon, or as an emergent out of, the natural or non- moral world, but strictly as the very * nature of things ’—not, however, in the too catholic sense in which it has been presented by Prof. Alexander in his spatio-temporal scheme of evolution, according to which both morality and Deity ‘ emerge ’ in time. By being so grounded in the nature of a moral being, the moral realm finally remains no longer parochial in its nature, but acquires a cosmic or ontological significance and importance.