English
’ Philosophy, as it has been well said, is largely a question of proportion; and it is re-assuring to note that Hegel, steeped as he was in the historical Weltanschauung with its pronounced leanings towards a philosophico-histori- cal necessity, saw things in their proper perspective when he observed that “ in thought, and parti¬ cularly in speculative thought, comprehension means something quite different from understanding the grammatical sense of the words alone, and also from understanding them in the region of ordinary conception only.”* ‘ The authors of such histories' as are lacking in this * comprehension ’ or ‘ know¬ ledge of the matter itself about which so much ado has been made,’ may, in Hegel’s opinion, ‘ be oompared to animals which have listened to all the * History of Philosophy (brans. E. S. Haldane), Yol. I, p, xvi. INTRODUCTION 33 tones in some music, tiut to whose senses the unison, the harmony of their tones, has not penetrated.’* To the ends of a systematic study of the Vedanta, such as is ours, the need and importance of ‘ comprehension,’ in its philosophic sense, can¬ not possibly be overrated. It is all the more im¬ perative in view of the fact that we have not, with rare exceptions, learnt the art of pressing historical scholarship into the service of a philosophical study. In fact, there is hardly any consensus of opinions among workers in this field as to the scope and function of such scholarship, and the result is that through sheer loss of perspective we cannot see the wood for the trees. But, then, we must remember that it is we who, in our perversity, first raise the dust, and then complain that we cannot see. A systematic study of the Vedanta is, therefore, our rallying-point; all other labellings and construc¬ tions of it are a matter of words only. LECTURE II The Vedanta in the Making The genetic study of the Vedanta in its histori¬ cal affiliations unmistakably points to the hymns of the Rgveda as containing the germinal beginnings of the Vedanta. Although there is scarcely to be found a more sympathetic expositor of the hymns of the Rgveda than Max Muller, his characterisa¬ tion of the Rgveda as ‘ the babbling of child- humanity,’ when read out of its context, may appear to have made no allowances for all the crudity and immaturity that must necessarily ap¬ pertain to all embryonic existences in a state of gestation. One need not go the whole length with the poet in acclaiming the child as ‘ the best philo¬ sopher, ’ ‘ Mighty Prophet ’ or ‘ Seer blest; ’ but with a little exercise of sympathetic imagination, one might discern in this so-called ‘ babbling ’ the primeval utterance of those truths ‘ which we are toiling all our lives to find.’ It is no wonder, then, that the average critic in whom this gift of sym¬ pathetic understanding is conspicuous by its absence will discover in the Rgveda nothing but the symp¬ toms of a low and degenerate type of civilisation— in which the entire gamut of animism, spiritism, ancestor-worship, and the like is traversed, along with the constant concomitance of a prevailing polytheism, bringing in their train the worst form THE VEDANTA lit THE MAKING- 35 ' of sacerdotalism and priestly- tyranny. In spite of a child-like naivete characterising most of the prayers, a sunny pagan temperament, breathing a light-hearted joyousness in all its utterances, and the somewhat riotous fantasy displayed in the creation of gods, the hymns of the Rgveda do, for the most part, reveal a philosophical frame of mind in - those obstinate questionings of sense and out¬ ward things ’ that sooner or later press upon the human mind, alike in the history of the individual and that of the race. If doubt, or what is the same thing, wonder in the Platonic sense, is to be regard¬ ed everywhere as the parent of philosophy, such a philosophic doubt makes its penetrative appeal in and through that famous ‘ Hymn to the Unknown God ’* which may, with strict justice, be taken to be symptomatic of the whole spirit of the Rgveda. Distracted by innumerable calls on his allegiance to the gods of the Vedic pantheon, the Rgvedic thinker in a mood of sceptical despair, has insistently harped on the strain :—“ qro “ to what God shall we offer our oblation ?’’t One need not be anxious for a defence of philosophic doubt expressed herein; for, it has its logical as well as historical justification. It is not that doubt which paralyses all inquiry at the very start; but is, strictly speak¬ ing, a methodological doubt, which, as the indis¬ pensable prelude to all inquiry, has everywhere * The phrase * unknown God ’ is to be divested, how¬ ever, of the Pauline associations as found in the Acts. t ggvedo, X, 121. J 36 A SYSTEMATIC STUDY OF THE VEDANTA proved so fruitful in the service of a philosophic construction, Viewed in its historical perspective, it stands at the cross-ways of two competing trends of thought. It heralds on the one hand ‘ the twilight of the gods,’ and on the other the dawning of a new era of philosophic earnestness which at once reveals the main drift and crowning achieve¬ ment of Rgvedic speculation. Verily, ‘ the owl of Minerva takes its flight only when the shades of night are gathering.’ It is not, assuredly, a doubt¬ ful adventure or excursion of the intellect, but is in itself the attainment of a stable ground on the way to further advance along this line. If the sole claim of Thales to be reckoned the first philosopher on the soil of Europe consists, not ostensibly in his enun¬ ciation of ‘ wjj^er ■ to be the primordial source or matrix of all things, but in the honest attempt that he made to trace, in his own crude way, the diver¬ sity of our experience to a unitary principle, in flagrant opposition to the explanations of current polytheism, then surely the effort after philosophic comprehension that is made in this very hymn entitles its author to a more respectful consideration. Take, for example, the beautiful line— M uqf (the being) whose shadow is immortality and mortality (i.e., deity and humanity) ”—which impresses as much by the elegance of its expression as by the depth of its insight; and we cannot help admiring the first fruits of the effort at compre¬ hension. Thus, the sceptical mood that is charac¬ teristic of some of the later hymns of the !l$gveda does not land us in bare negation, but has some THE VEDANTA IN THE MAKING 37 solid achievement to its credit. Even Prof. Keith who can never be accused of any the least partiality for Indian philosophy in general, and for Rgveda in particular, is not slow to acknowledge the value of this achievement. Premising that 1 philosophy in India shows its beginnings as often in the ex¬ pression of scepticism ’ [as in its ‘ earliest poetry ’], he proceeds to observe that ‘ the positive side of the tendency of the Rgveda to dissatisfaction with the gods of tradition is to be seen in the assertion of the unity of the gods and of the world. When all is said and done this is the one important contribution of the Rgveda to the philosophy of India. It asserts as a norm for the future development of that thought the effort to grasp more concretely and definitely the unity, which it asserts as a fact, but which it does not justify or explain in detail.’* The prolific myth-making of the Rgveda, again, is made a target of attack by its critics. For better or for worse the first flutter of the new- fledged philosophic impulse on the Indian soil clothed itself in poetry of unending charm, with an abundance of myths, as the machinery just meant for the purpose, standing to the credit of a fertile imagination or creative phantasy, native to the soil. This characteristic of early Indian speculation, by no means uncommon in the history of speculative thought in other lands, attests inter alia the truth of Vico’s dictum that ‘ poetry is the first operation * The Religion and Philosophy of the Vedas and VpanUhadSp pp. 433, 484. 38: A SYSTEMATIC STUDY OP THE VEDINTA of the human mind.’ It is not merely on that account that the poetic or the mythological garb of *' the earliest poetry of India ’ which ‘ already con¬ tains many traces of the essential character of the philosophy of India ’* is to be justified. ‘ In nothing indeed ’ as we have it on Prof. Keith’s authority ‘ does the continuity of Indian life show itself more strikingly than this: the gods of India change, but the alteration of the higher thought is far less marked, ’t Nor one need be apologetic at all for the poetic or mythical representation of philosophical truths as systematically carried out in the Rgveda. Even the purists among dialecticians, while labelling the myths of Plato as mere lacun:e or lapses in his otherwise rigorous logic, have yet to acknowledge that there is in all of these a rich kernel of truth concealed under what is mere myth. The relation of the two, viewed in a time-perspective, may be pithily expressed by saying that the myth is but truth in the making. But there is no denying the fact that a poetic or mythical representation of philosophical doctrines at the present day would at once be tabooed as being a matter of historical anachronism. Even Plato refers in the Republic\ to an ‘ old feud between poetry and philosophy ’ and condones the ‘ noble untruth ’ of poetry and the * Keith, The Religion and Philosophy of ihe Vedae and Vpanishads, p, 488. .. * t Ibid. • IBook X- THE VEDANTA IN THE MAKING- 39 imitative arts in general, in so far as they tend to lead one astray from the strict pursuit of truth. The so-called * feud ’ to which he refers is an inter¬ esting study in psycho-analysis.