English
It is only an objectification of a crisis in his mental history preci¬ pitated by a growing conflict between the two funda¬ mental tendencies of his nature. For, it is no mere exaggeration to say that Plato was primarily and temperamentally a poet, but a philosopher by pro¬ fession. However paradoxical it might sound, it is not so in point of fact; and a deeper reading in Plato is sure to confirm this analysis. When, therefore, he was ordaining the exile of the poets from the ideal republic, he did not know—such is the irony of the situation—that he was signing the warrant of his own extradition from the Ideal State. In¬ deed, much of the authority that attaches to Plato’s pronouncements on the ‘ first truths ’ is due to the dual role in which he appears, and the double voice with which he speaks. If, as the poet Yeats be¬ lieves, * whatever of philosophy has been made poetry is alone permanent, ’ there could be found no more apt illustration of the point than in the case of Plato. As a matter of fact, a philosophic doctrine, in order to insure its perpetuity, must see that it ia integral to a 1 vision ’ or synoptic view of the whole ; then and then only can it hope to survive, as does for Browning’s melodist ‘ the passion that left the ground to lose itself in the sky.’* Truly it is Plato, the poet, that conceived or had the vision of a world *'Abt Vogler, 40 A SYSTEMATIC STUDY OP THE VEDANTA of Ideas or archetypal Forms; it is Plato, the philo¬ sopher that sought to justify the vision with refer¬ ence to the things of sensible experience. And that is exactly the reason why the Platonic vision of a world of Ideas has come to stay as a classical in¬ heritance of mankind, while his teachings about ‘ fixed stars ’ or ‘ future retribution ’ have become matters of antiquarian research. But the issue is not merely staked on accidents of history; it is one involving a question of principle. The principle in question is no other than the one underlying Words¬ worth’s description of poetry, and that in sober prose, as ‘ the breath and finer spirit of all know¬ ledge.’ There are many who would stoutly refuse to be convinced by an ipse dixit of this kind. But they might as well, without dogmatising, reckon with the fact that truth does not come to us on the crutches of dialectic, but is seized in a moment of rapt contemplation by reason in its synthetic activity, or what is the same thing by ‘ imagina¬ tion ’ in the Wordsworthian sense, which is but ‘ reason in its most exalted mood. ’ Thus, the poetic or the mythical presentation of the hymns of the Bgveda has prima facie nothing to invalidate their truth-claim. It would be, however, carrying things too far to accept the myths, all and sundry, as bearers of deep philosophic import, and to read into the hymns, individually, a meaning which, on the strength of historic as well as textual criticism, does not appear to be at all plausible. Such is more or less the procedure of an accredited exponent of the Advaila- THE VEDANTA IN THE MAKING 41 Vedanta school in recent times,* so far as he dis¬ credits the so-called plurality of the Vedic deities accepted on the basis of their different functions and discerns in the Rgveda, from the very first hymn unto the last, a sustained message of unity, of a clear-cut Advaitism. By way of substantia¬ ting his bona fides, he literally selects the well- known opening hymn of the Rgveda t :—“ I glorify Agni, the high-priest of the sacrifice, the divine, the ministrant, who presents the oblation (to the gods) and is the possessor of great wealth.” It is not on this solitary peg that he rests his pet theory, but seeks to fortify further his position by culling out hymns that ostensibly bear the interpretation desired. Admittedly, the Rgveda as a heterogene¬ ous aggregate (Savphita) of hymns, traceable to successive generations of thinkers and distinct levels or strata of thought,—which, by the way, is an accredited conclusion of critical researches in the Rgveda,—offers an admirable scope for such a policy of pick-and-choose. Although this characteristic appears in excelsis in the Rgveda, it is an outstand¬ ing feature of all development in the cultural history of India. The synchronousness of the earlier and the later, and the resulting syncretism in the Rgveda, spring from the method of super-imposition or comprehension by inclusion, which is just the method of racial accretion by incorporation of alien ethnic stocks. The formula of all such develop- * E.g., Pandit Kokilesvar Sastri in his Advaitavada. t sftfvd fvifant vtart w i mm i 6 42 A SYSTEMATIC STUDY OP THE VEDINTA meht,—if development at all it can be called,—is not the emergence of the later by way of incor- vrtiat is of value in the earlier till at last the climax is reached in a consummate value, but is one in which each succeeding stage, instead of ousting or negating the preceding one, is super¬ imposed on the latter. This accounts for the Rgvedic repetitions that seldom fail to strike the discerning reader. Accordingly, there is consider¬ able risk, in the face of the synchronous appearance of polytheistic and monotheistic passages in the Rgveda, of assigning primacy to the latter and explaining away the former as being the viewpoint of the unphilosophical. This can only be secured, as it has been evidently done, by way of a systema¬ tic supersession of the plain meaning in favour of the implied. This is, for one thing, forcing facts on the Procrustean bed of preconceived theories,, or metaphysical predilections on the part of the inter¬ preter ; and, besides, it is suggestive of a wide gulf between the philosophical and the unphilosophical, the paramarthika and the vyavaharika, the esoteric and the exoteric, in the domain of knowledge—a class-distinction which in the democracy of know¬ ledge cannot be suffered to hold its own. Truly viewed, the vyavaharika is but the paramarthika in the making; for, strictly speaking, knowledge is always of Reality or the Paramlartha, and, there¬ fore, all intellectual progress is not one from ignor¬ ance or unthinking activity to knowledge or reflec¬ tive thought, but is a progress in knowledge. If science, or philosophy for the matter of that, be a THE VEDANTA IN THE MAKING 43 criticism of common sense, it is always to be viewed as a self-criticism or as an immanent criticism— the criticism in question being never superinduced ab extra. The defence of rigid Advaitism that seeks to ensure an easy success by way of an initial separation between the vyavaharika and the para- marthika, and a proleptic use of the category of ' end,’ is foredoomed to failure. It may have the merit of simplicity to commend itself; but it is essentially lacking in that historic sense which has its relative importance and use in the study of the Rgveda that is, intrinsically, not so simple as it is made out to be. The attempt obviously proceeds upon the maxim that the Vedanta, and in particular its essence, Advaitism, is implanted in the Veda,* but it construes the principle with a literalness that strikes at the very root of all development. Indeed, it is not possible, within the meaning of the law of development, to have the flower along with the fruit, for the simple reason that the decay of the flower is the condition of the appearance of the fruit. The attempt in question, as typical of the absolutist’s Absolute which ‘ has no seasons, but all at once bears its leaves, fruit, and blossoms,’t evinces a constitutional impatience for all process of growth or movement; for, we are told, ‘ nothing perfect, nothing genuinely real, can move.’ While ceasing to claim immutable perfection for the hymns of the Rgveda, the more rational * $$ Nw. vrfafira: i t Bradley, Appearance and Reality (2nd Ed.), p. 600. 44 A SYSTEMATIC StUfcY OF THE VEDANTA procedure would be to recognise distinct levels of perfection in the Rgveda without prejudice to its integrity or inner continuity. As a matter of fact, continuity of process, as we have recently learnt, does not demand that the last phase of it should Nj prefigured in the very first, but that it is perfrytly commensurate with the emergence of real lffer- ences in respective levels of the process, kuch is undoubtedly the case with the different strata of the Rgveda against the background of a thought- continuity—not surely an ‘ unbroken ’ continuity, if by that were meant one, exclusive of real differ¬ ences. For, as the late Professor Wallace taught us long ago, ‘ all development is by breaks and yet makes for continuity.’* There is, of course, uo unanimity on the question of strata in Rgvedic thought. The stratification that will meet the ends of a philosophical study is the three-fold one of naturalistic polytheism, monotheism and agnostic monism along with henotheism, pantheism and panentheism as their correlates in their varied permutation and combination. As already observ¬ ed, the inherent syncretism of the Rgvedic thought and culture makes it well nigh impossible to mark off one stratum rigidly from another, each being essentially a composite structure comparable more or less to the Anaxagorean bfioionepr) according to which ‘ in all there is something of all.’ Now, as in the case of all first beginnings of a ‘ thinking consideration of things ’ (denkende Belrachtung der * Prolegomena to Hegel’s Logic (2nd Ed.), p. 476. tefi VEDANTA IN THE MAKIN& 45 Gegenstande) in the Hegelian sense, the naturalistic polytheism of the Egveda is a conglomerate mass of religion, mythology and philosophy or science, in the wider sense of the term, the pivot of which is a full and frank recognition of a plurality of gods.