184 CHAPTER IX. PHILOSOPHY. "Where is the sweet repose of heart's repenting, And all the Godhead joins to make us whole.”—Keble. IN all Brahmanical literature we meet with anxious questioning concerning man's soul and the universal soul, and the means by which perpetual transmigration may be escaped. This knowledge was taught in Upanishads, which professed great reverence for the old Vedas, but started discussions upon subjects quite beyond their range of this we had some specimens in our Second Chapter, where Nachiketa went to the abode of Yama, God of Death, and entreated him to impart that "knowledge which leads to absorption." By degrees philosophers discovered that the teaching of the Upanishads was contrary to that of the Vedas, and, enrolling their new views into systems, they avowed themselves critics and opponents of the ancient books. Three systems obtained celebrity, the Sankhya, the Nyaya, and the Vedanta; and each system being divided into two parts, six schools of philosophy arose, somewhere between 700 and 600 B.C., which systems are still in force, and studied at Benares. The Sankhya system was the earliest of these, and also the most schismatic, for it starts with declaring that the Vedas have failed to communicate means of absolute and final liberation. Indra and other Gods, it says, declare that by drinking soma-juice they have become immortal; but in another place they say that, "Many thousands of Indras and other Gods have passed away in successive ages :" a different method is therefore necessary, consisting in a discriminative knowledge of perceptible principles, and of the imperceptible one, and of the thinking soul."* 66 The Sankhya system originated with a philosopher named Kapila, who had migrated through many states of existence, and remembered the Vedas in one of his former lives. He ventured nevertheless to think that the soma-draughts, fire-worship, and the sacrifices enjoined by the Vedas, procured only happiness of limited duration, and he expounded aphorisms to secure eternal liberation. Kapila's aphorisms are still extant; but either it was his habit to explain orally, or his written explanations have perished, for the aphorisms alone are wholly unintelligible. His pupils made and collected commentaries, and put the whole in verse, called Karika; and the Sankhya Karika, or memorial verses of the Sankhya, is the chief source from which we now derive a knowledge of this curious anticipation of modern metaphysics.+ Its leading principles are, that knowledge discriminates twenty-five principles: the Soul, which is unchangeable, is one; Nature, the material of creation, another; Intellect, Buddhi, a fourth; Egotism, Wilson's 'Sankhya Karika,' p. 14. Ibid., pp. 17, 80, 52. or self-consciousness, a fifth; then follow the five subtle elements which produce our senses, eleven organs, and five gross elements. Nature, or Prakriti, has three qualities, the good, the bad or perturbed, and the dark. The good quality is explained as "kindliness, restraint of the organs, correct judgment, attainment of knowledge, and supernatural power; the bad, or impetuous, as passion, anger, covetousness, sternness, discontent;" and the dark, as "madness, intoxication, atheism, sloth, and other vices." These three qualities are moreover described by their effects, as pleasure, pain, and indifference, and said to co-operate like a lamp, by union of contraries, that is, "as a lamp, which is composed of the opposites, a wick, oil, and flame, illuminates objects, so the qualities of goodness, foulness, and darkness, although contrary to one another, effect a common purpose. Buddhi (the intellect), which is produced by Nature (Prakriti), partakes of these qualities. If it be good, its properties are virtue (dharma), knowledge, calm selfcontrol, and supernatural power, called aiswarya. The lastmentioned property enables a man to make his way into a solid rock, to sail to the sun on a sunbeam, touch the moon with the tip of his finger, expand so as to occupy all space, and swim, dive, or float upon the earth as readily as in water: through goodness, in fact, the Intellect (Buddhi) attains the "absolute subjugation of Nature," so that "whatever the will proposes, that it obtains."* The other chief product of Nature is Egotism; "but," says Dr. Ballantyne,† "egotism, thus employed, is not to carry with it the familiar import of bustling vanity," for one who would escape * Wilson's 'Sankhya Karika.' Lecture on the Sankhya Philosophy, No. 52; Benares, 1850. the charge of ahan-kara (egotism) is not merely to avoid talking about himself, but must not even distinguish himself from other things, or other things from himself. Selfconsciousness is the organ by which the impression of individuality is conveyed to the soul; it produces the senses and all ideas conveyed by the senses, and so far resembles the Ego, or I, of Fichte. But here Dr. Ballantyne remarks a "striking difference between the European and the Oriental theory," for, whilst European philosophers assume self-consciousness as the certain indication of soul, Kapila declares it to be no property of soul, and to be regarded such only through delusion. Fichte calls what is outside ourselves real only, inasmuch as out of it arises duty and the feeling of "Thou shalt;' whereas with Kapila the distinctness of Soul from Nature is a "radical fact." Fichte excluded a twofold nature, because it rendered unity of exposition, and consequently all philosophy, impossible; * Kapila looked upon soul as the unchangeable, ultimate reality, which can only be perceived when the transitory is destroyed. Hindu philosophers describe it by negations, and it appears therefore cold, inert, and lifeless; but from the intensity with which these idealists yearned to cast away illusory existence, we may suppose that they felt as the poet, who speaks of the marvels of night, to which sunshine makes us blind, and then sublimely indicates the greater glories hidden from us by life:† 66 'Why do we then shun death with anxious strife? If light can thus deceive, wherefore not life ?" Kapila's doctrine however was cold and rigid; he makes the soul a passive, unimpressible spectator of joy, sorrow, Ballantyne, Lecture on the Sankhya Philosophy. Blanco White. 66 it extends over the space or, duty, power, and knowledge, and, clothed in subtile matter, of the heart the size of a finger," "invested in subtile matter," it hovers over a man like "the flame of a lamp over its wick." Thus, where Yama expounds to Nachiketa the nature of the soul, he says that it "resides within that space of the human heart which is as large as a finger," and he directs him by firmness of mind to separate it from his body, “in the same manner as the pith is removed from the plant manju."+ So also in the story of Savitri, told in the preceding Chapter, Yama comes to Satyavan with a noose in his hand, and, forcing out the vital being as it were a finger's length, bound it in his cord. When the spirit, "big as the thumb,"§ has quitted the body, pain ceases, and therefore the great business of life is to acquire immunity from further lives and transmigrations. Self-consciousness and its associates must learn the nothingness of phenomena; then Soul becomes satisfied and allows Nature to repose; by which is meant, that for such a man finite existence is no longer necessary, and he is therefore permitted to shrink to the small dimensions of his "subtile body," and, departing through "the hundred and first tube," proceeding from the heart, he acquires emancipation or absorption.|| This school represents the first division of the Sankhya system; the second division is that of Kapila's pupil, Patanjali, who teaches Yoga¶ (concentration) as a means whereby to "cast off ignorance." The pupil is desired to * Colebrooke, vol. i. p. 246. + Katha Upanishad. Griffith's Indian Poetry, p. 27. § Wilson's 'Sankhya Karika.' From yuj, to keep the mind fixed in abstract meditation. |