A New Approach to the Vedas An Essay in Translation and Exegesis Ananda K. Coomaraswamy ISBN 81-215-0630-1 This edition 2002 First published in 1933 by Luzac & Co., London © 2002, Munshiram Manoharlal Publishers Pvt. Ltd., New Delhi All rights reserved, including those of translation into foreign languages. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form, or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the written permission of the publisher. Printed and published by Munshiram Manoharlal Publishers Pvt. Ltd., Post Box 5715. 54 Rani Jhansi Road. New Delhi 110 055. CONTENTS PAGE Introduction.............................................vii I. Brhadaranyaka Upanisad, I, 2 - I II. Portions of the Maitri Upanisad - 48 III. Three Vedic Hymns 52 Notes - - 77 Appendix - 109 INTRODUCTION Existing translations of Vedic texts, however etymo- logically " accurate,” are too often unintelligible or unconvincing, sometimes admittedly unintelligible to the translator himself. Neither the “ Sacred Books of the East,” nor for example such translations of the Upani§ads as those of R. E. Hume, or those of Mitra, Roer, and Cowell, recently reprinted, even approach the standards set by such works as Thomas Taylor’s version of the Enneads of Plotinus, or Friedlander’s of Maimonides' Guide for the Perplexed. Translators of the Vedas do not seem to have possessed any previous knowledge of meta­ physics, but rather to have gained their first and only notions of ontology from Sanskrit sources. As remarked by Jung, Psychological Types, p. 263, with reference to the study of the Upani$ads under existing conditions, “ any true perception of the quite extraordinary depth of those ideas and their amazing psychological accuracy is still but a remote possibility.” It is very evident that for an understanding of the Vedas, a knowledge of Sanskrit, however profound, is insufficient. Indians themselves do not rely upon their knowledge of Sanskrit here, but insist upon the absolute necessity of study at the feet of a guru. That is not possible in the same sense for European students. Yet Europe also possesses a tradition founded in first prin ciples. That mentality which in the twelfth and thirteenth centimes brought into being an intellectual Christianity owing as much to Maimonides, Aristotle,1 and the Arabs as to the Bible itself, would not have found the Vedas “ difficult.” For example, those who understood that " Paternity and filiation . . . are dependent proper- vii ties," or that God " cannot be a Person without a Nature, nor can his Nature be without a Person,” Eckhart, 1, 268 and 39 ;.,2 or had read later Dante’s “ O Virgin Mother, daughter of thy Son,” Paradiso, xxxiii, would not have seen in the mutual generation of Purusa and Viraj, or Daksa and Aditi an arbitrary or primitive mode of thought: those familiar with Christian conceptions of Godhead as “ void,” " naked,” and “ as though, it were not,” would not have been disconcerted by descriptions of That as “ Death ” (1mrlyu), and as being " in no wise ” (neti, neli). To those who even to-day have some idea of what is meant by a “ reconciliation of opposites,” or have partly understood the relation between man’s conscious consciousness and the unconscious sources of his powers, the significance of the Waters as an " inex­ haustible well ” of the possibilities of existence might be apparent. W hen Blake speaks of a “ Marriage of Heaven and Hell,” or Swinburne writes, " 1 bid you but be,” there is included more of the Vedas than can be found in many learned disquisitions on their " philosophy.” What right have Sanskritists to confine their labours to the solution of linguistic problems: is it fear that precludes their wrestling with the ideology of the texts they undertake ? Our scholarship is too little humane.® What 1 have called here a “ new approach to the Vedas ” is nothing more than an essay in the exposition of Vedic ideas by means of a translation and a commentary in which the resources of other forms of the universal tradition are taken for granted. Max Muller, in 1891, held that the Veda would continue to occupy scholars “ for centuries to come.” Meanwhile there are others beside professional scholars, for whom the Vedas are significant. In any case, no great extension of our present measure of understanding can be expected from philological research alone, however valuable such methods of research may have been in the past: and what is true for Sumero- Babylonian religion is no less true for the Vedas, viz., that viii “ further progress in the interpretation of the difficult cycle of . . . liturgies cannot be made until the cult is more profoundly interpreted from the point of vie-v of the history of religion.”4 As regards the translation: every English word employed has been used advisedly with respect to its technical significance. For example, " nature ” is here always the correlative of " essence,” and denoted that whereby the world is as it is; never as in modern colloquial usage to denote the world, ens naturata. Similarly, existence is distinguished from being, creation from emanation, local movement from the principle of motion, the incalculable from the infinite, and so forth. All that is absolutely necessary if the sense of the Vedic texts is to be conveyed. In addition, the few English words added to complete the sense of the translation are italicised : and when several English words are employed to render one Sanskrit term, the English words are generally connected by hyphens, e.g., Aditya, “ Supemal-Sun ” ; Ak§ara, “ Imperishable-Word.” As regards the commentary : here I have simply used the resources of Vedic and Christian scriptures side bv side. An extended use of Sumerian, Taoist, Sufi, and Gnostic sources would have been at once possible and illuminating, but would have stretched the discussion beyond reasonable limits.5 As for the Vedic and Christian sources, each illuminates the other. And that is in itself an important contribution to understanding, for as Whitman expresses it, " These arc really the thoughts of all men in all ages and lands, they are not original with me. If they are not yours as much as mine, they are nothing, or next to nothing.” Whatever may be asserted or denied with respect to the “ value” of the Vedas, this at least is certain, that their fundamental doctrines are by no means singular. ANANDA K. COOMARASWAMY. Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, December, 1932. ix BRHADARANYAKA UPANISAD, I, 2 (= Satapatha Brahmana X, 6, 5) In the beginning {ogre) no thing whatsoever was here. This-all (idam) was veiled by Death (nifty u), by Privation (asanaya): for Privation is Death. That (tad) took-on (akuruta) Intellect (manas), “ Let me be Selfed ” (atfnanvt syam). He (sah), Self, manifested Light (arcan acarat). Of Him, 3s he shone, were the Waters {apah) bom (jayanta). “ Verily, whilst I shone, there was Delight " (kam), said-He (iti). This is the Sheen (arkatva) of Shining (arka). Verily, there is delight for him who knoweth thus the sheen of shining. 1. Our text deals with the origin of Light from Darkness, Life from Death, Actuality from Possibility, Self from the Un-selfed, saguna from nirguna Brahman, “ I am ” from Unconsciousness, God from Godhead. ** The first formal assumption in Godhead is being . . . God,” Eckhart, 1,267. “ The Nothing bringeth itself into a Will,” BQhme, XL Questions concerning the Soule, I, 178 : “ an eternal will arises in the nothing, to introduce the nothing into something, that the will might find, feel, and behold itself,” Signatura Rerum, I, 8. “ The Tao became One,” Too Te Ching, II, 42.® Compare Taittirtya Up., II, 7 svayatn akurut’ atmanam “ of jtself assumed Self,” and svayathbhu, " self-become,” 1 Upanisads passim : Maitri Up., V, 2 and II, 5, “ In the beginning this world was a Dark-Inert (tarnas) . . . that proceeds to differentiation (visamatva) . . . even as the awakening of a sleeper." That is Eckhart’s “ passive welling up " : " the beginning of the Father is primary, not proceeding,” “ the Father is the manifestation of the Godhead/' J, 268, 267 and 135. Just as also, microcos- mically, “ Without a-doubt, consciousness is derived from the unconscious ” (Wilhelm and Jung), Now as to " One " : an intelligible distinction can be made between the inconnumerable Unity of God " without a second/' the Sameness of Godhead, and the Identity, Deity, of God and Godhead, murta and amtirta Brahman : “ between the pillars of the conscious and unconscious . . . all beings and all worlds/* Kabir, Bolpur ed., II, 59 ; “ One and One uniting, there is the Supreme Being/* Eckhart, 1,-368. That these are here “ rational, not real " distinc­ tions (Eckhart, I, 268) appears in the fact that “ One ” can be spoken equally of Unity, Sameness, and Identity : God, Godhead, Deity, is not a distinction of Persons. On the other hand, “ One ” cannot be said of the Trinity as such. These distinctions, necessarily and clearly made in exegesis, when literally interpreted, become definitions of sectarian points of view, theistic, nihilistic, and meta­ physical7: in Ibhakii-vada the Unity, in sunya-vdda the Sameness, in jndna-vdda the Identity are respectively paramdrthika, ultimately significant. In Sakta cults there survives an ontology antedating patriarchal modes of thought, and the relation of the conjoint principles is reversed (viparita) in gender: here Siva, inert, effecting nothing by himself, represents the God­ head, while Sakti, Mother of All Things, is the active power, engendering, preserving, and resolving, Hid is not “ his" but “ hers/* In “ mysticism" there is an emotional realisation of all or any of these points of view. In reality, u the path men take from every side is Mine," Bhagavad Gita, IV, n ; " In whatever way you find God 2 brhadaranyaka upani$ad best and are most aware of him that way pursue,” Eckhart, I, 482. It should be observed further that while we speak in theology* of First, Second, and Third Persons, the Persons being connected (band.hu, Rg Veda, X, 129, 4, Bfha- ddranyaka Up., 1,1,2) by opposite relation,® the numerical ordering of the Persons is purely conventional (samketita), not a chronological or real order of coming into being: for the Persons are connascent, itaretarajanmana, the Trinity (tridhd) is an arrangement (samhita), not a process. For example, thfe Son creates the Father as much as the Father the Son,10 for there can be no paternity without a filiation, and vice versa, and that is what is meant by “ opposite relation.” Similarly, there cannot be a Person (Purusa) without Nature (Prakrti), and vice versa. That is why in metaphysical " mythology ” we meet with “ inversions,” as for example, when in the Rg Veda, X, 72, 4, Daksa (a personal name of the Progenitor, sfee Satapatha Brahmana, II, 4,4,2) is bom of Aditi as her son, and she also of him as his daughter; or X, 90,5, where Viraj is bom of Purusa, and vice versa. Metaphysics sire consistent, but not systematic: system is found only in religious extensions,11 where a given ordering of the Persons becomcs a dogma, and it is precisely by such “ matters of faith,” and not by a difference of meta­ physical basis, that one religion is distinguished from another. That is truly a “ distinction without a difference.” It should be observed that the connascence (sahajartma) of Father-essence and Mother-nature, the “ two forms ” of Brahman, though metaphorically spoken of as “ birth ” (Janma), is not a sexual-begetting, not a generation from conjoint principles, maithunya prajanana : in that sense both are equally un-begotten, un-bom, as in Svetasvatara Up., I, 8, dvavajau, or as implied in the Brhadaranyaka Up., 1,4, 3 where the origination of the conjoint principles called a “ falling apart,” diremption, or karyokinesis,