The passage of the Indian mind from the Brahmanic to the Upanishad thought is probably the most remarkable event in the history of philosophic thought. We know that in the later Vedic hymns some monotheistic conceptions of great excellence were developed, but these differ in their nature from the absolutism of the Upanishads as much as the Ptolemaic and the Copernican systems in astronomy.

The direct translation of Vishvakarman or Hiranyagarbha into the atman and the Brahman of the Upanishads seems to me to be very improbable, though I am quite willing to admit that these conceptions were swallowed up by the atman doctrine when it had developed to a proper extent. Throughout the earlier Upanishads no mention is to be found of Vishvakarman, Hiranyagarbha or Brahmanaspati and no reference of such a nature is to be found as can justify us in connecting the Upanishad ideas with those conceptions (1). The word purusha no doubt occurs frequently in the Upanishads, but the sense and the association that come along with it are widely different from that of the purusha of the Purushasukta of the rig-Veda.

When the rig-Veda describes Vishvakarman it describes him as a creator from outside, a controller of mundane events, to whom they pray for worldly benefits. “What was the position, which and whence was the principle, from which the all-seeing Vishvakarman produced the earth, and disclosed the sky by his might? The one god, who has on every side eyes, on every side a face, on every side arms, on every side feet, when producing the sky and earth, shapes them with his arms and with his wings….Do thou, Vishvakarman, grant to thy friends those thy abodes which are the highest, and the lowest, and the middle…may a generous son remain here to us (2)”; again in R.V.X. 82 we find “Vishvakarman is wise, energetic, the creator, the disposer, and the highest object of intuition….He who is our father, our creator, disposer, who knows all spheres and creatures, who alone assigns to the gods their names, to him the other creatures resort for instruction (3)” Again about Hiranyagarbha we find in R.V.I. 121, “Hiranyagarbha arose in the beginning; born, he was the one lord of things existing. He established the earth and this sky; to what god shall we offer our oblation?… May he not injure us, he who is the generator of the earth, who ruling by fixed ordinances, produced the heavens, who produced the great and brilliant waters!–to what god, etc.? Prajapati, no other than thou is lord over all these created things: may we obtain that, through desire of which we have invoked thee; may we become masters of riches (4).” Speaking of the purusha the rig-Veda says “Purusha has a thousand heads…a thousand eyes, and a thousand feet. On every side enveloping the earth he transcended [it] by a space of ten fingers….He formed those aerial creatures, and the animals, both wild and tame (5),” etc. Even that famous hymn (R.V.x. 129) which begins with “There was then neither being nor non-being, there was no air nor sky above” ends with saying “From whence this creation came into being, whether it was created or not–he who is in the highest sky, its ruler, probably knows or does not know.”

In the Upanishads however, the position is entirely changed, and the centre of interest there is not in a creator from outside but in the self: the natural development of the monotheistic position of the Vedas could have grown into some form of developed theism, but not into the doctrine that the self was the only reality and that everything else was far below it. There is no relation here of the worshipper and the worshipped and no prayers are offered to it, but the whole quest is of the highest truth, and the true self of man is discovered as the greatest reality. This change of philosophical position seems to me to be a matter of great interest. This change of the mind from the objective to the subjective does not carry with it in the Upanishads any elaborate philosophical discussions, or subtle analysis of mind. It comes there as a matter of direct perception, and the conviction with which the truth has been grasped cannot fail to impress the readers. That out of the apparently meaningless speculations of the Brahmanas this doctrine could have developed, might indeed appear to be too improbable to be believed.

On the strength of the stories of Balaki Ga’rgya and Ajatashatru (Brih. II. i), Shvetaketu and Pravahana Jaibali (Cha. V. 3 and Brih. VI. 2) and Aruni and Ashvapati Kaikeya (Cha. V. 11) Garbe thinks “that it can be proven that the Brahman’s profoundest wisdom, the doctrine of All-one, which has exercised an unmistakable influence on the intellectual life even of our time, did not have its origin in the circle of Brahmans at all (6)” and that “it took its rise in the ranks of the warrior caste (7).” This if true would of course lead the development of the Upanishads away from the influence of the Veda, Brahmanas and the Aranyakas. But do the facts prove this? Let us briefly examine the evidences that Garbe himself self has produced. In the story of Balaki Gargya and Ajatashatru (Brih. II. 1) referred to by him, Balaki Gargya is a boastful man who wants to teach the Kshattriya Ajatashatru the true Brahman, but fails and then wants it to be taught by him. To this Ajatashatru replies (following Garbe’s own translation) “it is contrary to the natural order that a Brahman receive instruction from a warrior and expect the latter to declare the Brahman to him (8).” Does this not imply that in the natural order of things a Brahmin always taught the knowledge of Brahman to the Kshattriyas, and that it was unusual to find a Brahmin asking a Kshattriya about the true knowledge of Brahman? At the beginning of the conversation, Ajatashatru had promised to pay Balaki one thousand coins if he could tell him about Brahman, since all people used to run to Janaka to speak about Brahman (9). The second story of Shvetaketu and Pravahana Jaibali seems to be fairly conclusive with regard to the fact that the transmigration doctrines, the way of the gods (devayana) and the way of the fathers (pitriyana) had originated among the Kshattriyas, but it is without any relevancy with regard to the origin of the superior knowledge of Brahman as the true self.

The third story of Aruni and Ashvapati Kaikeya (Cha. V. 11) is hardly more convincing, for here five Brahmins wishing to know what the Brahman and the self were, went to Uddalaka Aruni; but as he did not know sufficiently about it he accompanied them to the Kshattriya king Ashvapati Kaikeya who was studying the subject. But Ashvapati ends the conversation by giving them certain instructions about the fire doctrine (vaisvanara agni) and the import of its sacrifices. He does not say anything about the true self as Brahman. We ought also to consider that there are only the few exceptional cases where Kshattriya kings were instructing the Brahmins. But in all other cases the Brahmins were discussing and instructing the atman knowledge. I am thus led to think that Garbe owing to his bitterness of feeling against the Brahmins as expressed in the earlier part of the essay had been too hasty in his judgment. The opinion of Garbe seems to have been shared to some extent by Winternitz also, and the references given by him to the Upanishad passages are also the same as we just examined (10). The truth seems to me to be this, that the Kshattriyas and even some women took interest in the religio-philosophical quest manifested in the Upanishads. The enquirers were so eager that either in receiving the instruction of Brahman or in imparting it to others, they had no considerations of sex and birth (11); and there seems to be no definite evidence for thinking that the Upanishad philosophy originated among the Kshattriyas or that the germs of its growth could not be traced in the Brahmanas and the Aranyakas which were the productions of the Brahmins.

1: The name Vishvakarma appears in Shvet. IV. 17. Hiranyagarbha appears in Shvet. III. 4 and IV. 12, but only as the first created being. The phrase Sarvahammani Hiranyagarbha which Deussen refers to occurs only in the later Nrisimh. 9. The word Brahmanaspati does not occur at all in the Upanishads.
2: Muir’s Sanskrit Texts, vol. IV. pp. 6, 7.
3: Ibid. p, 7.
4: Ibid. pp. 16, 17.
5: Muir’s Sanskrit Texts, vol. v. pp. 368, 371.
6: Garbe’s article, “Hindu Monism,” p. 68.
7: Ibid. p. 78.
8: Garbe’s article, “Hindu Monism,” p. 74.
9: Brih. II., compare also Brih. IV. 3, how Yajnavalkya speaks to Janaka about the brahmavidya.
10: Winternitz’s Geschichte der indischen Litteratur, I. pp. 197 ff.
11: The story of Maitryi and Yajnavalikya (Brih. II. 4) and that of Satyakama son of Jabala and his teacher (Cha. IV. 4).

atman, brahman, one god, principle, rig veda, upanishads, vedic hymns