Unknown

“ The question is, whether there is or whether there is not, hidden in every one of the sacred books, something that could lift up the human heart from this earth to a higher world, something that could make man feel the omnipresence of a higher Power, something that could make him shrink from evil and incline to good, something to sustain him in the short journey through life, with its bright moments of happiness, and its long hours of terrible distress. ”

“ Were we to translate this so-called âtmavidyâ, this self-knowledge, by knowledge of the soul, we should not be altogether wrong, but we should nevertheless lose all that distinguishes Indian from Greek thought. It may not be good English to say to know his self, still less to know our selfs, but it would be bad Sanskrit to say to know himself, to know ourselves; or, at all events, such a rendering would deprive us of the greatest advantage in the study of Indian philosophy, the opportunity of seeing in how many different ways man has tried to solve the riddles of the world and of his soul. ”

“ The religions of antiquity, must always be approached in a loving spirit, and the dry and cold-blooded scholar is likely to do here as much mischief as the enthusiastic sciolist. But true love does not ignore all faults and failings: on the contrary, it scans them keenly, though only in order to be able to understand, to explain, and thus to excuse them. To watch in the Sacred Books of the East the dawn of the religious consciousness of man, must always remain one of the most inspiring and hallowing sights in the whole history of the world ”

“ All this I fully admit, yet after making every allowance for national taste and traditions, I still confidently appeal to the best Oriental scholars, who have not entirely forgotten that there is a world outside the four walls of their study, whether they think that my condemnation is too severe, or that Eastern nations themselves would tolerate, in any of their classical literary compositions, such violations of the simplest rules of taste as they have accustomed themselves to tolerate, if not to admire, in their sacred books. ”

“ He is my self within the heart, smaller than a corn of rice, smaller than a corn of barley, smaller than a mustard seed, smaller than a canary seed or the kernel of a canary seed. He also is my self within the heart, greater than the earth, greater than the sky, greater than heaven, greater than all these worlds. ”

“ How is every one who by a diligent study of its Persian Latin has become familiar with that incomparable book, stirred by that spirit to the very depth of his soul! How does every line display its firm, definite, and throughout harmonious meaning! From every sentence deep, original, and sublime thoughts arise, and the whole is pervaded by a high and holy and earnest spirit. Indian air surrounds us, and original thoughts of kindred spirits. ”

“ They live, because one sees how their sap runs and how it dries up, just as one sees the sap in a living body, which, as we saw, was produced by food and water. Therefore the simile holds good. The life, or, more correctly, the liver, the living Self, pervades the tree, as it pervades man, when it has entered the organism which produces breath, mind, and speech. If any accident happens to a branch, the living Self draws himself away from that branch, and then the branch withers. The sap which caused the living Self to remain, goes, and the living Self goes away with it. ”

“ We must not expect therefore that a translation of the sacred books of the ancients can ever be more than an approximation of our language to theirs, of our thoughts to theirs. The translator, however, if he has once gained the conviction that it is impossible to translate old thought into modern speech, without doing some violence either to the one or to the other, will hardly hesitate in his choice between two evils. He will prefer to do some violence to language rather than to misrepresent old thoughts by clothing them in words which do not fit them. ”

“ That Highest Self which had become to the ancient Brahmans the goal of all their mental efforts, was looked upon at the same time as the starting-point of all phenomenal existence, the root of the world, the only thing that could truly be said to be, to be real and true. As the root of all that exists, the Âtman was identified with the Brahman, which in Sanskrit is both masculine and neuter, and with the Sat, which is neuter only, that which is, or Satya, the true, the real. It alone exists in the beginning and for ever ”

“ If those, they say, who have performed sacrifices enter at last into the essence of Soma, the moon, and are eaten by the Devas, by Indra, &c, what is the use of their good works? No, they reply, they are not really eaten. Food (anna) means only what is helpful and delightful; it is not meant that they are eaten by morsels, but that they form the delight of the Devas. Thus we hear it said that men, women, and cattle are food for kings. And if it is said that women are loved by men, they are, in being loved, themselves loving. ”

“ The sacred code of Zoroaster or of any other of the founders of religions may appear to us to be full of absurdities, or may in fact really be so, and it may yet be the duty of the scholar to publish, to translate, and carefully to examine those codes as memorials of the past, as the only trustworthy documents in which to study the growth and decay of religion. It does not answer to say that if Zoroaster was what we believe him to have been, a wise man, in our sense of the word, he could not have written the rubbish which we find in the Avesta. ”

“ But whether I am myself one of the guilty or not, I cannot help calling attention to the real mischief that has been done and is still being done by the enthusiasm of those pioneers who have opened the first avenues through the bewildering forest of the sacred literature of the East. They have raised expectations that cannot be fulfilled, fears also that, as will be easily seen, are unfounded. ”

“ Pragâpati said: 'The Self which is free from sin, free from old age, from death and grief, from hunger and thirst, which desires nothing but what it ought to desire, and imagines nothing but what it ought to imagine, that it is which we must search out, that it is which we must try to understand. ”

“ If some of those who read and mark these translations learn how to discover some such precious grains in the sacred books of other nations, though hidden under heaps of rubbish, our labour will not have been in vain, for there is no lesson which at the present time seems more important than to learn that in every religion there are such precious grains; that we must draw in every religion a broad distinction between what is essential and what is not, between the eternal and the temporary, between the divine and the human ”

“ And what is a translation of modern German into modern English compared with a translation of ancient Sanskrit or Zend or Chinese into any modern language? It is an undertaking which, from its very nature, admits of the most partial success only, and a more intimate knowledge of the ancient language, so far from facilitating the task of the translator, renders it only more hopeless. Modern words are round, ancient words are square, and we may as well hope to solve the quadrature of the circle, as to express adequately the ancient thoughts of the Veda in modern English. ”

“ To those (and I do not speak of Christians only) who look upon the sacred books of all religions except their own as necessarily the outcome of human or superhuman ignorance and depravity, the mixed nature of their contents may seem to be exactly what it ought to be, what they expected it would be. But there are other and more reverent minds who can feel a divine afflatus in the sacred books, not only of their own, but of other religions also, and to them the mixed character of some of the ancient sacred canons must always be extremely perplexing. ”

“ Let a man meditate on the syllables of the udgîtha, i. e. of the word udgîtha. Ut is breath (prâna) , for by means of breath a man rises (uttishthati) . Gî is speech, for speeches are called girah. Tha is food, for by means of food all subsists (sthita) .
7. Ut is heaven, gî the sky, tha the earth. Ut is the sun, gî the air, tha the fire. Ut is the Sâma-veda, gî the Yagur-veda, tha the Rig-veda [18] . Speech yields the milk, which is the milk of speech itself [19] , to him who thus knowing meditates on those syllables of the name of udgîtha, he becomes rich in food and able to eat food. ”

“ If he follows them, he becomes a seeing, a hearing, a perceiving, a knowing, a doing, an understanding man. By power the earth stands firm, and the sky, and the heaven, and the mountains, gods and men, cattle, birds, herbs, trees, all beasts down to worms, midges, and ants; by power the world stands firm. Meditate on power.
2. 'He who meditates on power as Brahman, is, as it were, lord and master as far as power reaches—he who meditates on power as Brahman.'
'Sir, is there something better than power?'
'Yes, there is something better than power.'
'Sir, tell it me.' ”

“ Then, owing to some supererogatory good works we may have done, we suddenly meet a man who knows the Self of Brahman, whose own bonds have been broken, who takes pity on us and shows us the way to see the evil which attaches to all that we love in this world. ”

“ But although there can be little doubt here that the reading of the Khândogya-upanishad gives us the original text, or a text nearest to the original, no sound critic would venture to correct the readings of the Brihad-âranyaka. They are corruptions, but even as corruptions they possess authority, at all events up to a certain point, and it is the fixing of those certain points or chronological limits, which alone can impart a scientific character to our criticism of ancient texts. ”

“ It was from an unwillingness to assent to the decided teaching of the Îsâ-upanishad that Sankara attempted to explain vidyâ, knowledge, in a limited sense, as knowledge of the gods, and not yet knowledge of Brahman. He would not admit that knowledge without works could lead to darkness, and even to greater darkness than works without knowledge. ”

“ There are three branches of the law. Sacrifice, study, and charity are the first [88] ,
2. Austerity the second, and to dwell as a Brahmakârin in the house of a tutor, always mortifying the body in the house of a tutor, is the third. All these obtain the worlds of the blessed; but the Brahmasamstha alone (he who is firmly grounded in Brahman) obtains immortality.
3. Pragâpati brooded on the worlds. From them, thus brooded on, the threefold knowledge (sacrifice) issued forth. He brooded on it, and from it, thus brooded on, issued the three syllables, Bhûh, Bhuvah, Svah. ”

“ Let it not be supposed that a text, three thousand years old, or, even if of more modern date, still widely distant from our own sphere of thought, can be translated in the same manner as a book written a few years ago in French or German. Those who know French and German well enough, know how difficult, nay, how impossible it is, to render justice to certain touches of genius which the true artist knows how to give to a sentence. ”

“ He said to him: 'Breath is one quarter, the eye is one quarter, the ear is one quarter, the mind is one quarter. This is a foot of Brahman, consisting of four quarters, and called Âyatanavat (having a home) .
'He who knows this and meditates on the foot of Brahman, consisting of four quarters, by the name of Âyatanavat, becomes possessed of a home in this world. He conquers the worlds which offer a home, whoever knows this and meditates on the foot of Brahman, consisting of four quarters, by the name of Âyatanavat.'
Ninth Khanda. ”

“ When the first enthusiasm for such works as Sakuntalâ and Gîta-Govinda had somewhat subsided, and Sanskrit scholars had recognised that a truly scholarlike study of Indian literature must begin with the beginning, the exclusively historical interest prevailed to so large an extent that the hymns of the Veda, the Brâhmanas, and the Sûtras absorbed all interest, while the Upanishads were put aside for a time as of doubtful antiquity, and therefore of minor importance. ”

“ And if those who perform good works are opposed to others who delight in true knowledge, that knowledge can be the knowledge of the true Self only.
The difficulty therefore which has perplexed Sankara is this, how, while the orthodox believer is said to enter into blind darkness, the true disciple, who has acquired a knowledge of the true Self, could be said to enter into still greater darkness. While Sankara in this case seems hardly to have caught the drift of the Upanishad, Uvata and Mahîdhara propose an explanation which is far more satisfactory. ”

“ By what degrees a man, who has been properly instructed in the knowledge of Brahman, obtains the Sat, or returns to the True. To judge from the text both he who knows the True and he who does not, reach, when they die, the Sat, passing from speech to mind and breath and heat (fire) . But whereas he who knows, remains in the Sat, they who do not know, return again to a new form of existence. It is important to observe that the commentator denies that he who knows, passes at his death through the artery of the head to the sun, and then to the Sat. ”

“ The mists gather, that is the hinkâra; the cloud has risen, that is the prastâva; it rains, that is the udgîtha; it flashes and thunders, that is the pratihâra; it stops, that is the nidhana. That is the Vairûpa Sâman, as interwoven in Parganya, the god of rain.
2. He who thus knows the Vairûpa as interwoven in Parganya, obtains all kinds of cattle (virûpa) , he reaches the full life, he lives long, becomes great with children and cattle, great by fame. ”

“ Further, it should be remembered that in ancient as in modern times, the utterances of men who had once gained a certain prestige, would often receive attention far beyond their merits, so that in many a family or tribe the sayings and teachings of one man, who had once in his youth or manhood uttered words of inspired wisdom, would all be handed down together, without any attempt to separate the grain from the chaff. Nor must we forget that though oral tradition, when once brought under proper discipline, is a most faithful guardian, it is not without its dangers in its incipient stages. ”

“ From that point of view the Upanishad may well say, Let a man wish to live here his appointed time, let him even perform all works. If only he knows that all must be surrendered to the Lord, then the work done by him will not cling to him. It will not work on and produce effect after effect, nor will it involve him in a succession of new births in which to enjoy the reward of his works, but it will leave him free to enjoy the blessings of the highest knowledge. ”

“ In their ascent to the moon, they have consciousness, as a man who climbs up a tree knows what he is about. But in their descent, that consciousness is gone, as it is when a man falls down from a tree. ”

“ So it is with these ancient sages, who have become the founders of the great religions of antiquity. They can never be judged from without, they must be judged from within. We need not become Brahmans or Buddhists or Taosze altogether, but we must for a time, if we wish to understand, and still more, if we are bold enough to undertake to translate their doctrines. Whoever shrinks from that effort, will see hardly anything in these sacred books or their translations but matter to wonder at or to laugh at ”

“ Scholars also who have devoted their life either to the editing of the original texts or to the careful interpretation of some of the sacred books, are more inclined, after they have disinterred from a heap of rubbish some solitary fragments of pure gold, to exhibit these treasures only than to display all the refuse from which they had to extract them. ”

“ We must face the problem in its completeness, and I confess it has been for many years a problem to me, aye, and to a great extent is so still, how the Sacred Books of the East should, by the side of so much that is fresh, natural, simple, beautiful, and true, contain so much that is not only unmeaning, artificial, and silly, but even hideous and repellent. ”

“ I think, therefore, that the first simile, taken from the phenomenal world, was meant to show that Brahman is that which appears for a moment in the lightning, and then vanishes from our sight.
The next illustration is purely psychological. Brahman is proved to exist, because our mind moves towards things, because there is something in us which moves and perceives, and because there is something in us which holds our perceptions together (saṅkalpa) , and revives them again by memory. ”