A History of Indian Philosophy Volume 1

by Surendranath Dasgupta | 1922 | 212,082 words | ISBN-13: 9788120804081

This page describes the philosophy of vedanta and shankara (788-820 a.d.): a concept having historical value dating from ancient India. This is the fifth part in the series called the “the shankara school of vedanta”, originally composed by Surendranath Dasgupta in the early 20th century.

Part 5 - Vedānta and Śaṅkara (788-820 A.D.)

Vedānta philosophy is the philosophy which claims to be the exposition of the philosophy taught in the Upaniṣads and summarized in the Brahma-sūtras of Bādarāyaṇa. The Upaniṣads form the last part of the Veda literature, and its philosophy is therefore also called sometimes the Uttara-Mīmāṃsā or the Mīmāṃsā (decision) of the later part of the Vedas as distinguished from the Mīmāṃsā of the previous part of the Vedas and the Brāhmaṇas as incorporated in the Pūrvamīmāṃsā sūtras of Jaimini. Though these Brahma-sūtras were differently interpreted by different exponents, the views expressed in the earliest commentary on them now available, written by Śaṅkarācārya, have attained wonderful celebrity, both on account of the subtle and deep ideas it contains, and also on account of the association of the illustrious personality of Śaṅkara.

So great is the influence of the philosophy propounded by Śaṅkara and elaborated by his illustrious followers, that whenever we speak of the Vedānta philosophy we mean the philosophy that was propounded by Śaṅkara. If other expositions are intended the names of the exponents have to be mentioned (e.g. Rāmānuja-mata,Vallabha-mata, etc.). In this chapter we shall limit ourselves to the exposition of the Vedānta philosophy as elaborated by Śaṅkara and his followers. In Śaṅkara’s work (the commentaries on the Brahma-sūtra and the ten Upaniṣads) many ideas have been briefly incorporated which as found in Śaṅkara do not appear to be sufficiently clear, but are more intelligible as elaborated by his followers. It is therefore better to take up the Vedānta system, not as we find it in Śaṅkara, but as elaborated by his followers, all of whom openly declare that they are true to their master’s philosophy.

For the other Hindu systems of thought, the sūtras (Jaimini sūtra , Nyāya sūtra , etc.) are the only original treatises, and no foundation other than these is available. In the case of the Vedānta however the original source is the Upaniṣads, and the sūtras are but an extremely condensed summary in a systematic form. Śaṅkara did not claim to be the inventor or expounder of an original system, but interpreted the sūtras and the Upaniṣads in order to show that there existed a connected and systematic philosophy in the Upaniṣads which was also enunciated in the sūtras of Bādarāyaṇa.

The Upaniṣads were a part of the Vedas and were thus regarded as infallible by the Hindus. If Śaṅkara could only show that his exposition of them was the right one, then his philosophy being founded upon the highest authority would be accepted by all Hindus. The most formidable opponents in the way of accomplishing his task were the Mīmāmsists, who held that the Vedas did not preach any philosophy, for whatever there was in the Vedas was to be interpreted as issuing commands to us for performing this or that action. They held that if the Upaniṣads spoke of Brahman and demonstrated the nature of its pure essence, these were mere exaggerations intended to put the commandment of performing some kind of worship of Brahman into a more attractive form.

Śaṅkara could not deny that the purport of the Vedas as found in the Brāhmaṇas was explicitly of a mandatory nature as declared by the Mīmāṃsā, but he sought to prove that such could not be the purport of the Upaniṣads, which spoke of the truest and the highest knowledge of the Absolute by which the wise could attain salvation. He said that in the karmakāṇḍa—the (sacrificial injunctions) Brāhmaṇas of the Vedas—the purport of the Vedas was certainly of a mandatory nature, as it was intended for ordinary people who were anxious for this or that pleasure, and were never actuated by any desire of knowing the absolute truth, but the Upaniṣads, which were intended for the wise who had controlled their senses and become disinclined to all earthly joys, demonstrated the one Absolute, Unchangeable, Brahman as the only Truth of the universe.

The two parts of the Vedas were intended for two classes of persons. Śaṅkara thus did not begin by formulating a philosophy of his own by logical and psychological analysis, induction, and deduction. He tried to show by textual comparison of the different Upaniṣads, and by reference to the content of passages in the Upaniṣads, that they were concerned in demonstrating the nature of Brahman (as he understood it) as their ultimate end. He had thus to show that the uncontradicted testimony of all the Upaniṣads was in favour of the view which he held. He had to explain all doubtful and apparently conflicting texts, and also to show that none of the texts referred to the doctrines of mahat, prakṛti, etc. of the Sāṃkhya. He had also to interpret the few scattered ideas about physics, cosmology, eschatology, etc. that are found in the Upaniṣads consistently with the Brahman philosophy.

In order to show that the philosophy of the Upaniṣads as he expounded it was a consistent system, he had to remove all the objections that his opponents could make regarding the Brahman philosophy, to criticize the philosophies of all other schools, to prove them to be self-contradictory, and to show that any interpretation of the Upaniṣads, other than that which he gave, was inconsistent and wrong. This he did not only in his bhāṣya on the Brahma-sūtras but also in his commentaries on the Upaniṣads. Logic with him had a subordinate place, as its main value for us was the aid which it lent to consistent interpretations of the purport of the Upaniṣad texts, and to persuading the mind to accept the uncontradicted testimony of the Upaniṣads as the absolute truth.

His disciples followed him in all, and moreover showed in great detail that the Brahman philosophy was never contradicted either in perceptual experience or in rational thought, and that all the realistic categories which Nyāya and other systems had put forth were self-contradictory and erroneous. They also supplemented his philosophy by constructing a Vedānta epistem-ology, and by rethinking elaborately the relation of the māyā, the Brahman, and the world of appearance and other relevant topics. Many problems of great philosophical interest which had been left out or slightly touched by Śaṅkara were discussed fully by his followers. But it should always be remembered that philosophical reasonings and criticisms are always to be taken as but aids for convincing our intellect and strengthening our faith in the truth revealed in the Upaniṣads.

The true work of logic is to adapt the mind to accept them. Logic used for upsetting the instructions of the Upaniṣads is logic gone astray. Many lives of Śaṅkarācārya were written in Sanskrit such as the Sañkara-digvijaya , Sañkara-vijaya-vilāsa , Sañkara-jaya , etc. It is regarded as almost certain that he was born between 700 and 800 A.D. in the Malabar country in the Deccan. His father Śivaguru was a Yajurvedi Brahmin of the Taittirlya branch. Many miracles are related of Śaṅkara, and he is believed to have been the incarnation of Śiva.

He turned ascetic in his eighth year and became the disciple of Govinda, a renowned sage then residing in a mountain cell on the banks of the Narbuda. He then came over to Benares and thence went to Badarikāśrama. It is said that he wrote his illustrious bhāṣya on the Brahma-sñtra in his twelfth year. Later on he also wrote his commentaries on ten Upaniṣads. He returned to Benares, and from this time forth he decided to travel all over India in order to defeat the adherents of other schools of thought in open debate. It is said that he first went to meet Kumārila, but Kumārila was then at the point of death, and he advised him to meet Kumārila’s disciple. He defeated Maṇḍana and converted him into an ascetic follower of his own. He then travelled in various places, and defeating his opponents everywhere he established his Vedānta philosophy, which from that time forth acquired a dominant influence in moulding the religious life of India.

Śaṅkara carried on the work of his teacher Gauḍapāda and by writing commentaries on the ten Upaniṣads and the Brahma-sūtras tried to prove, that the absolutist creed was the one which was intended to be preached in the Upaniṣads and the Brahma-sūtras[1]. Throughout his commentary on the Brahma-sūtras, there is ample evidence that he was contending against some other rival interpretations of a dualistic tendency which held that the Upaniṣads partly favoured the Sāṃkhya cosmology of the existence of prakṛti.

That these were actual textual interpretations of the Brahma-sūtras is proved by the fact that Śaṅkara in some places tries to show that these textual constructions were faulty[2]. In one place he says that others (referring according to Vācaspati to the Mīmāṃsā) and some of us (referring probably to those who interpreted the sūtras and the Upaniṣads from the Vedānta point of view) think that the soul is permanent. It is to refute all those who were opposed to the right doctrine of perceiving everything as the unity of the self (ātmaikatva) that this Śārīraka commentary of mine is being attempted[3].

Rāmānuja, in the introductory portion of his bhāṣya on the Brahma-sūtra , says that the views of Bodhāyana who wrote an elaborate commentary on the Brahma-sūtra were summarized by previous teachers, and that he was following this Bodhāyana bhāṣya in writing his commentary. In the Vedārthasaṃgraha of Rāmānuja mention is made of Bodhāyana, Taṅka, Guhadeva, Kapardin, Bhāruci as Vedāntic authorities, and Dravidācāryya is referred to as the “bhāṣyakāra” commentator. In Chāndogya III. x. 4, where the Upaniṣad cosmology appeared to be different from the Viṣnupurāṇa cosmology, Śaṅkara refers to an explanation offered on the point by one whom he calls “ācāryya” (atroktaḥ parihārah ācāryyaiḥ) and Anandagiri says that “ācāryya” there refers to Dravidācāryya. This Dravidācāryya is known to us from Rāmānuja’s statement as being a commentator of the dualistic school, and we have evidence here that he had written a commentary on the Chāndogya Upaniṣad.

A study of the extant commentaries on the Brahma-sūtras of Bādarāyaṇa by the adherents of different schools of thought leaves us convinced that these sūtras were regarded by all as condensations of the teachings of the Upaniṣads. The differences of opinion were with regard to the meaning of these sūtras and the Upaniṣad texts to which references were made by them in each particular case.

The Brahma-sūtra is divided into four adhyāyas or books, and each of these is divided into four chapters or pādas. Each of these contains a number of topics of discussion (adhikaraṇa) which are composed of a number of sūtras, which raise the point at issue, the points that lead to doubt and uncertainty, and the considerations that should lead one to favour a particular conclusion. As explained by Śaṅkara, most of these sūtras except the first four and the first two chapters of the second book are devoted to the textual interpretations of the Upaniṣad passages.

Śaṅkara’s method of explaining the absolutist Vedānta creed does not consist in proving the Vedānta to be a consistent system of metaphysics, complete in all parts, but in so interpreting the Upaniṣad texts as to show that they all agree in holding the Brahman to be the self and that alone to be the only truth. In Chapter I of Book II Śaṅkara tries to answer some of the objections that may be made from the Sāṃkhya point of view against his absolutist creed and to show that some apparent difficulties of the absolutist doctrine did not present any real difficulty.

In Chapter II of Book II he tries to refute the Sāṃkhya, Yoga, Nyāya-Vaiśeṣika, the Buddhist, Jaina, Bhā-gavata and Śaiva systems of thought. These two chapters and his commentaries on the first four sūtras contain the main points of his system. The rest of the work is mainly occupied in showing that the conclusion of the sūtras was always in strict agreement with the Upaniṣad doctrines. Reason with Śaṅkara never occupied the premier position; its value was considered only secondary, only so far as it helped one to the right understanding of the revealed scriptures, the Upaniṣads. The ultimate truth cannot be known by reason alone. What one debater shows to be reasonable a more expert debater shows to be false, and what he shows to be right is again proved to be false by another debater. So there is no final certainty to which we can arrive by logic and argument alone.

The ultimate truth can thus only be found in the Upaniṣads; reason, discrimination and judgment are all to be used only with a view to the discovery of the real purport of the Upaniṣads. From his own position Śaṅkara was not thus bound to vindicate the position of the Vedānta as a thoroughly rational system of metaphysics. For its truth did not depend on its rationality but on the authority of the Upaniṣads. But what was true could not contradict experience. If therefore Śaṅkara’s interpretation of the Upaniṣads was true, then it would not contradict experience. Śaṅkara was therefore bound to show that his interpretation was rational and did not contradict experience.

If he could show that his interpretation was the only interpretation that was faithful to the Upaniṣads, and that its apparent contradictions with experience could in some way be explained, he considered that he had nothing more to do. He was not writing a philosophy in the modern sense of the term, but giving us the whole truth as taught and revealed in the Upaniṣads and not simply a system spun by a clever thinker, which may erroneously appear to be quite reasonable. Ultimate validity does not belong to reason but to the scriptures.

He started with the premise that whatever may be the reason it is a fact that all experience starts and moves in an error which identifies the self with the body, the senses, or the objects of the senses. All cognitive acts presuppose this illusory identification, for without it the pure self can never behave as a phenomenal knower or perceiver, and without such a perceiver there would be no cognitive act. Śaṅkara does not try to prove philosophically the existence of the pure self as distinct from all other things, for he is satisfied in showing that the Upaniṣads describe the pure self unattached to any kind of impurity as the ultimate truth. This with him is a matter to which no exception can be taken, for it is so revealed in the Upaniṣads. This point being granted, the next point is that our experience is always based upon an identification of the self with the body, the senses, etc. and the imposition of all phenomenal qualities of pleasure, pain, etc. upon the self; and this with Śaṅkara is a beginningless illusion. All this had been said by Gauḍapāda.

Śaṅkara accepted Gauḍapāda’s conclusions, but did not develop his dialectic for a positive proof of his thesis. He made use of the dialectic only for the refutation of other systems of thought. This being done he thought that he had nothing more to do than to show that his idea was in agreement with the teachings of the Upaniṣads. He showed that the Upaniṣads held that the pure self as pure being, pure intelligence and pure bliss was the ultimate truth. This being accepted the world as it appears could not be real. It must be a mere magic show of illusion or māyā. Śaṅkara never tries to prove that the world is māyā, but accepts it as indisputable. For, if the self is what is ultimately real, the necessary conclusion is that all else is mere illusion or māyā. He had thus to quarrel on one side with the Mīmāṃsā realists and on the other with the Sāṃkhya realists, both of whom accepted the validity of the scriptures, but interpreted them in their own way.

The Mīmāmsists held that everything that is said in the Vedas is to be interpreted as requiring us to perform particular kinds of action, or to desist from doing certain other kinds. This would mean that the Upaniṣads being a part of the Veda should also be interpreted as containing injunctions for the performance of certain kinds of actions. The description of Brahman in the Upaniṣads does not therefore represent a simple statement of the nature of Brahman, but it implies that the Brahman should be meditated upon as possessing the particular nature described there, i.e. Brahman should be meditated upon as being an entity which possesses a nature which is identical with our self; such a procedure would then lead to beneficial results to the man who so meditates.

Śaṅkara could not agree to such a view. For his main point was that the Upaniṣads revealed the highest truth as the Brahman. No meditation or worship or action of any kind was required; but one reached absolute wisdom and emancipation when the truth dawned on him that the Brahman or self was the ultimate reality. The teachings of the other parts of the Vedas, the karmakāṇḍa (those dealing with the injunctions relating to the performance of duties and actions), were intended for inferior types of aspirants, whereas the teachings of the Upaniṣads, the jñānakāṇḍa (those which declare the nature of ultimate truth and reality), were intended only for superior aspirants who had transcended the limits of sacrificial duties and actions, and who had no desire for any earthly blessing or for any heavenly joy.

Throughout his commentary on the Bhagavadgītā Śaṅkara tried to demonstrate that those who should follow the injunctions of the Veda and perform Vedic deeds, such as sacrifices, etc., belonged to a lower order. So long as they remained in that order they had no right to follow the higher teachings of the Upaniṣads. They were but karmins (performers of scriptural duties). When they succeeded in purging their minds of all desires which led them to the performance of the Vedic injunctions, the field of karmamārga (the path of duties), and wanted to know the truth alone, they entered the jñānamārga (the way of wisdom) and had no duties to perform. The study of Vedānta was thus reserved for advanced persons who were no longer inclined to the ordinary joys of life but wanted complete emancipation.

The qualifications necessary for a man intending to study the Vedānta are

  1. discerning knowledge about what is eternal and what is transitory (nityānityavastuviveka),
  2. disinclination to the enjoyment of the pleasures of this world or of the after world (ihāmutraphalabhogavirāga),
  3. attainment of peace, self-restraint, renunciation, patience, deep concentration and faith (śamadamādisādhanasampat) and desire for salvation (mumukṣutva).

The person who had these qualifications should study the Upaniṣads, and as soon as he became convinced of the truth about the identity of the self and the Brahman he attained emancipation. When once a man realized that the self alone was the reality and all else was māyā, all injunctions ceased to have any force with him. Thus, the path of duties (karma) and the path of wisdom (jñāna) were intended for different classes of persons or adhikārins. There could be no joint performance of Vedic duties and the seeking of the highest truth as taught in the Upaniṣads (jñāna-karma-samuccayābhāvaḥ).

As against the dualists he tried to show that the Upaniṣads never favoured any kind of dualistic interpretations. The main difference between the Vedānta as expounded by Gauḍapāda and as explained by Śaṅkara consists in this, that Śaṅkara tried as best he could to dissociate the distinctive Buddhist traits found in the exposition of the former and to formulate the philosophy as a direct interpretation of the older Upaniṣad texts. In this he achieved remarkable success. He was no doubt regarded by some as a hidden Buddhist (pracchanna Bauddha), but his influence on Hindu thought and religion became so great that he was regarded in later times as being almost a divine person or an incarnation.

His immediate disciples, the disciples of his disciples, and those who adhered to his doctrine in the succeeding generations, tried to build a rational basis for his system in a much stronger way than Śaṅkara did. Our treatment of Śaṅkara’s philosophy has been based on the interpretations of Vedānta thought, as offered by these followers of Śaṅkara. These interpretations are nowhere in conflict with Śaṅkara’s doctrines, but the questions and problems which Śaṅkara did not raise have been raised and discussed by his followers, and without these one could not treat Vedānta as a complete and coherent system of metaphysics. As these will be discussed in the later sections, we may close this with a short description of some of the main features of the Vedānta thought as explained by Śaṅkara.

Brahman according to Śaṅkara is

“the cause from which (proceeds) the origin or subsistence and dissolution of this world which is extended in names and forms, which includes many agents and enjoyers, which contains the fruit of works specially determined according to space, time, and cause, a world which is formed after an arrangement inconceivable even by the (imagination of the) mind[4].”

The reasons that Śaṅkara adduces for the existence of Brahman may be considered to be threefold:

  1. The world must have been produced as the modification of something, but in the Upaniṣads all other things have been spoken of as having been originated from something other than Brahman, so Brahman is the cause from which the world has sprung into being, but we could not think that Brahman itself originated from something else, for then we should have a regressus ad infinitum (anavasthā).
  2. The world is so orderly that it could not have come forth from a non-intelligent source. The intelligent source then from which this world has come into being is Brahman.
  3. This Brahman is the immediate consciousness (sākṣi) which shines as the self, as well as through the objects of cognition which the self knows. It is thus the essence of us all, the self, and hence it remains undenied even when one tries to deny it, for even in the denial it shows itself forth. It is the self of us all and is hence ever present to us in all our cognitions.

Brahman according to Śaṅkara is the identity of pure intelligence, pure being, and pure blessedness. Brahman is the self of us all. So long as we are in our ordinary waking life, we are identifying the self with thousands of illusory things, with all that we call “I” or mine, but when in dreamless sleep we are absolutely without any touch of these phenomenal notions the nature of our true state as pure blessedness is partially realized. The individual self as it appears is but an appearance only, while the real truth is the true self which is one for all, as pure intelligence, pure blessedness, and pure being.

All creation is illusory māyā. But accepting it as māyā, it may be conceived that God (Īśvara) created the world as a, mere sport; from the true point of view there is no Īśvara who creates the world, but in the sense in which the world exists, and we all exist as separate individuals, we can affirm the existence of Īśvara, as engaged in creating and maintaining the world. In reality all creation is illusory and so the creator also is illusory. Brahman, the self, is at once the material cause (upādāna-kāraṇa) as well as the efficient cause (nimitta-kāraṇa) of the world.

There is no difference between the cause and the effect, and the effect is but an illusory imposition on the cause—a mere illusion of name and form. We may mould clay into plates and jugs and call them by so many different names, but it cannot be admitted that they are by that fact anything more than clay; their transformations as plates and jugs are only appearances of name and form (nāmarūpa). This world, inasmuch as it is but an effect imposed upon the Brahman, is only phenomenally existent (vyavahārikd) as mere objects of name and form (nāmarūpa), but the cause, the Brahman, is alone the true reality (pāramārthika)[5].

Footnotes and references:

[1]:

The main works of Śaṅkara are his commentaries (bhāsya) on the ten Upaniṣads (īśa, Kena, Katha, Praśna, Muṇḍaka, Māndūkya, Aitareya, Taittirīya, Bṛhadāran-yaka, and Chāndogya), and on the Brahtna-sūtra.

[2]:

See note on p. 432.

[3]:

Śaṅkara’s bhāsya on the Brahma-sūtras , 1. iii. 19.

[4]:

Śaṅkara’s commentary, 1. i. 2. See also Deussen’s System of the Vedānta.

[5]:

All that is important in Śaṅkara’s commentary of the Brahma-sūtras has been excellently systematised by Deussen in his System of the Vedānta ; it is therefore unnecessary for me to give any long account of this part. Most of what follows has been taken from the writings of his followers.

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