admire the ingeniousness of those who sometimes in this, sometimes in that peculiarity see a clear indication of the modern date of an Upanishad, but to a conscientious scholar such arguments are really distasteful for the very sake of their ingeniousness. He knows that they will convince many who do not know the real difficulties; he knows they will have to be got out of the way with no small trouble, and he knows that, even if they should prove true in the end, they will require very different support from what they have hitherto received, before they can be admitted to the narrow circle of scientific facts.

While fully admitting therefore that the Svetâsvataraupanishad has its peculiar features and its peculiar difficulties, I must most strongly maintain that no argument that has as yet been brought forward, seems to me to prove, in any sense of the word, its modern character.

It has been said, for instance, that the Svetasvataraupanishad is a sectarian Upanishad, because, when speaking of the Highest Self or the Highest Brahman, it applies such names to him as Hara (I, 10), Rudra (II, 17; III, 2; 4; IV, 12; 21; 22), Siva (III, 14; IV, 10), Bhagavat (III, 14), Agni, Åditya, Vâyu, &c. (IV, 2). But here it is simply taken for granted that the idea of the Highest Self was developed first, and, after it had reached its highest purity, was lowered again by an identification with mythological and personal deities. The questions whether the conception of the Highest Self was formed once and once only, whether it was formed after all the personal and mythological deities had first been merged into one Lord (Pragâpati), or whether it was discovered behind the veil of any other name in the mythological pantheon of the past, have never been mooted. Why should not an ancient Rishi have said: What we have hitherto called Rudra, and what we worship as Agni, or Siva, is in reality the Highest Self, thus leaving much of the ancient mythological phraseology to be used with a new meaning? Why should we at once conclude that late sectarian worshippers of mythological gods replaced again the Highest Self, after their fathers had discovered it, by their own sectarian names? If we adopt the former [15]

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view, the Upanishads, which still show these rudera of the ancient temples, would have to be considered as more primitive even than those in which the idea of the Brahman or the Highest Self has reached its utmost purity.

It has been considered a very strong argument in support of the modern and sectarian character of the Svetâsvatara-upanishad, that 'it inculcates what is called Bhakti1, or implicit reliance on the favour of the deity worshipped.' Now it is quite true that this Upanishad possesses a very distinct character of its own, by the stress which it lays on the personal, and sometimes almost mythical character of the Supreme Spirit; but, so far from inculcating bhakti, in the modern sense of the word, it never mentions that word, except in the very last verse, a verse which, if necessary, certain critics would soon dispose of as a palpable addition. But that verse says no more than this: "If these truths (of the Upanishad) have been told to a high-minded man, who feels the highest devotion for God, and for his Guru as for God, then they will shine forth indeed.' Does that prove the existence of Bhakti as we find it in the Sândilya-sûtras??

Again, it has been said that the Svetâsvatara-upanishad is sectarian in a philosophical sense, that it is in fact an Upanishad of the Sânkhya system of philosophy, and not of the Vedanta. Now I am quite willing to admit that, in its origin, the Vedânta philosophy is nearer to the Vedic literature than any other of the six systems of philosophy, and that if we really found doctrines, peculiar to the Sânkhya, and opposed to the Vedânta, in the Svetâsvataraupanishad, we might feel inclined to assign to our Upanishad a later date. But where is the proof of this?

No doubt there are expressions in this Upanishad which remind us of technical terms used at a later time in the Sânkhya system of philosophy, but of Sânkhya doctrines, which I had myself formerly suspected in this Upanishad,

1 Weber, Ind. Stud. I, 422; and History of Indian Literature, p. 238. The Aphorisms of Sândilya, or the Hindu Doctrine of Faith, translated by E. B. Cowell, Calcutta, 1879.

I can on closer study find very little. I think it was Mr. Gough who, in his Philosophy of the Upanishads, for the first time made it quite clear that the teaching of our Upanishad is, in the main, the same as that of the other Upanishads. The Svetâsvatara-upanishad teaches,' as he says, 'the unity of souls in the one and only Self; the unreality of the world as a series of figments of the selffeigning world-fiction; and as the first of the fictitious emanations, the existence of the Demiurgos or universal soul present in every individual soul, the deity that projects the world out of himself, that the migrating souls may find the recompense of their works in former lives.'

I do not quite agree with this view of the Isvara, whom Mr. Gough calls the Demiurgos, but he seems to me perfectly right when he says that the Svetâsvatara-upanishad propounds in Sânkhya terms the very principles that the Sânkhya philosophers make it their business to subvert. One might doubt as to the propriety of calling certain terms Sânkhya terms' in a work written at a time when a Sânkhya philosophy, such as we know it as a system, had as yet no existence, and when the very name sânkhya meant something quite different from the Sânkhya system of Kapila. Sânkhya is derived from sankhyâ, and that meant counting, number, name, corresponding very nearly to the Greek Móyos. Sânkhya, as derived from it, meant originally no more than theoretic philosophy, as opposed to yoga, which meant originally practical religious exercises and penances, to restrain the passions and the senses in general. All other interpretations of these words, when they had become technical names, are of later date.

But even in their later forms, whatever we may think of the coincidences and differences between the Sânkhya and Vedanta systems of philosophy, there is one point on which they are diametrically opposed. Whatever else the Sânkhya may be, it is dualistic; whatever else the Vedanta may be, it is monistic. In the Sânkhya, nature, or whatever else we may call it, is independent of the purusha; in the Vedanta it is not. Now the Svetâsvatara-upanishad states distinctly that nature, or what in the Sankhya philosophy

is intended by Pradhâna, is not an independent power, but a power (sakti) forming the very self of the Deva. 'Sages,' we read, 'devoted to meditation and concentration, have seen the power belonging to God himself, hidden in its own qualities.'

What is really peculiar in the Svetâsvatara-upanishad is the strong stress which it lays on the personality of the Lord, the Îsvara. Deva, in the passage quoted, is perhaps the nearest approach to our own idea of a personal God, though without the background which the Vedanta always retains for it. It is God as creator and ruler of the world, as isvara, lord, but not as Paramâtman, or the Highest Self. The Paramâtman constitutes, no doubt, his real essence, but creation and creator have a phenomenal character only1. The creation is mâyâ, in its original sense of work, then of phenomenal work, then of illusion. The creator is mâyin, in its original sense of worker or again, in that character, phenomenal only 2. or qualities arise, according to the Vedânta, from prakriti or mâyâ, within, not beside, the Highest Self, and this is the very idea which is here expressed by 'the Self-power of God, hidden in the gunas or determining qualities.' How easily that sakti or power may become an independent being, as Mâyâ, we see in such verses as:

maker, but

The Gunas

Sarvabhuteshu sarvâtman yâ saktir aparâbhavâ

Gunâsrayâ namas tasyai sasvatâyai paresvara3.

But the important point is this, that in the Svetâsvataraupanishad this change has not taken place. Throughout the whole of it we have one Being only, as the cause of everything, never two. Whatever Sânkhya philosophers of a later date may have imagined that they could discover in that Upanishad in support of their theories, there is not one passage in it which, if rightly interpreted, not by itself, but in connection with the whole text, could be quoted in

1 Prathamam îsvarâtmanâ mâyirûpenâvatishthate brahma; see p. 280, 1. 5. Mâyî srigate sarvam etat.

See p. 279, 1. 5. Sarvâtman seems a vocative, like paresvara,

♦ Sec Sarvadarsanasańgraha, p. 152.

support of a dualistic philosophy such as the Sânkhya, as a system, decidedly is.

If we want to understand, what seems at first sight contradictory, the existence of a God, a Lord, a Creator, a Ruler, and at the same time the existence of the super-personal Brahman, we must remember that the orthodox view of the Vedanta1 is not what we should call Evolution, but Illusion. Evolution of the Brahman, or Parinâma, is heterodox, illusion or Vivarta is orthodox Vedânta. Brahman is a concept involving such complete perfection that with it evolution, or a tendency towards higher perfection, is impossible. If therefore there is change, that change can only be illusion, and can never claim the same reality as Brahman. To put it metaphorically, the world, according to the orthodox Vedântin, does not proceed from Brahman as a tree from a germ, but as mirage from the rays of the sun. The world is, as we express it, phenomenal only, but whatever objective reality there is in it, is Brahman, 'das Ding an sich,' as Kant might call it.

Then what is Isvara or Deva, the Lord or God? The answers given to this question are not very explicit. Historically, no doubt, the idea of the Isvara, the personal God, the creator and ruler, the omniscient and omnipotent, existed before the idea of the absolute Brahman, and after the idea of the Brahman had been elaborated, the difficulty of effecting a compromise between the two ideas, had to be overcome. Îsvara, the Lord, is Brahman, for what else could he be? But he is Brahman under a semblance, the semblance, namely, of a personal creating and governing God. He is not created, but is the creator, an office too low, it was supposed, for Brahman. The power which enabled Îsvara to create, was a power within him, not independent of him, whether we call it Devâtmasakti, Mâyâ, or Prakriti. That power is really inconceivable, and it has assumed such different forms in the mind of different Vedântists, that in the end Mâyâ herself is represented as the creating power, nay, as having created Îsvara himself.

1 Vedanta paribhâshâ, in the Pandit, vol. iv, p. 496.