Samayasara

SR No.: 001607
Original Sutra Author: Kundkundacharya
Author: Hiralal Jain, A N Upadhye
Publisher: Bharatiya Gyanpith
Publication Year: 1944
Total Pages: 370
Language: English
Classification: Book_English, Religion, & Philosophy
File Size: 8 MB

Page 39

SAMAYASARA
period. Throughout the Upanişadic texts we find this as the ruling conception. Towards the close of the Upanişadic period there is the identification of Brahman with Atman. These terms are indiscriminately used to refer to the Ultimate Reality of which man and the nature are but the special manifestations. “From Him the universe springs, to Him it returns." “Thou art the Self of all and Maker of all." In Maxmuller's words, "It was an epoch in the history of the human mind when the identity of Self with the neuter Brahman was for the first time conceived though the name of the terms the Ultimate Reality which is the import of both is very often referred to as Sat-Existence. Tattvamasi ---That thou art. This famous Upanişadic formula represents the developinent and the final identification of the terms Atman and Brahman. Then it becomes a Transcendental concept thereafter. The significance of personality which was associated with Atman gets submerged in the neuter concept of Brahman. The Upanişadic Brahman is said to be beyond description. It can be described only negatively. It is not man or woman nor is it neuter. It is without breath, without mind, higher than the Highest, the Imperishable. The only adequate description we can have of this is Neti Neti-not this, not this. When we go to study the Upanişads in detail we shall see more of this.
The Age of the Upanisads- The Upanisadic age has certain marked characteristics peculiar to itself and not found either in the Samhitā or Brāhmaṇa period. During the Rg Vedic period the Aryans were mainly of a homogeneous society. Their Gods were magnified human beings actuated by human sympathies and sharing even human failures. The Vedic singer invoked their aid both in war and peace to fight the enemy and to promote his own prosperity. This age corresponds to the Homeric age in the Greek civilisation. All this primitive simplicity disappears when we enter into the Upanişadic period, Here we have a different order of society. We are no more with the Aryans whose life was mainly pastoral, whose wealth was cattle and who spent most of their time in offering sacrifices to Indra or Agni and drinking their favourite soma. To bring the Greek parallel once again we are quitting the world of Agamemnon and Odysseus and entering the world of Socrates and Euripides. Now we are concerned with a people already divided into different sects and we are face to face with a race highly contemplative. Sacrifices and rituals do not retain their importance though they are still extant. These persist merely as vestigial institutions preserved by tradition and custom. They ceased to be the genuine ideals of religion. The intellectual atinosphere is surcharged with sophistical idealism. In short, we are in the centre of the world of Indian sophists who are actuated by theoretic curiosity as to the nature of inan and the universe. With such a change in the body-politic of the Aryans, the old order must have elapsed.