Samayasara

SR No.: 006764
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: A Chakravarti
Publisher: Bharatiya Gyanpith
Publication Year: 1989
Total Pages: 370
Language: English
Classification: Book_English, Agam, & Canon
File Size: 20 MB

Page 48

30
SAMAYASARA
used them as a Bible. "It has been the solace of my life and I hope it will be the same in my death.” The Upanişads peculiarly appealed to the German students, because they themselves at the time of Schopenhauer were in possession of a philosophy quite analogous to this.
Deus sen on the Upani şads.-Speaking of the concepts of the Upanişads in their relation to philosophy, Deussen writes : “The whole of religion and philosophy has its root in the thought that the universe is only appearance and not reality. This fact that philosophy has from the earliest times sought to determine the first principle of the universe proves that it started from a more or less clear consciousness that the entire empirical reality is not the true essence of things, that in Kant's words is only appearance and not the thing-in-itself. There have been three occasions on which philosophy has advanced in a clearer comprehension of its recurring task and of the solution demanded. First in India in the Upanişads, again in Greece in the philosophy of Parmenides and Plato and finally at a more recent times in the philosophy of Kant and Schopenhauer”. Deussen adds : "All great religious teachers therefore, whether in earlier or later times, may even all those at the present day whose religion rests upon faith are unconsciously followers of Kant. The new testament and the Upanişads, the two noblest products of the religious consciousness of mankind are found, when we sound their deeper meaning, to be nowhere in irreconcilable contradiction, but in a manner the most attractive serve to elucidate and complete one another.” The purport of these words of Deussen is that Kant's philosophical agnosticism is the last word in philosophy and that a religion not associated with Kantian metaphysics is far from being a genuine religion. It places the philosophy of the Upanişads on a par with that of Kant and Plato. If he wants to express his admiration of the philosophy of the Upanişads by comparing it to his own national philosophy we have nothing to quarrel about. He is at liberty to choose his own method of critical appreciation. He may quite well regard the philosophy of Kant and Plato as the only genuine philosophy. But when he says that the philosophy of the Upanişads is the same as that of Plato we have to protest. This is an unwarranted philosophical attitude with certain European scholars who started the study of Indian thought with the unwarranted assumption that the Advaita Vedānta was the one fruit to produce which the whole of Indian life and culture conspired. This bias was further strengthened by the tendencies of European thought moulded by such German thinkers like Kant and Hegel. It requires no serious argument to show how unfounded the assumption is even if we admit for the sake of argument such an interpretation of the Upanişadic philosophy. We cannot consistently explain the claims put forward by other systems of Indian philosophy that they are also resting on the Upanişadic authority. The real fact is that all the Indian systems whether orthodox or heterodox are based upon fundamental concepts of Upanișadic thought and that all have the right to claim the authority of their source. This simple fact of History cannot be denied