tman_and_moksa

SR No.: 020053
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: G N Joshi
Publisher: Gujarat University
Publication Year: 1965
Total Pages: 901
Language: English
Classification: Book_English
File Size: 12 MB

Page 49

Acharya Shri Kailashsagarsuri Gyanmandir
The Vedas
pay tribute to the strong. There the person is united with a bright and glorious body and lives a life of eternal enjoyment. In this heaven, the sound of the flute and songs is heard. There seems to be abundant scope for the sensual gratification also.
These Vedic passages throw light on the idea of the state after death imagined by the Vedic seers. It is similar to a happy and comfortable life on the earth. They believed in the verity of goodness of bodily and mental happiness and such a life is depicted by them in their description of their ideal heaven for which they strove. They sought a material happiness. The ancient people of the Vedic period did not stand for physical tortures and they did not look up for spiritual gains at the cost of flesh. Body was not looked upon with contempt but it was used as a means for the achievement of happiness. Whitney's observations give a clearer idea of their aim. It is said, “The earliest inhabitants of India were far enough removed from the unhealthy introversion of their descendants, from their contempt of all things beneath the sun, from their melancholy opinion of the vanity and misery of existence, from their longings to shufte off the mortal coils forever, and from the metaphysical subtlety of their views respecting the universe and its creator. They looked at all these things with the simple apprehension, the naive faith, which usually characterises a primitive people.
1 Ibid. A.V.-III, 29.3. Vol. I, p. 124.
2 Griffith (Tr.): The Hymns of the Rg Veda. R.V.-X,135.7. Tr. Vol. II, p. 581. Ā 2
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