Story of Nation Buddhist India

SR No.: 035274
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: T W Rhys Davids
Publisher: T Fisher Unwin Ltd
Publication Year: 1916
Total Pages: 356
Language: English
Classification: Book_English
File Size: 88 MB

Page 272

RELIGION—THE BRAHMIN POSITION
251
must have been other ideas current besides those that the priests thus adapted and handed down in their text-books. And we have valuable evidence, in the lay literature of a later date, as to what these other ideas were, so that in this respect also, as in other matters, the priestly books have preserved an invaluable, but still only a partial, record.
The ideas they selected are, as would naturally be expected, those based on the same animistic notions as underlay their own views of the sacrifice. A soul in these texts--the pre-Buddhistic Upanishads -is supposed to exist inside each human body, and to be the sole and sufficient explanation of life and motion. In the living body, in its ordinary state, the soul dwells in a cavity in the heart.' It is described as being in size like a grain of barley or rice. It is only in later speculation that it grows to be of the size of the thumb, and to be called therefore “the dwarf."In shape it is like a man.' Its appearance was evidently found difficult to portray, even in simile; but it is said in different passages to be like smoke-coloured wool, like cochineal, like flame, like a white lotus, like a flash of lightning, like a light without smoke. Beliefs vary as to what it is made of. Ont passage says it consists of consciousness, inind, breath; eye and ears; earth, water, fire, and ether; heat and no heat; desire and no
Brhad. iv. 3. 7, v. 6; Chānd. viii. 3. 3; Tait. i. 6. I. Compare Katha, ii. 20 ; iii. 1; iv. 6; vi. 17
? Bịhad. v. 6; Chånd. ii. 14. 3 (this idea is even l'edic). 3 Katha, iv. 12, 13, vi. 17; Svet. iii. 13. v. S. * Tait, ii.; Brhad. i. 41; Sat. Br. xiv. t. 2. I,