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THE INDIAN ANTIQUARY
[ OCTOBER, 1920
ordinary fervour and emotion. Although in his miraculous control over the universe, culminat. case he founded an important Sect, he was, like ing in the complete translation of his soul into the Lal Ded, no organiser, but his religious emotion highest phase of Being, the Absolute (usually conwas real and clean, and he turned the talu of ceived as the Supreme Siva) for ever and ever." Radha-Krishna, not very savoury from the point of The Yogic theory of the microcosm contained in the general morality, into something that held the human body involves a description thereof which imagination of a vast public to their good. The has to be learnt, as it has no counterpart in the dancing and the music soon died away after his ordinarily observable facts of its anatomy. death, but they had done their work, for they "As the object of metaphysical contemplation attracted general attention, and the contonts of is to merge the individual soul into the absolute tho hymns and the teachings of the Sect, with All-Spirit, so the object of Yogic contemplation much deterioration, alas ! in certain instances, is to absorb (the Creative Force of the Phenomenal were left to their inherent value for success and Universe, personified as] Kundalini in the mioropermanence.
cosm, representing the microcosmic Energy, Lal Ded purported to popularise the highly
into the highest of the circles supposed to be anthropomorphic doctrines of the Saiva Yoga,
I attached to the spinal cord at the base of the This was no easy task, for the Yogic philosophy
palate and called) Sahasrara, typifying the Absolute WAS so abstruse and difficult to follow and so full
whereby the Cosmos is merged into the infinite of technicalities, that obviously the workaday
bliss of the Supreme (Perameévara)." While the unlettered population could never grasp it ; and
absorption is being effected there occurs the Ele. the technicalities, which would come to be repeated
mental Sound in his body audible to the Yogi,
the subject of further extremely complicated. glibly enough, must have largely appeared to the
and obscure theories of cosmic evolution, but public like "the blessed word Mesopotamia." In his illuminating discourse on Yoga, Dr. Barnett
they are of importance because, as the Creative
Force " reveals herself in sound, Word or Logos, starts by saying: "The object of the discipline
the elements of Speech, namely syllables and called Yoga is to emancipate the individual soul
their combinations, have a profound mystio signifrom its bondage to the material universe" includ.
ficance in Saiva doctrine." ing "the mental organism.... The emancipa. tion is effected by a mental and bodily discipline Teach the details of such a doctrine by a mass culminating in a spiritual transformation, in which of technical terms in, or based on, a conventional there comes into existence a permanent intuition tongue, such as Sanskrit has been for a very long revealing an essential distinction between the time; add to it fragments of other striking docindividual goul and the material universe. This trines current at the period, and the people will 18 the state of isolation which is salvation." As I be puzzled ; and so it is with some justification the bondage of the material universe includes the that Granny Lal's editors point out the importance bondage of the mental organism the Yogi attempts of her songs from the fact that they are not a by ascetic exercises, into which metaphysical systematic exposé of saivism on the lines laid contemplation largely enters, to attain such power down by the theologians who preceded her, but over his own mental organism that "all sense of illustrate the religion on its popular side." How objectivity disappears from the matter of thought, much Lal Ded actually taught the people of leaving only the intuition of the distinction between what she herself understood her editors have rot the individual soul and the material universe,
worked out, but it would be worth doing. wherein the individual soul shines for over in its
I have been so absorbed in the philosophical perfectly pure still radiance."
side of this remarkable book that I have almost Dr. Barnett explains that from the first the omitted to mention Sir George Grierson's invalu. Yogic method of gnosis presupposes certainable Appendices on Lalla's Language and Lalla's mystic conceptions of the natural and spiritual Metres and the Vocabulary. Especially would world " which may be classified broadly under I draw attention to the extremely informing foottwo heads : (1) the theory of Nature and of sal. note on p. 128, based on the experience gained vation hv manns thereof (2) the practice of by the fact that her songs have reached physical means supposed to be eiticaciótis in at handed down by word of mouth from generation taining the latter object....In Yogic theory
to generation, and are therefore now found in the human body is conceived as a miniature copy
practically modern Kashmiri. His footnote says: or replica of the world without it: the forces by
"So also the Vedic hymns were for centuries handed which this microcosm is controlled at the same down by word of mouth and Lalla's songs give time operate upon the macrocosm outside, and & valuable example of the manner in which their thus by certain physical and mental processes the
language must have changed from generation to Yogi can win for himself not only supernatural generation before their text was finally established." powers over his own body and mind but also a
R. C. TEIOLE.
