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LXXVI
PRAVACANÁSÁRA.
with the Vedic god · Varuņa. The all-encompassing blue vault above is the natural basis of Varuha; the sun, the eminent luminary of the sky, is his eye, his golden winged messenger; the sky can be seen from everywhere, especially so with nomadic Aryans who spent much of their time on open grounds, and so Varuņa sits looking on all; and he easily detects the violations of his laws by men. The sky is ever reflected in the great oceàn, so Varuna is said to go in the ocean. This ubiquitous character of Varuņa brings him some tinge of omniscience, so he is said to be a witness to the flights of birds in the sky and to the path of ships in the ocean. This is physical omnipresence with a moral purpose and does not indicate any metaphysical or psychological implication; that is why perhaps this idea is not seen to be continued in later literature,
UPANIŞADS ON OMNISCIENCE. The conception of omniscience in Upanişadic philosophy has to be sought under the idea of Brahman. Through the course of Indo-Aryan literature, from Rgveda to the last stratum of Upanişads, the word Brahman, both neuter and masculine, has passed through various vicissitudes of meaning; once the word signified prayer, and later on the potential power in prayers and other holy acts; and further Brahman as the limitless power at the basis of all existence was an easy step; but synthetically taking into consideration the culminating point, the Brahman has both anthropomorphic and noumenal characteristics. In the beginning he is identified with various elements, and later he is conceived as bliss and light and ultimately the Real of the real. Brahman is the cosmic base, or the. world-ground as Hume puts it, of all phenomena which are merely his various aspects. Brahman is everything, it is permeation, it is identity; besides him there is nothing real. "The phenomenal is a part of the Real, but only a fragment of the totality of the real'.$ This searching insight of the Upanişadic philosophers has brought them to a peculiar stand of awareness : whatever is around the subject, the phenomenal world including the subject, is illusary; and what is noumenal, the Brahman, is unknowable, and it is truly beyond expression. When the limited individual, realizing himself as one with the cosmic spirit viz., Brahiman, knows this, he knows everything in fact. The omniscience or all-knowledge, according to Upanişads,' would come to mean the complete negation of nescience, the cosmic illusion; by fully grasping the underlying reality, the Unity. This omniscience is Brahman-knowledge for which senses, thought and instruction are no means at all; it is a state of the supreme bliss of Turiyāvasthā. The Vedāntic Brahman has no appreciable individuality in a finite sense; he is an all-embracing and all-pervading individuality; or better the cosmic principle standing for all that exists, is intelligent and is bliss; with the monist it is unique with no second ; and with S'arikara whatever else that appears to be besides him is simply a figment of nescience. In this Vedantic conception which is thoroughly idealistic, the
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1 Macdonell: Vcdic Mythology pp. 22 etc. 2 'Belvalkar and Ranade: History of Indian Philosophy, Creative Period pp. 351 etc. 3 Hume: Thirteen Principle Upanisads, Iutr. p. 37.
