Saddharma Pundarika

Author(s): H Kern
Publisher: Oxford

Page 29

INTRODUCTION.
xxvii
Saddharma-pundarika intends to represent Sakya as the supreme being, as the god of gods, almighty and all-wise. But what have we to understand by the words 'god' and 'god of gods?' that is the question. To find the answer let us recall to memory the theosophic notions prevailing in ancient India at certain periods.
In general it may be said that the Upanishads recognise two supreme beings, which in a mystical way are somehow identified ; one is the great illuminator of the macrocosm, and is sometimes called the Sun, at other times Ether; the other, the enlightener of the microcosm, is Mind or Reason 1, As soon as the Sun ceased to be considered an animate being or to be represented as such, he might continue, for worship's sake, honoris causa, to be called the highest god; the really remaining deity was Reason, poetically termed the inward light. This idea is expressed by Nila-. kantha in his commentary on Bhagavad-gita V, 14, in the following terms: Prabhus kidåtmå sürya ivasmadadinàm prakasa kah, the Lord (is) the intelligent Self that like a sun is the illuminator of ourselves and others?. Now the same author, in his notes on Bhagavad-gita VI, 30, dis. tinctly states that our inward consciousness, or as he puts it, the pratyagåtman, the individual Self, otherwise called giva, is Narayana, i.e. the supreme being. At IX, 28 he paraphrases Narayana by sarvesham pratyagatman, the individual consciousness of all (sentient beings); at XII, 14 he identifies Nåråyana with nirgunam brahma. Just as here and there Narayana is represented as clad in all the glory and majesty of a sovereign, as the illuminator, the vivifier of the world, in one word as the sun, so we find Sakyamuni invested with all the grandeur and all the resources of a ruler of nature. Philosophically, both Nåråyana and his counterpart Sâkyamuni are purushottama, paramåtman, the highest brahman, Mind. Såkyamuni
See e. g. Khandogya-opanishad III, 18 and 19; cf. Bhagavad-gita XV, 12. • Cf. Bhagavad-gita XIII, 33: yathå prakåsayaty ekak kritsnam lokam imam ravih, kshetram kshetrt tatha kritsnam prakasayati, Bharata. The kshetra bere is the body, the kshetrin is Mind, Reason, åtman. Cf. Sankara on KAândogya-upanishad, I. c.
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