Sambodhi 1975 Vol 04

Author(s): Dalsukh Malvania, H C Bhayani
Publisher: L D Indology Ahmedabad

Page 29

Vedic Origins of the Sankhya Dialectic
27
(vyākļla).69 The Taittiryid-U panişad. has it that first there was as-at, from which sat sprang up.70 But here a-sat appears to be the unmanifest Brahman, as held by Sankaral and, above all, suggested by the Upanişad itself, adding, immediately after, that a-snt made itself into the world].?? It is interesting to note that, in the RgVeda iteself, there is a statement that before creation a-sat gave birth to sat 73 Sāyana interprets a-sat and sat there to signify the unmanifest Brahman and the manifest cosmos respectively.74 The Sat patha-Brāhmaṇa states that first there was a-sat, that the seers (rșayaḥ) are called a-sat, and that the breaths or vital energies (prānah) are the seers.75 Here, too, Sāyana construes a sat to signify 'having the unmanifest name and forin.769 Following him, we can construe sat and a-sat to signify the chaos and the cosmos. In Hesiod, 'chaos' which be considers antecedent to the cosmos, means the space, the firmament - 'antariksa' io Vedic parlance. It is neither 'primordial disorder' nor priinordial matter but the 'yawning gap between the earth and the sun. Does it have any. thing to do with the Vedic concept of a-sat? Plato's 'space', too, which he declares 'incomprehensible' and 'hardly real and which is nevertheless the source of the four elements,77 also appears to answers to the Vedic a-sat. In the Upanisads as well, akāśa is sometimes said to be the source of the four elements.78
Another import of sat and a-sat as used in the Rg-Veda that would suggest itself is 'reified' and 'unreified'.
The Sata patha-Brahmana elsewhere says that there was (originally), as it were, neither sat nor a-sat and that what there was was the mind (manas).79 It adds immediately that the mind is neither sat nor a-sat.80 Sāyaṇa explains that something beyond sat and a-sat there was, which was the mind; for the mind is neither sat, being devoid of form etc. characteristic of the jar etc., nor a-sat, being cognizable. 81
Sayana's explanation does not help us much, however, In fact, being too loose in expression, too profuse in the use of adjectives, and too paradoxical and symbolical in approach - 'bahubhaktivadini', viz. likening any. thing and everything to anything and everythings, the Brahmanas cannot be taken literally.
According to a passage in the Brhadaranyaka-Upanişad, nothing existed before the cosmos, which was all enveloped by death, that is, by hunger, which is death.98 The Upanişad declares elsewhere that before the cosmos there was Brahman.84 At a third place. It equates a-sat with death and sat with immortality.85 If we can make anything out of these rather obscure and mystical passages (of course to us moderns, not necessarily to those for whom these were composed), it is this that in the beginning there was the reign of the unmanifest inscrutable,