Soul Body And Person In Ancient India

Author(s): Karin Preisendanz
Publisher: Karin Preisendanz

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in the immediately following verse, Earth and God Soma are requested to return asu and the (bodily?) Self (tanu) respectively." This suggests that here too as is to be understood as the individuating "free soul," rather than the "vital soul"" which is referred to with its specializations in the preceding where prana is listed together with the other three major vital forces."
The notion of asu - so closely connected with "de-" and "re-animation" and the afterlife can thus be shown to have most probably been basically that of a "free soul," and as such a "soul" it could indeed have been imagined as wind- or air
term in Vedic literature (as obviously intended by Arbman). On the use of some verses of RV 10.57, in which manas is called back from the other world (RV 10.57.3-5), in a modified form to relate to the manas-s of the persons involved in a ritual addressing the Fathers (within the spavasatha-rituals preceding the establishment of the sacrificial fire according to the Baudhayana-Srautasütra) cf. Krick 1982: 80.
97 Cf. RV 10.59.7. On tanu cf. Arbman 1927a: 43-49, 52, with n. 2, and 73 (referring to Tuxen).
98 The latter alternative is adopted by Arbman (1927a: 15).
99 As explained above (p. 136), the short-term departure of the "breath (ing) soul" prana from within the body to a place nearby was obviously considered possible during life, i.e., it was not fatal, although certainly dangerous. Thus, the request that it may be returned is not necessarily meaningless.
100 Further evidence for the interpretation of ass as a/the "free soul" is provided by AV 5.1.7 (adduced also in Schlerath 1968: 148): it is difficult to imagine that the expression "as which is without death (amptass)" in the otherwise very obscure verse refers to the impersonal "vital soul" as manifest in this body (pace Arbman 1927a: 15, n. 1), and not to the "free soul." Cf. also RV 1.113.16 (adduced in Schlerath 1968: 147) where the living as is said to have come to those awakened by Dawn; this could refer to the return of the "free soul" after deep sleep. Because the "free soul" is imagined to be "alive" (cf. e.g., Arbman 1926: 135 and 172) the qualification jioa is certainly meaningful for it, too. Alternatively, however, Dawn herself could be metaphorically imagined as the living as inasmuch as she fulfills the same vitalizing function for all creatures who have been wakened by her as the individual "vital soul" fulfills for a living being (cf., e.g., Oldenberg 1916: 526; Arbman 1927a: 16 and Krick 1982: 292, n. 740 ["Lebenskraft"]; in a more abstract sense Lommel 1955: 32: "neue Lebensfrische" for jah asuh; Renou 1942: 29 ["l'esprit de vie"] may point at the notion of a conscious soul also responsible for vital functions; cf: also Oberlies 1998: 504, n. 216, who takes ja to mean "vitalizing," not "living," on account of the immediate context). For the sake of completeness, some remaining passages of the Reveda have to be addressed in which Schlerath takes the term ass to refer to the "localization" of "existence," especially of existence in the other world; he thus postulates a "local reinterpretation" of the term meaning "the other world," similar to the Old Iranian (Avestan) evidence (cf. Schlerath 1968: 148-149; cf. also earlier interpretations, reported in Arbman 1927a: 65, of the term ass as referring to "Geisterleben" = "Geisterreich," "Geisterwelt" in this context, and Maurer 1986: 254: "spirit-world"). However, regardless whether the equation of "existence" and "unspecified life" is legitimate (cf. above pp. 127128), the development of the term to refer to a very specific location of existence of beings which is not the primary one, namely, the other world, seems rather problematic; cf. also Lommel's translation of the word ass with "(anderes) Leben" in one of the relevant verses, namely, RV 10.15.1 (Lommel 1955: 111). In this difficult verse (cf. also Arbman 1927a: 65
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like, 10 regardless of the etymology of the word. However, in a Rgvedic passage we find ask and the primordial life-giving waters juxtaposed or paralleled, 102 and in a famous cosmogonic hymn of the Rgveda there is reference to the one single (eka) primordial as of the Gods; here the context demands that the term refers to a "vital soul" in the sense of concrete vital force, not an individuating "free soul." Some of the passages where as is qualified as "living" (a) and ap
71 and 1928: 232, and Dange 1995-1996: 24) the Fathers who are requested to ascend (from the realm of the dead in the underworld) are qualified as "having gone to as" without having fallen prey to danger; this could be understood as referring to the "going to [one's own] ass" in the sense of (re-)gaining one's individual personality, of becoming oneself (again) after a dangerous passage or a period of dormancy (cf. RV 10.12.1 on the reanimation of the sacrificial fire where the noun ass is qualified by "own" [sua-]). Oldenberg (1916: 529) offers a different interpretation for the passage RV 10.15.1 (cf. also the presentation in Arbman 1927a: 65-66): he assumes that here ass, as the vital potency in the function of the psyche, is imagined to precede manas, as the mental potency in the function of the pryche, on the way to the other world and that the two, which otherwise stick to each other, re-unite there. (It has to be pointed out that Oldenberg's notion of the psyche ["free soul"] is not the one brought out in such strong relief by Arbman and applied in the present contribution, but rather a unitary concept of "soul.") Oberlies (1998: 505, n. 221) seems to follow this interpretation by explaining (not translating!) the idiom "to go to/in [one's] asu" as "come to new life" (similarly Arbman 1927a: 16, with n. 2, on the expression in RV 10.12.1). This has to be distinguished from Tuxen's understanding of the term asu as "eternal life" in this context, referring to ass in the sense of "the universal, allcomprehensive aspect of life" and as having a "collective character" (cf. Arbman 1927a: 18 and 65); Krick's translation "zum Leben gelangt" (Krick 1982: 75) may point at a similar interpretation. Inspired by the commentators on this idiom who understand it (in RV 10.15.1 and in similar contexts) in the concrete sense of "attaining a wind-like subtle body (cf. also Geldner and Caland as referred to by Arbman) endowed with organs and capabilities similar to that of the material body, Arbman (Arbman 1927a: 67-71) renders the idiom as "becoming spirit" ("die, welche Geist geworden sind") although he seems to be aware of the problem that this does not fit all too well with the literal meaning. asw would thus be a neutral term for "spirit" ("Geist"), a notion which, Arbman claims, is at the basis of the two notions of the (personal) psyche and the (impersonal) life-breath (?) ("Geist" in German can refer to a ghost, but not to breath). Finally, also Oldenberg's rendering of the relevant phrase in RV 10.12.1 ("zu seinem Geistesdasein gehend") is difficult to understand in context (cf. Oldenberg 1917:44).
101 On the wind-like nature of the "free soul," imagined as a wisp of air, in general, cf. Arbman 1926: 179 and 195-198; on its smoke-like nature cf. p. 195. On the wind-like nature of ass and other "free souls" in Vedic and later popular belief cf. Arbman 1927a: 68-70, 77, 80-81, 90, 96, 110 with n. 1, 126 and 128.
102 Cf. RV 2.22.4 (cf. also Tuxen according to Arbman 1927a: 17 and Schlerath 1968: 147). 103 Cf. RV 10.121.7. This hymn, called the hymn on or about the golden germ, has been treated many times. Most interpreters assign a vitalizing function to ass in this context; cf., e.g, the annotated translations in Brown 1965: 32-33 (as "life spirit," possibly implying consciousness, as in Strauss', Lüders' and Krick's rendering "Lebensgeist" [cf. Strauss 1925: 27, Lüders 1951: 122 and Krick 1982: 293]) and Maurer 1986: 267-270 ("life-essence"). CE also Lommel 1955: 119 ("Lebenskraft") and Renou 1942: 120 (more abstract: "principe de vie"). Thieme may presuppose the above-mentioned etymological connection of the word
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