Soul Body And Person In Ancient India

Author(s): Karin Preisendanz
Publisher: Karin Preisendanz

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speech
fire wind sun moon directional quarters
respiration (prāna) sight (caksus) thinking (manas) hearing (Srotra).
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As a group, the vital faculties are frequently called präna-s, evidently after the chief, most essentially "vital" and maybe also most physically manifest member of the group. In some teachings of the Brāhmaṇas and Upanişads which possibly reach back to the older concept of prāna as "breath-soul" (cf. above), präna - owing to its essential importance for life - acquires the function of a "vital soul" that constitutes the essence of (wo)man, in continuation of the ancient individuating function of the "free soul," and of the universe at the same time. Generally, in the course of reflections on the plural prana-s, the notion of subtle sense faculties was developed that superseded the just mentioned development of the notion of praņa, and finally, in the philosophical traditions of the classical period, the notion of prdna was excluded from the context of metaphysics and psychology, and relegated to the realm of speculations on the functions of various bodily winds; this more physiological notion of präna was part of the medical tradition from early on. In non-scholarly works and idioms, however, the plural expression "prana-s" remains to be used in the sense of concrete "life."
The two terms ass and präna, although of great significance in the psychology of the ancient period, did not persist in the context of the subsequent development of the concept of "soul" in classical Indian philosophy where the term dtman (to which I have already referred in the introduction cf. pp. 120-121) became most prominent. It is this term that has been connected in the West with the Indian religio-philosophical notion of a "soul" ever since the middle of the eighteenth century and became a household word for Western philosophers and historians of religion at the very latest with the publication of Paul Deussen's famous Allgemeine Geschichte der Philosophie (General History of Philosophy) - with its substantial volumes on Indian philosophy - and his translation into German of sixty Upanişads in 1897, dedicated to the "manes / spiritual ancestors of Arthur Schopenhauer.*) In his translations, Deussen left the word ätman untranslated, and otherwise referred to ātman as "das Selbst," just like Friedrich Max Müller in his earlier, equally well-known English translation of the oldest Upanişads, 126 chose "the Self as translation equivalent. In this, both translators, and other translators of individual Upanişads, base themselves on the fact that in the classical Sanskrit language the word ātman is used in everyday language to refer to one's own psycho-physical complex, in contrast with what is not oneself, that is, the Other, and that the word therefore also has the function of a reflexive pronoun.
As in the case of ass, the etymology of the word atman, which is assumed to be related to German Atem," in Old German "ātum" and Old Saxon "adhom," meaning "breath," has not yet been clarified. An early, still much quoted etymology connects the word with the verbal root meaning "to breathe" that is traditionally considered to be at the base of the word asu. Such an etymology would again provide a parallel, c.g., to the Latin anima, but cannot be maintained any longer from the linguistic point of view. From the point of view of the history of ancient Indian religion and philosophy, however, another derivation which was suggested in early days of scholarship on India would be equally suitable, namely from a verbal root meaning "to move back and forth, to wander." Even though he does not consider such an etymology, the Dutch historian of religion Jan Heesterman stresses the aspect of the brisk movement of breath which takes place continuously and its resulting aspect of having an unsteady, changeable nature; these aspects of breath, he assumes, explain the fact that many
faculties I disagree with Bodewitz who interprets präna in this context as the breath-like) "life-soul [i... "vital soul") or soul in general"; cf. Bodewitz 1986: 343 (cf. also his implicit reference in Bodewitz 1991: 47). This disagreement extends also to the related passage Sankhayana-Aranyaka 11.6 adduced by Bodewitz as evidence for the notion of such a "life. soul"; there prdna, together with apana and addna, two additional types of respiratory faculty ("backward" and "upward" "breathing. cf. on these Bodewitz 1986: 333-334 and 337341), figures between speech (i.e., the faculty of speech) (ude) on the one hand, and sight,
thinking and hearing on the other which clearly points at the context of vital faculties. 130 On the preeminence of prdna in general cf. Bodewitz 1992 and Zysk 1993: 205, on the
groups of four, five, six, seven, nine and ten prdna-s in the Brahmanas and Upanisads cf. Arbman 1927a: 4-7 and Bodewitz 1986.- Arbman assumes a different historical develop ment and reason for the plural designation prana-s here, namely, a differentiation of the "vital soul" präna into several entities according to its various functions in different body
parts (1927: 7-9). DI Cf. also Bodewitz 1992: 52 on präna as "representative of the Atman concept," and p. 55
on prona as the soul of the deceased. 12 Che... Satapatha-Brahmara (SPB) (ed. Chinnaswami Shastri and Pattabhirama Shastri.
3rd ed., Varanasi 1998) 6.6.2.6 (cf. Oldenberg 1917: 526, n. 1, and Arbman 1927: 14) and
KauUp 2.1-2. Cf. also Strauss 1925:38, Frauwallner 1953: 55-60 and Zysk 1993:204. 1) For references to the different types of breath and the bodily winds, which include prana,
in Vedic sources cf. Bodewitz 1986 and Zysk 1993: 199-206. 134 Cf., ... Arbman 19272: 4 and 8. Cf. the similar usage of the plural expression asu-s"
mentioned in n. 107 above.
1) Cf. Deussen 1897 (translation into English in 1980). Earlier translations of individual
Upanişads, also from one European language into another, are listed in Renard 1995. 136 Cf. Müller 1879, 1884. 19 Cf. n. 21 above. 1 The derivation from Van has been unambiguously rejected already in Mayrhofer 1956, s.v.
atman. Cf. also Bodewitz 1991: 48. 1Vaf/at. Cf. Weber 1895: 32 [846), n. 2; cf. also Debrunner 1954: 761.
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