Soul Body And Person In Ancient India

Author(s): Karin Preisendanz
Publisher: Karin Preisendanz

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manas, was established at this stage; in choosing this term, the early Upanisadic philosophers took recourse to an old term that relates to the true and adequate verbal formulation of the awe-inspiring real nature of this world by the Rgvedic poet-priests;212 Schopenhauer's fascination with and adaptive interpretation of this identification in the context of his own philosophy has been referred to above (cf. I.). A further remarkable and important aspect of atman that becomes prominent in the teachings of the Upanisads is its conscious nature, that is, the function of consciousness and cognition which was earlier on ascribed to manas as the "mental soul," a conscious "free soul," or the mind- next to sensory vital faculties and the vital faculty of respiration, has now become an important, almost foundational aspect of the atman of living beings, which foremost include humans, but to a certain extent also animals. This can be seen as a clear step towards the development of a unitary notion of a "soul" termed ätman.215 An interesting Aranyaka-passage16 specifies that in (smaller) plants and trees, which are devoid of the vital faculty of respiration (prana), an atman is present, albeit underdeveloped inasmuch as it lacks consciousness; their atman is called rasa, literally: "juice," referring to their vital essence or specific "vital soul" that manifests the "power of life" in them too, although not to themselves (at least not in the sense of becoming intellectually manifest) but to us intellectually conscious creatures who have the obligation to respect this order of life accordingly, I would like to add. In creatures possessing prana, however, the atman is more developed because it becomes manifest as consciousness (citta). Here again, a distinction of degree is made: compared to the atman of animals the atman in (wo)man (purusa) is more developed; there it reveals itself by way of intellectual understanding (prajñāna): only (wo)man verbalizes and "sees" (i.e., conceptualizes?) what has been cognized, knows about what belongs to the morrow, knows about the world and That which is not the world, and desires That which is without death by means of what is mortal. This passage demonstrates in an impressive manner that the notion of atman in Indian philosophy - quite different from the mainstream of Western thought on the "soul" - extends to non-human and even vegetal creatures, and not only in the early period under examination here. The early thinker who composed the adduced Aranyaka-passage would not
212 Cf. especially Thieme 1952.
213 Cf., c.g., Strauss 1925: 51, relating to Aitareya-Aranyaka 2.3.2 and ChUp 8.12 (4-5). Cf. also in general Arbman 1927a: 11 and 128-129, n. 2, with numerous references.
214 Cf. also Arbman 1927a: 179.
215 Cf. Arbman 1927a: 13.
216 Cf. Aitareya-Aranyaka 2.3.2 (ed. A.B. Keith, Oxford 1909), translated in Keith 1909: 216
217.
217 Literally: "bearing prana" (pranabhṛt).
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sympathize, e.g., with those who want to prove the existence of an atman / a "soul" on the basis of arguments such as the universal desire for immortality,218
Many other aspects of the human atman are considered and discussed by the thinkers and early philosophers of the Upanisads, and old, more archaic notions reappear in the course of their speculations, such as the notion of purusa, as a "technical" term specifically referring to a manikin-like "free soul" dwelling in the pupil of the eye or the heart,219 which is now used in a more sophisticated way to refer to a vital, conscious, active and individuating "unitary" "soul" in (wo) man.220 It is the term purusa which according to Arbman refers originally and exclusively to the "free soul" in ancient Indian culture.221 The adjective jiva ("living"), previously used as a qualification of ass (cf. above pp. 127 and 143), reappears as a qualification of atman, the individual essence of a human being, in the famous teaching of Chandogya-Upanisad 6.11222 where the word jiva also functions by itself as a noun referring to some kind of "unitary" "soul" that attends to the functions of earlier "body-souls," especially the vital functions of breathing and thinking/consciousness, as well as to the functions of a "free
218 Cf. Flew 1967: 149, with reference to the Philosophy of the Active and Moral Powers of Man by the Scottish philosopher Dugald Stewart (1753-1828).
219 On this idea cf. in general Arbman 1926: 126 and 145, relating to Indian culture Arbman 1927: 69, 119-120, 135 and 144; on the miniature, often thumb-sized puruşa which is considered identical with the deceased person (ie., as his/her "free soul," cf. n. 221 below), also in later popular belief, cf. Arbman 1927a: 79.
220 Cf., e.g., BrẪUp 2.3.1, 3 and 5-6 (on 3 cf. Arbman 1927a: 135, 136 and 138, on 5f. op. cit., p. 119; on 6 cf. Strauss 1925: 59 and Arbman 1927a: 145); see further BrÃUp 4.4.4-5 according to the Madhyandina recension (cf. Schmithausen 1995: 53-54). In the ritualistic context cf. especially SPB 10.5.2.7 (on 10.5.2 in general cf. Arbman 1927: 135 and Bodewitz 1996: 43). The cosmogony of BrÄUp 1.4 which is based on a primordial puruṣalike atman (in the sense of a complete living organism?) should probably be separated from this complex and rather be related in the widest sense to the hymn about Puruşa and its cosmogony in the Rgveda. Cf. also Katha-Upanisad 4.12 (with Weller 1953: 129-130) and 6.17 (cf. also Arbman 1927a: 107); the latter passage is identified as an element of compilation by Weller (1953: 198) which, however, does not reduce its value. For further passages in this Upanisad that concern the localization of the inner Self (also called atman and "the Ancient" [purana]) in the heart, cf. Weller 1953: 103.
221 Cf. Arbman 1927a: 134-148. Relying mainly on Upanisadic passages, Arbman introduces the element of functioning inside the body and even governing it in connection with this notion of puruşa (identified with atman). However, this seems to contradict his earlier very decided statements in Arbman 1926 (cf. n. 45 above) and 1927a, unless the notion of the "free soul" had in his opinion - already been expanded in the passages referred to. This may be indicated by Arbman's concluding words on this complex in Arbman 1927a: 148.-The treatment of the concept of purupa and the discussion of Arbman's hypothesis are outside the scope of the present contribution.
222 Cf. CbUp 6.11.1.
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