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to mystic and marvellous results. The distinction seems to have been that it was rather worldly success, cattle, children, and heaven, that were attained by sacrifice; and mystic, extraordinary, superhuman faculties that were attained by Tapas.
Then, by a natural anthropomorphism, the gods too, in later works, were supposed-just as they had been supposed to offer sacrifice-to practise tapas, austerity. And it was not a mere distinction without a difference, it was a real advance in thought, when this sort of physical self-mastery, of the conquest of will over discomfort and pain, came to be placed above sacrifice. It had been by sacrifice that the gods had made the world. Now it came to be said, in different cosmological legends, that one god or another had brought forth the world by tapas.' And a Brāhmaṇa text declares :
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Heaven is established on the air, the air on the earth, the earth on the waters, the waters on truth, the truth on the mystic lore (of the sacrifice), and that on Tapas.” 2
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It will be noticed that tapas is here put in the most important place, higher than sacrifice, which is, in its turn, higher than truth-a most suggestive order, as we shall see later on. We have no details in the books of this period of the particular practices in which the austerity, the self-mortification, consisted. It was no doubt of various kinds, and would tend, in course of time, to be elaborated. But we have a full statement of the stage it had Satapatha-brāhmaṇa vi. 1.1.13, and often afterwards.
2 Aitareya Br. xi. 6. 4.
Shree Sudharmaswami Gyanbhandar-Umara, Surat
www.umaragyanbhandar.com
