Theories Of Parinama

Author(s): Indukala H Jhaveri
Publisher: Gujarat University

Page 16

The Samkhya-Yoga and the Jaina Theories of Pariņāma
cially in the first and the tenth mandala, we find these speculations resolving themselves into definite types which are in character, both mythical and metaphysical. Thus, in the Rgveda X.190 as Prof. Radhakrishnan puts it, 'water is said to develop into the world through the force of time, year, desire or tapas. Sometimes water itself is derived from night or chaos or air as in the Rgveda X.168.'3 In the Rgveda. X.81,82 Višvakarmā, a personal deity, is said to produce Heaven and Earth through the exercise of his arms and wings. In the Rgveda, X.72. Brahmaṇaspati becomes the creater. At certain places Prajāpati and Hiranyagarbha occur as the lord of creatures as in the Rgveda X.85,43 and X.121..
. But such a conception of a personal supreme deity, as the source of all existence, could not for long satisfy the ‘metaphysical craving to use the term of Schopenhauer, of the more profound thinkers. For, as Max Muller aplty puts it, “every one of the gods called by a personal and proper name was limited ipso facto and therefore not fit to fill the place which was to be filled by an unlimited absolute power which they yearned for as the primary cause of all created things. No name that expressed ideas connected with the male or female sex, not even Prajāpati was considered as fit for such a being. And thus we see that as early as the Vedic hymns they arrived at the conception of That One’ "4 They applied to this central principle the neuter form ‘ekam' and 'sat' to show that it is a comprehensive entity subsuming the duality of sex. "That One' we come across in the Rgveda I. 164.6, wherein after asking who he was that established these six spaces of the world, the poet says, “Was it perhaps the One, in the shape of the unborn ?" "That One' is also referred to in X,82.6. Significant is the reference to this One at VIII.58.2 wherein the last quarter, 'It is the one that has severally become all this' clearly brings out the important ideas of One and Many, of Being and Becoming.
3 Indian Philosophy, Vol. I, p. 99. 4 Six Systems of Indian Philosophy, p. 48