Vaishali Institute Research Bulletin 4

Author(s): R P Poddar
Publisher: Research Institute of Prakrit Jainology & Ahimsa Mujjaffarpur

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Vaishali Institute Research Builetin No. 4 The religion of the Rgveda and the Atharvaveda is concerned with reverence (śraddhayā havişā vidhema etc.) paid to external objective entities of nature like fire, earth, lightning, heavens, etc. But it is not correct to say that the Vedas can be regarded as only objective, as Edward Caird does. He accepted the Hegelian dialectical thesis of the sequential progression of religion from the objective to the subjective and from the subjective to the absolute stage. He interpreted the evolution of ancient Indian religion according to this scheme and regarded the Vedic religion as the example of objective religion, the Upunişads as representing subjectivism and Buddhism as exemplifying the highest example of subjective religion'. Caird could not find any manifestation of the absolute stage of religion in India. It is possible, nevertheless, to locate in the Vedas traces of the concept of an Absolute, transcending the subject and the object, although the dominant theme is the worship of external objects of nature which symbolize power, strength, immensity and lustre and evoke sentiments of fear and awe. The Puruşa Sükra represents the Puruşa as both transcendent and immanent and as the source of the entire cosmic procession, both subjective and objective. The Long hymn ascribed tu Dirgbatamas in the first mandala of the Rgveda centains the doctrine of ekum sat according to wh'ch the several deities are considered to be, in essence, the same as the primal pure spiritual existents. The Nāsadiya Sukta perhaps represents the culmination of the cosmological speculations of the Veda and the Anidasvātain svudhayā ladekam' contains the roots of the later concept of the Vedantic Absolute4. In it even the gods are said not be have known the secret of the cosmic and super-cosmic spirit. The avidyā is regarded as the conceptualization of superior creative potency and as the prototype of maya". Thus the Nāsadīya doctrine of being (ekom) reveals to us an
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Edward Caird, Evolution of Religion, (Gifford Lectures at St. Andrews. Glasgow, James Maclehouse & Sons., 1907, 2 Vols.) Vol. I, pp. 40, 42, 43-44, 53. Macdonell, Vedic Mythology. A. Coomaraswamy, “An Essay in Vedic Ontology". J.A.O.S. 1935, W.N. Brown, “Creation Myth of the Rigveda", J.A.O.S. 1942. V. P. Verma, “Decline of the Vedic Religion” Journal of the Bihar Research Society, December 1945 pp. 269-74. A peculiar theory of the origin of Māyāvāda, based on the juxtaposition of Brahman as the regular and orderly procedure, and Māyā as the unregulated self-determined intervention of a