A History of Sanskrit Literature

The style of the prose in which the Aitareya is composed is crude, clumsy, abrupt, and elliptical. The following quotation from the stanzas interspersed in the story of Çunaḥçepa may serve as a specimen of the gāthās found in the Brāhmaṇas. These verses are addressed by a sage named Nārada to King Hariçchandra on the importance of having a son:—

In him a father pays a debtAnd reaches immortality,When he beholds the countenanceOf a son born to him alive.Than all the joy which living thingsIn waters feel, in earth and fire,The happiness that in his sonA father feels is greater far.At all times fathers by a sonMuch darkness, too, have passed beyond:In him the father’s self is born,He wafts him to the other shore.Food is man’s life and clothes afford protection,Gold gives him beauty, marriages bring cattle;His wife’s a friend, his daughter causes pity:A son is like a light in highest heaven.

To the Aitareya Brāhmaṇa belongs the Aitareya Āraṇyaka. It consists of eighteen chapters, distributed unequally among five books. The last two books are composed in the Sūtra style, and are really to be regarded as belonging to the Sūtra literature. Four parts can be clearly distinguished in the first three books. Book I. deals with various liturgies of the Soma sacrifice from a purely ritual point of view. The first three chapters of Book II., on the other hand, are theosophical in character, containing speculations about the world-soul under the names of Prāṇa and Purusha. It is allied in matter to the Upanishads, some of its more valuable thoughts recurring, occasionally even word for word, in the Kaushītaki Upanishad. The third part consists of the remaining four sections of Book II., which form the regular Aitareya Upanishad. Finally, Book III. deals with the mystic and allegorical meaning of the three principal modes in which the Veda is recited in the Saṃhitā, Pada and Krama Pāṭhas, and of the various letters of the alphabet.

To the Kaushītaki Brāhmaṇa is attached the Kaushītaki Āraṇyaka. It consists of fifteen chapters. The first two of these correspond to Books I. and V. of the Aitareya Āraṇyaka, the seventh and eighth to Book III., while the intervening four chapters (3–6) form the Kaushītaki Upanishad. The latter is a long and very interesting Upanishad. It seems not improbably to have been added as an independent treatise to the completed Āraṇyaka, as it is not always found in the same part of the latter work in the manuscripts.

Brāhmaṇas belonging to two independent schools of the Sāmaveda have been preserved, those of the Tāṇḍins and of the Talavakāras or Jaiminīyas. Though several other works here claim the title of ritual text-books, only three are in reality Brāhmaṇas. The Brāhmaṇa of the Talavakāras, which for the most part is still unpublished, seems to consist of five books. The first three (unpublished) are mainly concerned with various parts of the sacrificial ceremonial. The fourth book, called the Upanishad Brāhmaṇa (probably “the Brāhmaṇa of mystic meanings”), besides all kinds of allegories of the Āraṇyaka order, two lists of teachers, a section about the origin of the vital airs (prāṇa) and about the sāvitrī stanza, contains the brief but important Kena Upanishad. Book V., entitled Ārsheya-Brāhmaṇa, is a short enumeration of the composers of the Sāmaveda.

To the school of the Tāṇḍins belongs the Panchaviṃça (“twenty-five fold”), also called Tāṇḍya or Prauḍha, Brāhmaṇa, which, as the first name implies, consists of twenty-five books. It is concerned with the Soma sacrifices in general, ranging from the minor offerings to those which lasted a hundred days, or even several years. Besides many legends, it contains a minute description of sacrifices performed on the Sarasvatī and Dṛishadvatī. Though Kurukshetra is known to it, other geographical data which it contains point to the home of this Brāhmaṇa having lain farther east. Noteworthy among its contents are the so-called Vrātya-Stomas, which are sacrifices meant to enable Aryan but non-Brahmanical Indians to enter the Brahmanical order. A point of interest in this Brāhmaṇa is the bitter hostility which it displays towards the school of the Kaushītakins. The Shaḍviṃça Brāhmaṇa, though nominally an independent work, is in reality a supplement to the Panchaviṃça, of which, as its name implies, it forms the twenty-sixth book. The last of its six chapters is called the Adbhuta Brāhmaṇa, which is intended to obviate the evil effects of various extraordinary events or portents. Among such phenomena are mentioned images of the gods when they laugh, cry, sing, dance, perspire, crack, and so forth.

The other Brāhmaṇa of this school, the Chhāndogya Brāhmaṇa, is only to a slight extent a ritual text-book. It does not deal with the Soma sacrifice at all, but only with ceremonies relating to birth and marriage or prayers addressed to divine beings. These are the contents of only the first two “lessons” of this Brāhmaṇa of the Sāma theologians. The remaining eight lessons constitute the Chhāndogya Upanishad.

There are four other short works which, though bearing the name, are not really Brāhmaṇas. These are the Sāmavidhāna Brāhmaṇa, a treatise on the employment of chants for all kinds of superstitious purposes; the Devatādhyāya Brāhmaṇa, containing some statements about the deities of the various chants of the Sāmaveda; the Vaṃça Brāhmaṇa, which furnishes a genealogy of the teachers of the Sāmaveda; and, finally, the Saṃhitopanishad, which, like the third book of the Aitareya Āraṇyaka, treats of the way in which the Veda should be recited.

The Brāhmaṇas of the Sāmaveda are distinguished by the exaggerated and fantastic character of their mystical speculations. A prominent feature in them is the constant identification of various kinds of Sāmans or chants with all kinds of terrestrial and celestial objects. At the same time they contain much matter that is interesting from a historical point of view.

In the Black Yajurveda the prose portions of the various Saṃhitās form the only Brāhmaṇas in the Kaṭha and the Maitrāyaṇīya schools. In the Taittirīya school they form the oldest and most important Brāhmaṇa. Here we have also the Taittirīya Brāhmaṇa as an independent work in three books. This, however, hardly differs in character from the Taittirīya Saṃhitā, being rather a continuation. It forms a supplement concerned with a few sacrifices omitted in the Saṃhitā, or handles, with greater fulness of detail, matters already dealt with. There is also a Taittirīya Āraṇyaka, which in its turn forms a supplement to the Brāhmaṇa. The last four of its ten sections constitute the two Upanishads of this school, vii.–ix. forming the Taittirīya Upanishad, and x. the Mahā-Nārāyaṇa Upanishad, also called the Yājnikī Upanishad. Excepting these four sections, the title of Brāhmaṇa or Āraṇyaka does not indicate a difference of content as compared with the Saṃhitā, but is due to late and artificial imitation of the other Vedas.

The last three sections of Book III. of the Brāhmaṇa, as well as the first two books of the Āraṇyaka, originally belonged to the school of the Kaṭhas, though they have not been preserved as part of the tradition of that school. The different origin of these parts is indicated by the absence of the change of y and v to iy and uv respectively, which otherwise prevails in the Taittirīya Brāhmaṇa and Āraṇyaka. In one of these Kāṭhaka sections (Taitt. Br. iii. 11), by way of illustrating the significance of the particular fire called nāchiketa, the story is told of a boy, Nachiketas, who, on visiting the House of Death, was granted the fulfilment of three wishes by the god of the dead. On this story is based the Kāṭhaka Upanishad.

Though the Maitrāyaṇī Saṃhitā has no independent Brāhmaṇa, its fourth book, as consisting of explanations and supplements to the first three, is a kind of special Brāhmaṇa. Connected with this Saṃhitā, and in the manuscripts sometimes forming its second or its fifth book, is the Maitrāyaṇa (also called Maitrāyaṇīya and Maitri) Upanishad.

The ritual explanation of the White Yajurveda is to be found in extraordinary fulness in the Çatapatha Brāhmaṇa., the “Brāhmaṇa of the Hundred Paths,” so called because it consists of one hundred lectures (adhyāya). This work is, next to the Rigveda, the most important production in the whole range of Vedic literature. Its text has come down in two recensions, those of the Mādhyaṃdina school, edited by Professor Weber, and of the Kāṇva school, which is in process of being edited by Professor Eggeling. The Mādhyaṃdina recension consists of fourteen books, while the Kāṇva has seventeen. The first nine of the former, corresponding to the original eighteen books of the Vājasaneyi Saṃhitā, doubtless form the oldest part. The fact that Book XII. is called madhyama, or “middle one,” shows that the last five books (or possibly only X.–XIII.) were at one time regarded as a separate part of the Brāhmaṇa. Book X. treats of the mystery of the fire-altar (agnirahasya), XI. is a sort of recapitulation of the preceding ritual, while XII. and XIII. deal with various supplementary matters. The last book forms the Āraṇyaka, the six concluding chapters of which are the Bṛihadāraṇyaka Upanishad.

Books VI.–X. of the Çatapatha Brāhmaṇa occupy a peculiar position. Treating of the construction of the fire-altar, they recognise the teaching of Çāṇḍilya as their highest authority, Yājnavalkya not even being mentioned; while the peoples who are named, the Gāndhāras, Salvas, Kekayas, belong to the north-west. In the other books Yājnavalkya is the highest authority, while hardly any but Eastern peoples, or those of the middle of Hindustan, the Kuru-Panchālas, Kosalas, Videhas, Sṛinjayas, are named. That the original authorship of the five Çāṇḍilya books was different from that of the others is indicated by a number of linguistic differences, which the hand of a later editor failed to remove. Thus the use of the perfect as a narrative tense is unknown to the Çāṇḍilya books (as well as to XIII.).

The geographical data of the Çatapatha Brāhmaṇa point to the land of the Kuru-Panchālas being still the centre of Brahmanical culture. Janamejaya is here celebrated as a king of the Kurus, and the most renowned Brahmanical teacher of the age, Āruṇi, is expressly stated to have been a Panchāla. Nevertheless, it is clear that the Brahmanical system had by this time spread to the countries to the east of Madhyadeça, to Kosala, with its capital, Ayodhyā (Oudh), and Videha (Tirhut or Northern Behar), with its capital, Mithilā. The court of King Janaka of Videha was thronged with Brahmans from the Kuru-Panchāla country. The tournaments of argument which were here held form a prominent feature in the later books of the Çatapatha Brāhmaṇa. The hero of these is Yājnavalkya, who, himself a pupil of Āruṇi, is regarded as the chief spiritual authority in the Brāhmaṇa (excepting Books VI.–X.). Certain passages of the Brāhmaṇa render it highly probable that Yājnavalkya was a native of Videha. The fact that its leading authority, who thus appears to have belonged to this Eastern country, is represented as vanquishing the most distinguished teachers of the West in argument, points to the redaction of the White Yajurveda having taken place in this eastern region.

The Çatapatha Brāhmaṇa contains reminiscences of the days when the country of Videha was not as yet Brahmanised. Thus Book I. relates a legend in which three stages in the eastward migration of the Aryans can be clearly distinguished. Māṭhava, the king of Videgha (the older form of Videha), whose family priest was Gotama Rāhūgaṇa, was at one time on the Sarasvatī. Agni Vaiçvānara (here typical of Brahmanical culture) thence went burning along this earth towards the east, followed by Māṭhava and his priest, till he came to the river Sadānīra (probably the modern Gandak, a tributary running into the Ganges near Patna), which flows from the northern mountain, and which he did not burn over. This river Brahmans did not cross in former times, thinking “it has not been burnt over by Agni Vaiçvānara.” At that time the land to the eastward was very uncultivated and marshy, but now many Brahmans are there, and it is highly cultivated, for the Brahmans have caused Agni to taste it through sacrifices. Māṭhava the Videgha then said to Agni, “Where am I to abide?” “To the east of this river be thy abode,” he replied. Even now, the writer adds, this river forms the boundary between the Kosalas (Oudh) and the Videhas (Tirhut).

The Vājasaneyi school of the White Yajurveda evidently felt a sense of the superiority of their sacrificial lore, which grew up in these eastern countries. Blame is frequently expressed in the Çatapatha Brāhmaṇa of the Adhvaryu priests of the Charaka school. The latter is meant as a comprehensive term embracing the three older schools of the Black Yajurveda, the Kaṭhas, the Kapishṭhalas, and the Maitrāyaṇīyas.

As Buddhism first obtained a firm footing in Kosala and Videha, it is interesting to inquire in what relation the Çatapatha Brāhmaṇa stands to the beginnings of that doctrine. In this connection it is to be noted that the words Arhat, Çramana, and Pratibuddha occur here for the first time, but as yet without the technical sense which they have in Buddhistic literature. Again, in the lists of teachers given in the Brāhmaṇa mention is made with special frequency of the Gautamas, a family name used by the Çākyas of Kapilavastu, among whom Buddha was born. Certain allusions are also suggestive of the beginnings of the Sānkhya doctrine; for mention is several times made of a teacher called Āsuri, and according to tradition Āsuri is the name of a leading authority for the Sānkhya system. If we inquire as to how far the legends of our Brāhmaṇa contain the germs of the later epic tales, we find that there is indeed some slight connection. Janamejaya, the celebrated king of the Kurus in the Mahābhārata, is mentioned here for the first time. The Pāṇḍus, however, who proved victorious in the epic war, are not to be met with in this any more than in the other Brāhmaṇas; and Arjuna, the name of their chief, is still an appellation of Indra. But as the epic Arjuna is a son of Indra, his origin is doubtless to be traced to this epithet of Indra. Janaka, the famous king of Videha, is in all probability identical with the father of Sītā, the heroine of the Rāmāyaṇa.

Of two legends which furnished the classical poet Kālidāsa with the plots of two of his most famous dramas, one is told in detail, and the other is at least alluded to. The story of the love and separation of Purūravas and Urvaçī, already dimly shadowed forth in a hymn of the Rigveda, is here related with much more fulness; while Bharata, son of Duḥshanta and of the nymph Çakuntalā, also appears on the scene in this Brāhmaṇa.

A most interesting legend which reappears in the Mahābhārata, that of the Deluge, is here told for the first time in Indian literature, though it seems to be alluded to in the Atharva-veda, while it is known even to the Avesta. This myth is generally regarded as derived from a Semitic source. It tells how Manu once came into possession of a small fish, which asked him to rear it, and promised to save him from the coming flood. Having built a ship in accordance with the fish’s advice, he entered it when the deluge arose, and was finally guided to the Northern Mountain by the fish, to whose horn he had tied his ship. Manu subsequently became the progenitor of mankind through his daughter.

The Çatapatha Brāhmaṇa is thus a mine of important data and noteworthy narratives. Internal evidence shows it to belong to a late period of the Brāhmaṇa age. Its style, as compared with the earlier works of the same class, displays some progress towards facility and clearness. Its treatment of the sacrificial ceremonial, which is essentially the same in the Brāhmaṇa portions of the Black Yajurveda, is throughout more lucid and systematic. On the theosophic side, too, we find the idea of the unity in the universe more fully developed than in any other Brāhmaṇa work, while its Upanishad is the finest product of Vedic philosophy.

To the Atharva-veda is attached the Gopatha Brāhmaṇa, though it has no particular connection with that Saṃhitā. This Brāhmaṇa consists of two books, the first containing five chapters, the second six. Both parts are very late, for they were composed after the Vaitāna Sūtra and practically without any Atharvan tradition. The matter of the former half, while not corresponding or following the order of the sacrifice in any ritual text, is to a considerable extent original, the rest being borrowed from Books XI. and XII. of the Çatapatha Brāhmaṇa, besides a few passages from the Aitareya. The main motive of this portion is the glorification of the Atharva-veda and of the fourth or brahman priest. The mention of the god Çiva points to its belonging to the post-Vedic rather than to the Brāhmaṇa period. Its presupposing the Atharva-veda in twenty books, and containing grammatical matters of a very advanced type, are other signs of lateness. The latter half bears more the stamp of a regular Brāhmaṇa, being a fairly connected account of the ritual in the sacrificial order of the Vaitāna Çrauta Sūtra; but it is for the most part a compilation. The ordinary historical relation of Brāhmaṇā and Sūtra is here reversed, the second book of the Gopatha Brāhmaṇa being based on the Vaitāna Sūtra, which stands to it practically in the relation of a Saṃhitā. About two-thirds of its matter have already been shown to be taken from older texts. The Aitareya and Kaushītaki Brāhmaṇas have been chiefly exploited, and to a less extent the Maitrāyaṇī and Taittirīya Saṃhitās. A few passages are derived from the Çatapatha, and even the Panchaviṃça Brāhmaṇa.

Though the Upanishads generally form a part of the Brāhmaṇas, being a continuation of their speculative side (jnāna-kāṇḍa), they really represent a new religion, which is in virtual opposition to the ritual or practical side (karma-kāṇḍa). Their aim is no longer the obtainment of earthly happiness and afterwards bliss in the abode of Yama by sacrificing correctly to the gods, but release from mundane existence by the absorption of the individual soul in the world-soul through correct knowledge. Here, therefore, the sacrificial ceremonial has become useless and speculative knowledge all-important.

The essential theme of the Upanishads is the nature of the world-soul. Their conception of it represents the final stage in the development from the world-man, Purusha, of the Rigveda to the world-soul, Ātman; from the personal creator, Prajāpati, to the impersonal source of all being, Brahma. Ātman in the Rigveda means no more than “breath”; wind, for instance, being spoken of as the ātman of Varuṇa. In the Brāhmaṇas it came to mean “soul” or “self.” In one of their speculations the prāṇas or “vital airs,” which are supposed to be based on the ātman, are identified with the gods, and so an ātman comes to be attributed to the universe. In one of the later books of the Çatapatha Brāhmaṇa (X. vi. 3) this ātman, which has already arrived at a high degree of abstraction, is said to “pervade this universe.” Brahma (neuter) in the Rigveda signified nothing more than “prayer” or “devotion.” But even in the oldest Brāhmaṇas it has come to have the sense of “universal holiness,” as manifested in prayer, priest, and sacrifice. In the Upanishads it is the holy principle which animates nature. Having a long subsequent history, this word is a very epitome of the evolution of religious thought in India. These two conceptions, Ātman and Brahma, are commonly treated as synonymous in the Upanishads. But, strictly speaking, Brahma, the older term, represents the cosmical principle which pervades the universe, Ātman the psychical principle manifested in man; and the latter, as the known, is used to explain the former as the unknown. The Ātman under the name of the Eternal (aksharam) is thus described in the Bṛihadāraṇyaka Upanishad (III. viii. 8, 11):—

“It is not large, and not minute; not short, not long; without blood, without fat; without shadow, without darkness; without wind, without ether; not adhesive, not tangible; without smell, without taste; without eyes, ears, voice, or mind; without heat, breath, or mouth; without personal or family name; unaging, undying, without fear, immortal, dustless, not uncovered or covered; with nothing before, nothing behind, nothing within. It consumes no one and is consumed by no one. It is the unseen seer, the unheard hearer, the unthought thinker, the unknown knower. There is no other seer, no other hearer, no other thinker, no other knower. That is the Eternal in which space (ākāça) is woven and which is interwoven with it.”

Here, for the first time in the history of human thought, we find the Absolute grasped and proclaimed.

A poetical account of the nature of the Ātman is given by the Kāṭhaka Upanishad in the following stanzas:—

That whence the sun’s orb rises up,And that in which it sinks again:In it the gods are all contained,Beyond it none can ever pass (iv. 9).Its form can never be to sight apparent,Not any one may with his eye behold it:By heart and mind and soul alone they grasp it,And those who know it thus become immortal (vi. 9).Since not by speech and not by thought,Not by the eye can it be reached:How else may it be understoodBut only when one says “it is”? (vi. 12).

The place of the more personal Prajāpati is taken in the Upanishads by the Ātman as a creative power. Thus the Bṛihadāraṇyaka (I. iv.) relates that in the beginning the Ātman or the Brahma was this universe. It was afraid in its loneliness and felt no pleasure. Desiring a second being, it became man and woman, whence the human race was produced. It then proceeded to produce male and female animals in a similar way; finally creating water, fire, the gods, and so forth. The author then proceeds in a more exalted strain:—

“It (the Ātman) is here all-pervading down to the tips of the nails. One does not see it any more than a razor hidden in its case or fire in its receptacle. For it does not appear as a whole. When it breathes, it is called breath; when it speaks, voice; when it hears, ear; when it thinks, mind. These are merely the names of its activities. He who worships the one or the other of these, has not (correct) knowledge.... One should worship it as the Self. For in it all these (breath, etc.) become one.”

In one of the later Upanishads, the Çvetāçvatara (iv. 10), the notion, so prominent in the later Vedānta system, that the material world is an illusion (māyā), is first met with. The world is here explained as an illusion produced by Brahma as a conjuror (māyin). This notion is, however, inherent even in the oldest Upanishads. It is virtually identical with the teaching of Plato that the things of experience are only the shadow of the real things, and with the teaching of Kant, that they are only phenomena of the thing in itself.

The great fundamental doctrine of the Upanishads is the identity of the individual ātman with the world Ātman. It is most forcibly expressed in a frequently repeated sentence of the Chhāndogya Upanishad (vi. 8–16): “This whole world consists of it: that is the Real, that is the Soul, that art thou, O Çvetaketu.” In that famous formula, “That art thou” (tat tvam asi), all the teachings of the Upanishads are summed up. The Bṛihadāraṇyaka (I. iv. 6) expresses the same doctrine thus: “Whoever knows this, ‘I am brahma’ (aham brahma asmi), becomes the All. Even the gods are not able to prevent him from becoming it. For he becomes their Self (ātman).”