The Religions of India: Handbooks on the History of Religions, Volume 1, Edited by Morris JastrowHopkins, Edward Washburn
Religion
The Religions of India: Handbooks on the History of Religions, Volume 1, Edited by Morris Jastrow
Hopkins, Edward Washburn
India -- Religion
regard to incongruous teaching. Manu is no more Sankhyan than
Vedantic. Indeed in the main part of the work the teaching is clearly
more Vedantic. But it suffices here to point out that the
_[=a]tm[=a]_-philosophy and religion is not ignored; it is taught as
essential. Nevertheless, it is not taught in such a way as to indicate
that it is requisite for the vulgar. On the contrary, it is only when
one becomes an ascetic that he is told to devote himself to the
pursuit of the knowledge of _[=a]tm[=a]_. In one passage there is
evidence that two replies were given to this fundamental question in
regard to works and knowledge. For after enumerating a list of good
acts, among which are knowledge and Vedic ceremonies, it is asked
which among them most tends to deliverance. The answer is vital. Or it
should be, but it is given in an ambiguous form (xii. 85-6): "Amid all
these acts the knowledge of self, _[=a]tm[=a],_ is the highest, for it
produces immortality. Amid all these acts the one most productive of
happiness, both after death and in this life, is the Vedic ceremony."
Knowledge gives real immortality; rites give temporary bliss. The
Upanishads teach that the latter is lower than the former, but each
answers the question. There were two answers, and Manu gives both.
That is the secret of many discrepancies in Hindu rules. The law-giver
cannot admit absolutely and once for all that the Vedic ceremony is of
no abiding use, as it can be of no use to one that accepts the higher
teaching. He keeps it as a training and allows only the ascetic to be
a philosopher indeed. But at the same time he gives as a sort of
peroration to his treatise some 'elegant extracts' from philosophical
works, which he believes theoretically, although practically he will
not allow them to influence his ritualism. He is a true Brahman
priest.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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