Part 35 (2/2)

The introduction of [email protected] (non-injury), satya (truthfulness), asteya (want of stealing), brahmacaryya (s.e.x-control), aparigraha (want of greed) as yama and s'auca (purity), [email protected] (contentment) as niyama, as a system of morality without which Yoga is deemed impossible (for the first time in the sutras), probably marks the period when the disputes between the Hindus and the Buddhists had not become so keen. The introduction of maitri, [email protected], mudita, [email protected] is also equally significant, as we do not find them mentioned in such a prominent form in any other literature of the Hindus dealing with the subject of emanc.i.p.ation.

Beginning from the [email protected], Uttaradhyayanasutra_,

[Footnote 1: [email protected] pratyaharah dhyanam [email protected] tarkah samadhih [email protected]@nga ityucyate yoga_ (Maitr. 6 8).]

237

the [email protected]@ngasutra,_ etc., and pa.s.sing through Umasvati's _Tattvarthadhigamasutra_ to Hemacandra's _Yogas'astra_ we find that the Jains had been founding their Yoga discipline mainly on the basis of a system of morality indicated by the yamas, and the opinion expressed in Alberuni's _Patanjal_ that these cannot give salvation marks the divergence of the Hindus in later days from the Jains. Another important characteristic of Yoga is its thoroughly pessimistic tone. Its treatment of sorrow in connection with the statement of the scope and ideal of Yoga is the same as that of the four sacred truths of the Buddhists, namely suffering, origin of suffering, the removal of suffering, and of the path to the removal of suffering [Footnote ref 1]. Again, the metaphysics of the [email protected] (rebirth) cycle in connection with sorrow, origination, decease, rebirth, etc. is described with a remarkable degree of similarity with the cycle of causes as described in early Buddhism.

Avidya is placed at the head of the group; yet this avidya should not be confused with the Vedanta avidya of [email protected], as it is an avidya of the Buddhist type; it is not a cosmic power of illusion nor anything like a mysterious original sin, but it is within the range of earthly tangible reality. Yoga avidya is the ignorance of the four sacred truths, as we have in the sutra ”[email protected] [email protected]_” (II. 5).

The ground of our existing is our will to live (_abhinives'a_).

”This is our besetting sin that we will to be, that we will to be ourselves, that we fondly will our being to blend with other kinds of existence and extend. The negation of the will to be, cuts off being for us at least [Footnote ref 2].” This is true as much of Buddhism as of the Yoga abhinives'a, which is a term coined and used in the Yoga for the first time to suit the Buddhist idea, and which has never been accepted, so far as I know, in any other Hindu literature in this sense. My sole aim in pointing out these things in this section is to show that the _Yoga sutras_ proper (first three chapters) were composed at a time when the later forms of Buddhism had not developed, and when the quarrels between the Hindus and the Buddhists and Jains had not reached such

[Footnote 1: _Yoga sutra,_ II. 15, 16. 17. [email protected] [email protected] rogo rogahetuh [email protected] bhais'ajyamiti evamidamapi s'astram caturvyuhameva; tadyatha [email protected]@h, [email protected]@h [email protected]@h [email protected]@h; [email protected] [email protected] [email protected], [email protected]@h [email protected] [email protected], [email protected] [email protected]@m [email protected] samyagdar'sanam, [email protected]_, II. 15]

[Footnote 2: Oldenberg's _Buddhism_ [Footnote ref 1].]

238

a stage that they would not like to borrow from one another.

As this can only be held true of earlier Buddhism I am disposed to think that the date of the first three chapters of the _Yoga sutras_ must be placed about the second century B.C. Since there is no evidence which can stand in the way of identifying the grammarian Patanjali with the Yoga writer, I believe we may take them as being identical [Footnote ref 1].

The [email protected] and the Yoga Doctrine of Soul or [email protected]

The [email protected] philosophy as we have it now admits two principles, souls and [email protected]_, the root principle of matter. Souls are many, like the Jaina souls, but they are without parts and qualities.

They do not contract or expand according as they occupy a smaller or a larger body, but are always all-pervasive, and are not contained in the bodies in which they are manifested. But the relation between body or rather the mind a.s.sociated with it and soul is such that whatever mental phenomena happen in the mind are interpreted as the experience of its soul. The souls are many, and had it not been so (the [email protected] argues) with the birth of one all would have been born and with the death of one all would have died [Footnote ref 2].

The exact nature of soul is however very difficult of comprehension, and yet it is exactly this which one must thoroughly grasp in order to understand the [email protected] philosophy. Unlike the Jaina soul possessing _anantajnana, anantadars'ana, anantasukha_, and _anantaviryya_, the [email protected] soul is described as being devoid of any and every characteristic; but its nature is absolute pure consciousness (_cit_). The [email protected] view differs from the Vedanta, firstly in this that it does not consider the soul to be of the nature of pure intelligence and bliss (_ananda_) [Footnote ref 3]. Bliss with [email protected] is but another name for pleasure and as such it belongs to [email protected] and does not const.i.tute the nature of soul; secondly, according to Vedanta the individual souls (_Jiva_) are

___________________________________________________________________

[Footnote 1: See S.N. Das Gupta, _Yoga Philosophy in relation to other Indian systems of thought,_ ch. II. The most important point in favour of this identification seems to be that both the Patanjalis as against the other Indian systems admitted the doctrine of [email protected]_ which was denied even by [email protected] On the doctrine of [email protected] see my _Study of Patanjali_, Appendix I.]

[Footnote 2: _Karika_, 18.]

[Footnote 3: See Citsukha's _Tattvapradipika,_ IV.]

239

but illusory manifestations of one soul or pure consciousness the Brahman, but according to [email protected] they are all real and many.

The most interesting feature of [email protected] as of Vedanta is the a.n.a.lysis of knowledge. [email protected] holds that our knowledge of things are mere ideational pictures or images. External things are indeed material, but the sense data and images of the mind, the coming and going of which is called knowledge, are also in some sense matter-stuff, since they are limited in their nature like the external things. The sense-data and images come and go, they are often the prototypes, or photographs of external things, and as such ought to be considered as in some sense material, but the matter of which these are composed is the subtlest.

These images of the mind could not have appeared as conscious, if there were no separate principles of consciousness in connection with which the whole conscious plane could be interpreted as the experience of a person [Footnote ref 1]. We know that the [email protected] consider the soul or atman as pure and infinite consciousness, distinct from the forms of knowledge, the ideas, and the images. In our ordinary ways of mental a.n.a.lysis we do not detect that beneath the forms of knowledge there is some other principle which has no change, no form, but which is like a light which illumines the mute, pictorial forms which the mind a.s.sumes.

The self is nothing but this light. We all speak of our ”self”

<script>