philosophers. To reckon a thousand years as one day would not satisfy them. They represent length of time by much bolder similes, such as when a man once in every thousand years passes his silken kerchief over the chain of the Himalayan mountains. By the time he has completely wiped them out by this process the world or Samsâra may indeed come to an end, but even then eternity and reality lie far beyond. In order to get an easier hold of this eternity, the very popular idea of Pralayas, i. e. destructions or absorptions of the whole world, has been invented. According to the Vedânta there occurs at the end of each Kalpa a Pralaya or dissolution of the universe, and Brahman is then reduced to its causal condition (Kâranâvasthâ), containing both soul and matter in an Avyakta (undeveloped) state1. At the end of this Pralaya, however, Brahman creates or lets out of himself a new world, matter becomes gross and visible once more, and souls become active and re-embodied, though with a higher enlightenment (Vikâsa), and all this according to their previous merits and demerits. Brahman has then assumed its new Kâryâvasthâ or effective state which lasts for another Kalpa. But all this refers to the world of change and unreality only. It is the world of Karman, the temporary produce of Nescience, of Avidyâ, or Mâyâ, it is not yet real reality. In the Sâmkhyaphilosophy these Pralayas take place whenever the three Gunas of Prakriti recover their equipoise 2, while creation results from the upsetting of the equipoise between them. What is truly eternal, is not

Thibaut, V. S. I, p. xxviii.

2 Samkhya-Sutras VI, 42.

affected by the cosmic illusion, or at least is so for a time only, and may recover at any moment its selfknowledge, that is, its self-being, and its freedom from all conditions and fetters.

According to the Vaiseshikas this process of creation and dissolution depends on the atoms. If they are separated, there ensues dissolution (Pralaya), if motion springs up in them and they are united, there follows what we call creation.

The idea of the reabsorption of the world at the end of a Kalpa (æon) and its emergence again in the next Kalpa, does not occur as yet in the old Upanishads, nay even the name of Samsâra is absent from them; and Professor Garbe is inclined therefore to claim the idea of Pralaya as more recent, as peculiar to the Sâmkhya-philosophy, and as adopted from it by the other systems1. It may be so, but in the Bhagavad-gîtâ IX, 7, the idea of Pralayas, absorptions, and of Kalpas or ages, of their end and their beginning (Kalpakshaye and Kalpâdau), are already quite familiar to the poets. The exact nature of the Pralayas differs so much, according to different poets and philosophers, that it is far more likely that they may all have borrowed it from a common source, that is, from the popular belief of those among whom they were brought up and from whom they learnt their language and with it the materials of their thoughts, than that they should each have invented the same theory under slightly varying aspects.

5. Infallibility of the Veda.

One more common element presupposed by Indian philosophy might be pointed out in the recognition of the supreme authority and the revealed character ascribed to the Veda. This, in ancient times, is certainly a startling idea, familiar as it may sound to us at present. The Sâmkhya-philosophy is supposed to have been originally without a belief in the revealed character of the Vedas, but it certainly speaks of Sruti (Sûtras I, 5). As long as we know the Sâmkhya, it recognises the authority of the Veda, calling it Sabda, and appeals to it even in matters of minor importance. It is important to observe that the distinction between Sruti and Smriti, revelation and tradition, so well known in the later phases of philosophy, is not to be found as yet in the old Upanishads.

6. Three Gunas.

The theory of the three Gunas also, which has been claimed as originally peculiar to the Sâmkhyaphilosophy, seems in its unscientific form to have been quite familiar to most Hindu philosophers. The impulse to everything in nature, the cause of all life and variety, is ascribed to the three Gunas. Guna means quality, but we are warned expressly not to take it, when it occurs in philosophy, in the ordinary sense of quality, but rather as something substantial by itself, so that the Gunas become in fact the component constituents of nature. In the most general sense they represent no more than thesis, antithesis, and something between the two, such as cold, warm, and neither cold nor warm; good,

bad, and neither good nor bad bright, dark, and neither bright nor dark, and so on through every part of physical and moral nature. Tension between these qualities produces activity and struggle: equilibrium leads to temporary or final rest. This mutual tension is sometimes represented as Vishamatvam, unevenness, caused by a preponderance of one of the three, as we read, for instance, in the Maitrâyana Upanishad V, 2: This world was in the beginning Tamas (darkness) indeed. That Tamas stood in the Highest. Moved by the Highest, it became uneven. In that form it was Ragas (obscurity). That Ragas, when moved, became uneven, and this is the form of Sattva (goodness). That Sattva, when moved, ran forth as essence (Rasa).' Here we have clearly the recognised names of the three Gunas, but the Maitrâyana Upanishad shows several Sâmkhya influences, and it might therefore be argued that it does not count for much, in order to establish the general acceptance of the theory of the Gunas, not for more, at all events, than the later Upanishads or the Bhagavad-gîtâ, in which the three Gunas are fully recognised.

CHAPTER IV.

Vedanta or Uttara-Mîmâmsa.

IF now we pass on to a consideration of the six orthodox systems of philosophy, and begin with the Vedanta, we have to take as our chief guides the Sûtras of Bâdarâyana, and the commentary of Samkara. We know little of Bâdarâyana, the reputed author of our Sûtras. Of course when we possess commentaries on any Sûtras, we know that the Sûtras must have existed before their commentaries, that the Sûtras of Bâdarâyana were older therefore than Samkara, their commentator. In India he has been identified with Vyâsa, the collector of the Mahâbhârata, but without sufficient evidence, nor should we gain much by that identification, as Vyâsa of the Mahâbhârata also is hardly more than a name to us. This Vyasa is said by Samkara, III, 3, 32, to have lived at the end of the Dvâpara and the beginning of the Kali age, and to have had intercourse with the gods, 1. c., I, 3, 33. But though he calls him the author of the Mahâbhârata, 1. c., II, 3, 47, Samkara, in the whole of his commentary on the Vedânta-Sûtras, never mentions that the Vyasa of the epic was the author of the book on which he is commenting, though he mentions Bâdarayana as such. This convinced Windischmann that Samkara himself did not consider these two Vyâsas as one and the same person, and this judg