Page:A History of Indian Philosophy Vol 1.djvu/68

 52 The E arlz"er Upanzads [CH. The World-Soul. The conception of a world-soul related to the universe as the soul of man to his body is found for the first time in R.V. x. 12I. I, where he is said to have sprung forth as the firstborn of creation from the primeval waters. This being has twice been referred to in the Svetasvatara, in III. 4 and IV. 12. It is indeed very strange that this being is not referred to in any of the earlier U paniads. In the two passages in which he has been spoken of, his mythical character is apparent. He is regarded as one of the earlier products in the process of cosmic creation, but his importance from the point of view of the development of the theory of Brahman or Atman is almost nothing. The fact that neither the Purua, nor the Visvakarma, nor the HiraI)yagarbha play.ed an important part in the earlier development of the U paniads leads me to think_that the U paniad doctrines were not directly developed from the monotheistic tendencies of the later g- Veda speculations. The passages in Svetasvatara ckarly show how from the supreme eminence that he had in R.V. X. 121, HiraI)yagarbha had been brought to the level of one of the created beings. Deussen in explaining the philosophical significance of the H iraI)yagarbha doctrine of the U paniads says that the" entire objective universe is possible only in so far as it is sustained by a knowing subject. This subject as a sustainer of the objective universe is manifested in all individual objects but is by no means identical with them. For the individual objects pass away but the objective universe con- tinues to exist without them; there exists therefore the eternal knowing subject also (hirazyagarbha) by whom it is sustained. Space and time are derived from this subject. It is itself accord- ingly not in space and does not belong to time, and therefore from an empirical point of view it is in general non-existent; it has no empirical but only a metaphysical realityI." This however seems to me to be wholly irrelevant, since the Hiraryyagarbha doctrine cannot be supposed to have any philosophical importance in the U paniads. The Theory of Causation. There was practically no systematic theory of causation in the U paniads. Sailkara, the later exponent of Vedanta philosophy, always tried to show that the U paniads looked upon the cause I Deussen's Philosophy of the Upanishads, p. 201.