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THE PHILOSOPHY OF SUCCESS
himself and feeding greedily on as many of the others as he can. The idea is that politics is, and forever must be, an enterprise of battle, not a decent, orderly courtroom affair, wherein each nation, group, or race is reasonably assigned its due share of the world, according to its size, its contributions to civilization, and its abilities.
In conformity to this same pessimistic way of understanding the problem of life's war for survival, the means and devices proposed in the Indian books of politics are without conscience or regard for mercy. The four chief "means" (upāya)2of approach to an enemy, for example, are the following:
1. Säman, "conciliation or negotiation.” This is the way of appeasement, soothing, or charming.
The snake-charmer appeases the serpent by playing a melody on a pipe; this soothes the dangerous animal. Similarly, the socalled "wrathful" or "terrible" aspect of a divinity (who is always ambivalent and may be dangerous) is charmed, soothed, appeased, or propitiated by the magic melodies on the wings of which the holy incantations of magic stanzas mount to his invisible abode. Our English "charm" is from the Latin carmen, "magic song to win the grace of a superhuman being." And in the same spirit, the Sanskrit saman literally means "melody." Säman denotes a special branch of priestly learning in the Vedic tradition of rituals, which treats of the melodies to which the various stanzas (rc) of the Rg-veda must be sung. This is a lore loaded with magic, certain parts of it being so dangerous that they may not be imparted inside the village boundary; the master and pupil withdraw to some remote and lonely spot in the wilderness. By singing magic charms of this kind while holding in his hands some of the remainders of the Cosmic Egg after it had opened at the beginning of the world (the upper half of the egg having ascended to become the heavens, while the lower descended and became the earth), Brahmā, the creator, conjured 28 Upāya, from the verb upa-i, "to approach.”
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| SR No. | 007309 |
| Book Title | Philosophies of India |
| Original Sutra Author | N/A |
| Author | Heinrich Zimmer, Joseph Campbell |
| Publisher | Routledge and Kegan Paul Ltd |
| Publication Year | 1953 |
| Total Pages | 709 |
| Language | English |
| Classification | Book_English |
| File Size | 34 MB |