Philosophies of India

SR No.: 007309
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

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VEDA
of our theoretical astronomy, biology, and physics. The archaic Brahmanical inquiry and application resulted in a far-reaching identification with each other of diverse phenomena in widely differing spheres of the universe. (A) The elements of the macrocosm were identified with (B) the faculties, organs, and limbs of the microcosm (man's organism), and both with (C) the details of the inherited and traditional sacrificial ritual. The ritual was the principal instrument through which the forces of the universe were contacted and brought under control, harnessed to man's need and desire. It gradually vanished into the background, however, as the "path of knowledge" (jñāna-mārga) superseded the "path of ritualistic activity" (karma-marga)—that is to say, as the abstract philosophy of the Upanisads became disengaged from the web of ritualistic magic. This development took place among the Vedic divines, in circles devoted to esoteric discussions, meditations, and initiations. Therewith the problem of the equivalences, or parallel structures, of (A) the universe and (B) man's nature became the sole significant key to understanding; the problem of the details of the sacrifice (C) simply dropping away. And so an extraordinary period of speculative research opened, in which the secret identity of the faculties and forces of the human body with specific powers of the outer world was exhaustively studied, from every possible angle, as a basis for a total interpretation of human nature, an understanding of its position in the universe, and a reading therewith of the riddle of our common human fate.
This curious, long-continued comparative study resulted in numerous attempts to sum up the main constituents of the inicromacrocosm in co-ordinating lists, or sets of equations.*
4 These can be readily compared in Hume's translation of the Upanisads (op. cit., p. 520) by turning to his index, under "correlation, or correspondence of things cosmic and personal:-of the sacrifice and the liturgy with life and the world;-of the existential and the intelligential elcments."
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