How all those more or less conflicting texts came to be preserved and handed down to posterity, is not difficult to understand. As mentioned above, each of the great sections of Brahminical priesthood had its own sacred texts, and again in each of those sections there existed more ancient texts which it was impossible to discard when deeper and more advanced speculations began in their turn to be embodied in literary compositions, which in the course of time likewise came to be looked upon as sacred. When the creative period had reached its termination, and the task of collecting and arranging was taken in hand, older and newer pieces were combined into wholes, and thus there arose collections of such heterogeneous character as the Chândogya and Brihadâranyaka Upanishads. On later generations, to which the whole body of texts came down as revealed truth, there consequently devolved the inevitable task of establishing systems on which no exception could be taken to any of the texts; but that the task was, strictly speaking, an impossible one, i.e. one which it was impossible to accomplish fairly and honestly, there really is no reason to deny.
For a comprehensive criticism of the methods which the different commentators employ in systematizing the contents of the Upanishads there is no room in this place. In order, however, to illustrate what is meant by the 'impossibility,' above alluded to, of combining the various doctrines of the Upanishads into a whole without doing violence to a certain number of texts, it will be as well to analyse in detail some few at least of Sa@nkara's interpretations, and to render clear the considerations by which he is guided.
We begin with a case which has already engaged our attention when discussing the meaning of the Sûtras, viz. the question concerning the ultimate fate of those who have attained the knowledge of Brahman. As we have seen, Sa@nkara teaches that the soul of him who has risen to an insight into the nature of the higher Brahman does not, at the moment of death, pass out of the body, but is directly merged in Brahman by a process from which all departing and moving, in fact all considerations of space, are altogether excluded. The soul of him, on the other hand, who has not risen above the knowledge of the lower qualified Brahman departs from the body by means of the artery called sushumnâ, and following the so-called devayâna, the path of the gods, mounts up to the world of Brahman. A review of the chief Upanishad texts on which Sa@nkara founds this distinction will show how far it is justified.
In a considerable number of passages the Upanishads contrast the fate of two classes of men, viz. of those who perform sacrifices and meritorious works only, and of those who in addition possess a certain kind of knowledge. Men of the former kind ascend after death to the moon, where they live for a certain time, and then return to the earth into new forms of embodiment; persons of the latter kind proceed on the path of the gods—on which the sun forms one stage—up to the world of Brahman, from which there is no return. The chief passages to that effect are Ch. Up. V, 10; Kaush. Up. I, 2 ff.; Mund. Up. I, 2, 9 ff.; Bri. Up. VI, 2, 15 ff.; Prasna Up. I, 9 ff.—In other passages only the latter of the two paths is referred to, cp. Ch. Up. IV, 15; VIII 6, 5; Taitt. Up. I, 6; Bri. Up. IV, 4, 8, 9; V, 10; Maitr. Up. VI, 30, to mention only the more important ones.
Now an impartial consideration of those passages shows I think, beyond any doubt, that what is meant there by the knowledge which leads through the sun to the world of Brahman is the highest knowledge of which the devotee is capable, and that the world of Brahman to which his knowledge enables him to proceed denotes the highest state which he can ever reach, the state of final release, if we choose to call it by that name.—Ch. Up. V, 10 says, 'Those who know this (viz. the doctrine of the five fires), and those who in the forest follow faith and austerities go to light,' &c.—Ch. Up. IV, 15 is manifestly intended to convey the true knowledge of Brahman; Upakosala's teacher himself represents the instruction given by him as superior to the teaching of the sacred fires.—Ch. Up. VIII, 6, 5 quotes the old sloka which says that the man moving upwards by the artery penetrating the crown of the head reaches the Immortal.—Kaush. Up. I, 2—which gives the most detailed account of the ascent of the soul—contains no intimation whatever of the knowledge of Brahman, which leads up to the Brahman world, being of an inferior nature.—Mund. Up. I, 2, 9 agrees with the Chândogya in saying that 'Those who practise penance and faith in the forest, tranquil, wise, and living on alms, depart free from passion, through the sun, to where that immortal Person dwells whose nature is imperishable,' and nothing whatever in the context countenances the assumption that not the highest knowledge and the highest Person are there referred to.—Bri. Up. IV, 4, 8 quotes old slokas clearly referring to the road of the gods ('the small old path'), on which 'sages who know Brahman move on to the svargaloka and thence higher on as entirely free.—That path was found by Brahman, and on it goes whoever knows Brahman.'—Bri. Up. VI, 2, 15 is another version of the Pañkâgnividyâ, with the variation, 'Those who know this, and those who in the forest worship faith and the True, go to light,' &c.—Prasna Up. 1, 10 says, 'Those who have sought the Self by penance, abstinence, faith, and knowledge gain by the northern path Âditya, the sun. There is the home of the spirits, the immortal free from danger, the highest. From thence they do not return, for it is the end.'—Maitr. Up. VI, 30 quotes slokas, 'One of them (the arteries) leads upwards, piercing the solar orb: by it, having stepped beyond the world of Brahman, they go to the highest path.'
All these passages are as clear as can be desired. The soul of the sage who knows Brahman passes out by the sushumnâ, and ascends by the path of the gods to the world of Brahman, there to remain for ever in some blissful state. But, according to Sa@nkara, all these texts are meant to set forth the result of a certain inferior knowledge only, of the knowledge of the conditioned Brahman. Even in a passage apparently so entirely incapable of more than one interpretation as Bri. Up. VI, 2, 15, the 'True,' which the holy hermits in the forest are said to worship, is not to be the highest Brahman, but only Hiranyagarbha!—And why?—Only because the system so demands it, the system which teaches that those who know the highest Brahman become on their death one with it, without having to resort to any other place. The passage on which this latter tenet is chiefly based is Bri. Up. IV, 4, 6, 7, where, with the fate of him who at his death has desires, and whose soul therefore enters a new body after having departed from the old one, accompanied by all the prânas, there is contrasted the fate of the sage free from all desires. 'But as to the man who does not desire, who not desiring, freed from desires is satisfied in his desires, or desires the Self only, the vital spirits of him (tasya) do not depart—being Brahman he goes to Brahman.'
We have seen above (p. lxxx) that this passage is referred to in the important Sûtras on whose right interpretation it, in the first place, depends whether or not we must admit the Sûtrakâra to have acknowledged the distinction of a parâ and an aparâ vidyâ. Here the passage interests us as throwing light on the way in which Sa@nkara systematises. He looks on the preceding part of the chapter as describing what happens to the souls of all those who do not know the highest Brahman, inclusive of those who know the lower Brahman only. They pass out of the old bodies followed by all prânas and enter new bodies. He, on the other hand, section 6 continues, who knows the true Brahman, does not pass out of the body, but becomes one with Brahman then and there. This interpretation of the purport of the entire chapter is not impossibly right, although I am rather inclined to think that the chapter aims at setting forth in its earlier part the future of him who does not know Brahman at all, while the latter part of section 6 passes on to him who does know Brahman (i.e. Brahman pure and simple, the text knowing of no distinction of the so-called lower and higher Brahman). In explaining section 6 Sa@nkara lays stress upon the clause 'na tasya prâna utkrâmanti,' 'his vital spirits do not pass out,' taking this to signify that the soul with the vital spirits does not move at all, and thus does not ascend to the world of Brahman; while the purport of the clause may simply be that the soul and vital spirits do not go anywhere else, i.e. do not enter a new body, but are united, somehow or other, with Brahman. On Sa@nkara's interpretation there immediately arises a new difficulty. In the slokas, quoted under sections 8 and 9, the description of the small old path which leads to the svargaloka and higher on clearly refers—as noticed already above—to the path through the veins, primarily the sushumnâ, on which, according to so many other passages, the soul of the wise mounts upwards. But that path is, according to Sa@nkara, followed by him only who has not risen above the lower knowledge, and yet the slokas have manifestly to be connected with what is said in the latter half of 6 about the owner of the parâ vidyâ. Hence Sa@nkara sees himself driven to explain the slokas in 8 and 9 (of which a faithful translation is given in Professor Max Müller's version) as follows:
8. 'The subtle old path (i.e. the path of knowledge on which final release is reached; which path is subtle, i.e. difficult to know, and old, i.e. to be known from the eternal Veda) has been obtained and fully reached by me. On it the sages who know Brahman reach final release (svargalokasabdah samnihitaprakaranât mokshâbhidhâyakah).
9. 'On that path they say that there is white or blue or yellow or green or red (i.e. others maintain that the path to final release is, in accordance with the colour of the arteries, either white or blue, &c.; but that is false, for the paths through the arteries lead at the best to the world of Brahman, which itself forms part of the samsâra); that path (i.e. the only path to release, viz. the path of true knowledge) is found by Brahman, i.e. by such Brâhmanas as through true knowledge have become like Brahman,' &c.
A significant instance in truth of the straits to which thorough-going systematisers of the Upanishads see themselves reduced occasionally!