An Essay on Violence, Tradition and Modernity

Rafael Leyre ( Rafael_Leyre@yahoo.com)       Third Edition - February 2007

India

A manifold of cultural encounters

India, an amalgam of vast river-banks, deserts and forests, is situated at the centre of Eurasia, the largest landmass on earth. It has always harboured a variety of cultures and uncountable forager communities, nomadic peoples and kingdoms. Consequently India was subject to a manifold of cultural encounters and received compound interest of progress. Ideas survived and evolved here because they were spread, gathered, split and merged among the many refuges in its hinterland and at its borders.365

As in all times and places, no special ‘race’ was involved in the process: the accidental geographical location and relation caused this surprising human experience, not the special ‘character’ of its population.

Looking at this historical frame, it is not surprising that Indian thinking was preoccupied with the diversity and transformation of being – the essential prerequisite for the open-minded, cognisant observation that leads to progress.

The universe is per definition the sum of all things, including thinking. It is super-personal, the Universal Self, ‘the dwarf, who sits in the centre’.366 This Universal Self, Brahma, can not be prayed at, exerts no terror nor mercy, and accepts no offerings. It can only be approached by mindful contemplation: by the perceptive mind and not by reasoning – it is an insight, an awareness that can be cultivated, not a computation. Monotheism is an amalgam of this cosmic concept on the one hand and of the concept of tribal war gods on the other hand. But Brahma and gods are related like the whole and a particle, like inertia and decay, like absence and meddling. The imagery of the universal self evolved steadily from before the Avesta to after the Koran, and people raised in a monotheistic milieu should be careful not to project their parochial concepts on any philosophy from another century, let alone from ancient India.

The oldest Upanishads present unremitting trials to grasp the real world with its ever changing appearances, and suspect one great principle, the Ultimate Reality, long before the ancient Milesians searched for the primary substratum of the world, or contemporary physicists searched for a ‘Grand Unified Theory’.

This philosophy inspired Zoroastrian thinkers in Persia and through them the Greeks Anaximenes, Parmenides and Plato,367 and remained a fruitful concept in Western science until the twentieth century, when Albert Einstein made a universe holding a mixture of matter, energy and emptiness more acceptable.

Brahman priests in the seventh century BCE have defined the Universe by means of an elaborated numerology, and made Brahma, the Universal Self, part of the wheel of rebirth.

One daytime in the life of Brahma consists of 1,000 Maha-yugas, and one Maha-yuga equals 4,320,000 human years or 2.5 equinoctial precessions. Each Maha-yuga in its turn comprises four ages, each shorter and gloomier than the preceding, and then ends in floods and fire. When Brahma goes to sleep for another 4,320,000,000 human years, there is no matter, no gods, and no universe.

Brahma departs after 864,000,000,000 human years, and as a result the world cedes to chaos. But after the same span of time another Brahma is born, and the universe starts all over. 368

The four oldest Upanishads

Below are some scientific speculations on nature from ancient India, selected from the four oldest Upanishads. The Upanishads contain highly scientific natural speculations, and fortunately found a sanctuary in the religious corpus of the Vedas, where they are known as the Vedantas. At the time there existed no separation between metaphysics and physics. There was only careful, incisive investigation of the whole natural world. The metaphysical aspects of the Upanishads can not be negated by appraising their profound scientific learning.

While much of this learning was superseded in later ages, it remains of tremendous importance to the history of science, if we ever want to lift such a history above tribal pretentiousness. No unanimity exists about the date of the Upanishads cited here, but it is safe to locate their redaction before 700 BCE, always keeping in mind that their explorations must already have been going on for centuries.369

As precious stones in the treasure chest of humanity, the Upanishads change colours with each turn, and present many various speculations on nature and being: they do not present one neatly coherent, final dogma, but an affluent compilation of audacious queries. Such a treasury could only have been gathered amidst many diverse and transforming cultures, as indeed exchange of those riches with always new cultures can explain aspects of subsequent progress elsewhere.

Free, mindful inquiry into nature must have existed for a long time on many continents, but this exceptional testimony is the most ancient we know of:

Through understanding we understand [..] heaven, earth, air, ether, water, fire, gods, men, cattle, birds, herbs, trees, all beasts down to worms, midges, and ants; what is right and what is wrong; what is true and what is false; what is good and what is bad; what is pleasing and what is not pleasing; food and savour, this world and that, all this we understand through understanding. Meditate on understanding.370

The world is investigated by nothing but observation and contemplation: sparse references to Vedic imageries are just a frame in which the Upanishads needed to communicate innovating hypotheses to an archaic audience.

Readers, framed in the contemporary Western culture (even if they are Hindu themselves), often mistake the Upanishads for esoteric, obscure, nineteenth century mysticism, and look for a ‘spiritual’ philosophy distinct from speculations about the world we live in.371 Although the writers of the Upanishads never adapted such a schizophrenic world-image, many translations today have this spirituality induced in their texts. Translating âtman into ‘soul’ can lead to wrong interpretations372; translating Brahman into ‘God’ certainly does;373 satya, that which truly and really exists, should not be translated into ‘Truth’, a word used by dogmatists to designate their rigid propositions, but into ‘reality’, the subject of explorations and speculations.374 When the Upanishads say that ‘the unreal is verily death, the real immortality'’375 this is to stress that they are searching the factual world, not fabricated doctrines or god-given dogmas.

The authors tried to understand the complex world we seem to fall into by accident, and always base their assumptions on experience, without ever claiming divine inspiration, but also without unjustified reticence. On one occasion the Brihadaranyaka bluntly says ‘do not ask too much, lest thy head should fall off’376 and on another occasion: ‘anybody may say, I know, I know. Tell what thou knowest’.377

The oldest Upanishads on the first principle of nature

The first verse of the first Upanishad starts with questioning the traditional horse sacrifice, familiar to the author and his audience.378 The killing and separating of the slaughtered animal offered the vocabulary needed to analyse – to take apart - the nature of the world:

the dawn is the head of the horse which is fit for sacrifice, the sun its eye, the wind its breath, the mouth the Vaisvanara fire, the year the body of the sacrificial horse. Heaven is the back, the sky the belly, the earth the chest, the quarters the two sides, the intermediate quarters the ribs, the members the seasons, the joints the months and half-months, the feet days and nights, the bones the stars, the flesh the clouds. The half-digested food is the sand, the rivers the bowels, the liver and the lungs the mountains, the hairs the herbs and trees.379

The horse offering was no longer the feeding of gods, but was the feeding of the universe. The sacrificed horse and the universe were composed of the same ingredients. This essentially atheist point of view made the difference between the universe and ourselves (and all other beings) one of scale instead of substance, and enabled the imagination of universal laws of nature:

The earth, the Sky, Heaven, the four quarters, and the intermediate quarters, - fire, air, sun, moon, and the stars, - water, herbs, trees, ether, the Universal Self - so much with reference to material things. Now with reference to the body: up-breathing, down-breathing, back-breathing, out-breathing and on-breathing - The eye, the ear, mind, speech, and touch - The skin, flesh, muscle, bone, and marrow. Having dwelt on this fivefold arrangement of the worlds a Rishi said: ‘Whatever exists is fivefold.’380

Civilizations have always recovered and recycled creation legends into persistence myths, but such an easy way out did never satisfy the always lingering scientific curiosity. Better answers were looked for in the observation of nature.

The question arose from what matter the world was made. The oldest candidates were wood and earth. Wood, though underrated in archaeological records because it rots easily, has been the most important base material since the Old Stone Age. Then, in the New Stone Age, the use of pottery inspired to myths of creation out of earth. The Mapuche of Central Chile, the ancient Zoroastrians of Persia and many other cultures believed impressive mountains seemed to have a slow but strong growing force.381

In the Upanishads we find the oldest theory that some of this matter was elementary, while some things were a mixture of those elements. The Chinese elements – or rather types of matter - were in India reduced to the ingredients of the blacksmith.382 Wood and metals were removed from the list because they were made-up of the other elements: wind, water, earth and fire. Air was wind to stir up crops, but also breath or bellows; water was beneficial rain and drink, but also semen; earth was the field, but also bodies and all kinds of food; fire was the flames of the blacksmith, but also body heat of living beings, and the foaming of wild water. The elements are mixed by natural causes to produce all sorts of matter:

The earth is the former element, heaven the latter, ether their union; That union takes place through air. So much with regard to the worlds. Next, with regard to the heavenly lights. Fire is the former element, the sun the latter, water their union. That union takes place through lightning. So much with regard to the heavenly lights.383

From food384 are produced all creatures which dwell on earth. Then they live by food, and in the end they return to food. For food is the oldest of all beings.385

In the Prasna Upanishad, a pupil raises the question of the divine nature of the elements, but is instantly reprimanded by his tutor: no gods, but matter is our support and keeper:

Then Bhargava Vaidarbhi asked him: ‘Sir, How many gods keep what has thus been created, how many manifest this, and who is the best of them?’ He replied: ‘the ether is that god, the wind, fire, water, earth, speech, mind, eye, and ear. [..] These say: each of us support this body and keep it.

Since life decomposes and returns to its elements, it is only reasonable to expect that those elements once will return to life. The hypothesis of the elements is plausibly related with the hypothesis of reincarnation, but does not need the concept of a soul. Before African-Persian influence, what is born again is not the individual person, but the essence of the world behind the elements, breath, Prana:

Then Prana, as the best, said to them: Be not deceived, I alone, dividing myself fivefold, support this body and keep it.386

In the Mahabharata the monster Vritra devoured ‘the whole fivefold world: earth, air, space, water and light.’ In the Sutra of Perfect Enlightenment Buddha explains:

This present body is a synthesis of the Four Elements. Hair, nails, teeth, skin, flesh, bones, marrow, brains and pigment all return to earth. Saliva, mucus, pus, blood, sputum, scum, phlegm, tears, semen, urine and faeces all return to Water. Heat returns to Fire, and movement returns to Wind. When the Four Elements have been separated, where can the false body exist? Now you know that this body ultimately has no substance. As a synthesis it appears, but in reality it is like an illusion conjured by a magician.

Via Pythagoras the elements resurfaced in Plato’s Phaedo, and indirectly influenced Saint Augustine and European thinking:

God in the beginning of creation made the body of the universe to consist of fire and earth. But two things cannot be rightly put together without a third; there must be some bond of union between them. [..] but now, as the world must be solid, and solid bodies are always compacted not by one mean but by two, God placed water and air in the mean between fire and earth [..] Now the creation took up the whole of each of the four elements; for the Creator compounded the world out of all the fire and all the water and all the air and all the earth, leaving no part of any of them nor any power of them outside.387

In many foraging cultures water was the basis of life. A myth of the Bushongo of Central Africa recount that in the old times Sky was married to Earth, but became tired of her racket and left together with his offspring: birds, clouds and stars. Once in a while however Sky longs for his wife: that’s when his semen comes down as rain, fertilizing the land. An Egyptian myth says that when Sky yearned for Earth her vaginal fluids fell down as rain. The bible recounts that Yahweh, on the first day, ordained that there be sky to separate the water beneath and the water above; in the Mesopotamian Enuma Elish water is called ‘Apsu, the first one’. Sumerians learned that Enlil separated earth and Sky out of the primeval waters like a tent, covering an air bubble, erected on the bed of the primeval ocean. It is no surprise that water is also named as the first element in the Upanishads: ‘everything here is woven, like warp and woof, in water.’388 In the Brihadaranyaka water even surpasses Brahman as the ultimate being:

In the beginning this world was water. Water produced the true, and the true is Brahman. Brahman produced Pragapati, Pragapati the gods.389

This primacy of water is discovered by means of careful observation, while the language is still indebted to ancient spirits (not unlike Descartes):

Therefore if there is not sufficient rain, the vital spirits fail from fear that there will be less food. But if there is sufficient rain, the vital spirits rejoice, because there will be much food. This water, on assuming different forms, becomes this earth, this sky, this heaven, the mountains, gods and men, cattle, birds, herbs and trees, all beasts down to worms, midges, and ants. Water indeed assumes all these forms. Meditate on water.390

An old myth in which earth was made when the gods churned the milky ocean, is recycled to explain how fluid water can become earth and other firm things. But here gods are left out and a natural process, observed when making butter, is sufficient reason:

And what was there as the froth of the water, that was hardened, and became the earth. On that earth death rested, and from this, thus resting and heated, fire proceeded, full of light.391

But if water turns into earth by frothing, and waves endlessly rise and fall on the shores, in the end the whole ocean could become land. The ingenious solution is that there is no physical contact between land and water:

The ocean surrounds this earth on every side, twice as large. Now there is between them a space as large as the edge of a razor or the wing of a mosquito.392

Another candidate for primacy is air. In the Chandogya Upanishad we find observations naming in one place water, in another place air (or wind) the first: 393

Air is indeed the end of all. For when fire goes out, it goes into air. When the sun goes down, it goes into air. When the moon goes down, it goes into air. When water dries up, it goes into air. Air indeed consumes them all.394

The primacy of breath, which is identified with air or wind, is demonstrated by means of a thought experiment. We can live without speaking, hearing, seeing, even without thinking, but when we try hold our breath, our chest revolts:

The five senses quarrelled together, who was the best, saying, I am better, I am better.

They went to their father Pragapati and said: ‘Sir, who is the best of us?’ He replied: ‘ He by whose departure the body seems worse than worst, he is the best of you.’

The tongue departed, and having been absent for a year, it came round and said: ‘How have you been able to live without me?’ They replied: ‘Like mute people, not speaking, but breathing with the breath, seeing with the eye, hearing with the ear, thinking with the mind. Thus we lived.’ Then speech went back.

The eye departed, and having been absent for a year, it came round and said: ‘How have you been able to live without me?’ They replied: ‘Like blind people, not seeing, but breathing with the breath, speaking with the tongue, hearing with the ear, thinking with the mind. Thus we lived.’ Then the eye went back.

The ear departed, and having been absent for a year, it came round and said: ‘How have you been able to live without me?’ They replied: ‘Like deaf people, not hearing, but breathing with the breath, speaking with the tongue, thinking with the mind. Thus we lived.’ Then the ear went back.

The mind departed, and having been absent for a year, it came round and said: ‘How have you been able to live without me?’ They replied: ‘Like children whose mind is not yet formed, but breathing with the breath, speaking with the tongue, seeing with the eye, hearing with the ear. Thus we lived.’ Then the mind went back.

The breath, when on the point of departing, tore up the other senses, as a horse, going to start, might tear up the pegs to which he is tethered. They came to him and said: ‘Sir, thou art the best among us. Do not depart from us!’395

Next to water, air, also earth has been named as the first element: ‘Everything that here exists rests on the earth, and does not go beyond’396.

Sound is carried through obstacles like walls where air can’t pass, and therefore there must be a still finer medium drenching the physical universe. A kind of thinner air, ether, was assumed. Ether is the medium of our senses, thoughts and dreams:

When this man was thus asleep, then the intelligent person, having through the intelligence of the senses absorbed within himself all intelligence, lies in the ether, which is in the heart. When he takes in these different kinds of intelligence, then it is said that the man sleeps. Then the breath is kept in, speech is kept in, the ear is kept in, the eye is kept in, the mind is kept in.

But when he moves about in sleep and dream, then these are his worlds. He is, as it were, a great king; he is, as it were, a great priest;397 he rises, as it were, and he falls. And as a great king might keep in his own subjects, and move about, according to his pleasure, within his own domain, thus does that intelligent person keep in the various senses and move about, according to his pleasure, within his own body. Next, when he is in profound sleep, and knows nothing, there are the seventy-two thousand arteries called Hita, which from the heart spread through the body. Through them he moves forth and rests in the surrounding body. And as a young man, or a great king, or a great priest, having reached the summit of happiness, might rest, so does he then rest. 398

The ether is utterly permeable, and is therefore the all including selfness of the universe, from which all selves appear and to which all selves return, while ‘the world never becomes full’.399 The Upanishads present the ether however as a medium, not as a mystical unity:

When there is as it were duality, then one sees the other, one smells the other, one hears the other, one salutes the other, one perceives the other, one knows the other; but when the Self only is all this, how should he smell another, how should he see another, how should he hear another, how should he salute another, how should he perceive another, how should he know another?400

At a very early stage in Indian philosophy ether overtakes all other elements as the substrate of the universe:

“What is the origin of this world?”

“Ether,” he replied, “for all these beings take their rise from the ether, and return into the ether. Ether is older than these, ether is their rest.”401

This ether, Akasa, which is around us,402 ‘is the same as the ether which is within us.’403 It is understood as an all-pervading fluid, and once more its physical nature is underlined:

Who could breathe, who could breathe forth, if that bliss existed not in the ether?404

When the Greeks first heard about the elements, they still gave them the names of gods. Empedocles, generally but erroneously considered the first inventor of the four elements, preached also reincarnation, the cyclic universe and release from the ‘wheel of birth’ by asceticism. It can hardly be doubted that Empedocles was inspired – directly or otherwise – by the Indian Vedas.

The oldest Upanishads on being, form, ether and atomism

Following fragments from the Chandogya Upanishad offer an adequate introduction to the scientific speculations in ancient India. A father has sent away his twelve years old son to become a priest. When he returns home after twelve more years, at the age of twenty-four, Svetaketu has achieved the tremendous task of memorizing numerous sacred hymns and rituals. But to his dismay his father tells him that he has learned nothing but words, and that there is more powerful knowledge than that of the priests.405 Svetaketu begs his father to explain this knowledge, and what follows is, besides a delicate fragment of world literature, a concise overview of Indian science as it existed one millennium BCE.

The father starts out by referring to an already ongoing ontological dispute (‘others say…’).406 His down-to-earth conclusion is that time before being is impossible:

“Others say, in the beginning there was that only which is not, one only, without a second; and from that which is not, that which is was born. But how could it be thus, my beloved?” the father continued. “How could that which is, be born of that which is not? No, my beloved, only that which is, was in the beginning, one only, without a second. It thought, may I be many, may I grow forth. It sent forth fire. That fire thought, may I be many, may I grow forth. It sent forth water. And therefore whenever anybody anywhere is hot and perspires, water is produced on him from fire alone. Water thought, may I be many, may I grow forth. It sent forth earth. Therefore whenever it rains anywhere, most food is then produced. From water alone is eatable food produced.” 407

Based on observation of natural processes, living things are divided in oviparous, viviparous, and plants or fish:408

“Of all living things there are indeed three origins only, that which springs from an egg, that which springs from a living being, and that which springs from a germ. That Being thought, let me now enter those three beings with this living Self, and let me then reveal names and forms. Then that Being having said, let me make each of these three tripartite409 entered into those three beings with this living self only, and revealed names and forms. He made each of these tripartite; and how these three beings become each of them tripartite, that learn from me now, my beloved!” 410

The enthusiasm for the new physics mounts while the father continues. A hypothesis is uttered about how life force and the elements (fire, water, and earth or food) compose the lifeforms mentioned above. long before Heraclitus, the idea rose that the elements stem from a cosmic fire. In the course we encounter the most ancient known theory of colour - five or more centuries older than the Aristotelian De Coloribus, and yet more candid:411

“The red colour of burning fire is the colour of fire, the white colour of fire is the colour of water, the black colour of fire the colour of earth. Thus vanishes what we call fire, as a mere variety, being a name, arising from speech. What is true are the three colours412.

The red colour of the sun is the colour of fire, the white of water, the black of earth. Thus vanishes what we call the sun, as a mere variety, being a name, arising from speech. What is true are the three colours.

The red colour of the moon is the colour of fire, the white of water, the black of earth. Thus vanishes what we call the moon, as a mere variety, being a name, arising from speech. What is true are the three colours.

The red colour of the lightning is the colour of fire, the white of water, the black of earth. Thus vanishes what we call the lightning, as a mere variety, being a name, arising from speech. What is true are the three colours.” 413

This philosophy was already old:

“Great householders and great theologians of olden times who knew this, have declared the same, saying, ‘ No one can henceforth mention to us anything which we have not heard, perceived, or known.’ Out of these three colours or forms they knew all. Whatever they thought looked red, they knew was the colour of fire. Whatever they thought looked white, they knew was the colour of water. Whatever they thought looked black, they knew was the colour of earth. Whatever they thought was altogether unknown, they knew was some combination of those three beings.” 414

The discussion between Svetaketu and his father touches more biological issues in several highly fascinating paragraphs. Svetaketu will become subject of the oldest known scientific experiment on the function of memory – if not the oldest known scientific experiment altogether:

“Now learn from me, my beloved, how those three beings, when they reach man, become each of them tripartite. The earth when eaten becomes threefold; its grossest portion becomes faeces, its middle portion flesh, and its subtlest portion mind. 415 Water when drunk becomes threefold; its grossest portion becomes water, its middle portion blood, its subtilest portion breath. Fire when eaten becomes threefold; its grossest portion becomes bone, its middle portion marrow, its subtilest portion speech. 416 For truly, my child, mind comes of earth, breath of water, speech of fire.”

“Please, Sir, inform me still more,” said the son. ”Be it so, my child,” the father replied. “That which is the subtile portion of curds, when churned, rises upwards, and becomes butter. In the same manner, my child, the subtle portion of earth, when eaten, rises upwards, and becomes mind. That which is the subtle portion of water, when drunk, rises upwards, and becomes breath. That which is the subtle portion of fire, when consumed, rises upwards, and becomes speech. For mind, my child, comes of earth, breath of water, speech of fire.”

“Please, Sir, inform me still more,” said the son. “Be it so, my child,” the father replied.

“Man, my son, consists of sixteen parts. Abstain from food for fifteen days, but drink as much water as you like, for breath comes from water, and will not be cut off, if you drink water.”

Svetaketu abstained from food for fifteen days. Then he came to his father and said: “What shall I say?” The father said: “Repeat the Rik, Yagus, and Saman verses.” He replied: “They do not occur to me, Sir.” The father said to him: “As of a great lighted fire one coal only of the size of a firefly may be left, which would not burn much more than this, thus, my beloved son, one part only of the sixteen parts is left, and therefore with that one part you do not remember the Vedas. Go and eat! Then wilt thou understand me.” Then Svetaketu ate, and afterwards approached his father. And whatever his father asked him, he knew it all by heart. Then his father said to him: as of a great lighted fire one coal of the size of a firefly, if left, may be made to blaze up again by putting grass upon it, and will thus burn more than this, Thus, my beloved son, there was one part of the sixteen parts left to you, and that, lighted up with food, burnt up, and by it you remember now the Vedas.” After that, he understood what his father meant when he said: “Mind, my son, comes from food, breath from water, speech from fire.” He understood what he said, yea, he understood it.417

The sixteen parts of the human self are modelled after the composition of the universe, from low to high: earth, water, fire, sky, air, heaven, sun, space, moon and stars, ether…418. But the self comes into existence the other way around:

From [the Universal Self] sprang ether (that through which we hear); from ether air (that through which we hear and feel); from air fire (that through which we hear, feel, and see); from fire water (that through which we hear, feel, see, and taste); from water earth (that through which we hear, feel, see, taste, and smell). From earth herbs, from herbs food, from food seed, from seed man. Man thus consists of the essence of food. This is his head, this his right arm, this his left arm, this his trunk, this the seat.419

Each of the five elements is a medium for the previous, and consequently ‘inherits’ its properties. Now when Svetaketu fastens, only one medium remains active: this can only be ether. In this manner it is demonstrated that memories are located in ether, while the other fifteen help in active remembering. The later Prasna Upanishad adds Spirit and Faith to the parts of man, but in that scheme, refraining from food would have another effect:

He sent forth spirit; from spirit faith, ether, air, light, water, earth, sense, mind, food; from food came vigour, penance, hymns, sacrifice, the worlds, and in the worlds the name also. 420

One last quote from the dialog between father and son is an intriguing scene pointing at the oldest concept of atomism we know of.

“Fetch me from thence a fruit of the Nyagrodha tree.”

“Here is one, Sir.”

“Break it.”

“It is broken, Sir.”

“What do you see there?”

“These seeds, almost infinitesimal.”

“Break one of them.”

“It is broken, Sir.”

“What do you see there?”

“Not anything, Sir.”

The father said: “My son, that subtle essence which you do not perceive there, of that very essence this great Nyagrodha tree exists”421

The importance of atomism for the history of science can hardly be overestimated. Once naïve animism is abandoned, either atoms are accepted to describe how physical substance can permeate each other, or the blind alley of Parmenides and Plato is taken. Atomism was essential to the theory of the elements. The alternative says that change is an illusion and the world a boring display.

Atomism would reach the Mediterranean coast with the Persians; Democritus would pass it to Epicurus; after time, it would reach Western Europe via Lucretius and Gassendi. Atomism became one of the main paradigms to shatter centralist myths and ideologies: