Yama
It is only seemingly a paradox to affirm that a strong will to live entails an equally strong will to die. If the will to live is a realistic will to live a real life and not a whimsical desire for an imaginary life, we must recognize that inasmuch as real life is lived under the existential condition of death, death itself has to be taken into account and equally willed. To desire to live and not to desire the same degree of death that life may contain is not a realistic desire to live but a mere product of our imagination, which seeks to grasp at an illusory "life." Fear of death, by the same token, is of the same nature as fear of life. To wish for an X without wishing for all that the X contains is not really to wish for it, but to wish for an idealized and altogether different X.
We do not find so explicit an argument in the Vedas, but their all-pervading mood seems to correspond very closely to what we have just been saying. The Vedic attitude, which is strongly life-affirming, has as its corollary the acceptance of death. But we cannot reduce life and much less death to neat rational schemes. There are equally real human attitudes to life and death which are not rational and, further, we have to ask what kind of life we really love and what kind of death we really fear.
One thing that is clear is the integration between life and death in the shruti. That integration is examined in this part, whose connection with the preceding part requires no further comment.
To extricate the Vedic experience of death from its cosmological background, with which it is almost inseparably interwoven, is particularly difficult. In order to interpret correctly the human experience of death which permeates the Vedas, we must take into account the evidence provided by the history of religions for the periods that precede and follow the Vedic age, but we cannot include here such a preface to our study. We try to present only the results that a particular method produces. This method is based on involvement and distance: involvement in Vedic culture, so as to see it as far as possible through the eyes of Vedic Man, and distance from it, looking at it from without with critical awareness.
The difficulty here is compounded because, unlike other fields of human experience, the actual subject of this chapter is not empirical Man but rather man living in another realm outside this perceptible universe. Thus the cosmological model in which this "otherworld" is situated has to be understood first. Yet the cosmological model not only affects but also conditions that very insight into the eschatological problem.
We would like, then, to extricate, insofar as possible, the anthropological experience of Vedic wisdom regarding the central problem of death from the cosmological world view of that time. We are not assuming that there are two separable experiences, the cosmological and the anthropological. What we are saying is that the anthropological experience, that is, the subjective conviction (in this instance regarding death), can be expressed independently of the particular cosmological substructure. We certainly do not want to suggest that a pure demythologization is possible; rather, we are trying as it were to wrap the Vedic experience in another myth, the present-day one, so that through such a "transmythization" we may try to understand, or even reenact, the experience disclosed in the shruti.
Modern Man wonders about death and weaves innumerable theories about it; he seems to be sure about only one thing: its factual reality and thus its inevitability. In spite of startling news produced now and then by the scientific shamans of our age, contemporary Man seems at a loss when he is confronted with one of the most ancient myths of mankind: the possibility of avoiding death. Because death is seen to be inevitable, modern society tends to wipe out from the memory of the living all dealings with the dying and the dead. The fundamental Vedic attitude is almost the opposite: it does not reckon with death's inevitability and it does not try to smuggle death away from everyday life.
According to this vision, which is common to other cultures as well, death is not inevitable; it is only accidental. You die if your life is snatched away before you reach maturity, or before you marry, or if something unexpected happens to you which prevents you from achieving what you yourself or society was expecting of your life. Death is limited to this rupture, this misfortune, this accident. Thus it is always an unnatural event, and it is always akala mrtyu, untimely death.
On the other hand the old Man, "the Man of long life," as the Vedas call him, the one who has lived his life, who has fulfilled his life span, his ayus,1 does not die; he does not experience a break and, thus, a trauma; he has simply consumed the torch and exhausted the fuel. The flame of his life goes on and it burns in his sons, his daughters, his children's children, his friends, his work, and in his ideas which are scattered to the four winds. Even his body, with its own energy, has already enriched the earth on which he has walked, the rivers in which he has bathed, and the living beings with whom he has been in communication and communion. Only the last gifts of his body and breath still remain to be given away. The old Man does not die; he simply finishes his commerce with life and achieves the transmission of all that he himself has received, as the Upanishads describe.2 He cancels the constitutive rna, the debt of gratitude for the gift of his existence.3 The natural extinction of one particular carrier of life or the completion of one's own life is not death.
Indeed, not every Man who is old in years reaches long life, maturity, and thus immortality. It is not a question of mere number of years but of growth, for which the passing of years--the hundred autumns--is certainly required but of which it is not the only condition. Time, in fact, is more than its measurement by the passing of days and seasons; it is the qualitative coefficient of human growth itself. To disentangle the immortal from the mortal, to liberate himself from the claws of death, is the task of every Man. On the one hand there is the asu or life-principle, the power of life or vital strength, which is assimilated in some traditions to the ahamkara, the selfish ego of unfulfilled desires and unachieved projects. This ego is not pure, later periods will say, inasmuch as it consists of unburnt karmas; it is this ego that is afraid of death, because it must certainly die. There is, on the other hand, the personal atman, that spark of the paramatman, which does not die. Jiva, in spite of the variety of meanings given by different schools, could also be another word for immortal Man.
The notion that the old Man who has reached the end of his life span and finished the task entrusted to him does not die is more convincing for Vedic Man than for modern Man because of the deeper sense of collective consciousness which the former enjoys in comparison with contemporary Man.4 The Vedic Covenant is directed not to Men but to Man, not to disconnected individuals but to the rich web of personhood, which is, as we shall see, neither singular nor plural. Because the coefficient of individuality is very low, individual death presents a very small problem for the old Man whose vitality, or rather whose body, just fades away. Against this background we may perhaps acquire an adequate perspective that will enable us to envisage this central human problem as experienced in the beginnings of Indo-European civilization; we may also perhaps learn something of our own attainable immortality.
It would not be proper to reduce the rich range of the Vedic experience to only a few features. It contains, moreover, a double complexity: horizontal and vertical. The complexity is horizontal insofar as the millennium of human experience concentrated in the shruti--without of course considering the prehistory from which it originated--is far too wide to allow oversimplifications. We have, for instance, already stressed the tension between the self-understanding of Man in the Samhitas and in the Upanishads. What may be valid for one may be contested by the other and the eschatological ideas of one period may not tally with those of the other. By saying that the complexity is also vertical we want to indicate the fascinating fact that the Vedic Revelation discloses itself at very widely differing levels of human experience, ranging from the most simple, primitive, and literal understanding of an afterlife as a copy or rather an idealization of this one, to a sophisticated and highly refined vision of forms of survival which transcend imagination and even thought.
The hymns and texts that follow may give some idea of this experience. We divide this part into two sections; one describes the phenomenon of death, the break, the departure. It contains three subsections which should be easily understandable. The first one contains myths dealing with the mystery of the beyond. The second one has an immediate existential flavor. It mostly consists of prayers dealing with the concrete struggle with death; these prayers represent the everlasting tension between the living and the dying as well as between living and dying. The third one deals with the moment immediately after death. It is a moment for effective action, not one of theoretical reflection. It is the last of the human rites and the antyeshti completes the triangle composed of birth (with initiation, which is the spiritual birth), marriage, and death. For this reason we include the rite here as we have done in other instances.
The second section is limited to basic texts that describe the state of mind of Man when confronted with the idea of another world. We adduce only those eschatological representations directly connected with death and dissolution, without entering into other types of cosmographies. The first subsection has a particular interest as it describes the anthropological and theological settings of the end of the world, represented respectively by the myth of the deluge in the Shatapatha Brahmana and the assertion of the Gita that God is both the origin and the dissolution of the world. The two remaining subsections deal with conceptions of hell and heaven.
A. THE GREAT DEPARTURE
Mahaprasthana
O Indra, prolong our life once more!
RV I, 10, 115
Just as a cucumber is removed from its stalk,
so from Death's bonds may I be removed
but not from Immortality!
RV VII, 59, 12
Desireless, wise, immortal, self-existent,
full of bliss, lacking in nothing,
is the one who knows the wise, unaging,
youthful atman: he fears not death!
AV X, 8, 446
The three verses chosen as antiphons for this section express the gist of the many texts concerning what the Katha Upanishad calls the "Great Departure."7
The first one stresses what we are going to hear time and again: the "afterlife" and the "otherworld" may be very attractive prospects, but nothing is so dear and desirable as our human, concrete, bodily life here on earth and under the sun, with fellow human beings, animals, and objects surrounding us. If later on certain Upanishadic sages and, more so, some of their followers despise life here below and all human values, the Vedic rishis are still in love with this world.
The poet of the second verse knows only too well that Death does not wait for the fruit to fall from the tree by itself through its own impulse. He uses the metaphor of the plucked fruit and asks to be saved from the embrace of Death and handed over to immortality. The cucumber dies when plucked; Man enters immortality.
The third antiphon comes from the always astonishing Atharva Veda. Composed long before the Upanishads, it introduces us to the conception of atman, the discovery of which is the one means of overcoming both death and the fear of death. The concept was to be minutely developed in a later period. This existential discovery, which is much more than mere abstract knowledge, makes life glow with self-confidence. It is the secret of happiness and of the conquest of death, for it cannot be touched by the change and the decay caused by the passage of years.8
This text is similar to others found elsewhere, for instance, in the Shatapatha Brahmana, speaking of either Brahman9 or of atman.10 It already foreshadows the trend of later speculation about death and also about life.11 These sayings tell us that the secret of immortality and happiness is hidden neither on inaccessible peaks of heroic deeds nor in the equally unapproachable depths of universal knowledge, but is simply concealed in any human heart just "alongside" oneself.
Something similar must be said about another important insight, which represents perhaps the most common feature of the great majority of Eastern spiritualities: the notion of karman. Not only is the idea of atman foreshadowed in the Vedas but there is also discernible the seed of the conception of karman, though not the idea of rebirth. The term karman occurs almost forty times in the Rig Veda, but never in the sense of the later theories on transmigration. It means simply works, deeds, and, especially, sacred actions. Karman is directly related to the central idea of sacrifice. What appears clearly, mainly in the Brahmanas, is the idea of a superhuman justice which entails true belief in retribution.12 All human deeds have good or bad effects according to their nature, that is, to their moral value.
The conception of karman emerges later as the connecting link between the two ideas of immortality and retribution. If not everything disappears at death, and if justice is to be accomplished, there will have to be a continuity. Karman stands here for this continuity, that is, for all the elements gathered around a personal core, which can be shared by others and thus also transmitted from one person to another. The karmas are not only the good or bad dispositions, but the very causes of such dispositions; they are the links in the chain of cosmic solidarity, a kind of crystallization of Man's deeds on earth, which do not disappear with individual death.
The only Rig-Vedic text that has been traditionally interpreted as supporting the karman theory refers only to the anthropocosmic unity of reality, so that the eye goes back to the sun, the spirit to the wind, and so on. As noted earlier, it also refers to the cosmoethical harmony of the universe;13 thus the merits and demerits of the person have cosmic repercussions because they belong to the same world.14 Other texts from the Rig Veda,15 Atharva Veda,16 Upanishads,17 and Gita18 may also be considered in this connection.
Summing up the many threads of this tradition, we may detect three operative ideas: karman as the saving sacrificial action, mainly stressed in the Samhitas; karman as the subtle structure of temporal reality, as that which all existing things have in common and in which they share, disclosed mainly in the Upanishads and developed in later times; karman as the path of action, of good works, and thus also as a way to salvation, emphasized in the Bhagavad Gita. We could even add that the theory of karman is probably the fruit of a process of secularization away from the Vedic Brahmanic conception of the sacrifice to the general conception of life itself as a sacrifice, maintained no longer by a specific yajna but by the karmic action of Men. Be that as it may, what the shruti discloses is not a theory of karman but an attitude in the face of the problem of death. A few features may be noted.
First, there is the belief that the temporal world is not everything, that human life is not exhausted in space and time on earth, and that the person is not totally dissolved into his constituent elements. There is "another world."
Second, there is the belief that this otherworld is intimately connected with this world and for this reason not only does human life on earth condition the otherworld, but also the last rites, the blessings for the journey, and the climactic moment of death are of capital importance. They condition the new form of human existence. They open up the gates of the otherworld. It is for this reason that the various rituals are so important. Man cannot live without rituals, nor can he die without them. They are needed not only for corporate human life but also for the great departure.
Third, there is a peculiar continuity and discontinuity between these two worlds, which is differently interpreted in the Vedas and the Upanishads. According to the Vedas the rupture between this world and the otherworld is an anthropological break (i.e., Man is certainly transformed, but it is Man who is still living at the other side); in the Upanishads the chasm is ontological (and atman is the bridge). The Rig Veda foreshadows what becomes clear in the Upanishadic period: the deceased goes either the way of the Fathers, pitryana, or the way of the Gods, devayana.19 Later, with the theory of rebirth or punar-janman, there is a lively traffic behind the three worlds. According to the more radical doctrine of the Upanishads, all three belong to this side of the shore, all three are still under the law of karman and subjected to cause and effect. The other way, the Upanishads say, because it leads "no-where," does not even need to be a way. This is, properly speaking, liberation.
According to the Vedas, moreover, the great departure is to "another world." This otherworld has its own structure, but it seems to be still conditioned by time and space, though in a peculiar way. The Upanishads are not satisfied with a spatiotemporal conception. The great departure is not to another parallel, superior, or inferior world, but a radical departure from the human condition itself. This idea forms the background of the doctrine about the atman, as we shall see in several chapters of this part and the next.
If the idea is valid, the very metaphor of departure will be contested, because, although we certainly depart from this human condition, we neither reach another realm nor are we annihilated. We throw off the spatiotemporal wrapping and jump, stripped of any contingency or creatureliness, to the other shore, though here the word "shore" is also inappropriate, for it suggests the existence of another realm. Brahma-nirvana has no shores.20 They are visible, as a mirage, only from the other (this) side.
Param rahasyam
It would be preposterous to claim that the Vedic Revelation has so clearly disclosed the mystery of the beyond that the only remaining requirement is to listen to it. It would also be out of place to pretend that the Vedas have given the answer for which mankind is constantly searching. No answer to any existential question can be given once and for all, nor can we find solutions by proxy to personal issues. We may immediately add that any intellectual answer to the problem of death is methodologically weak, for human reason would then leap outside the area in which it is competent.
What we can learn from the shruti is not an intellectual elucidation or a theoretical answer to the problem of death, but rather an attitude and a disposition. We may even realize new dimensions of the problem of death which may help to enlighten our own confrontation with the darkness of the beyond. Anything we say or think about death is bound to be unsatisfying. Death is precisely such because it is a state where "all words recoil," to quote a Upanishad speaking about the bliss of Brahman.21 We may in a way speak more properly about deathlessness than about death, because if we belong to the living we can more congruently deal with life than with what is not life.
The documents in this subsection do not talk much, in point of fact, about death. They speak about Yama, Naciketas, Immortality, this temporal world (samsara), and the two ways leading from this world. They bear witness to an attitude of hope, of joy, of faith; they depict a human situation which is neither overwhelmed nor excessively worried by death; they seem to describe an existential attitude that takes cognizance of the phenomenon of death but denies to it any character of ultimacy, either psychological or metaphysical. It is by integrating the fact of death into life, by reabsorbing, as it were, death into life, by not losing ground, or rather by finding a ground that is common to both death and life, that we can find the proper Vedic perspective.
The six chapters of this subsection, reinforced by scores of other texts, including many of those that follow in subsequent subsections, all present the same characteristic feature: they do not overstress the rupture and the discontinuity at the price of losing sight of the harmony and the continuity between life and death. Life and death are not on the same level, as it were. There is not a principle of life on the one hand and a principle of death on the other. Life and death are intertwined and death is almost inbuilt into life. Moreover, life, although this seems at first sight to be contradicted by the Upanishads, is this earthly human life, though seen in a deeper perspective than the merely empirical one. The Atharva Veda unambiguously declares: "this world is the most beloved."22
The next subsection offers striking examples of this attitude. Even the Upanishads, at a second reading--and they have certainly been read many times--do not place the "otherworld" outside this life. They stress so much the radical difference between real life, that is, the liberated life, on the one hand, and the unauthentic existence of the life of the senses or of the body on the other, that the former can be almost perfectly immanent in the latter. The atman is so different from and so superior to the body that it does not rest on or depend upon the body, as later periods forcefully affirm with expressions like "the world is the great illusion," "Brahman is the ultimate subject of avidya," "samsara is Brahman," "nirvana is samsara," "samsara is nirvana," and the like.
Be that as it may, we could almost say without being too paradoxical that a feature of the Vedic experience is that it treats the problem of death as a noneschatological question. Death does not belong to the eschata, to the last things, but is an accident in the life of the individual and an incident in the life of society. The beyond is the unfathomable ocean which makes the beaches on this side worth walking on and playing on. The texts, however, tell us more than further comment could.
Yama-Yami
1 Among the many figures of the Vedas only a few have successfully passed through the fine metaphysical strainer of the Upanishads and the even finer sieve of time. Most of them have become lumber of the past or have been transformed into other deities or notions which conserve a certain continuity in the memory of the specialists but very little in the minds of ordinary people or in the events of everyday life. Among those few survivors we have the fascinating and intriguing figure of Yama. We shall try to expound this fundamental myth shorn of its many later additions and contradictions.23 We may perhaps in this way find an explanation of the fact that Yama has for so long remained in the realm of the mythical and has not been downgraded to the mythological. We do not give a complete interpretation of the figure of Yama down the ages. In point of fact we have in Yama a commingling of many motifs. We have a whole gamut of factors concurring in Yama, from fertility rites to Egyptian and Iranian myths, so that it would be a mistake to reduce them to an artificial unity. Instead, we select some of the most salient features of Yama and submit what we think constitutes the core of the Yama myth: Yama, the primordial historical Man, reached immortality and thus a divine state by overcoming the double temptation that springs from selfishness and from the fear of death. He overcame this temptation by his fidelity to rita, truth, and through his loyalty to the Gods.
Although Yama's name is found some fifty times in the Rig Veda, only three hymns are dedicated to him. The main reason that he has survived most of the other deities may be precisely that he is not, properly speaking, a God, but a Man; he is not just an animal called Man, but a full Man, that is, a divinized or immortal Man, actually the first Man to cross to the realm of the beyond.24 Although later periods like to portray him as a judge, with Citragupta as his scribe, and stress the role of his two dogs as his messengers, he is not in Vedic times a figure who punishes, but a hero who runs before us and shares with us both the human condition and the divine calling.25 He is the first Man to become immortal, the first one to attain his destiny. He is the Forerunner, as we shall see,26 or, as the Atharva Veda puts it in a paraphrase of the same Rig-Vedic hymn:
Yama was the first to die among the mortals,
the first to go forth to that world before us.27
Yama stands for the personified link between the two worlds. He does not come from the otherworld to ours but, on the contrary, he goes from our world to the other realm. Yama is the bridge to immortality, constructed from our side. But, unlike other bridges, Yama is a person; the bridge is personified.
Furthermore, Yama touches one of the deepest human realities: the fact of death. Yama is the king of the dead28 and death is his path.29 In point of fact he is a king of the human realm that is the kingdom of the dead.30 He is really the "gatherer of people.''31 All Men at one moment or another are gathered by him. He gives them a resting place.32 He is more the hero of the dead than the God of death. People pray to him in order to be released from their bondage.33 We shall have occasion to meet Yama yet again in connection with death.34
The story in our particular hymn is clear and well known. Yami, the twin sister of Yama, not only loves him but is convinced that the law of nature, which she certainly represents, demands that man and woman procreate and love each other. Moreover, as twins, Yama and Yami have already been lying together in their mother's womb. But their first responsibility is toward future generations: if they do not overcome the taboo of incest, mankind will perish forever and the race of Men will be extinguished. All the arguments are in favor of Yami.
Yama, however, does not yield. He retorts that evil times will certainly come later, in which unlawful actions will be done, but that he is not prepared to do such a deed. Earth, Heaven, Mitra, Varuna, and all the Gods will disapprove of it. He is unmoved by dialectical arguments and unconcerned with pragmatic reasoning, for he, the primordial man, is truthful to his vocation. We have, however, already suggested the main reason for Yama's refusal: his loyalty to rita, his rejection of anrta:
Shall I utter truth aloud and murmur untruth secretly? Shall I be a hypocrite and only keep up appearances? Shall I act according to somebody else's caprice, or even follow my own likings, disregarding the true cosmic order of things? Shall I, in short, not be truthful?35
Fidelity to truthfulness seems to be the pivot of the whole story. Although they are supposed to be alone, Yama with an extremely refined psychological device simply directs the imagination of Yami to embrace another. There is an indication here that the gratifying of the sexual urge does not stand in the foreground.
The act of incest is not committed and yet mankind subsists. Men are mortal and yet they became immortal. Here lies the power of this myth. We may indicate some of the leading threads.
Yama is a brother to the Gods. His father Vivasvat36 is certainly a solar deity, perhaps the sun itself. Saranyu, his mother, is none other than the daughter of the God Tvashtr. But Yama is also a brother to Men. Though he is offered the Soma and is thus accorded a privilege of the Gods, he is never explicitly called a God.37 He is a real Man and the whole story of his temptation proves that he has had to work out his own salvation. By nature, that is, by birth, Yama is twin to Gods and Men. But by grace, that is, by conquest, merit, deeds, and by his fidelity to his life, he has overcome death, has become immortal, and divinized, he has become the father of all Men once they are on the other side of time and space. He is the King of the dead.
Later legends tell of the death of Yama and of the inconsolable grief and sorrow of his sister Yami, which gives rise to the beautifully human explanation of the cosmic rhythm of day and night. It banishes the grief of a devoted sister. The Gods, seeing the sadness of Yami who was unable to forget the death of Yama, created the night:
Yama had died. The Gods tried to persuade Yami to forget him. Whenever they implored her to do so, she said: "But it is only today that he died." Then the Gods said: "Like this she will certainly never forget him; we will create night." So the Gods created night and thus there arose a morrow; thereupon she forgot him. Therefore people say: "Without doubt day and night together let sorrow be forgotten."38
Often the myth of Yama and Yami is called difficult and strange; it is regarded as a mere ballad, a nice but incongruous narrative, and so on. If we do not look for what is not to be found there we may perhaps understand its message. The silence of the myth also has to be incorporated into the interpretation and the silence about the incest is total. The fact that mankind was not extinguished and that offspring came out of the first pair does not justify speaking of a hidden or later incest as if only a Fall could be at the origin of the human race. It would perhaps be more accurate to speak of a Miracle, of a double one indeed, that of generation and that of immortality. Both things go together. Procreation is immortality. Yama's loyalty has effected both, and thus he became both the first immortal Man and the father of Men.39 It is interesting to note the similarity between Yama and Manu, who is also said to be our father40 and the first sacrificer, the first to present offerings to the Gods.41
The hymn about Yama is more than a recital of a moral or edifying story about our Forefathers. It is important to understand the overcoming of the temptation by which Yama conquered death and reached immortality, as clearly expressed in the third stanza of the hymn:
It is this that the immortals wish from you:
an offspring from the unique mortal.
If Yama does not yield, death will reign over the whole earth and he himself will die without offspring, most miserable destiny.42 He could hardly suffer a stronger temptation, and we can understand here incidentally that if the ethical sphere were autonomous and unrelated to the cosmic one, there is no reason on earth (and Indian culture, too, knows casuistry) why the merely moral taboo should in this instance not be broken and overcome. Yet Yama does not yield because he does not understand the problem in terms of individual casuistry or of the merely ethical grounds of autonomous morals. It is the victory over death which brings him immortality and we can understand why. He has really passed beyond death, has despised it, has not yielded, has not been frightened of dying, of remaining without offspring, and thus of leaving the whole world unpeopled. The temptation is not in Yami, the dear sister, but in what she says, in her reasons.
The myth tells us that Yama has conquered immortality. It does not need to tell us that he has conquered life also, for human life goes on here in this world, without the perpetration of the incest. At the origin of the human race there is a miracle, a miracle both of life and of immortality.
On the basis of the vast Vedic tradition we may suggest another reason that the act of incest was not perpetrated. The true incest that perpetuates the human race is not merely a human act of procreation between brother and sister, but the theandric action of the divine Father of creatures uniting himself with his daughter; this stresses the fact that man is not only an animal but also a divine offspring.43 The origin of mankind cannot be traced to an act of human weakness but to a divine one, if weakness it really is.44 It is God who has pity on his creation and unites himself with his own offspring.45 If Yama had wanted to, he could have usurped the place of God, but he could not commit such a cosmic crime.
Yama is not simply a Vedic deity; he is neither a God nor just a mortal man. He is man, the Man, but he is not the cosmic purusha or the metaphysical atman. He is the concrete historical and transhistorical Man; he is mortal and yet he has an immortal life before him which he has to win by conquest, by overcoming the temptation to break the order of the universe for the sake of his own concupiscence or for the sake of complying with others or of following the arguments of his own mind. Yama overcomes all attempts to make him the supreme criterion of truth and righteousness. Let the world remain empty of mortals46--yet he will not yield.
If we overlook later legendary accretions which made of Yama a terrible God of death and hell, we may conclude that the core of the myth is as follows. Yama is the symbol of Man, of an achieved and fulfilled Man, who has thus already transcended his earthly condition yet preserves his full identity as Man. He is the "master of the house," yet he fails to keep the rules of hospitality, so that he has to apologize by dispensing his favors.47 He has a fully human identity and yet is no longer subject to the limitation of this spatiotemporal world. He is the risen Man. The origin of the human race and the historical existence of mankind go back to the fidelity of the Primal Man to truth. No wonder the children of Man have a divine destiny.
RV X, 10
Devaih sampibate
2 This intriguing hymn contains three parts which present three aspects of the mystery of death. The first and the last verses constitute a frame, describing the realm of Yama, who was the first among mortals to reach the otherworld and who is Death personified. There is nothing fearful about the "seat of death;" rather, it inspires a lofty idea of a paradise where the dead join Yama and the Gods in a heavenly feast, drinking Soma and hearing the flute and songs of praise.
The second part of the drama of death (vv. 1-2) is more down to earth and shows the grief of a son for his departed father. It seems to be only the son, representing the surviving family, who grieves; the father, on the contrary, desires to join his predecessors, those who have gone before him to the heavenly world. The beauty and the simplicity of the heavenly and human sides of death are strikingly clear. The third part (vv. 3-6) adds an enigmatic story which leaves us in perplexity.
Verses 3-6 have been variously interpreted. Some have understood that a boy--the son (or a person whose name is Kumara)--dies and is addressed either by his father or by death himself. It seems as if, seeing the death of his father, the boy does not want to go on living, and so he mounts the symbolical chariot for the journey to Yama's realm. The chariot, like the boat (v. 4), is the Vedic symbol for the sacrifice by which the dead person ascends to the heavenly realm. The dead man leaves behind the priests who proceed to celebrate the funeral rites, and thus the Saman chant still follows him on his journey. Verse 5 puts a series of questions about the boy's origin, about the way ("chariot") by which the boy reached Yama's kingdom, and, third, about the obscure anudeyi, "that which is given after." It probably means the funeral gifts, or it may perhaps refer to the bride, asking why the youth died before being married. Other interpreters have understood the ascent of the boy to the seat of Yama not as real but as an imaginative or ecstatic movement. A hint of this meaning can be found in the expression that the chariot is "made by the mind" of the boy (manasakrnoh) because he only mentally follows his departed father. The questions in verse 5 would then cast doubt on the reality of the boy's "journey."
Indian tradition48 has seen in these difficult stanzas a first version and a foreshadowing of the well-known story of Naciketas.49 Whichever interpretation we may make our own, in each of the three instances--whether the youth dies, whether he ascends to Yama in imagination or in reality--we can see in verse 5 the exclamations and questions that arise when Man is faced with the overwhelming fact of death. They are concerned with the origin of the youth (even in a cosmogonic sense), the "whence," with his departure from this world (the "wheelless chariot") and with that third obscure "thing" given to him either as the "nourishment," the "equipment," or the "funeral gift" of the dead. It is this last "gift" that becomes the measure, we may say, of life. Verse 6 adds to the obscurity and leaves room for almost any temporal, spatial, existential, or ritual interpretation. If we read an existential meaning into it, we might venture to say: according to the measure "given" to a man (anudeyi)-- later periods would say according to his karman --such is his origin (agra). First the ground (or depth) of life is extended, spreads forth, and then, when his span is over, a passage or exit is made and Man leaves the place of his earthly existence. The idam with which the next stanza (7) opens, referring to the seat of Yama, may confirm this interpretation: at this exit from life we reach the abode of the Gods, the heavenly realm, and we hear the sound of Yama's flute whose music no mortal can resist.
RV X, 135
Antaram mrtyor amrtam
3 We know by now how startling the Brahmanas are. The two texts that follow undoubtedly have an immediate cultic context. The first has to do with the ritual of the fire altar; the second reflects the existence of an ordeal. But both texts point beyond their immediate background, for, according to the Brahmanas themselves, everything has a specular character and thus reflects something of the yonder and more real world.
In this sense we can interpret the first passage as disclosing that death and nondeath are not so opposite to and separate from each other as we might be tempted to assume. Two paradoxical statements put it in a striking way: death does not die and thus within Death itself there is immortality. Here is something more than what we learn from the Upanishads, that "life does not die.''50 We are not satisfied with discovering a jiva, a soul resistant to the bite of death; we hear that death itself belongs to immortality, that death is not the "end" of life, not something on the frontier of and, eventually, frightening to life, but a constitutive element of life itself.
Death is not at the limit ot life, but in the middle of it. One has to be born thrice, in fact, in order to be immortal.51
The very universality of death makes Man give it a superhuman character, and thus it acquires a quasi-divine status. What does it mean to say that the Gods have the privilege of immortality? It means not merely that after death comes immortality, as the text has sometimes been understood to say, but that it is only through death that immortality is reached, and thus that death itself already contains the seed of immortality. Another passage in the same Brahmana illustrates the same point. The setting, obviously sacrificial, deals with the immortality which some sacrifices may afford. We are in the period in which the Gods were still working out their destiny; they performed the proper sacrifice and thus became immortal:
For the human race, therefore, immortality is reached only through death; death becomes the gate to immortality.
In the same vein we may add that only mortal things are immortal. Immortality is not sheer deathlessness, the mere continuation of a given earthly and temporal condition; it is rather the overcoming of death, the passing through it and reaching the other shore, a shore that can exist only because the river of death lies between it and life. A stone, even in an unscientific cosmology, is not immortal. We have here a profound and extraordinary intuition, which yielded fruit in many schools of thought and spirituality. Death is the very token of its contrary, immortality. Here death is not the sequel of evil or of sin but the very condition of authentic life. Death is thus not even bad; it is the door to the realm where Man can fully be what he ultimately is. "Death is suffused in light," says our text; death clothes itself in brightness.
The second Brahmana connects the two worlds in a forceful way and gives us the hope of being eternally victorious in the yonder world if we succeed in being triumphant in this one. The pair of scales is the symbol of justice in this world and in the other--a metaphor that is almost universal. Another interesting feature is the inverse relation between the two worlds. It is the right weighing here which will spare an unfavorable judgment there. Whatever is done on earth has repercussions in heaven.53
SB X, 5, 2, 3-4
SB XI, 2, 7, 33
Pitryana-devayana
4 The Rig Veda speaks of a way leading to the Gods. The same way, moreover, is used by the Gods themselves when they come down to the sacrifice,54 so that it carries a two-way traffic, Men ascending and Gods descending.55 In one place Death is requested to move on a road far distant from the one that leads to the Gods, so as not to disturb those who tread there.56 The Upanishads systematize the whole subject of the different paths on which the departed proceed to the otherworld. From the dialogue between Shvetaketu and Pravahana it appears that this field of enquiry is new,57 as new as the belief in transmigration. The questions are posed: Who is to proceed on which path after death? Who is to return to earth? The Upanishads leave no doubt that "the one who knows," the one who has realized the truth and leads the austere life of a vanaprastha, a forest dweller, will proceed on the way of the Gods.58 Here the sacrificial, cosmological, and jnanic or gnostic ways are combined in an organic whole without break or contradiction. In this instance, the dead passes into the flame of the funeral pyre; he goes along the auspicious temporal path, which is the bright half month (shuklapaksha) and the northern way of the sun (uttarayana), passes into the sun, and is finally led to the brahma-loka from which there is no return. Those who have not yet attained so high a state, who are still on the level of performing rituals and good works (probably the householders [grhastha]), go along the inauspicious temporal path, during the dark half month (krishnapaksha) and the southern way of the sun (dakshinayana), whence they proceed to the moon. In the moon these spirits become food for the Gods and must once more pass through the cosmological elements and return to earth in order to be reborn.
The second text (ii) shows in a striking manner how even those who go along the way of the Fathers (pitryana)59 and are reborn can be released if they know who they are. What is important with regard to both these ways is to know them and to know what is to be done in order to attain them. He who really knows will not return again.
We may discover from these and similar texts a twofold insight: universal cosmic solidarity and the hierarchical world-building power of knowledge. We may give some idea of the first insight by saying that death is considered from two angles. It is the end of a temporal and spatial earthly road and also the gateway to the temporal and spatial road outside this earth. In fact, the whole universe forms a unity, for we live our lives together with our ancestors and between us we populate the entire universe. The world of Men is coextensive with both the physical and the spiritual universe. There are no empty stars and no time devoid of temporal beings.
Everybody, according to our second text, which is known as paryankavidya ("science of the couch"),60 goes to the moon and there his destiny is decided according to the wish he expresses; a wish that depends upon his knowledge or nonknowledge of who he is. "Who are you?" is the crucial question of each man's cross-examination. Here the vital insight is that Man collaborates in the building of the universe. Everybody is invited to contribute to the (re)construction of the world. You may like to share your lot once again with Men or to fly to the heavenly world of the Gods, where other tasks will await you, but you can do so only if you put your whole self behind your affirmation of what you are and what you want to be. This is the meaning of the cryptic identification formulas that keep cropping up in these texts.
BU VI, 2, 1-8; 13-16
KAUS U I, 2-6
Samparaya
5 The Upanishads take us straight to the heart of the metaphysical problem connected with death. By means of lively dialogue the Katha Upanishad brings us step by step to the disclosure of the mystery of death. The dialogue is between Yama and a young Brahmin, Naciketas by name. The parable of Naciketas belongs to an already highly developed stage in human consciousness. It combines the symbolism of Yama with elements of the earlier story of the Taittiriya Brahmana, thus weaving together in one artistic fabric the different threads of the Vedic tradition. The Katha Upanishad presents to us one facet of the human experience of the universal phenomenon of death.
Yama is depicted both with human features (he was not at home when Naciketas went to him, he feels sorry, and apologizes) and with divine knowledge (he imparts the highest wisdom to the young man). Naciketas represents Man at his noblest, longing for enlightenment and realization, haunted by the problem of death and capable of overcoming the allurements and temptations to which Yama subjects him when attempting to avoid compliance with his request. He is not satisfied with individual comforts or concerned with individual problems. To discover the real meaning of death is the one thing that will satisfy him and he chooses the boon that will allow him to penetrate the mystery. The theme of temptation, which later on assumes considerable importance, is here only discreetly mentioned.
It is instructive to notice the divergencies between the story of the Brahmana and that of the Upanishad. Whereas the former is steeped in ritual and, by playing on words, elaborates the doctrine of the Naciketas fire through which one becomes imperishable, the latter, though acknowledging the value of rituals and repeating the first two boons, converts the third one into a spiritual realization which involves saving knowledge as well as ritual practices.
In the Taittiriya Brahmana61 the third gift aims at the conquest of "death again" or "repeated death" (punar-mrtyu).62 The Upanishad, on the other hand, insists upon the necessity of knowing the mystery of the great departure and the teaching is imparted accordingly.
Out of desire for reward, Vajashrava gave away all his wealth in order to perform a sacrifice. His son Naciketas, either because according to the customary ritual he himself is to be given away as part of the sacrifice or because "faith enters into him" offers himself also as oblation (dakshina) for the sacrifice and asks his father three times over to whom he has to go. "Go to hell!" is the impatient rejoinder of the father and there the boy goes, to the kingdom of death. Because of the absence for three days of King Yama, however, Naciketas does not receive the customary attention demanded by hospitality. To atone for the lapse Yama offers three favors or boons to Naciketas. The boy proceeds to ask, first, that the wrath of his father may be appeased and, next, that Yama may give him instruction concerning the fire of sacrifice which gains entry to heaven for a man. These two favors are granted.63 As his third favor the young man begs to be enlightened on the crucial question: "Does Man--the life principle in a Man--continue to exist or not after death?" Or, more tersely and more vividly: "Is he or is he not?"64
KATH U I, 20-21
Yama tries to dissuade him by offering him more tempting and solid favors, which Naciketas rejects. Yama finds the young man ripe for instruction and indeed better prepared than himself, for Naciketas is ready to give up all material and spiritual wealth in order to know the ultimate mystery.65 There is a fundamental difference between the second favor, which is to know svarga-loka, the "world of heaven,"66 and the way leading to ananta-loka, the infinite world,67 and the third one, which is concrete existential knowledge of existence or nonexistence.
KATH U I, 29
Then Yama, judging him to be worthy of receiving Brahma knowledge, discloses to him the profound secret of atman-brahman.
KATH U II, 12-14
The question about the Great Beyond is taken in an absolute way by Naciketas. It is not mere curiosity about afterdeath but an all-encompassing query about total transcendence.
Yama's answer consists of an explanation of OM.68 He then goes on to say that this mystery is beyond any observable appearance and is apparent only by its own grace.
KATH U II, 18
KATH U II, 20
Then follows a description of the atman and the dispositions of the heart necessary for its realization. Next comes the famous metaphor of the chariot in which the atman is the lord, the chariot is the body, the driver is the intellect (buddhi ), the reins are the mind (manas ), and the horses are the senses (indriyani). Through yoga, affirms Yama, one begins to overcome death, and he proceeds to extol in a great crescendo the realization of the atman as a means of overcoming death.
KATH U III, 10-11
Yama now declares to Naciketas that he must set out on the difficult path of liberation from death.
KATH U III, 14-15
Two stanzas bring to a close the story of Naciketas, but this question (I, 20) still haunts Man, and the Upanishad, in what is probably a later addition, continues its reflection. Chapter IV attempts to define the identity, the complete oneness, of atman and Brahman by the expression "this is that," declaring that those who do not understand this essential unity pass from death to death, that is to say, from rebirth to rebirth, never transcending the world of space and time. The whole chapter is an injunction to turn inward and to discover the inner vision that will lead to immortality.69 Chapter V reverts to the theme of the identity of atman-brahman and, stressing the immanence-transcendence of the atman, declares the supreme joy that results from the knowledge of this truth. It is this atman, the antaratman or inner soul, which frees a man from death. We still hear echoes of the teaching of Yama to Naciketas:
KATH U V, 6-7
KATH U V, 14-15
The Upanishad concludes, in Chapter VI, with a vision of the world as an everlasting tree with its life, or roots, firmly fixed above, in Brahman, the immortal, and with its branches directed downward. The powerful breath of Brahman fills the universe with so much energy that fear seizes all things. Because of this fear the fire burns and the sun gives heat; because of this fear, also, Indra, Vayu (the wind), and Death speed on their ways. He who is freed from all desires becomes immortal. It is this immortality that is bestowed upon Naciketas when he is purified and becomes one with Brahman.
KATH U VI, 1-3
KATH U VI, 14-18
If Yama is the risen Man, the Man who has transcended his earthly condition, Naciketas is the Man on pilgrimage, the homo viator, the symbol of mankind's itinerant condition. He is the perpetual seeker, the Man of faith, driven by his desire to know, which leads him to ignore all other pursuits. He is a young man, a student, on the way.71 He breaks with his father and even enrages him. He is the generous youngster, according to another interpretation, who reminds his father that he has not yet given up everything, as his son still remains to be offered as an oblation. Yama discovers that he will not be content with rituals and, perplexed by this obduracy, tries to convince the young man that he should be amply satisfied that the sacrificial fire will henceforth be called by his name. Rebuffed, he next tries to allure Naciketas with all sorts of earthly temptations.
After so graphic a buildup one would expect some spectacular disclosure regarding the meaning of death. We have here, certainly, one of the deepest revelations concerning the mystery of the beyond, but its hallmark of authenticity lies in its simplicity and universality. There is nothing spectacular here. The realm of the beyond is neither beyond nor far away; it is neither inaccessible to the majority nor reserved for the superhuman. Naciketas is the common Man who finds residing within his own self that for which he is searching. He is equipped simply with the desire to know, with a thirst for knowledge. Yet his thirst is not only intellectual; it is not an epistemological curiosity that drives him, but a gnostic-existential thrust, if we are allowed to phrase it this way: it is the desire to know salvation, to decipher not objective problems but the mystery of human existence, to master the riddle that consists of himself. Naciketas is Man desiring to know whether he is or is not, because in this knowledge is contained all his being. It was later called mumukshutva or existential desire for liberation.72 Some may see in Naciketas a sage, others a philosopher. He is in any event the searcher aspiring to reach fullness of life by discovering the mystery of being itself. Here the problem of death is bound up with the question of being or not being, and Naciketas is the symbol of Man intent on this supreme quest.
The answer is immortalized in the simple words, "this is that," that is, that which you see and smell and think and will, that which comes within the range of your human experience, this is that, this is what you are looking for, this is that which transcends everything, that which is really beyond, that which is imperishable and absolute--except that you must really know the this and the that. You must know, furthermore, that the this is that and yet not confuse them, for the that certainly does not appear except in the form of this but if you mistake the this for the that, then you are deluded. Naciketas, know the this and know the that, know that this is that and yet do not mix or confuse them, do not blur the this and the that, precisely because this is that.
The Upanishad ends with the same invocation with which it started and which occurs also in other texts. Although it does not belong to the Upanishad proper, it acquires here a profound meaning:
Mrtyu-samsara
6 The word samsara was first coined in Upanishadic times. It is un-known in the Vedas but occurs in the Gita. Later it was widely used in literature and in everyday language.75 It means literally a going or wandering through, a course or passage through a succession of states or stages.76 Then it came to be used directly to mean the passing through a succession of existences, that is, of births and deaths, or, in a word, the cycle of life." The meaning of the word was then extended so that it came to denote the totality of transitory things, that is, this fleeting world.
The Bhagavad Gita uses samsara to denote rather the cycle of death, for it is through and by death as the gate that living beings pass through and wander from one stage to another.78 Death, therefore, is not seen as an end, but rather as a gate. One could almost call it a sluice through which the different elements of this world go as they move from one stage to another in the cosmic evolution of all empirical "reality."
Samsara is not the cosmos but the world in its dynamic and evolutionary aspect; it is the world's movement, implying both change and continuity; it is the cyclical process of all the elements of this world. In terms of the present-day cosmological world view we could say that samsara stands for cosmic transformation, and thus transmission, in all its manifestations, including that of matter. Samsara is the universal circulation of the entire world traffic.
Together with the idea of karman, the notion of samsara suggests the contingency and the caducity of all things, their mutual interrelatedness, and the dynamic nature of all the elements of the empirical world. It also points to the fact that there is a transempirical reality which Man is called upon to enter once he breaks through the cycle of samsara, once he realizes (this word implies more than a merely epistemic act) the true nature of reality, that is, once he discovers his true and real atman.
Therefore it is not difficult to understand the other affirmation in the mouth of the Lord Krishna, that he, Krishna, is not only deathlessness but also death, for he is both appearance and reality. The appearance could not be such if it were not the appearance of the real, and in this world of samsara the real can be manifested only as appearance. Wisdom does not consist in denying the appearances but in recognizing them as such. This can be done, the Gita says (and here it represents a new emphasis), only if our mind and heart are totally and sincerely surrendered to the Lord.
The immediate implication is that death also belongs to samsara, that is, that death appertains to this side of the shore, that it is the very expression of contingency. If so, a change will be noticeable: death is no longer the gate through which Man reaches immortality. Death is only the condition for change within the world itself. Immortality does not depend on death: immortality is primordial, original, and not the result of a process of death and new life. All that rises again to life was certainly not immortal. Resurrection was only a figure of speech. You are risen!
Slowly the two conceptions sharpen their positions. On the one hand is the primeval Vedic notion of death as the gate to immortality, which makes possible the idea of a real resurrection to a new life. On the other hand, there is the later notion of death as an internal, this-worldly, samsaric process having nothing to do with true immortality. According to this view Man is constitutively immortal and so he does not need to die in order to live forever. The atman "is" because it already "was" Brahman. Is there any middle way between these two views? This question is the concern of Part VI. Meanwhile, we shall meditate on the mortal condition.
BG II, 27
BG VIII, 5-6; 10
BG IX, 19
BG X, 34
BG XII, 7
BG XIV, 20
Mrtyusamjivani
The Vedic attitude to dead steers a course between two extremes: on the one hand it avoids a tragic and almost obsessive
attitude, while on the other it does not trivialize or ignore the place of death in human life. The group of texts presented here give ample evidence of this middle way.
Again there is a certain free association of ideas in the different themes dealt with in this subsection. Life is a great value; indeed, if properly understood, it is the highest value. It seems to be the task of death to help us realize the value of life, to enhance it, and to give earthly existence all the value it deserves. Man should not leave this earth too early, before his time. Indeed, if by accident he has already had to abandon his earthly mansion, one should even try to let him come back. The blessings for the journey are not last-minute consolations. They are blessings that are offered in order to call us back or to delay the time of departure. They are final blessings in the sense that they are directed to what is going on at the moment of dying. Let the dead depart in peace, in the hope that life has been a good thing and that it is still the highest blessing.
The first part of one of the oldest Upanishads ends with a cryptic sentence referring to the structure of reality as being threefold: name, form, and act (karman). It says that "immortality is veiled by reality,"79 meaning that truth or the real is what veils immortality. It does not say that the world of names and forms is unreal and that only the underlying atman is real. It explicitly affirms that immortality is covered by reality, that the real is the veil of deathlessness, or in other words that truth is the outer shell of an everlasting core.
The core is not covered by an illusory veil, by an unreal fiction, but by truth itself. Truth is the very cover that conceals and at the same time reveals the immortal core hidden in all things. But what is that core without its real manifestation? Man cannot consider death as something irrelevant, as the sloughing off of a skin. The attainment of deathlessness is achieved at the price of leaving reality behind. This feeling is encountered in many texts of this subsection.
Yama
7 This is the first of the traditional funeral hymns of the Rig Veda. Like many other texts dealing with the subject of death it has certain striking features: there is no sign of grief; the whole hymn is markedly sober in tone; and it is pervaded by a spirit of subdued joy: "O King, rejoice in this oblation."80 Neither bereavement nor regret is visible here. On the contrary, the dead Man is going to be gloriously united with Yama and the Fathers. Death is seen here from the viewpoint of the dead man himself and not from that of those he leaves behind him. The center of life lies not in the temporal span of our earthly years but in the other world. The dead Man is going to the resting place prepared for him by Yama the forerunner of men, who has gone before us to prepare a place for us and to show us the way, who was not originally a God but a Man, who has endured, as we have, the entire burden of the human condition and who has overcome the ordeal of the great departure.
We may now concentrate our attention on an interesting point, which proves once more that the importance of a text does not lie in what it says but mainly in what one reads out of it and in the overall interpretation that each epoch has given to it. The truth lies in the interpretation. We refer to stanza 8 where the deceased is addressed as follows:
A similar idea is found in another funerary hymn:
Life in the otherworld is not discarnate; it is life with a new body, a body of glory. This idea is considered almost obvious, not only by later tradition but also by the Atharva Veda, when speaking about life beyond. Here is another example of the holistic view of the Vedic Revelation.
The title suggests the exemplary role of Yama, a role that might almost be called teleological. He goes before, he calls, he attracts. Thus he will have the right of knowing who is coming to his house, that is, of judging them. Yama establishes true fellowship between Men and Gods; in his home or realm, Men and Gods feast together and the cosmic dichotomy is overcome. But Men without their bodies would not be Men. And it is with their bodies that they share Soma with the Gods. Yama is certainly the forerunner. He is the one who has found the trail leading to immortality, the path to the Gods, the way to total humanness. If religion is considered to be the way to salvation, we can call Yama a religious founder par excellence, a truly religious man who follows to the very end the way that he himself has discovered.
RV X, 14
Tat ta a vartayamasi
8 The hymns that follow illustrate an interesting and original feature of the Vedic experience of death, namely, the refusal to consider it to be a final or irreversible fact. No wonder, then, that Vedic Man tries to rescue his fellowmen from the clutches of death or even to recover them once they have actually died.
These two hymns belong to the same group of the Gaupayana hymns. In a continuous narrative they describe the efforts made to bring back the priest Subandhu from death. He had been deprived of life by the incantations of two other priests. His three brothers, who are also priests, pray a blessing82 followed by a ritual injunction in order to get his life back (i). They also entreat several Gods, especially the Goddess Nirrti, to preserve the life of their brother (ii). The last hymn of the group is a thanksgiving offered to king Asamati83 in spite of the fact that it was he who had appointed the two other priests in place of the four brothers.84
Hymn X, 58, enumerates all the possible places where a dead man may have gone. Yet the return to earth is considered the greatest blessing. One can hardly conceive of an attitude that is more secular, and yet at the same time it is sacred. We may recall what we said on the subject of premature death and on the extinguishing of one's life as being its own fulfillment. Here Subandhu was violently snatched from the realm of the living and he is conjured back to it.85 Interestingly enough, the last verse, without any special sense of paradox, says that among the many places to which he might have gone are the past and the future. From past and future time he may also come back to the real present.
Hymn X, 59, is an impassioned appeal for the dead man's return, for the prolongation of his human life so that he may still be allowed to share in its blessings. Life triumphs over death. There is one particular theme we must not allow to pass unnoticed, though we have already mentioned it in the context of the sacrifice;86 that is the theme of rejuvenation. In this hymn the desire is expressed that the risen Subandhu may have a renewed life, and the name of Cyavana is cited as an example of such renewal.87
Since the story is already familiar, we shall simply point out some of the details in the actual process of rejuvenation. Cyavana was made young again by the act of peeling off his skin like a garment. As a result he not only became acceptable to his young wife but was also made "husband of maidens."88 He was made young again,89 given another form,90 freed from old age,91 and renewed like a chariot so that he could run again.92 We do not discuss here the later additions to the story.93 It is important to note that there is no question of Cyavana remaining eternally young; he regains his lost youth by means of an appropriate bodily change. Nor does he become immortal; he is given back his youth after having lived a long and healthy life. Last, there is also no question of his being born again in a young body.
RV X, 58
RV X, 59
[Yami:]
1. May I entice my friend toward friendship,
far though he has gone beyond the oceans!
The sage shall produce a grandchild for his fathers,
considering what will happen here on earth.
[Yama:]
2. Your friend repudiates such a friendship
as will make of his sister a woman unrelated.
The heroes, sons of the mighty Asura,
sustainers of the heaven, view all from afar.
[Yami:]
3. Do not the immortals require of you that
from the sole existing mortal issue an offspring?
Let your heart and mine be fused together.
Enter now as husband the body of your wife!
[Yama:]
4. Shall we do now what has hitherto been spurned?
Shall we who speak truth now countenance wrong?
The Merman and the Nymph within the waters--
these are our origin, our intimate kinship.
[Yami:]
5. Even in the womb God, the Ordainer
and Vivifier, the molder of forms, made us consorts.
No one transgresses his Holy Laws;
to this both Heaven and Earth bear witness.
[Yama:]
6. Who knows about the first day? Who has seen it?
Who can of that day produce firm proof?
Great is the decree of Mitra and Varuna,
What, temptress, will you say to men to seduce them?
[Yami:]
7. Desire for Yama overwhelms me, Yami,
to lie with him on a common bed.
As a woman to her husband I would yield my body.
Like chariot wheels let us move to and fro!
[Yama:]
8. They do not rest or close their eyes,
these watchmen of the Gods who pace around us.
Go, temptress, with another, not with me!
With him move like chariot wheels to and fro!
[Yami:]
9. By day and by night would Yami cherish you.
For a moment the eye of the Sun would vanish!
Twins unite in a bond like that of Earth and Heaven.
The blame for the incest of Yama will be Yami's.
[Yama:]
10. It may well be that in later generations
brother and sister will act against the law.
Look for another than myself, O fair one,
and offer your arm to another lover.
[Yami:]
11. What brother is he who protects not his sister?
Does she count as a sister when destruction is at hand?
Swept along by love, I whisper again:
unite your body with this body of mine!
[Yama:]
12. Never will I unite my body with yours.
Sin it is called to approach one's sister.
Not with me--with another find your delight!
Your brother, O fair one, does not desire it.
[Yami:]
13. O miserable coward! In you, O Yama,
I do not find either soul or heart.
Very well; let another entwine herself around you
as a girdle, as a creeper encircles a tree!
[Yama:]
14. Entwine yourself also, O Yami, around another.
Let another embrace you as the creeper a tree!
Seek to win his heart and let him win yours
and form with him a blessed union!
2. Sister: salakshma she who has the same features, is of the same parentage.
Sons of the mighty Asura: the Angirases who perform the role of moral overseers in the same way as the divine watchmen in stanza 8.
3. The sole existing mortal: a frequent designation of Yama.
Heart: manas.
4. Truth: rita.
Wrong: anrta, unrighteousness. Cf. RV III, 4, 7, which may shed some light on more than one aspect: truth-untruth, the connection with Sacrifice, with Manu, etc.
Merman: Gandharva.
Nymph: Apsaras, here understood to be the parents of Yama and Yami.
Origin: nabhi, lit. navel.
Kinship: jami, blood relation, sister.
5. Ordainer: Tvashtr.
Vivifier: Savitri.
Holy Laws: vratani.
6. Temptress: ahanas, lascivious woman.
7. Bed: yoni, lit. womb.
8. Watchmen of the Gods: davanam spashah.
Temptress: ahanas.
9. Bond like that of Earth and Heaven: cf. stanza 5; a reference to the myth of Heaven and Earth who are called sisters in RV I, 159, 4, and yet are the parents of the universe.
Incest: ajami, "what is not proper for brother and sister," lawless act. Without the sun here is night and then the God would not see.
10. Act against the law: ajami.
Lover: lit. bull.
1l. Destruction: nirrti.
14. Blessed union: samvidam subhadram.
Drinking Soma With the Gods
[The Son]
1. Near the fair-leafed tree where Yama drinks
in the company of the Gods,
our father, master of our house, is seeking
the fellowship of the ancients.
2. I gazed with reluctance upon him as he
trod the evil path,
seeking the fellowship of the ancients; and I longed
to see him again.
[The Father]
3. Without seeing it you mounted, young man, the new chariot
constructed by your mind;
wheelless it is, with only one pole,
yet it moves in all directions.
4. The chariot, young man, which you made to roll forward,
taking leave of the priests,
was followed by a chant, conveyed on a boat
from here to there.
5. Who was father of the youth? Who caused the chariot
to proceed on its way?
Who can tell us today the nature
of the viaticum's gift?
6. According to the nature of the gift
arose the beginning.
First was the base extended; later
was contrived an exit.
7. Such is the seat of Yama, called also
the home of the Gods;
there the God plays on his flute, there he dwells,
glorified by songs.
1. Seeks the fellowship: anu-ven-, looks for, desires to see.
The ancients: puranah, the ancestors, his predecessors.
2. The evil path: death, which is regarded by the son as an evil way. I longed to see him: the root sprh- may also mean to envy; both meanings could fit into the hymn, because the following vv. show the desire of the boy to follow his father.
3. Constructed by your mind: manasakrnoh, imagined?
4. Priests: viprah, the wise, the speakers, but here referring to the priests performing the funeral rite.
Chant saman, funeral hymn.
5. The nature of the . . . gift: lit. how was the gift, anudeyi, an obscure word probably meaning funeral gift (or equipment for the journey to death?): viaticum.
6. Beginning: agra, could also mean top (of the chariot), and then the translation would be in spatial instead of temporal terms (i.e., "in front" instead of "first," "behind" instead of "later").
Exit: nirayana, also result.
7. This very poetic stanza corresponds to the description of Yama's world in the first two lines of stanza 1.
Glorified: parishkrta, lit. adorned.
Within Death There Is Immortality
Death then spoke to the Gods: "If this is so, then surely all men will become immortal. What will then be my fate?" The Gods said: "From now on no one will become immortal with the body. After you have taken the body as your portion, then only shall whoever is going to become immortal, either by wisdom or works, become immortal, that is, after having laid down the body."52
i) 3. He verily is Death, that Person in the
yonder orb.
That orb's blazing ray is the immortal; thus Death cannot die either, for he is enclosed within the immortal; thus Death cannot be seen, for he is enclosed within the immortal.
4. On this point there is a verse: "Within Death there is immortality," for after Death comes immortality. "On Death is based immortality," for it is within immortality that the Person established in yonder orb shines. "Death clothes itself in Light," for Light, to be sure, is yonder Sun, because this light changes day and night, and so Death clothes itself in Light and is surrounded on all sides by Light. "The Self of Death is in the Light," for the Self of that Person is assuredly in that orb. Thus says the verse.
ii) Now, regarding the balance of the right side of the altar: whatever good a man does, that is placed upon the altar; whatever evil a man does, that is placed outside the altar. Therefore he should sit down, touching the right side of the altar, for he will be placed on the balance in the otherworld. He must follow the path of the raised balance, whether for good or for evil. He who knows this places himself on the balance even in this world and is thus released from the balance of the other world, for his good deeds raise the balance, not his evil deeds.
i) 3. Death: mrtyu.
Orb: mandala, the disk of "yonder Sun."
Blazing ray: arcis, the glowing light, radiance (of the sun).
Within the immortal: amrte . . . antah.
4. Within death there is immortality: antaram mrtyor amrtam.
After death: could also be translated as "near death" (avara).
On death is based immortality: mrtyav amrtam ahitam.
Light: vivasvat, the radiant one, the brilliant one, a name of the sun. Yama is said to be the son of Vivasvat; cf. § V 1. There is here a pun on the verb vi-vas-, meaning both to shine forth and also to change, to depart, and the verb vas-, to clothe.
ii) Balance: tula-.
Altar: vedi, the place of the sacrifice.
Good: sadhu.
Evil: asadhu.
Two Ways Are Given to Mortals
i) 1. Then Shvetaketu Aruneya went to the Council of the Pancalas. He went to Jaivali Pravahana who was being attended by his servants. When the latter saw him, he said to him: "Young man!" "Yes, [sir]!'' he answered. He then said: "Have you been instructed by your father?" "Yes," said he.
2. "Do you know how people here, when they have departed from this life, proceed on different paths?" "No," he said. "Do you know how they return again to this world?" "No," he said again. "Do you know how it is that the otherworld is not filled completely with the many who ceaselessly ascend to it?" "No," he said again. "Do you know after the offering of which oblation it is that the waters acquire a human voice and, arising, speak?" "No," he said again. "Do you know the means of access to the path of the Gods or to the path of the Fathers, and what is to be done to proceed either on the path of the Gods or on the path of the Fathers? And have you not heard the word of the sage:
Two ways, I hear, are given to mortals:
the path of the Fathers and the path of the Gods.
Upon these two all things proceed together,
whatever moves between the Father and the Mother."
"No, I know nothing whatever of all this," he said.
3. Then he [the king] invited him to stay, but refusing to stay the boy ran away. He went to his father and said to him: "Sir, before you have called me well learned." "How is that, O wise one?" "The man of royal lineage asked me five questions of which I did not know the answer of even one." "What questions?" "The following," he said, repeating them.
4. The father said: "My son, you should know me as I am, that whatever I myself know, I have told to you. But let us go there and live in purity and the study of Brahman." "Sir, you may go alone," said [the son]. So Gautama went to the place where Pravahana Jaivali lived. There the king brought him a seat and had water brought for him. He gave him respectful hospitality. Then he said to him: "I shall grant a boon to the venerable Gautama."
5. Gautama replied: "You have promised me this boon. Please tell me, then, the words you spoke in the presence of my son."
6. He said: "This boon belongs to the divine boons; ask rather for a human one."
7. Gautama said: "It is well known that I have abundance of gold, cows, horses, female attendants, objects to fulfill my wishes, and garments. Do not deprive me of that which is of great value, eternal and boundless." "This, O Gautama, you will have to request in the proper way." "I approach you, sir, as a disciple." For with these words the ancient ones used to approach their master. Having declared himself as a disciple, he [Gautama] stayed [with the king].
8. The king said to him: "Neither you nor your Forefathers should take offense at this. This knowledge has from of old never remained with any brahmin. But I will declare it to you. For it is not proper to refuse it to you who speak like this."
13. . . . Out of this oblation a person comes to be. He lives as long as his life lasts. When he dies
14. they carry him to the [funeral] fire . . . .
15. Those who know this and those also who in the forest realize that faith is truth, they pass into the flame, from the flame into the day, from the day into the bright fortnight, from the bright fortnight into the six months when the sun goes northward, from these months into the sun, from the sun into lightning. When they have reached the region of lightning, a spiritual person leads them into the worlds of Brahman. In these worlds of Brahman they dwell in the highest of the highest. For them there is no return.
16. But those who win the worlds by means of sacrifice, gifts, and austerity, they pass into smoke, from smoke into the night, from night into the dark fortnight, from the dark fortnight into the six months when the sun goes southward, from these months into the world of the Fathers, from the world of the Fathers into the moon. When they have reached the moon, they become food. There the Gods, in the same way as they say to King Soma, "Increase, decrease!" and partake of him, so also do they consume them. When that has taken place, they enter into this space, from space into the wind, from wind into rain, from rain into the earth. Having reached the earth, they become food; again they are offered into the fire of a man, whence they are born in the fire of a woman, and, arising in the worlds, again move in the circle. But those who do not know these two paths, they become crawling and flying and biting beasts.
ii) 2. He said: those, in truth, who leave this world all go to the moon. In the bright half the moon grows large because of these beings and in the dark half it causes them to be born [again]. The moon, assuredly, is the gate to the heavenly world. Those who answer the moon [properly] are released, but those who do not answer [properly] become rain and rain down [on earth], where they will be born again in different conditions of life, according to their works and according to their knowledge, either as an insect, or as a bird, or as a fish, or as a big bird, or as a lion, or as a bear, or as a snake, or as a tiger, or as a man, or as some other being. When he reaches there, a man is asked "Who are you?" He should reply:
From the radiant one, O seasons, the seed was collected, from the fifteenfold, from the world of the Fathers. Place me in man as an agent, and thence, with the man as an agent, place me in a mother.
[Or he should say:]
So was I born, brought forth in the twelfth or thirteenth month, sired by a father who is twelve- or thirteenfold by nature. Knowing this, I understand; knowing this, I am. By this Truth, O seasons, by this Ardor make me deathless! I am season, a son of the seasons.
"Who are you?" [asks the moon.] "I am you!" [he replies.] Then he releases him.
3. When he proceeds on the path leading to the Gods, he reaches the world of Agni, then the world of Vayu, the world of Varuna, the world of Indra, the world of Prajapati, the world of Brahman. This world contains the lake Ara, the hours Yeshtiha, the river Vijara, the tree Ilya, the city Salajya, the palace Aparajita, the doorkeepers Indra and Prajapati, the hall Vibhu, the throne Vicakshana, the couch Amitaujas, the beloved "Mind" and her counterpart "Vision" who, taking flowers, weave the worlds, and also the mothers, the nurses, the nymphs, and the rivers. To this world he who knows this comes. To him Brahman speaks: "Go toward him! for it is my glory that made him reach this undecaying stream, and assuredly he will not decay."
4. Then five hundred Apsarases approach him, a hundred with fruits in their hands, a hundred with ointments in their hands, a hundred with garlands in their hands, a hundred with garments in their hands, a hundred with perfumes in their hands. They adorn him with the ornament of Brahman. When he is adorned with the ornament of Brahman, he, the knower of Brahman, goes to Brahman. Then he reaches the lake Ara; he crosses over it by the mind. Those who approach it, knowing only the present, are drowned. Then he reaches the hours Yeshtiha, which run away from him. Then he reaches the river Vijara which he crosses over by the mind alone.
Then he shakes off his good and evil actions. Those who are dear to him take over his good actions, and those who are not dear to him, his bad actions. Just as a chariot driver looks down on the two chariot wheels, he too looks down upon day and night, upon good and evil actions, and upon all pairs of opposites. Thus he is free from good and evil, a knower of Brahman, and he goes to Brahman.
5. He comes to the tree Ilya and the fragrance of Brahman enters into him. He comes to the city Salajya and the essence of Brahman enters into him. He comes to the palace Aparajita and the splendor of Brahman enters into him. He comes to the doorkeepers Indra and Prajapati who run away from him. He comes to the hall Vibhu and the glory of Brahman enters into him. He comes to the throne Vicakshana whose front feet are the Saman chants Brhad and Rathantara, whose hind feet are Shyaita and Naudhasa, whose bars stretching lengthwise consists of Vairupa and Vairaja, whose bars stretching crosswise are Shakvara and Raivata. It is wisdom, for by wisdom one sees.
Then he comes to the couch Amitaujas which is the Breath of life and whose front feet are past and future, whose hind feet are beauty and comfort, whose head parts are [the chants] Bhadra and Yajnayajniya, whose bars stretching lengthwise consist of Brhad and Rathantara, whose lengthwise cords are the Rig Veda hymns and the Saman chants, whose crosswise cords are the Yajus formulas. The Soma-fibers are the mattress, the Udgitha chant is the cover, beauty is the cushion. He comes to the couch
Amitaujas which is Life . . . On this couch Brahman is seated. He who knows this ascends to it with one foot only. Brahman asks him: "who are you?" He shall respond:
6. "I am season; I am son of the seasons. From space as origin I am born as seed of a woman, as the splendor of the year, as the self of every being. What you are, that I am." He asks him: "Who am l?" "Reality," he replied. "What is this reality?" "Whatever is different from the Gods and from the vital breaths, that is 'real,' but the Gods and the vital breaths are '-ity.' Therefore it is expressed by the word 'reality,' which comprises all that is. You are all that is." Thus he speaks.
i) This passage is similar to CU V, 3-10.
2. The Father and the Mother: i.e., Heaven and Earth.
4. In purity and the study of Brahman: brahmacaryam.
6. Belongs to the divine boons: daiveshu . . . vareshu. Cf. KathU I, 20-27 (§ V 5) where in the same way Yama tries to avoid the spiritual questions by tempting Naciketas with material wishes.
7. In the proper way: tirthena, in the traditional manner, i.e., according to the ritual (consisting here of a short formula).
8. Offense: aparadha.
This instance is one of many in the U where a Kshatriya is teaching the highest wisdom to a brahmin.
9-14. Cf. § III 26
15. Realize that faith is truth: shraddham satyam upasate, worship faith in truth, or meditate with faith on truth.
Spiritual person: purusho manasah, a person consisting of manas (mind, spirit).
Highest of the highest: parah paravatah, or, for long periods, immeasurable length.
ii) 2. Beings: pranah, spirits, breath souls.
Released: ati-srj-, i.e., they proceed on the way of the Gods, devayana.
Fifteenfold: i.e., the moon, which in the Hindu calendar is reckoned in units of fifteen days (the half month).
Or he should say: another type of answer for the candidate for the devayana.
Twelfth or thirteenth month: i.e., within the span of a year.
Knowing this . . . : the idam may refer to the devayana and pitryana, respectively.
Truth: satya.
Ardor: tapas.
I am season: the individual soul depends upon the moon and time and hence is identified with "time," with the seasons.
3. Vijara: lit. unaging, translated below as the "undecaying stream."
Aparajita: lit. unconquered. Cf. CU VIII, 5, 3 (§ III 27).
The beloved "Mind": priya ca manasi.
"Vision": cakshushi. These are two female attendants of the throne of Brahman, representing two ways of knowledge: by understanding (manas) and by direct vision (cakshus).
The image of weaving the worlds is again present.
4. Ornament of Brahman: brahmalankara.
Mind: manas.
Knowing only the present: sampratividah, those who know only what is in front of them, and nothing beyond, cannot cross over to the "other shore."
The hours Yeshtiha . . .: because the knower of Brahman has already transcended time, even the mythical "time" of the Brahma world evaporates in front of him.
Good and evil actions: sukrta-dushkrta. By the law of solidarity and interrelatedness, the merit derived from a man's good deeds goes to his dear ones (priya) and the fruit of his evil deeds, to his enemies (apriya).
Pairs of opposites: dvandvani. Cf. BG IV, 22.
5. Doorkeepers: Indra and Prajapati can reach no farther than the threshold of the world of Brahman, whereas the released person enters within.
Wisdom: prajna.
Breath of life: prana.
The throne and the couch of Brahman are made of the components of sacrifice, and mainly of the Saman chant. This mythical description reveals the process by which Brahman becomes the Absolute, that is, by means of the sacrifice and the sacred chant.
6. The reply to the ultimate existential question refers both to the temporal self and to the ultimate Self of a person.
Sons of the seasons: artava, related to the season, i.e., temporal; derived from rtu, season.
From space as origin: akashad yoneh; akasha is the cosmic womb.
Reality: satyam. We have tried to reproduce the Sanskrit pun which splits the word into sat and tyam, by a similar device: "real-ity." Cf. also BU II, 3, 1 (§ VI 7); V, 5, 1; CU VII 3, 5 (§ VI 6).
You are all that is: idam sarvam asiti. It is interesting that in this ultimate dialogue, man is a "you," tvam. Cf. § VI 10.
The Last Journey
i) [Naciketas:]
20. The doubt that exists about a man when he is dead--
for some say "he is" and others, "he is not"--
about that I would clearly know, instructed by you.
This is my third and final favor.
[Yama:]
21. Even the Gods were once in doubt about this question.
To know is not easy, so subtle is the problem.
Choose, Naciketas, another favor.
About this do not press me! Let it be!
ii) [Naciketas:]
Tell us, I pray, of the great Departure
about which doubt exists, O Death.
The boon that will elucidate this mystery--
it is that and none other that Naciketas chooses.
iii) 12. The hard-to-perceive and wrapped in mystery,
set in the cave and hidden in the depth--
he who, wise indeed, realizes this as God,
by means of an awareness centered on the Self,
leaves far behind both joy and sorrow.
13. The man who has understood and grasped this well,
who, stripping off all else, has plumbed this mystery,
will rejoice, having obtained what merits rejoicing.
For you, I think, the house is wide open, Naciketas!
[Naciketas:]
14. Declare to me then what you deem to be
beyond what is righteous and what is unrighteous,
beyond what is done and what is undone,
beyond what was and what shall be.
iv) The Inspired Self is not born nor does he die;
he springs from nothing and becomes nothing.
Unborn, permanent, unchanging, primordial,
he is not destroyed when the body is destroyed.
v) Smaller than the small, greater than the great,
the atman is hidden in the core of every creature.
One free from desire and thus free from grief
sees the greatness of the atman by grace of the Ordainer.
vi) 10. Beyond the senses are their objects,
beyond the objects is the mind,
beyond the mind is the intellect,
beyond the intellect is the great atman.
11. Beyond the Great is the Unmanifest,
beyond the Unmanifest is the Person,
beyond the Person there is nothing:
it is the end, the highest state.
vii) 14. Arise! Awake! Seek to understand
the favors you have won. The sharpened edge
of a razor is hard to cross--thus the sages
declare the intricacies of the path.
15. When one has realized that which is soundless,
intangible, formless, unchanging, tasteless,
odorless, unwavering, beginningless, and endless,
that which is infinite and perfectly stable,
then one is freed from the jaws of death.
viii) 6. Now I will teach you concerning
this mysterious everlasting Brahman
and also what becomes of the atman
when death arrives, O Gautama.
7. Some go into a womb
to receive once again a body;
others enter inert things
according to, their works and knowledge.
ix) 14. "This is that"--thus they recognize
the supreme ineffable happiness.
How will I then discern "it"?
Does it shine or does it reflect light?
15. There the sun does not shine, or moon or stars,
lightnings do not shine there, much less this fire.
All things shine as reflections of his shining
and this whole world is bright with his light.
x) 1. This everlasting fig tree, whose roots are on high
and whose branches are below, is the Pure, is Brahman,
what is called the Immortal. In that all worlds
are established and nothing passes beyond.
This in truth is that!
2. This whole world--whatever exists--
both springs from that and moves by his breath.
Herein is great fear as in a brandished thunderbolt.
Those who know that become immortal.
3. From fear of that burns the Fire,
from fear of that blazes the Sun,
from fear of that both Indra and Vayu
and Death, to name a fifth, speed on their ways.
xi) 14. Once freed of all desires that lie in the heart,
then a mortal man becomes immortal.
Even in this life he attains to Brahman.
15. Once all the knots of the heart are cut,
then a mortal man becomes immortal.
This is the end of the instruction.
16. A hundred and one are the channels of the heart;
one of them leads to the crown of the head.
By this channel, proceeding upward, one goes to immortality.
The rest serve for movement in various directions.
17. The Person of a thumb's size, the atman within,
ever dwells in the heart of beings.
One should draw him out of one's body with care
just as an inner stem is drawn from its sheath.
Him you should know, the Pure, the Immortal;
him you should know, the Pure, the Immortal.
18. Then Naciketas, instructed by Death,
having embraced this knowledge and the whole yoga discipline,
passed over to Brahman and became free from stain
and exempt from death; and so too is he
who possesses this knowledge of the Self within him.70
May He help both of us,73
may He be pleased with both of us,
may we act together in a vigorous way,74
may our study be successful,
may we never hate each other.
Om! Peace, peace, peace!
i) 20. He is, he is not: asti, nasti, with double reference to the immediate context and to the later one of the astikas and nastikas, or orthodox and heterodox views on religion and reality.
21. Problem: dharma, doctrine, truth, state of affairs.
ii) Of the great Departure: samparaye mahati.
Mystery: gudha, covered, hidden, concealed, invisible, secret.
iii) 12. Set in the cave: guhahitam, i.e., in the heart.
Wise: dhira, i.e., the one who is firm in meditation, wise as a result of his realization of God.
Awareness centered on the Self: adhyatma yoga, yoga relating to the deepest Self, spiritual yoga or spiritual communion or concentration. This phrase appears in the Upanishads only here.
13. Mystery: dharmyam, that which possesses dharma.
14. Beyond: anyatra, an adverb that can also mean other than, different, independent from.
Righteous, unrighteous: dharma, adharma: good and evil, merit and demerit, duty and nonduty, etc.
Done, undone: krta, akrta.
What was and what shall be: bhuta, bhavya, past and future.
iv) Inspired Self: vipashcit, a name for the atman, i.e., aware (cit) of vipas (inward vibration, internal stirring), hence, inspiration. The root vip- means to quiver, to tremble. Cf. BG II, 20, where this text is the substance of Krishna's argument for engaging Arjuna in battle against his kin but on behalf of dharma.
v) Core: guha, the cave, the heart, the secret place, the hidden spot.
Free from desire: akratu, without will, without craving.
By grace of the Ordainer: dhatuh prasadat. If one adopts the variant dhatu-prasadat, the text would read "through tranquillity of spirit [mind, senses, faculties]."
vi) 10. Senses: indriyani.
Objects: arthah.
Mind: manas.
Intellect: buddhi.
Cf. KathU VI, 7-8 (§ VI 11), where a similar progression is given and where the concept of alinga purusha is expressed: the bodiless, signless, attributeless person.
11. Unmanifest: avyakta.
Person: purusha, which here could perhaps be better rendered as Spirit.
Highest state: para gatih, the highest path, the supreme way, the final goal.
Para is the word constantly used: beyond this or higher than this.
vii) 12. Cf. § VI 5.
14. Intricacies of the path: durgam pathas, a way difficult to go.
viii) 6. Mysterious everlasting Brahman: guhyam brahma sanatanam.
Gautama: Gautama-kumara (young Gautama), says the TB and it is generally understood that Gautama refers to the clan (gotra).
7. According to their . . . knowledge: yathashrutam, according to the tradition they received (what has been heard, learned), is the same as yathavidyam in KausU I, 2 (§ V 4): according to knowledge. Cf. for a similar idea § V 12.
8. Cf. § VI 7.
9-13. Cf. § VI 2.
ix) 14. "This is that": tad etad.
Ineffable happiness: paramam sukham.
Does it shine or does it reflect light: Many interpreters make a distinction between bhati, shining by its own light, and vibhati, reflecting the light of another. Another reading has, "does it shine or does it not," na bhati va instead of u bhati vibhati va. Ultimately the two readings come to the same, for in both the question is whether it shines or whether it reflects (i.e., does not shine of itself).
15. Reflections: here the same verb, bhati, is used (as in v. 14) with the prefix anu -; thus anu-bhati, shines after. Cf. Udana I, 10.
x) 1. Cf. the hymn to skambha (§ I 3). Cf. also RV I, 24, 7, and BG XV, 1, where again the arbor inversa, the inverted cosmic tree, is said to be immortal.
2. Breath: prana, the universe originated from and develops owing to life.
Great fear: mahad bhayam, mysterium tremendum!
3. Cf. TU II, 8, 1, a similar stanza.
Indra and Vayu here symbolize not only storms and winds but also all the cosmic powers: Agni, Surya, Indra, Vayu, and Mrtyu. The TB substitutes the moon for Indra.
xi) 4-11. Cf. § VI 11.
12-13. Cf. § VI 9.
14. This stanza is given also in BU IV, 4, 7 (§ VI 11).
15. It seems that this was the final verse of the second enlarged version of the Upanishad.
16. Channels of the heart: hrdayasya nadyah, the arteries. Cf. CU VIII, 6, 6: PrasnU III, 6 (§ II 6).
Crown of the head: murdhan, referring to the conception of brahmarandhra the opening of the skull which the soul passes through at the time of death.
17. Cf. MaitU VI, 38.
Ever dwells in the heart of beings: sada jananam hrdaye sannivishtah.
To draw out with care the purusha from one's body is the supreme yoga discipline (yogavidhi, v. 18) and cannot be only a mrtyuprokta vidya, a teaching imparted by death.
18. Passed over to Brahman: brahmaprapta, having attained or realized brahman.
Self within: adhyatman, relating to the Self.
The Breaking of the Death Cycle
i) Death is certain for all that is born
and birth for all that dies.
Therefore for what is unavoidable
you should not be distressed.
ii) 5. And whoever at the end of his span of life,
when leaving the body,
remembers Me alone, he attains my own being;
of this there is no doubt.
6. Whatever state of being he recalls when at the end
he abandons his body,
to that state he attains, being ever assumed
into that condition.
10. If at death with steady mind, disciplined in love
and the power of yoga,
he locates his vital strength between the eyebrows,
he will reach the supreme Person.
iii) I am the producer of heat. I withhold
and send forth the rain.
I am deathlessness and also death,
being and nonbeing.
iv) I am death, the devourer of all,
yet the source of things to be.
v) Those whose thoughts are set on Me
I shall deliver--
and that quite soon--from the ocean, O Arjuna,
of ever-recurring death.
vi) Transcending the three attributes of nature
which give the body its existence,
man, freed from birth, death, old age, and pain,
attains immortality.
i) Cf. § IV 7.
ii) 5. At the end of his span of life: antakale, lit. at the end of time or the last moment.
My own being: mad-bhava my state of being, my nature.
6. State of being: bhava, nature.
Being ever assumed into that condition: tad-bhava-bhavita, lit. made to become in the state of that; i.e., he reaches that particular state of being in which he remains.
10. At death: prayana-kale, time of passing away.
Disciplined in love: bhaktya yuktah.
Power of yoga: yoga-bala, power of discipline.
Supreme Person: param purusham . . . divyam, the highest divine being.
iii) 18. Cf. § I 29.
19. Producer of heat: tapami, lit. I heat.
21. Cf. § V 28.
v) Ocean . . . of ever-recurring death: mrtyu-samsara-sagara.
vi) Attributes of nature: guna.. Cf. BG XIV, 5: goodness (satva), passion, greed (rajas), dullness, negligence (tamas).
Man: dehin, lit. the embodied one, having a body, the corporeal (man); hence, the soul as being in a body. Deha, the body, is often one of the components of the anthropological triad (deha, manas, vac). Dehin is the soul in bondage to the body, the incarnate soul. Once the Self is realized, man passes beyond that state. Hence Janaka, the great jivanmukta is called videhin, freed from the embodied state.
Cf. the Buddhist view about the sufferings of birth, death, and old age.
b) The Blessings for the Journey
The Forerunner
Come home again, leaving your stains;
assume a body bright with glory.
Putting on new life, let him approach the remaining ones,
let him reunite with a body, All-Knowing One!''81
[The chronicler]
1. The one who has climbed the mighty steeps,
thus blazing a trail for many to follow,
the son of Vivasvat, the gatherer of men,
Yama, the King, we worship with offerings.
2. Yama was the first to find us a way,
the pastures that no one shall steal from us.
The path that our ancient Fathers took
all mortals, once born, must tread for themselves.
3. Matali is there, united with the ancient
poets and Yama, with the priests of old
and Brhaspati, praise of the singers, both those
who extol the Gods and those the Gods extol.
Some rejoice in lip praise; others, in the oblation.
[Invocation of Yama]
4. Take your seat, O Yama, on the sacred grass,
together with the priests of old and with the Fathers.
May the prayers of the sages bring you hither!
O King, rejoice in this oblation!
5. Come, O Yama, with the holy priests of old!
Here, together with the Vairupas, rejoice!
Seated on the sacred sacrificial grass,
I summon also Vivasvat your father.
6. May the priests of old, our Fathers, the Navagvas,
the Atharvans and Bhrgus, all worthy of Soma,
regard us with kindliness--deserving, they, of worship--
and keep us ever in their grace and favor!
[The last blessings (to the dead)]
7. Proceed, proceed along the ancient pathways
whereon our Forefathers have passed before us.
There you shall see God Varuna and Yama,
the two kings, rejoicing in the offerings.
8. Meet Yama and the Fathers in the highest heaven
along with your offerings and praiseworthy deeds.
Rid of imperfection, seek again your dwelling
and assume a body, bright with glory.
[To the evil spirits]
9. Off with you, spirits! Flee, rampage elsewhere!
For him the Fathers have prepared this place.
Yama will grant him a place of relaxation,
where days and nights rotate and waters flow.
[To the deceased]
10. Speed on your happy pathway, outstripping
the two brindled dogs, each with four eyes,
sons of Indra's messenger. Then approach the kindly
Fathers who rejoice in the fellowship of Yama.
[To Yama]
11. Put him, O King, under the protection
of your two dogs, each with four eyes, the guardians
and keepers of the way, who gaze upon men.
Bestow on him happiness and well-being.
12. May the broad-nosed dark-hued pair, the life stealers,
the messengers of Yama who run in men's wake,
restore to us today a life of happiness,
that we may live to see the sun!
[To the priests]
13. For Yama press the Soma-juice,
To Yama offer the sacrifice.
Toward Yama it mounts, a perfect offering,
with Agni as herald going before.
14. Present to Yama an offering rich
in ghee; come forward and take your places.
May he conduct us to the Gods,
so that in their midst we may live forever!
15. The offering steeped most richly in honey
present now to the royal Yama.
We offer homage to the Seers of old,
to the pioneers who discovered the way.
1. Steeps: pravatah, the distant and steep ways leading to the limits of the earth and to the region where Yama now lives. Cf. AV XVIII, 3, 13.
3. Matali: a celestial being; or, the charioteer of Indra.
Ancient poets: kavyas, a group of manes.
Priests of old: Angirases (also in vv. 4-6), a group or house of priests in days of old.
Lip praise: svaha, the sacrificial exclamation, standing for the sacrifice itself.
Oblation: svadha, the offering to the dead.
4. Prayers: mantras, sacred hymns.
5. Vairupas: they belong to the family of the Angiras.
6. Navagvas: a priestly clan or class of rishis (as also the Atharvans and Bhrgus).
Kindliness: sumati, benevolence, favor.
Grace and favor: bhadre saumanase, in their gracious goodwill, benevolence.
7. Both Yama and Varuna are called kings, but only Varuna is said to be a God.
Offerings: svadha, the offerings to the dead.
8. Offerings and praiseworthy deeds: ishta-purta, the sacred and secular works that earn merit in the world beyond. This is the only occurrence of this term in the RV.
Seek again your dwelling: i.e., at the time of ancestor worship.
9. Where days and nights . . . : lit. distinguished by waters, days, and nights.
10. Sons of Indra's messenger: sarameyau, i.e., the two dogs, sons of Sarama, Indra's hound; (cf. § V 13 iv).
12. Dark-hued: udumbalau, doubtful word.
Life stealers: asutrpah, taking away the life of others.
15. Who discovered the way: pathikrt, those who prepared the path.
16. There is a last stanza, which may have been added at a later date.
Let Him Come Back Again
i) 1. Your spirit which has gone afar
to Yama, son of Vivasvat,
may it return to you again
that it may live and dwell here.
2. Your spirit which has gone afar
to heaven and earth,
may it return to you again
that it may live and dwell here.
3. Your spirit which has gone afar
to the four corners of the earth,
may it return to you again
that it may live and dwell here.
4. Your spirit which has gone afar
to the four directions of space,
may it return to you again
that it may live and dwell here.
5. Your spirit which has gone afar
to the waves of the ocean,
may it return to you again
that it may live and dwell here.
6. Your spirit which has gone afar
to the shining light rays,
may it return to you again
that it may live and dwell here.
7. Your spirit which has gone afar
to the waters and the plants,
may it return to you again
that it may live and dwell here.
8. Your spirit which has gone afar
to the Sun and Dawn,
may it return to you again
that it may live and dwell here.
9. Your spirit which has gone afar
to the highest mountains,
may it return to you again
that it may live and dwell here.
10. Your spirit which has gone afar
to the whole world,
may it return to you again
that it may live and dwell here.
11. Your spirit which has gone afar
to the farthest realms,
may it return to you again
that it may live and dwell here.
12. Your spirit which has gone afar
to the past and the future,
may it return to you again
that it may live and dwell here.
ii) 1. Now may his life be renewed and further extended,
as by two skilled charioteers, pursuing their course!
May he, like Cyavana, attain the goal!
May Goddess Destruction move to distant places!
2. This is a song for wealth, for food in plenty.
Let us do many noble deeds to win glory!
Now may the singer rejoice in all our doings!
May Goddess Destruction move to distant places!
3. May we surpass our foes by deeds of valor,
as heaven surpasses earth and mountains the plains.
All these our deeds the singer has acclaimed.
May Goddess Destruction move to distant places!
4. Do not deliver us over to Death, O Soma!
Still may our eyes behold the rising of the sun!
May the full life span determined by the Gods be ours!
May Goddess Destruction move to distant places!
5. O guide of the spirits, retain our heart within us.
Prolong for us the life span yet to be lived!
Allow us still to enjoy the vision of the sunlight!
Strengthen your body by means of the fat we bring you!
6. O guide of the spirits, restore to us our sight,
give us again our life breath and powers of enjoyment.
Long may our eyes behold the rising of the sun!
O gracious Goddess, grant us your favor and bless us.
7. May Earth restore to us our breath of life,
may Goddess Heaven and the aery space return it!
May Soma give us once again a body
and Pushan show us again the way of salvation!
8. May both the worlds accord to Subandhu a blessing,
they who are youthful mothers of cosmic Order.
May heaven and earth remove all evil and shame!
May you be troubled neither by sin nor by pain!
9. The healing remedies descend from heaven
in twos and threes, or singly roam the earth.
May Heaven and Earth conspire to dispatch the evil
into the ground! May sorrow no more affect you!
10. Restore, O Indra, the ox that brought to this place
he chariot bearing the wife of Ushinara.
May Heaven and Earth conspire to dispatch the evil
into the ground! May sorrow no more affect you!
i) Spirit: manas throughout.
12. The past and the future: bhuta and bhavya.
ii) 1. Just as Cyavana was once restored and rejuvenated (cf . RV I, 116, 10), so may Subandhu, the rishi of this hymn, experience the same.
Goddess Destruction: nirrti. A dark Goddess frequently associated with Yama and death.