Ancient India is considered to be the spiritual motherland
of our planet. According to The Secret Doctrine, it was the home
of the once universal Wisdom Tradition. From ancient India,
called Åryåvarta, the wisdom teachings went forth into all the
religions and philosophies of the world. H. P. Blavatsky writes:
For Åryåvarta, the bright focus into which had been poured in
the beginning of time the flames of Divine Wisdom, had become
the center from which radiated the “tongues of fire” into every
portion of the globe.1
The one Wisdom Tradition thus took various forms for various
peoples. In time these varying forms became religious dogma.
But all had their origin in the sacred land of Åryåvarta.
But all such dogma grew out of the one root, the root of wisdom,
which grows and thrives on the Indian soil. There is not an Archangel that could not be traced back to its prototype in the sacred
land of Åryåvarta.2
It is to ancient India, home of the Wisdom Tradition, that we
must turn to find the one truth behind the various religions of
the world, and the key to the great mysteries of humanity.
. . . we affirm that, if Egypt furnished Greece with her civilization,
and the latter bequeathed hers to Rome, Egypt herself had, in
those unknown ages when Menes reigned, received her laws, her
social institutions, her arts and her sciences, from pre-Vedic
India; and that, therefore, it is in that old initiatrix of the
priests—the adepts of all the other countries—we must seek for
the key to the great mysteries of humanity.3
2 God’s Arrival in India
The most central truth behind the various religions of the
world is generally thought to be that of the existence of God.
Finding the key to the great mysteries of humanity, then, would
depend on knowing that the various names for God found in
the various religions of the world all refer to the same reality.
But is God a reality? Although the Theosophical movement, in
its efforts to promote the universal brotherhood of humanity,
has had to act as if the answer to this question is yes, the teachers
behind the Theosophical movement have answered it with an
unequivocal no.
Belief in God is so central to modern ideas of spirituality,
that it is hardly possible to conceive of a true spiritual tradition
without God. A. O. Hume could not imagine that the Wisdom
Tradition lacked God; so in his exposition of it written on the
basis of correspondence with the Theosophical Mahatmas, he
drafted a chapter on God. The Mahatma K.H. responded with
one of the clearest and most unmistakable statements we have
of their doctrine, saying:
Neither our philosophy nor ourselves believe in a God. . . .
Our philosophy . . . is preeminently the science of effects by their
causes and of causes by their effects. . . . Our doctrine knows no
compromises. It either affirms or denies, for it never teaches but
that which it knows to be the truth. Therefore, we deny God
both as philosophers and as Buddhists. We know there are
planetary and other spiritual lives, and we know there is in our
system no such thing as God, either personal or impersonal. . . .
The word “God” was invented to designate the unknown cause
of those effects which man has either admired or dreaded without understanding them, and since we claim and that we are
able to prove what we claim—i.e., the knowledge of that cause
and causes—we are in a position to maintain there is no God or
Gods behind them.4
In another letter, K.H. said that if Hume publishes his account,
I will have H.P.B. or Djual Khool deny the whole thing; as I cannot permit our sacred philosophy to be so disfigured.5
God’s Arrival in India 3
Nonetheless, after H. P. Blavatsky’s death, this position ceased
to be upheld, so that at present the vast majority of members of
the Theosophical Society are believers in God. Similarly, other
teachings with roots in Theosophy that arose later, such as the
Djual Khool/Alice Bailey books, utilized the God idea.6
The sincere and intelligent modern student of the ancient
and Ageless Wisdom Tradition, then, often takes for granted
that the idea of God in some form or other is necessarily found
in all religions. Now that Buddhism has become more widely
known, its noble teachings of compassion have impressed many
such students. Like Hume in regard to Theosophy, they cannot
imagine that a tradition so noble could be Godless. They then
assume that the idea of God must be there under some other
name or concept, since they know that this belief is universal.
But is it? The Mahatma K.H. tells us that, “the idea of God is
not an innate but an acquired notion.”7
If this is true, and the
notion of God was in fact never part of the Wisdom Tradition,
but was acquired as these truths went forth from their home in
ancient India, history should show this.
There are three religions of ancient India, those now
called Buddhism, Hinduism, and Jainism. Neither Buddhism
nor Jainism have ever taught the existence of God. They are
non-theistic. Hinduism presently teaches the existence of God.
It is now theistic. However, there is considerable evidence that
none of the various schools of Hinduism originally taught the
existence of God. In other words, all of ancient India, home of
the Wisdom Tradition, was once non-theistic. To show this, we
will here attempt to trace God’s arrival in India.
Jainism and Buddhism—Religions without God
Jainism is the religion of the Jinas, the Conquerors, those
who have conquered their passions and thus achieved liberation. They have done this without the help of God; for indeed,
God is not to be found in their worldview. The worldview taught
by the Jinas is described in the authoritative Tattvårthådhigamasütra.
8
This text is a compendium of the teachings of the 24th
and last Jina of our time-cycle, called Vardhamåna Mahåvîra,
4 God’s Arrival in India
who in turn only re-established the teachings of the previous
Jinas, going back in time without beginning.
In the Jaina worldview, karma takes the place of God. No
one punishes us but ourselves, through our own former actions;
and no one rewards us but ourselves, again through our own
actions. The working of karma requires no intelligence to guide
it nor power to implement it. It is simply the way things are, an
inherent part of the eternal fabric of our universe. The universe
has not been created, nor will it end. Matter is eternal and souls
are eternal. Souls must through asceticism free themselves from
the karmic bondage of matter. In this universe there is no place
for God, nor any function for such a being to perform.
The religion of the Jinas is the religion of harmlessness,
ahiµså. Its first principle is to not harm any living thing. This
also means no retaliation. The karmic cycle of violence will not
stop until it stops with us. For ages, Jainas made harmlessness
the guiding principle of their lives. With no help from God,
Jainism shares with Buddhism the distinction of having the best
record on nonviolence of all religions known to history.
Buddhism is the religion of the Buddhas, the Awakened
Ones, those who have awakened to truth or reality and thereby
achieved liberation. They, too, have done this without the help
of God; for God is not to be found in their worldview either.
The basic worldview taught by the Buddhas is described in the
authoritative Abhidharma-ko≈a.
9
This text is a compendium of
the teachings of the last Buddha, called Gautama or ˛åkyamuni.
While modern writers recognize only this Buddha, the Buddhist
texts speak of many previous Buddhas, extending back into the
night of time.
In the Buddhist worldview, as in the Jaina, karma takes the
place of God. How karma works is understood differently in
Buddhism than it is in Jainism, but the results are the same. We
make our own destiny through our own actions. The universe
and everything in it operates by its own laws, in the sense that
science gives to the law of gravity. These require no lawgiver,
and function without the need of God. As the present Dalai
Lama of Tibet once said to a priest at an ecumenical meeting,
“your business is God, my business is karma.”
God’s Arrival in India 5
The religion of the Buddhas is the religion of compassion,
karuñå. In Tibet, Buddhist monks begin their meditations by
generating compassion toward all living beings. This includes
especially those who have wronged or harmed them. Thus after
the brutal Chinese Communist takeover of Tibet, the Buddhist
response was one of nonviolence. This was recognized worldwide when in 1989 the Dalai Lama won the Nobel Peace Prize
for his thirty years of efforts to regain his homeland, during
which violence was never considered an option. What country
that calls upon God to bless it can boast such an example?
Both Jainism and Buddhism teach that each one of us can
become perfected, through our own efforts, and be liberated
from the compulsory round of rebirth. To do this requires the
will power to follow the path taught by the Jinas or the Buddhas
in face of all obstacles, as did Mahåvîra and ˛åkyamuni. This way
of self-reliance is in direct contrast with the way of surrender to
God taught in theistic religions.
Some modern writers have attempted to find in Buddhism
an equivalent for God, or Godhead, and have found this in the
Buddhist idea of nirvåña. Thus, Huston Smith in his deservedly
popular book, The World’s Religions, writes:
We may conclude with Conze that nirvana is not God defined as
personal creator, but that it stands sufficiently close to the concept of God as Godhead to warrant the name in that sense.10
This refers to Edward Conze’s 1951 book, Buddhism: Its Essence
and Development, which in turn refers to Aldous Huxley’s 1944
classic, The Perennial Philosophy, on the difference between God
and Godhead. According to Huxley, the Perennial Philosophy
has at all times and in all places taught a divine Ground of all
existence, a spiritual Absolute, or Godhead. This has a personal
aspect, who has form, activity, and attributes such as mercy; and
this is God. In this philosophy, the two go together; you cannot
have one without the other. In order to fit Buddhism into this
scheme, Huxley had to make Godhead and God correspond to
two of the three bodies of a Buddha. Thus he made the second
body of a Buddha, the Sambhoga-kåya, correspond “to Isvara
6 God’s Arrival in India
or the personal God of Judaism, Christianity and Islam,”11 an
equation that few Buddhists would accept. God is simply not
found in Buddhism.
In making the nirvåña comparison, Smith distinguished
God as Godhead from the personal creator God. The idea of an
impersonal Godhead, “the God-without-form of Hindu and
Christian mystical phraseology,”12 is, however, invariably linked
with the idea of a personal God. Godhead must be able to think
and act, even if through God. Were it possible to conceive of
Godhead without God, that is, without any of the qualities that
normally define God—those of being all-knowing, all-powerful,
ruler of all, or even of merely being conscious—then why call it
Godhead, or God as Godhead?
When A. O. Hume wished to describe the One Life taught
in the Wisdom Tradition as God, the Mahatma K.H. replied:
If people are willing to accept and to regard as God our ONE LIFE
immutable and unconscious in its eternity they may do so and
thus keep to one more gigantic misnomer. But then they will
have to say with Spinoza that there is not and that we cannot
conceive any other substance than God; . . . —and thus become
Pantheists. . . . If we ask the theist is your God vacuum, space or
matter, they will reply no. And yet they hold that their God penetrates matter though he is not himself matter. When we speak
of our One Life we also say that it penetrates, nay is the essence
of every atom of matter; and that therefore it not only has correspondence with matter but has all its properties likewise, etc.—
hence is material, is matter itself. . . . We deny the existence of a
thinking conscious God, on the grounds that such a God must
either be conditioned, limited and subject to change, therefore
not infinite, or if he is represented to us as an eternal unchangeable and independent being, with not a particle of matter in
him, then we answer that it is no being but an immutable blind
principle, a law. . . . The existence of matter then is a fact; the
existence of motion is another fact, their self existence and eternity or indestructibility is a third fact. And the idea of pure spirit
as a Being or an Existence—give it whatever name you will—is a
chimera, a gigantic absurdity.13
God’s Arrival in India 7
Nirvåña is described in the Buddhist texts as the extinction
of thirst (i.e., desire), or the cessation of suffering. It is also
called the ultimate truth. It is what the Buddhas attain when
liberated. It is the one thing taught by all Buddhist schools as
unconditioned (asaµsk®ta). Helmuth von Glasenapp says about
nirvåña in his major study, Buddhism—A Non-Theistic Religion:
It does not belong to the world, has no relationship with it, nor
does it affect it. It might best be called the ‘totally other’; this is,
indeed, a much more suitable expression for Nirvåna than it is
for the Christian God who, though being above the world, yet
governs it and is thus in constant touch with it. If God were the
‘totally other’, he could never be the ‘good friend’ of the soul,
and neither could the soul establish a relationship with him.14
As something “totally other,” nirvåña has no relationship
with the world, and plays no role in the life of an individual. It
does not think or act. This is not God in any normal sense of
the word. Certain epithets used to describe nirvåña, such as
“peace,” caused it to be equated with God as Godhead by those
who sought to find the idea of God in all religions. This was
based on the conception of Godhead and God, explained as the
twofold brahman found in the Vedånta system of Hinduism:
the absolute brahman without attributes (nirguña), and the
conditioned brahman with attributes (saguña), now also called
God-without-form and God-with-form in modern Hinduism.
God-with-form includes the ideas of ˆ≈vara, the ruler of all, and
Brahmå, the creator. Buddhism has always refuted these ideas
of God. The Buddha is depicted as refuting the idea of Brahmå
the creator in the Brahma-jåla Sutta;
15 Någårjuna is credited with
a treatise refuting the idea of ˆ≈vara;16 and so on throughout
Buddhist history. The Buddhist attitude toward the idea of God
is pointedly summed up in the Encyclopaedia of Buddhism:
The Buddha and his followers borrowed the name [Brahmå =
God] from their Brahmanical counterparts in order to refute,
not only their theology but the basis of all theologies: the idea of
God.17
8 God’s Arrival in India
Religion had been defined in terms of God. When scholars
began to study Buddhism seriously, they first suggested that it
cannot be a religion, because it does not have a God. It instead
could only be a philosophy. But since Buddhism obviously is a
religion, with temples, a priesthood, scriptures, etc., scholars
had to re-define religion, allowing that there could be religion
without God. This, of course, applies equally to Jainism. Now
that religions without God are recognized, scholars prefer to
refer to them as non-theistic, rather than atheistic, since the
term atheistic has other connotations in our society.
The above serves to illustrate just how difficult it is for us in
the West to even conceive of a Godless religion. Conversely, it
was likewise difficult for the Mahatma K.H. to conceive of the
theistic ideas prevalent in the West, as they were so illogical to
him. Some passages from his letters to A. O. Hume illustrate the
difficulties faced by teachers when trying to communicate the
teachings of the Wisdom Tradition to a theistic audience.
Then for a man endowed with so subtle a logic, and such a fine
comprehension of the value of ideas in general and that of words
especially—for a man so accurate as you generally are to make
tirades upon an “all wise, powerful and love-ful God” seems to
say at least strange. I do not protest at all as you seem to think
against your theism, or a belief in an abstract ideal of some kind,
but I cannot help asking you, how do you or how can you know
that your God is all wise, omnipotent and love-ful, when everything in nature, physical and moral, proves such a being, if he
does exist, to be quite the reverse of all you say of him? Strange
delusion and one which seems to overpower your very intellect.18
And now to your extraordinary hypothesis that Evil with its attendant train of sin and suffering is not the result of matter, but may
be perchance the wise scheme of the moral Governor of the
Universe. Conceivable as the idea may seem to you, trained in
the pernicious fallacy of the Christian,—“the ways of the Lord
are inscrutable”—it is utterly inconceivable for me. Must I repeat
again that the best Adepts have searched the Universe during
millenniums and found nowhere the slightest trace of such a
God’s Arrival in India 9
Machiavellian schemer—but throughout, the same immutable,
inexorable law. You must excuse me therefore if I positively
decline to lose my time over such childish speculations. It is not
“the ways of the Lord” but rather those of some extremely intelligent men in everything but some particular hobby, that are to
me incomprehensible.19
You say it matters nothing whether these laws are the expression
of the will of an intelligent conscious God, as you think, or constitute the inevitable attributes of an unintelligent, unconscious
“God,” as I hold. I say, it matters everything, and since you
earnestly believe that these fundamental questions (of spirit and
matter—of God or no God) “are admittedly beyond both of
us”—in other words that neither I nor yet our greatest adepts
can know any more than you do, then what is there on earth that
I could teach you?20
Theism, of course, is not limited to the West. It is now the
norm in India as well. Buddhism had been driven out of India a
thousand years ago, and Jainism at present makes up less than
one percent of its population. Today, virtually all of Hinduism is
theistic. But it was not always this way.
Hinduism and God—Earlier and Later
The Vedas are the oldest religious compositions of India,
and indeed are thought to be the oldest religious texts in the
world having a continuous tradition of use up to the present.
They will not provide us with the help we might expect from
them in our attempt to trace God’s presence in ancient India,
however, for the simple reason that we do not know for certain
how they were understood in ancient India. They require the
help of a commentary to be properly understood, and the only
commentaries now extant are comparatively modern. The age
of the Vedas is not known, but they are estimated by modern
scholarship to date from circa 1500-1000 B.C.E., while Indian
tradition makes them considerably older than that. Yet for long,
the only commentaries known were those of Såyaña, dating
10 God’s Arrival in India
from the 14th century C.E.
21 This is well within what we may call
the theistic period of Indian history, and at least two thousand
years removed from the Vedas themselves. The strange fact that
we have only late commentaries on India’s oldest texts provides
weighty evidence for the Wisdom Tradition’s assertion that the
genuine commentaries have all been withdrawn.22
The Vedas are to all appearances polytheistic, since they
are made up of hymns addressed to a number of different
“gods,” or “deities.” But as everyone knows, appearances can be
deceiving. When Western scholars approached the Vedas, they
of course did so presupposing their own worldview, wherein
what is ancient is necessarily primitive, and primitive religion is
polytheistic, arising through the deification of various natural
phenomena such as the sun and rain. Seeing in the Vedas the
personified sacrificial fire (Agni), sky (Indra), sun (Sürya), etc.,
they took the Vedas at face value, that is, as being polytheistic.
India was at that time under British rule, and institutions of
higher learning in India followed a European model. So Indian
scholars also took up the view that the Vedas are polytheistic.
Thus today, most books by both Western and Indian scholars
present this view.
The traditional Indian worldview differs from the modern
Western one, holding sometimes opposite presuppositions. In
this worldview, whatever is ancient is not of necessity primitive,
but on the contrary comes down to us from a spiritually more
advanced Age of Truth, or Golden Age as it is called in other
traditions around the world. The seers (®ßi) of the Vedic hymns
were not rustics wondering at the awe-inspiring forces of nature
they saw around them, but rather were highly advanced sages
whose insight far surpasses our own. This is why the Vedas are so
revered in Hinduism. The Vedic revelation (≈ruti) includes two
parts. The hymns addressed to various deities are found in the
first part, on works (karma-kåñ∂a). The last part, on knowledge
(j∆åna-kåñ∂a) comprises the Upanißads. It is to these texts that
Hinduism has traditionally turned for the philosophy of the
Vedas, rather than to the hymns themselves. This is because the
hymns, consisting of mantras, are liturgical formulae that are
considered to be of limited use in determining philosophical
God’s Arrival in India 11
issues, such as the question of Vedic polytheism. As pointed out
by Ananda K. Coomaraswamy:
It is precisely the fact that the Vedic incantations are liturgical
that makes it unreasonable to expect from them a systematic exposition of the philosophy they take for granted; if we consider
the mantras by themselves, it is as if we had to deduce the Scholastic philosophy only from the libretto of the Mass.23
Thus we find that Hinduism in general adopted the view
taught in the Upanißads of the one universal brahman, and
found no contradiction between this and the fact that the Vedas
spoke of the many gods. This characteristic Indian attitude is
explained by Shrimat Anirvan in his chapter, “Vedic Exegesis,”
from The Cultural Heritage of India:
. . . in the spiritual idiom of the Vedic seers, gods are born as
One and Many and All. The same phenomenon of expanding
consciousness (brahma) is described objectively in a symbolic
language by the Vedas, and subjectively in an intellectual language by the Upanißads. They speak of a metaphysical realism in
which One and Many do not clash either in form or in substance; and their theory of gods cannot be exclusively labelled as
monotheism, polytheism, or pantheism, because it is an integrated vision in which all these isms harmonize. Since this was
the vision at the root of all forms of Årya mysticism, a Buddhist
nihilism or a Vedåntic monism (which are not to be confounded
with a-theism or mono-theism) found nothing to quarrel with in
a theory of many gods. This is a phenomenon which very naturally mystifies the western mind, which will see in it nothing but a
condescension to an ineradicable superstition. From the Vedic
age to the present times, the vision of One Existence and many
gods have lived harmoniously in the spiritual realizations of
India’s greatest seers; . . .24
Early on, pioneer Vedic scholar F. Max Müller had noticed that
the alleged Vedic polytheism was no ordinary polytheism, since
each god may in turn be addressed as if the highest one. This is
12 God’s Arrival in India
unlike polytheism found elsewhere, as for example in Greece,
where Zeus is always the highest. Thus he coined new terms for
this, henotheism and kathenotheism. This observation fits in
nicely with the idea from the Upanißads of the one and the
many. Nonetheless, scholars did not apply this idea of the one
and the many to the Vedas, because the Upanißads are regarded
by them as being a later development. So Western scholars, and
now Indian scholars following them, continue to regard the
Vedas as being polytheistic, in spite of Hindu tradition on this.
As far as can be traced, Hindu tradition has looked upon the
Vedas in terms of the one and the many for a very long time.
Already in the Vedas proper, in hymn 1.164 of the ‰g-veda,
and repeated in hymn 9.10 of the Atharva-veda, we find a verse
explicitly stating this idea. Here is this verse, numbered 46 or 28
respectively, translated by Vasudeva S. Agrawala:
They call him Indra, Mitra, Varuña, Agni, and he is the heavenly
Winged Bird. The sages speak of the One by many names: they
call it Agni, Yama, Måtari≈van.25
Modern scholars do not deny the obvious meaning of this verse,
but dismiss the hymns it is found in as being “late”; that is, as
approaching the time of the Upanißads, where such an idea is
stated repeatedly. Their presupposition of development from
more primitive to less primitive is, however, the very criterion
on which these hymns are judged to be late. None of the three
religious traditions of ancient India accept this presupposition,
and neither does the Wisdom Tradition. Hindu writers down
through the ages have quoted this verse as the expression of
what the Vedas have always taught.
Although no ancient Vedic commentaries are extant, we
do have a very old and authoritative text that gives exegetical
comments on selected Vedic passages. This is Yåska’s Nirukta,
estimated by scholars to date from circa 700-500 B.C.E. The
Nirukta is the “limb” or auxiliary of the Vedas (Vedå∫ga) that
deals with etymology and related topics. In its section on deities,
it quotes the above-cited verse to explain Agni, the first of the
Vedic deities, who is said to be all the deities.26 It had brought
God’s Arrival in India 13
up the idea of the one and the many earlier in this section.
There Yåska explained that the one is the one åtman, the “self,”
which the Upanißads had taught as being identical with the one
universal brahman. We here cite this passage as introduced and
translated by Ananda K. Coomaraswamy, slightly adapting his
translation in accordance with that of Lakshman Sarup:
Modern scholarship for the most part postulates only a gradual
development in Indian metaphysics of a notion of a single
principle, of which principle the several gods (devå˙, vi≈ve devå˙,
etc.) are, as it were, the powers, operative aspects, or personified
attributes. But as Yåska expresses it, “It is because of the great divisibility (mahå-bhågyåt) of the deity (devatå) that the One Spirit (eka
åtmå) is praised in various ways. Other gods (devå˙) come to be
(bhavanti) submembers (pratya∫gåni) of the One Spirit. . . . Their
becoming is a birth from one another, they are of one another’s
nature; they originate in function (karma); the Spirit is their origin.
. . . Spirit (åtman) is the whole of what a god is” (Nirukta VII.4).27
Lakshman Sarup, who dedicated many years of his life to the
editing and translating of Yåska’s Nirukta, notes here:
This is Yåska’s rejoinder to the objection that non-deities are
praised like deities. The so-called non-deities, says Yåska, are but
different manifestations of the same single soul [åtman]. In
other words, Yåska here propounds the doctrine of pantheism.28
Yåska’s Nirukta is the oldest text we have giving exegetical
comments on the Vedas, dating from at least 500 B.C.E. Yåska
refers to many teachers before him, so he was quite familiar
with the ancient schools of Vedic exegesis. He understands the
Vedas as teaching the one and the many; and he understands
the one as referring to the one universal åtman, or brahman.
This is the earliest available interpretation.
The standard Vedic commentaries now known are those of
Såyaña, written in the 14th century C.E., nearly two millenniums
later than Yåska. In the preface to Såyaña’s commentary on the
‰g-veda, the same above-cited Vedic verse that was quoted by
14 God’s Arrival in India
Yåska is again quoted to explain the many Vedic gods. Here is
Såyaña’s passage, translated by Peter Peterson:
Although Indra and the other gods are invoked in many texts
there is no contradiction, inasmuch as these are only the
Supreme God in the form of Indra and other such gods. And so
it is said in another text, “They call Agni, Indra, Mitra, Varuña
and he is the strong-winged divine Garutman: He is one, but wise
men call Him by many names, and call Agni, Yama, Måtari≈van.”
. . . In this way it is the Supreme God and no other who is invoked
of all men.29
Thus Såyaña, like Yåska nineteen centuries earlier, understands
the Vedas as teaching the one and the many. Now, however, the
one is no longer understood to refer to the one universal åtman
or brahman, but instead to the Supreme God (Parama ˆ≈vara).
The Supreme God is considered by Såyaña to be an anthropomorphic (paurußeya), corporeal being (≈arîra-dhåri-jîva),30 in
other words, a personal God. So somewhere between 500 B.C.E.
and 1400 C.E. the idea of the one as an impersonal principle was
displaced by the idea of the one as a personal God.
The move to monotheism in Vedic exegesis continued up
to modern times, reaching its culmination in the work of Swami
Dayananda Saraswati, founder of the Arya Samaj. Although
Såyaña believed in a Supreme God behind the many Vedic
gods, his primary concern was with Vedic ritual, not with God.
Further, his brother Mådhava was a leading exponent of the
Advaita Vedånta system, which by then allowed the coexistence
of the impersonal brahman and the personal God, ˆ≈vara. For
Dayananda, there was only the personal God, ˆ≈vara, the one
Lord and Ruler of all. The many Vedic gods were in name only;
they were not forms of God, but were all simply names of the
one God. Thus translations of the Vedas produced by the Arya
Samaj replace the names Agni, Indra, etc., with the word God.
Nor was there room in Dayananda’s view for any impersonal
principle such as the brahman taught in the Upanißads. Thus he
demoted the Upanißads from their status as revelation (≈ruti), a
status they had always held in Hindu tradition.31
God’s Arrival in India 15
Dayananda was a Hindu reformer and great champion of
the Vedas. This is what led to a brief alliance between his Arya
Samaj and the Theosophical Society. It was his monotheism
that led to their parting of the ways. Blavatsky and Olcott,
founders of the Theosophical Society, had understood from
their teachers that an impersonal principle was taught in the
Vedas. So they thought that when Dayananda was promoting
the Vedas, he was promoting this idea. Dayananda thought that
when Blavatsky and Olcott were extolling the Vedas, they were
extolling his monotheistic view of them. Neither party could
speak the other’s language. When they parted ways, a letter was
printed pertaining to this from “One of the Hindu Founders of
the Parent Theosophical Society,” Tiruvallam Hills, considered
to be a Mahatma. It is important because it states clearly the
position of the Wisdom Tradition in regard to Vedic theism.
It was in September, 1880,—more than 20 months ago—that the
Pandit Dayanand Saraswati was told plainly the truth (as he had
been told before, and even written to, from America, when the
Society had at last learned what kind of God was the Iswar
preached by him)—to wit: that the Founders neither then believed, nor ever had believed, in a personal God. The Swami . . .
endows his “I≈war” with all the finite attributes of the Jewish
Jehovah.
The Founders maintain that they do believe in the very Divine
PRINCIPLE taught in the Vedas; in that Principle which is
described at the outset in the Rigveda Sanhita (Man. X., R. 129)
as nåsad åsît na [no] sad åsît—which is “neither entity nor nonentity,” but an ABSTRACT ENTITY, which is no entity, liable to be
described by either words or attributes. And, as they entirely fail
to recognize this eternal, All-Pervading Principle in the “I≈war”
of the Arya Samajists—they turn away from it.32
Although we cannot trace in the Vedic commentaries how
the one impersonal principle came to be thought of as God,
since we lack these, we can see very clearly from the dar≈ana
texts the arrival of the God idea in India. The dar≈anas are the
16 God’s Arrival in India
six systems of Hindu philosophy. According to Hindu tradition,
they are based on the Vedas; that is, they have formulated the
teachings of the Vedas into systems of philosophical thought.
We have texts extant from these six systems that are much older
than the extant Vedic commentaries. So they will provide us
with considerable help in our attempt to trace God’s presence
in ancient India.
As is the norm with historical matters in India, we have no
definite dates for these texts. The Såµkhya system, however, is
regarded by Hindu tradition as the oldest dar≈ana, taught by the
first knower (ådi-vidvån), Kapila, so we will begin with it. The
Såµkhya system, like Buddhism and Jainism, does not teach the
existence of God. It instead explains the world and everything
in it in terms of the interaction of two self-sufficient principles,
purußa and prak®ti. The world is explained as the evolution of
eternal substance, prak®ti, when in contact with purußa, what we
may call spirit, soul, or life. This latter is not God, since it is a
purely passive principle, incapable of thinking or acting. The
fact that there is no place for God in what Hindus themselves
regard as their oldest dar≈ana is a very telling piece of evidence
on the question of God’s presence in ancient India.
As we have seen before in regard to the Wisdom Tradition
and to Buddhism, it is hard for those who have grown up within
a theistic worldview to accept that there can be a true religious
tradition having no place for God. This is also the case in regard
to Såµkhya. The Såµkhya-sütra is generally understood to refute
God. Its verse 1.92, among others,33 specifically says that God is
not proved (î≈vara asidde˙). But the 16th century commentator
Vij∆åna Bhikßu, and some modern translators following him,
understand this as only saying that God cannot be proved, not
that God does not exist.34 This is very much like the agnostic
position, that we cannot know whether or not God exists. The
attribution of the agnostic position to the Wisdom Tradition
was forcefully refuted by the Mahatma K.H.35 He points out that
when a system fully and completely describes the operation of
the cosmos on its own principles, without God, it is absurd to say
there might still be room in it for a God it does not know about
or cannot prove. Such a God would be a non-entity, something
God’s Arrival in India 17
that can and does do absolutely nothing.36 The attribution of
agnosticism to Buddhism, made by certain Buddhist scholars,
may be refuted in a similar manner.37 Likewise, Såµkhya gives a
full account of the origin and operation of the cosmos, that
leaves no room for God in its worldview.38
The Yoga dar≈ana presupposes the Såµkhya worldview. It
provides a system of practice based on this worldview. The
means of practice it teaches is meditation, which culminates in
the state of samådhi. If the practitioner cannot attain samådhi by
means of meditation, it offers an alternative: devotion to î≈vara.
Thus î≈vara is found in this system, though in a peripheral role.
Since the Yoga system accepts the Såµkhya worldview wherein
God plays no part, there is little else for this î≈vara to do. Just
how î≈vara is to be understood in the Yoga system is not fully
explained in the extant texts. The word î≈vara occurs only five
times in the Yoga-sütra of Pata∆jali, the textbook of the system.39
Its earliest commentary is that of Vyåsa. The first person to
translate this difficult commentary, Ganganatha Jha, suggested
the following to explain î≈vara’s role in the Yoga system:
He is nowhere spoken of as the ‘creator’; nor even as the ‘Consciousness’ permeating through all existence. He is spoken of
only as an object of devotion, devotion to whom leads to highest
results. In this respect the ‘god’ of the Yogin appears to hold the
same position, as the ‘devatå’ of the Mîmåµsaka, who posits the
‘devatå’ only as one to whom the prescribed sacrifices can be
offered. He has no other function.40
The fact that î≈vara is found in the Yoga system at all is seen by
some scholars as a concession to growing theism. This only got
stronger. The commentaries coming after Vyåsa’s, such as those
of Våcaspati Mi≈ra (9th century C.E.), and especially of Vij∆åna
Bhikßu (16th century C.E.), give increasing importance to î≈vara
as God.
There is a question as to whether î≈vara means God in
Pata∆jali’s Yoga-sütra. M. D. Shastri’s important study, “History
of the Word ‘ˆ≈vara’ and Its Idea,”41 shows that î≈vara did not
mean God in any of India’s oldest texts, including not only the
18 God’s Arrival in India
Vedic corpus, but also such works as Påñini’s A߆ådhyåyî and
Pata∆jali’s Mahå-bhåßya. It instead only meant a ruler, master,
administrative head (råjå) or king, and competent or capable
of. If the same Pata∆jali wrote both the Yoga-sütra and the Mahåbhåßya, as assumed by Hindu tradition, but doubted by Shastri,
î≈vara would refer to some sort of administrative head (råjå)
rather than God in the Yoga-sütra. This makes no sense in the
context of Yoga (even though Pata∆jali’s system is known as
Råja Yoga, apparently because in it one learns to rule one’s
mind), so no one has pursued this angle. At least, it made no
sense before the Wisdom Tradition became known.
The Secret Doctrine brought out the teaching of the månasaputras, the “sons of mind,” also called solar pit®s (“fathers”), or
solar angels. They are an advanced class of beings, the perfected
humanity of a previous manvantara or life-cycle, that endowed
our present humanity with the spark of mind. In a specific sense
they are our higher selves, and thus our rulers or administrative
heads (råjå). The statements about î≈vara made by Pata∆jali,
that î≈vara is a particular spirit (purußa), etc. (verses 1.24-26),
and also those made by the ancient commentator Vyåsa, could
apply to these. So could the statements from the Såµkhya-sütra
describing an î≈vara of such kind (îd®≈a), which is different from
the î≈vara as God that it refutes. This î≈vara is defined in verse
1.95 as a liberated self (mukta åtman), or perfected one (siddha),
and described in verses 3.54-57 as one who after dissolution into
primary substance (prak®ti) in a previous life-cycle has arisen in
the present one with full knowledge and full action capacity.
Devotion to this î≈vara as a means to achieve samådhi would then
make sense. The explanation of î≈vara as a solar pit® rather than
as God would make sense of î≈vara’s role in the Yoga system.
In either case, î≈vara as God plays at best a marginal role in
the Yoga system, while he plays no role in the Såµkhya system.
We will next take up the other avowedly non-theistic dar≈ana,
the Pürva Mîmåµså system.
The Pürva Mîmåµså system is the most orthodox dar≈ana,
since it is the one that deals with the Vedas proper, the hymns
addressed to the many gods. Yet it, like Såµkhya, has no place
for God. This rather unexpected (at least in later Hinduism)
God’s Arrival in India 19
combination of ultra-orthodoxy and non-theism led T. M. P.
Mahadevan, modern exponent of Advaita Vedånta, to remark:
It is rather strange that the most orthodox of systems should turn
out to be atheistic.42
Not only does it not accept God, even the gods it deals with are
not considered real. Its view of the Vedic deities is described by
Ganganatha Jha, the foremost translator of Mîmåµså texts:
The deity to whom sacrifices are offered is, for the Mîmåmsaka, a
purely hypothetical entity, posited for the sake of the accomplishment of a Sacrifice. . . . this is very clearly brought out in
Mîm[åµså] Sü[tra] IX—i—6-10; in which connection the Bhåßya
explains that the Deity has no body, it does not eat anything, it
cannot be either pleased or displeased; nor can it award prizes or
punishments, as results of sacrifices. . . .43
So the only dar≈ana that deals with the Vedas proper regards the
Vedic deities as purely hypothetical entities. This fact provides
weighty evidence that the Vedas never were polytheistic. As to
God, he finds no place in the Pürva Mîmåµså system because
the Vedas, the all in all of this system, are eternal.
The Vedas are ≈ruti, that which is heard. Even though ≈ruti
is often translated as revelation, this does not mean, like in
other religions, that it is the word of God. What the seers (®ßi)
heard and recorded as the Vedas is something that has always
existed: the eternal sound that is believed in Hindu tradition to
uphold and order the cosmos. The Vedic hymns are these
sound sequences, embodying the cosmic order (®ta). If these
sequences of sound were the word of God, there would be a
time when they did not exist, before God spoke them. But they
are eternal, so they cannot be the word of God. Nor does God
play any part in running the cosmos.
It is by the principle of cosmic order (®ta) rather than by
the will of God that the cosmos operates. Hence this principle
can be said to take the place of God in the Vedic worldview. The
idea of ®ta or cosmic order when applied to the human sphere
20 God’s Arrival in India
became the idea of dharma or duty, what it is necessary for us to
do simply because it is the eternal way of things. These are the
actions (karma) enjoined in the Vedas; and this is the sphere of
Pürva Mîmåµså. The results of these actions are brought about
by an inherent unseen potency (apürva), not by God. Thus in
the Pürva Mîmåµså system, God is not the author of the Vedas;
God did not create the cosmos; God does not run the cosmos;
God did not lay down human duty; God does not reward or
punish; God does not bring about the results of actions. Here as
in the Såµkhya system, God is left with no role to play in the
cosmos. So the existence of God is denied in Pürva Mîmåµså,
the most orthodox Hindu dar≈ana.
Just as Pürva Mîmåµså deals with the Vedas proper, the
former (pürva) part of the ≈ruti, so Uttara Mîmåµså deals with
the latter (uttara) part of the ≈ruti, namely, the Upanißads. Thus
the one universal principle known as brahman or åtman taught
in the Upanißads is the province of the Uttara Mîmåµså system,
better known as Vedånta, the “end (anta) of the Vedas.” The
Brahma-sütra is the textbook of this system, obviously dealing
with brahman. There is, however, no mention in this book of
saguña brahman, the conditioned brahman with attributes, also
called î≈vara, God; nor is this phrase found in the ten principal
Upanißads. Neither is the word î≈vara found in the Brahma-sütra,
nor is it found in eight of the ten principal Upanißads. ˆ≈vara is
found in three places in the B®had-årañyaka Upanißad.
44 In two of
these, as noted in M. D. Shastri’s above-cited study of the word
î≈vara, “it is unambiguously used only in the sense of ‘capable
of.’”45 In the third place it is found in the compound sarve≈vara,
“ruler of all,” used as an adjective describing åtman. It is also
found once in the Måñ∂ükya Upanißad, in the same compound,
used as an adjective describing the third quarter of brahman or
åtman. The related word î≈ is found in the ˆ≈å Upanißad, where
according to Shastri, “it becomes clear that the word ˆ≈ has been
used here more in the sense of Paramåtman, the supreme self
(or Brahman), than in the sense of Parame≈vara or supreme
God.”46 The word î≈ is also found in the Muñ∂aka Upanißad, in
the same sense, reports Shastri.47 So the God idea is not found
in the primary sources of the Vedånta system, the ten principal
God’s Arrival in India 21
Upanißads, nor in its textbook, the Brahma-sütra. Someone had
to bring it in, and do so in a decisive and convincing manner.
That someone was ˛a∫karåcårya.
˛a∫karåcårya is the founder of the Advaita or “non-dual”
school, the oldest school of Vedånta. He wrote very influential
commentaries on the Upanißads and on the Brahma-sütra. In
these he repeatedly brought in the idea of î≈vara, God, usually
making no distinction between î≈vara and the one universal
brahman or åtman.
48 In his emphasis on î≈vara, he differed from
even his own disciples, who very seldom use the word î≈vara in
their writings.49 The disciples he differed from, however, may
not in fact be his. Substantial evidence that the author of the
extant commentaries was not the original ˛a∫karåcårya from
the 5th century B.C.E., but was a later ˛a∫karåcårya from the 8th
century C.E., has been provided elsewhere.50 From what we can
deduce, the teachings of the original ˛a∫karåcårya must differ
significantly from the teachings of the later ˛a∫karåcårya. The
Mahatma K.H. writes in a letter replying to A. O. Hume:
In the first [letter] you notify me of your intention of studying
Advaita Philosophy with a “good old Swami”. The man, no
doubt, is very good; but from what I gather in your letter, if
he teaches you anything you say to me, i.e., anything save an
impersonal, non-thinking and non-intelligent Principle they call
Parabrahm, then he will not be teaching you the true spirit of that
philosophy, not from its esoteric aspect, at any rate.51
In contrast to this, the main theme of the extant Brahma-sütra
commentary of ˛a∫karåcårya is to prove that paraµ brahman is
conscious, is a thinking, intelligent entity. This is as opposed to
the non-conscious primary substance (pradhåna) taught in the
Såµkhya system, then apparently equivalent to brahman.
52 This
˛a∫karåcårya made brahman equivalent to î≈vara.
The idea of î≈vara, the God idea, is universally accepted in
Advaita Vedånta today. It exists alongside the ancient idea from
the Upanißads of the one impersonal principle, brahman. In this
way it is not the same as the God idea in monotheistic religions.
Nonetheless, î≈vara has many of the characteristics of the God
22 God’s Arrival in India
of monotheism. As described by T. M. P. Mahadevan, the God
of Advaita Vedånta is omniscient, omnipotent, the intelligent
controller of the operation of the law of karma, the dispenser of
justice, the moral governor, both the Law-Giver and the Law,
the bestower of grace on his devotees, the object of adoration,
the giver of prosperity, the grantor of liberation, etc.53
In the major Vedånta schools that arose after the Advaita
school, such as the Vi≈i߆ådvaita or “qualified non-dual” school
of Råmånuja, 11th century C.E., and the Dvaita or “dual” school
of Madhva, 13th century C.E., the once impersonal brahman was
progressively transformed into a full-blown personal God. Since
the 8th century C.E., the time of the later ˛a∫karåcårya, Vedånta
in all its schools has been a major force in promoting the God
idea in India.
We now take up the dar≈ana that has been for more than a
millennium the great defender of the God idea in India. This is
the Nyåya system. Nyåya is usually translated as logic.54 All three
religions of ancient India, Jainism, Buddhism, and Hinduism,
utilize reasoning to explain their tenets, in contradistinction to
the three Abrahamic religions, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.
In each of the three Indian religions, separate schools of logic
developed, even though reasoning is used in all their systems.
The schools of logic found in Jainism and Buddhism, of course,
use logic to refute the idea of God. But the Nyåya system found
in Hinduism uses logic to prove the existence of God. Indeed,
the use of logic to prove God reached its culmination in a work
of this system, the Nyåya-kusumå∆jali, written in the 11th century
C.E. by the great champion of the God idea, Udayana. About
this highly influential work Karl Potter writes in his Encyclopedia
of Indian Philosophies:
This work contains by general acclaim the definitive treatment
of the question of how to prove God’s existence.55
Ironically, this turns out to be a reversal of the position of
the system’s founder, Gautama. The original textbook of the
system is Gautama’s Nyåya-sütra. The oldest extant commentary
on it is the bhåßya by Våtsyåyana. The next oldest commentary
God’s Arrival in India 23
on it is the vårttika by Uddyotakara. These three highly complex
texts were first translated into English by Ganganatha Jha and
published serially from 1912-1919. In November of 1919 Jha
presented at the All-India Oriental Conference a paper titled,
“The Theism of Gautama, the Founder of ‘Nyåya,’” in which he
brought out the fact that Gautama’s position on God had been
reversed by the commentators. The one and only place in
Gautama’s Nyåya-sütra that î≈vara is found, 4.1.19, is in a section
giving the views of others, not those of Gautama, that Gautama
cites and then refutes. It took all the ingenuity of the theistic
commentators to turn this around. Ganganatha Jha writes:
A study of the commentators however sheds a lurid light upon
this device of the Vårtikakåra; and shows how hopelessly confused is the entire attempt to fasten this doctrine on Gautama.56
A few decades later, Harvard professor Daniel Ingalls took
up this same topic in his paper titled, “Human Effort Versus
God’s Effort in the Early Nyåya (NS. 4. 1. 19-21),” apparently
independently of Jha, since Jha’s paper is not cited. Here
Ingalls observes, as had Jha earlier:
The general movement of Nyåya opinion throughout this period
may be judged from one observation: the later the commentator
the greater the importance which he assigns to God . . .57
Ingalls shows the progressive stages this theism went through at
the hands of the commentators, beginning with Våtsyåyana,
who started it all with what is characterized by Ingalls as a “bold
aboutface (volte face).”
Since then, other studies have further clarified the nontheistic position of early Nyåya.58 From the various available
sources we get the following picture.
The Nyåya system as described by its founder, Gautama, in
his 528-verse Nyåya-sütra, has no place for God. Gautama did,
however, bring up the hypothesis of God, in order to reject it in
favor of human effort or action (karma). Some centuries later,
Våtsyåyana, the author of the oldest commentary now extant,
24 God’s Arrival in India
although acknowledging that Gautama’s verse on î≈vara is the
view of another, inexplicably treated it as if it were Gautama’s
own view.59 Våtsyåyana thereby put God’s foot in the door of the
Nyåya system by allowing God to play a role in the working of
karma. A few centuries after that, Uddyotakara, the author of
the next oldest commentary, opened the door wide for God, by
making God stand above the law of karma, and by giving the
first Nyåya proof of God’s existence. The next commentator,
Våcaspati Mi≈ra, seeing that Gautama’s verse on î≈vara was in
fact the view of another, so that the position of the previous two
commentators who treated it as Gautama’s own view could not
be maintained, took a new leap for God. Rather than accepting
the fact that Gautama here rejects the view that God is the cause
of the world, Våcaspati Mi≈ra has Gautama only rejecting the
view that God is the material cause (upådåna) of the world, and
thereby proving that God is the efficient cause (nimitta kåraña)
of the world. The proof that Våcaspati Mi≈ra put forth on behalf
of Gautama became the standard Nyåya proof for the existence
of God. This proof was taken up in a fourth commentary, and
the proof of God was made eloquent in the Nyåya-kusumå∆jali,
both by God’s great champion, Udayana, which put God firmly
in control in the Nyåya system.
We have now come full circle from where we started. From
all the available evidence, it would seem that the original Nyåya
system of Gautama, like Jainism and like Buddhism, believed in
karma alone as the sole regulator of the cosmos. God was not
yet involved.
Just as the Såµkhya system is paired with the Yoga system,
with Såµkhya providing the basic worldview for both, so the
Nyåya system is paired with the Vai≈eßika system, with Vai≈eßika
providing the basic worldview for both. The basic worldview
provided by the Vai≈eßika system is one of eternal atoms. Like in
Nyåya, where God has taken over the operation of karma, so in
Vai≈eßika, God has taken control of the eternal atoms. Thus the
joint Nyåya-Vai≈eßika system is seen in India as the staunchest
upholder of the idea of God. This is despite the fact that the
original Vai≈eßika textbook, Kañåda’s Vai≈eßika-sütra, does not
even mention î≈vara. How, then, did God get there?
God’s Arrival in India 25
Again, as in Nyåya, God found his way into the Vai≈eßika
system only gradually. None of the ancient commentaries on
the Vai≈eßika-sütra, such as the bhåßya by Råvaña, are extant.60
From what we know of the commentary by Råvaña, it, like the
Vai≈eßika-sütra itself, did not refer to God.61 The basic worldview
of the Vai≈eßika-sütra as explained in an ancient commentary,
probably Råvaña’s, was summarized by ˛a∫karåcårya in the 8th
century C.E., when this was still available.62 The eternal atoms
come together under the impetus of ad®ß†a, unseen potency, to
form the visible cosmos. Ad®ß†a is the unseen potency arising
from human actions (karma) that brings about their fruition,
even if in another lifetime, or even in the next periodic cosmos.
Ad®ß†a explains how karma works. Thus in early Vai≈eßika, as was
practically universal in ancient India, it is karma that operates
the cosmos rather than God. Only later was God brought in to
take over ad®ß†a as the efficient cause of the world, that impels
the eternal atoms, the material cause.
The oldest available Vai≈eßika text after the Vai≈eßika-sütra
is the Da≈a-padårtha-≈åstra, which was translated into Chinese
about the 5th century C.E.
63 It, too, nowhere mentions î≈vara.
God first appears in the Vai≈eßika system in the Padårtha-dharmasa∫graha of Pra≈asta-påda, about the 6th century C.E. In this text,
î≈vara, who impels ad®ß†a, is responsible for the creation of the
world.64 The teaching of God was attributed to the Vai≈eßikasütra from this time onward. A commentary by Candrånanda
from perhaps the 7th century C.E. explains a pronoun in verse 3
of the Vai≈eßika-sütra as referring to î≈vara.
65 The commentary by
˛a∫kara Mi≈ra from the 15th century C.E., for long the only one
known, also explains this pronoun as referring to î≈vara, but
adds that it could refer to the more obvious dharma, the subject
of the preceding two verses.66 Interestingly, in a commentary by
Bha††a Vådîndra from the 13th century C.E., although theistic,
this pronoun is explained entirely differently, as referring to
heaven and liberation (svargåpavargayo˙).67 This diversity of
interpretation is made possible by the terse sütra style. Taking
advantage of this terseness, î≈vara is brought in at several other
places in the Vai≈eßika-sütra by the commentators, who made
sure that God was here to stay in the Vai≈eßika system.
26 God’s Arrival in India
The history of the development of the God idea in the
Vai≈eßika system has formed the subject of extensive research
conducted over many years by George Chemparathy. In 1965
he published an article in which he brought out a statement
from an early commentator specifically saying that God had
been imported into the Vai≈eßika system. The Yukti-dîpikå, an
early Såµkhya commentary that was only lately discovered and
first published in 1938, describes in its discussion of the î≈vara
doctrine two systems: the På≈upata and the Vai≈eßika. It says that
the original Vai≈eßika system did not admit the existence of
î≈vara, but that the later Vai≈eßikas accepted this doctrine from
the På≈upatas. It calls this an innovation or invention. Here is
this statement from the Yukti-dîpikå, concluding its discussion of
the î≈vara doctrine, translated by Chemparathy:
This (doctrine of ˆ≈vara) is wrongly attributed to the Åcårya
[Kañåda, author of the Vai≈eßika-sütra] in order to put a share of
your fault on him, but (in truth) it is not his view. Thus (the
doctrine) of the followers of Kañåda, that there exists an ˆ≈vara,
is an invention (upaj∆am) of the På≈upatas.68
The På≈upatas may be thought of as ˛aivas, those who worship
˛iva or some form of ˛iva such as Pa≈upati. There is no doubt
that popular movements such as this, not only ˛aivism but also
Vaißñavism, contributed greatly to God’s arrival in India.
In summary, of the six philosophical systems of Hinduism,
the oldest, Såµkhya, and the most orthodox, Pürva Mîmåµså,
are avowedly non-theistic; they do not teach the existence of
God. The Yoga system includes î≈vara, but in a peripheral role,
and this î≈vara may not be God. Vedånta originally taught only
the impersonal principle called brahman; the idea of a personal
God, î≈vara, was brought in later. Nyåya originally denied God,
but this was later turned around and made into the definitive
proof of God. Vai≈eßika originally lacked God, but God was later
imported from the På≈upatas. So philosophical Hinduism did
not originally accept God. Nor can a single, all-powerful God be
found in the Vedas. All this shows beyond reasonable doubt that
early Hinduism, like Jainism and Buddhism, was non-theistic.
God’s Arrival in India 27
Therefore, all of ancient India, home of the Wisdom Tradition,
was once non-theistic. God was not a part of the teachings of the
Wisdom Tradition.
The Problem with God
The Mahå-Chohan, who is regarded as the teacher of the
teachers behind the Theosophical movement, and therefore as
the foremost authority of our time on the Wisdom Tradition, is
recorded as making this remarkable statement:
The world in general and Christendom especially, left for two
thousand years to the regime of a personal God as well as its
political and social systems based on that idea, has now proved a
failure.69
Perhaps a big failure. The Mahatma K.H. said that their own
philosophy “is preminently the science of effects by their causes
and of causes by their effects.”70 He asked Hume to work out the
causes of evil in the world. After enumerating the human vices
that one would expect as the causes of evil, K.H. continued:
Think well over these few words; work out every cause of evil you
can think of and trace it to its origin and you will have solved
one-third of the problem of evil. And now, after making due
allowance for evils that are natural and cannot be avoided,—and
so few are they that I challenge the whole host of Western
metaphysicians to call them evils or to trace them directly to an
independent cause—I will point out the greatest, the chief cause
of nearly two thirds of the evils that pursue humanity ever since
that cause became a power. It is religion under whatever form
and in whatsoever nation. It is the sacerdotal caste, the priesthood and the churches; it is in those illusions that man looks
upon as sacred, that he has to search out the source of that
multitude of evils which is the great curse of humanity and
that almost overwhelms mankind. Ignorance created Gods and
cunning took advantage of the opportunity. Look at India and
look at Christendom and Islam, at Judaism and Fetichism. It is
28 God’s Arrival in India
priestly imposture that rendered these Gods so terrible to man;
it is religion that makes of him the selfish bigot, the fanatic that
hates all mankind out of his own sect without rendering him any
better or more moral for it. It is belief in God and Gods that
makes two-thirds of humanity the slaves of a handful of those
who deceive them under the false pretence of saving them. Is
not man ever ready to commit any kind of evil if told that his God
or Gods demand the crime?; voluntary victim of an illusionary
God, the abject slave of his crafty ministers. The Irish, Italian and
Slavonian peasant will starve himself and see his family starving
and naked to feed and clothe his padre and pope. For two
thousand years India groaned under the weight of caste,
Brahmins alone feeding on the fat of the land, and to-day the
followers of Christ and those of Mahomet are cutting each
other’s throats in the names of and for the greater glory of their
respective myths. Remember the sum of human misery will
never be diminished unto that day when the better portion of
humanity destroys in the name of Truth, morality, and universal
charity, the altars of their false gods.71
The custodians of the Wisdom Tradition, being committed to
the upliftment of humanity, have traced the cause of two thirds
of humanity’s suffering. This cause, theistic religion and the
God idea, is something they aim to deliver humanity from.
The God of the Theologians is simply an imaginary power. . . .
Our chief aim is to deliver humanity of this nightmare, to teach
man virtue for its own sake, and to walk in life relying on himself
instead of leaning on a theological crutch, that for countless
ages was the direct cause of nearly all human misery.72
To deliver humanity from the God idea, their chief aim, is no
small task. According to The Secret Doctrine, theism has been
around for many ages.
Thus the first Atlantean races, born on the Lemurian Continent, separated from their earliest tribes into the righteous and
the unrighteous; into those who worshipped the one unseen
God’s Arrival in India 29
Spirit of Nature, the ray of which man feels within himself—or
the Pantheists, and those who offered fanatical worship to the
Spirits of the Earth, the dark Cosmic, anthropomorphic Powers,
with whom they made alliance. . . .
Such was the secret and mysterious origin of all the subsequent and modern religions, especially of the worship of the
later Hebrews for their tribal god.73
This explains the Mahatma K.H.’s statement cited earlier
that “the idea of God is not an innate but an acquired notion.”
In our own age, the God idea was acquired by the Hebrews as
the teachings of the Wisdom Tradition went forth from their
home in ancient India, and acquired from the Hebrews by the
Christians and Muslims. Abraham is the patriarch of the three
monotheistic faiths, Judaism, Christianity through his son Isaac,
and Islam through his son Ishmael. Thus Abraham is hailed as
the father of monotheism. The Secret Doctrine explains Abram,
Abraham’s original name before God changed it (see Genesis
17.5), as “A-bram,” meaning a non-Brahman (the prefix “a” is a
negative in Sanskrit). The Brahmans are India’s priestly caste,
originally the keepers of the wisdom teachings.
The Semites, especially the Arabs, are later Åryans—degenerate
in spirituality and perfected in materiality. To these belong all
the Jews and the Arabs. The former are a tribe descended
from the Chañ∂ålas of India, the outcasts, many of them exBrahmans, who sought refuge in Chaldea, in Sind, and Åria
(Iran), and were truly born from their A-bram (no-Bråhman)
some 8000 years B.C.
74
Abraham is the symbolic non-Brahman who does not keep the
wisdom teachings in their purity, and thus he becomes the first
monotheist. For this he is celebrated in the world. Through the
three Abrahamic religions, monotheism now has become the
faith of half the population of the world. From the standpoint
of the Wisdom Tradition, what Abraham did with its teachings
outside of India, in bringing in the God idea, brought about a
major world problem. If India is the spiritual motherland of the
30 God’s Arrival in India
world, it is to her that the world must turn to solve this problem.
But the God idea has now infiltrated India, too. Even karma,
which had once taken the place of God, has now been taken
over by God. God’s arrival in India, it would seem, has brought
about an even more serious problem for the world than did the
acquisition of the God idea outside of India.
The Mahå-Chohan, whose statement opened this section,
also made another statement at the same time, in 1881:
Oh, for the noble and unselfish man to help us effectually in India
in that divine task. All our knowledge past and present would not
be sufficient to repay him.75
I had long wondered about the meaning of this statement. The
divine task he refers to is that of propagating the idea of the
brotherhood of humanity. This is, of course, the first object of
the Theosophical Society. Were there not already noble and
unselfish people to help in this? What was so important about
doing this effectually in India?
What the Mahå-Chohan here alludes to, I now think, is the
problem of theism in India. By the end of the first millennium
C.E., Hinduism had acquired the God idea, Buddhism had left
India for other lands, and India had fallen under foreign rule,
which was to last until 1947. India under God is not in a position
to fulfill its dharma as the source of the wisdom teachings, the
teachings that alone can solve the world’s greatest problem, the
problem of God. To deliver India from the God idea, and
thereby ultimately deliver humanity from the God idea, the
only realistic course then available was to promote the idea of
the brotherhood of humanity. Attempting to directly promote
non-theism would only have fostered the very thing the God
idea was responsible for in the first place: intolerance of the
beliefs of others and hatred of everyone outside one’s own sect;
in brief, religious persecution. This was not an option.
The Theosophical movement was successful, I believe, in
establishing the idea of brotherhood in the consciousness of
humanity. It also spread the idea of karma around the world,
which must someday take the place of God, as it did in ancient
God’s Arrival in India 31
India. “Replace the word ‘God’ by that of Karma and it will
become an Eastern axiom,” says The Secret Doctrine.
76 Knowledge
of the ways of karma, affirms The Secret Doctrine, would eliminate
the cause of two thirds of the world’s evil, i.e., the God idea.
Nor would the ways of Karma be inscrutable were men to work
in union and harmony, instead of disunion and strife. For our
ignorance of those ways—which one portion of mankind calls
the ways of Providence, dark and intricate, while another sees in
them the action of blind Fatalism, and a third, simple chance,
with neither gods nor devils to guide them—would surely disappear, if we would but attribute all these to their correct cause.
With right knowledge . . . the two-thirds of the World’s evil would
vanish into thin air.77
It is not the Theosophical movement, however, that is likely to
bring this about; for as most observers recognize, it is no longer
a force in the world. Perhaps this is because it, like Hinduism,
acquired the God idea, and thus ceased to truly represent the
Wisdom Tradition.
NOTES
1. H. P. Blavatsky Collected Writings, [ed. by Boris de Zirkoff,] vol. 14,
Wheaton, Illinois: Theosophical Publishing House, 1985, p. 310; from
“The Post-Christian Successors to the Mysteries,” section 34 of The
Secret Doctrine, vol. 3, 1897; or vol. 5 of the 6-volume Adyar ed., 1938.
2. The Secret Doctrine, by H. P. Blavatsky, 2 vols., 1st ed., 1888; many
reprints since; I use the definitive edition prepared by Boris de Zirkoff
(pagination unchanged), Adyar, Madras: Theosophical Publishing
House, 1978, vol. 2, p. 584.
3. Isis Unveiled, by H. P. Blavatsky, 2 vols., 1st ed., 1877; reprint,
[ed. by Boris de Zirkoff] (pagination unchanged), Adyar, Madras:
Theosophical Publishing House, 1972, vol. 1, p. 589.
4. The Mahatma Letters to A. P. Sinnett, transcribed and compiled by
A. T. Barker, 1st ed., 1923; 2nd (corrected) ed., London: Rider & Co.,
1926; facsimile reprint, Pasadena: Theosophical University Press,
1975; 3rd rev. ed., Adyar, Madras: Theosophical Publishing House,
32 God’s Arrival in India
1962, letter #10, p. 52; chronological ed., Quezon City, Metro Manila,
Philippines: Theosophical Publishing House, 1993, pp. 269-270.
5. The Mahatma Letters, letter #54, 3rd ed. p. 300. See also letter
#23B, 3rd ed. p. 152: “. . . Mr. Hume’s MSS., ‘On God’—that he kindly
adds to our Philosophy, something the latter had never contemplated
before—. . .”
6. Some have regarded this utilization of the term “God” in the
Djwhal Khul/Alice Bailey writings as “skillful means”; that is, the use of
teachings that are not ultimately true in order to benefit a spiritually
immature audience, one that is presently incapable of assimilating the
actual truth. To move a largely Christian audience from an anthropomorphic conception of God to a much more abstract conception of
God as the Solar Logos, rather than causing them to reject the Ageless
Wisdom teachings altogether as being Godless, would be considered
in Buddhism as skillful means.
Others have considered the Mahatma letters to be of questionable authenticity, and have therefore doubted whether their denial of
God accurately represents the position of the Ageless Wisdom Tradition. This is based on the statement in Alice Bailey’s The Rays and the
Initiations, p. 342: “The Master K.H., in one of the few (the very few)
paragraphs in The Mahatma Letters which are genuine and not simply
the work of H.P.B. . . .” H. P. Blavatsky said the same thing in an 1886
letter, published by C. Jinarajadasa in the Introduction to The Early
Teachings of the Masters: “It is very rarely that Mahatma K.H. dictated
verbatim; and when he did there remained the few sublime passages
found in Mr. Sinnett’s letters from him.” Blavatsky points out here
that “the Masters would not stoop for one moment to give a thought to
individual, private matters relating but to one or even ten persons,
their welfare, woes and blisses in this world of Maya, to nothing except
questions of really universal importance.” The Mahatma letters in
question, letters #10 and #22, on the topic of God, certainly pertain to
questions of really universal importance. A study of the more than 100
Mahatma letters shows that these two are almost certainly among the
few that are genuine (along with letter #2, which is apparently the one
referred to in the Bailey passage cited above, and two other letters not
found in The Mahatma Letters, namely, the first letter of K.H. to A. O.
Hume, and the Mahå-Chohan’s letter, besides parts of others).
There is a passage that deals directly with this question in Alice
Bailey’s Esoteric Psychology, vol. 2, pp. 229-230: “We have spoken here
of God in terms of Person, and we have used therefore the pronouns,
He and His. Must it therefore be inferred that we are dealing with
God’s Arrival in India 33
a stupendous Personality which we call God, and do we therefore
belong to that school of thought which we call the anthropomorphic?
The Buddhist teaching recognises no God or Person. Is it, therefore,
wrong from our point of view and approach, or is it right?” The answer
is: “Both schools of thought are right and in no way contradict each
other.” The author says further: “In form and when in manifestation,
the only way in which the human mind and brain can express its recognition of the conditioning divine life is to speak in terms of Person,
of Individuality. Hence we speak of God as a Person, of His will, His
nature and His form.” This statement holds true only for the Western
Christian audience to whom it was addressed, since Buddhists and
Jainas have in fact developed spiritual systems that have functioned
effectively for thousands of years without ever speaking in terms of
Person. This answer is reminiscent of a famous editorial that appeared
in The New York Sun at the end of the nineteenth century, which said in
answer to the question of 8-year-old Virginia O’Hanlan, “Yes, Virginia,
there is a Santa Claus. He exists as certainly as love and generosity and
devotion exist.” How else could a question like this be answered? Just
as a professor of physics will answer the same question one way when
speaking to a class of beginning physics students, and another way
when speaking to another physics professor, we may assume that the
Tibetan, D.K., would have dealt with this question very differently to
an audience of Tibetan Buddhists.
7. The Mahatma Letters, letter #10, 3rd ed. p. 52.
8. The Tattvårthådhigama-sütra, written by Umåsvåti or Umåsvåmi,
has recently been published in the West in English as That Which Is,
translated by Nathmal Tatia, Harper Collins Publishers, 1994. A previous translation by J. L. Jaini, Tattvarthadhigama Sutra, Sacred Books of
the Jainas, vol. 2, 1920, was reprinted by AMS Press, New York, in 1974.
A translation with the early commentary of Püjyapåda called Sarvårthasiddhi was published under the title, Reality, by S. A. Jain, Calcutta: Vira
Sasana Sangha, 1960. A translation with a modern commentary was
published as Pt. Sukhlalji’s Commentary on Tattvårtha Sütra of Våcaka
Umåsvåti, Ahmedabad: L. D. Institute of Indology, 1974.
When the Tattvårthådhigama-sütra was written, approximately
two millenniums ago, Jainas made up a significant percentage of
India’s population. Today, Jainas make up less than one percent of
India’s population. Jainas today, living in a sea of Hindus who all
believe in God, have sometimes adopted the word God for their
paramåtman, or muktåtman, or mukta-jîva, or siddha-parame߆hi, which
all refer to a liberated soul, perfectly pure, and completely freed from
34 God’s Arrival in India
karmic bondage; the goal held out for all souls. This, of course, is not
God as understood in other religions. Thus, one may occasionally see
references to God in modern Jaina writings, but Jainism has in fact
never postulated the existence of God. This is because, as put by
Subodh Kumar Pal in “A Note on Jaina Atheism”: “—it is karma alone
which fructuates and determines the course of an individual through
different births. Because the Jaina believes in the inexorable moral law of
karma which no mercy can bend.” (Jain Journal, vol. 24, no. 2, Oct. 1989,
p. 52; italics his.)
9. The Abhidharma-ko≈a, written by Vasubandhu, has now been published in English with its auto-commentary, as Abhidharmako≈abhåßyam,
first translated into French by Louis de La Vallée Poussin, 1923-1931,
then translated from French into English by Leo M. Pruden, 4 vols.,
Asian Humanities Press: Berkeley, 1988-1990.
10. The World’s Religions: Our Great Wisdom Traditions, by Huston
Smith, HarperSanFrancisco, 1991, p. 115. This is a revised and updated edition of his 1958 book, The Religions of Man.
11. The Perennial Philosophy, by Aldous Huxley, New York and
London: Harper & Brothers Publishers, 3rd ed., 1945 (1st ed., 1944),
p. 22. This shows that Huxley did not conceive of Godhead without
God, even though he popularized the use of the term Godhead as
something that could be distinguished from God (contrary to standard dictionaries, which define Godhead as God). God is, for him, an
inherent aspect of Godhead. He writes, for example, on pp. 23-24: “It
would be a mistake, of course, to suppose that people who worship
one aspect of God to the exclusion of all the rest must inevitably run
into the different kinds of trouble described above. If they are not too
stubborn in their ready-made beliefs, if they submit with docility to
what happens to them in the process of worshipping, the God who is
both immanent and transcendent, personal and more than personal,
may reveal Himself to them in his fulness.”
12. The Perennial Philosophy, p. 21. The Hindu “God-without-form,”
or impersonal Godhead, is nirguña brahman. Brahman is equated with
åtman, the self of all, in the Upanißads. Buddhism, with its cardinal
doctrine of anåtman, “no-self,” denies the åtman. There have, however,
been several attempts to show that original Buddhism did not deny
åtman in the sense taught in the old Upanißads, where it is identified
with the impersonal brahman. Only one of these attempts has been
regarded seriously, that of Kamaleswar Bhattacharya in his book,
L’Åtman-Brahman dans le Bouddhisme ancien, Paris: École française
d’Extrême-Orient, 1973 (an English translation is forthcoming). This
God’s Arrival in India 35
book came about as a result of Bhattacharya’s studies on Cambodia.
While working on old Buddhist inscriptions found there, he was
struck by one which read, “Let the Buddha give you enlightenment, by
whom the doctrine of no-self was well-taught, as the means of attaining
the highest self (paramåtman), though [apparently] in contradiction.”
He attempts to show in this book, on the basis of the Påli and Sanskrit
Buddhist scriptures, that the Buddha does not deny the åtman taught
in the Upanißads, but on the contrary indirectly affirms it, in denying
that which is falsely believed to be the åtman.
The Cambodia connection is of particular interest to students of
the Wisdom Tradition. H. P. Blavatsky had said about Angkor Wat,
“After the Pyramids this is the most occult edifice in the whole world”
(see her entry, “Nagkon Wat,” the name used for Angkor Wat, in The
Theosophical Glossary, p. 223). Paul Brunton’s posthumously published
notebooks provided further information. See chapter 4, section 7,
“The Secret Doctrine of the Khmers,” in The Notebooks of Paul Brunton,
vol. 10, The Orient: Its Legacy to the West, Burdett, New York: Larson Publications, 1987, pp. 197-202. Brunton’s informant, a Mongolian Lama,
said that Dorjeff and Blavatsky were co-disciples of the same guru. On
Dorjeff’s life, see: Buddhism in Russia, The Story of Agvan Dorzhiev,
Lhasa’s Emissary to the Tsar, by John Snelling, Element, 1993.
Cambodia was described by Brunton’s informant as one of three
centers of the secret doctrine, along with south India and Tibet. The
headquarters of this tradition shift locations every seven hundred
years. This tradition was centered in Cambodia from the sixth to the
thirteenth centuries C.E. Before that it was centered in south India.
After Cambodia it was centered in Tibet, up till 1939. In Cambodia, it
thrived during most of the Khmer Empire, which lasted from the
ninth to the fifteenth centuries C.E., and which was centered at
Angkor. However, little is known about religion in the Khmer Empire,
other than that it included both Hinduism and Mahåyåna Buddhism
(which latter apparently included the Ådi-Buddha teaching, found in
Kålacakra). This is because, as noted in a recent National Geographic
article, “The Temples of Angkor,” by Douglas Preston, Aug. 2000,
p. 86: “Its extensive libraries of writings on palm leaves or animal skins
vanished without a trace centuries ago, leaving us only a scattering of
puzzling stone inscriptions.”
13. The Mahatma Letters, letter #10, 3rd ed. pp. 53-56.
14. Buddhism—A Non-Theistic Religion, by Helmuth von Glasenapp,
London: George Allen and Unwin, 1970, p. 107. This is an English
translation of the original German book, Buddhismus und Gottesidee,
36 God’s Arrival in India
Wiesbaden, 1954. See also p. 119: “Thus Nirvåna cannot be equated
with the Christian God for it lacks most of the distinguishing marks of
God: it is not a personality; it does not think, feel, or will; it did not
create the world, nor does it rule it, etc.”
15. The Brahma-jåla Sutta is the first Sutta of the Dîgha Nikåya, so
can be found in the Pali Text Society’s edition and translation of the
latter. A recent English translation is The Long Discourses of the Buddha,
Boston: Wisdom Publications, 1995 (published as Thus Have I Heard in
1987). The idea of Brahmå as the creator is refuted in 2.3-6.
16. This treatise, titled ˆ≈vara-kart®tva-niråk®tir Vißñor-eka-kart®tvaniråkarañam, “Refutation of ˆ≈vara as Creator; refutation of Vißñu as
Sole Creator,” is attributed to Någårjuna in the Tibetan Tanjur. It was
first published, in Sanskrit and Tibetan, by F. W. Thomas in his “Notes
from the Tanjur,” Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, 1903, pp. 345-349.
An English translation of it is included in: “Two Early Buddhist Refutations of the Existence of ˆ≈vara as the Creator of the Universe,” by
George Chemparathy, Wiener Zeitschrift für die Kunde Süd- und Ostasiens,
vol. 12-13, 1968/1969, p. 85-100. The other refutation he includes is
from the Yogåcåra-bhümi, by Asa∫ga.
17. Encyclopaedia of Buddhism, ed. G. P. Malalasekera, published by
the Government of Sri Lanka, vol. 5, fasc. 2, 1991, p. 346; entry “God,”
by Gunapala Dharmasiri and Jonathan S. Walters.
18. The Mahatma Letters, letter #22, 3rd ed. pp. 137-138.
19. The Mahatma Letters, letter #22, 3rd ed. p. 139.
20. The Mahatma Letters, letter #22, 3rd ed. pp. 139-140.
21. Incomplete manuscripts of a few other commentaries on the
Vedas were discovered in the early 1900s, those of Skanda-svåmin,
Udgîtha, and Ve∫kata Mådhava, all pre-Såyaña. Skanda-svåmin’s, the
oldest, may possibly date to the 7th century C.E. This is still far
removed from the time of the Vedas. Their approach does not differ
substantially from Såyaña’s.
Såyaña employs a ritualistic interpretation of the Vedas, having
reference to sacrifice, and this line of interpretation has by default
conditioned modern understanding of the Vedas. But from references found in a much older text, the Nirukta, we see that this is only
one of three lines of Vedic interpretation. While explaining certain
Vedic passages, the Nirukta occasionally refers to these three kinds of
interpretation (see: Nirukta 3.12, 10.26, 11.4, 12.37, 12.38): adhiyaj∆a,
having reference to sacrifice (the one used by Såyaña); adhidaivata,
having reference to the deity; and adhyåtma, having reference to the
self or spirit, i.e., the inner. This last kind of interpretation had been
God’s Arrival in India 37
almost entirely lost, but in the twentieth century attempts were made
by writers such as Vasudeva S. Agrawala to revive it.
Vasudeva S. Agrawala (1904-1966) was the main writer in English
on the adhyåtma tradition of Vedic interpretation. His teacher was
Pandit Motilal Sastri, a disciple of Madhusudan Ojha, Raja Pandit of
Jaipur. These two wrote many books, but not in English. Agrawala first
called attention to this line of interpretation in his 1939 article, “The
Vedas and Adhyåtma Tradition,” Indian Culture, vol. 5, pp. 285-292. I
am aware of only one other publication in English preceding this that
advocated the adhyåtma approach: “Indra—The ‰g-Vedic Åtman,” by
O. K. Anantalakshmi, Journal of Oriental Research, Madras, vol. 1, 1927,
pp. 27-44. Agrawala went on to publish several books utilizing this
approach. His magnum opus is The Thousand-Syllabled Speech, I. Vision
in Long Darkness, Varanasi: Prithivi Prakashan, 1963, an annotated
translation of ‰g-veda hymn 1.164.
22. See: The Secret Doctrine, vol. 1, pp. xxiii-xxx. For a list of the “real,
original” Sanskrit works once found in India, see “The Strange Story
of a Hidden Book,” in The Science of the Sacred Word, Being a Summarized
Translation of The Pranava-vada of Gargyayana, by Bhagavan Das, vol. 1,
Adyar, Madras: The Theosophist Office, 1910, pp. i-lxxxi, especially
pp. xii-xiv, xl-xlvii. This describes “a special literature which existed
and was extant and matter of public knowledge and study in India,
some thousands of years ago, and which still exists, but now inextant
and hidden, and to be rediscovered by single-minded and laborious
search only” (p. lx). The Prañava-våda is one of these works, whose
summarized English translation by Bhagavan Das was published in
three volumes, 1910-1913. Two volumes of its original Sanskrit were
published: Pranava Vada of Maharshi Gargyayana and Pranava Vadartha
Deepika of Swami Yogananda, ed. by K. T. Sreenivasachariar, vol. I,
Madras: The Brahmavadin Press, 1915; vol. II, Madras: The Modern
Printing Works, 1919, Suddha Dharma Mandala Series no. 5 (a-1).
The Suddha Dharma Mandala also brought out other of these hidden
Sanskrit works, most notably what they call the original Bhagavad-gîtå,
having 745 verses rather than 700 as in the now extant version.
23. Coomaraswamy, 2: Selected Papers, Metaphysics, edited by Roger
Lipsey, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1977; Bollingen Series,
89; p. 175; from his 1936 article, “Vedic ‘Monotheism.’”
24. The Cultural Heritage of India, vol. 1, Calcutta: The Ramakrishna
Mission Institute of Culture, 2nd ed., 1958, pp. 327-328.
25. Vasudeva S. Agrawala, The Thousand-Syllabled Speech, I. Vision in
Long Darkness, Varanasi: Prithivi Prakashan, 1963, p. 180.
38 God’s Arrival in India
26. Nirukta, 7.14 (Agni as the first deity), 7.17 (Agni as all the
deities; this is found in the Bråhmañas), and 7.18 (quotation of Vedic
verse). See: The Nighañ†u and the Nirukta, ed. and trans. by Lakshman
Sarup, 1st ed. 1920-1927; reprint, Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1967.
27. Nirukta, 7.4; Coomaraswamy, 2: Selected Papers, Metaphysics, p. 166;
Sarup, The Nighañ†u and the Nirukta, English p. 115, Sanskrit p. 134;
also cited by Agrawala, “Yåska and Påñini,” in The Cultural Heritage of
India, vol. 1, 2nd ed., p. 300.
28. Sarup, The Nighañ†u and the Nirukta, p. 115, fn. 10.
29. Såyaña’s Preface to the ‰gvedabhåßya, trans. Peter Peterson, Poona:
Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute, 1974, p. 2 (first published in
Handbook to the Study of the Rigveda, Bombay Sanskrit Series, 41, 1890).
30. Rig-Veda-Samhitâ . . . with the Commentary of Sâyanâkârya, vol. I, ed.
F. Max Müller, 2nd ed., London: Henry Frowde, 1890, p. 2, lines 27-
29; for English, see: Peterson, Såyaña’s Preface, p. 6.
31. See: George Chemparathy, “Some Observations on Dayånanda
Sarasvatî’s Conception of the Veda,” Wiener Zeitschrift für die Kunde
Südasiens, vol. 38, 1994, p. 235-236. On p. 236, he writes: “The reason
for the strikingly subordinate position accorded to the Upanißads may
be sought in the very nature of their central teachings, which could
not at all be brought into harmony with Dayånanda’s own conception
of God, man, and the external world. The Upanißads view the Ultimate Reality as absolutistic and monistic. . . . By contrast, Dayånanda
accepts a single personal supreme God as the creator of the universe.
. . . A strict monotheistic belief . . . could not be constructed on the
monistic and idealistic underpinnings of the Upanißadic thought.”
Earlier, on p. 232, he wrote: “. . . Dayånanda set about his work of
reform by re-interpreting the Vedic texts in such a way as to present
Hinduism as a monotheistic religion, purged of all forms of polytheism and idolatry. In order to achieve this end he had to repudiate
certain traditional conceptions on the nature of the Veda and to interpret the Vedic texts in such a way as to make them suit his own ideas.”
Others agree that a single, all-powerful God cannot be found in
the Vedas. Leading Vedic scholar R. N. Dandekar in his article, “God
in Hindu Thought,” Annals of the Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute,
vols. 48 & 49, 1968, p. 440, writes: “In spite of all such indications, it
must be clearly stated that monotheism in the sense of a single ethical
god who, while being intimately involved in the world-process, is yet
transcendental in character had not developed in the Vedic period.”
Similarly, leading Western Vedic scholar Jan Gonda in his study, “The
Concept of a Personal God in Ancient Indian Religious Thought,”
God’s Arrival in India 39
Selected Studies, vol. 4: History of Ancient Indian Religion, Leiden: E. J.
Brill, 1975, pp. 1-26, was unable to find this kind of God in the Vedas.
32. “A Mental Puzzle,” The Theosophist, vol. 3, no. 9, June 1882,
Supplement, p. 7. “Man. X., R. 129” is Mañ∂ala 10, Sükta 129. The “R”
is apparently a misprint for “S.” The line quoted from this Sükta or
hymn is the first line of ‰k 1, or verse 1.
33. See also: Såµkhya-sütra 5.2-10, 6.64. I cite this and like titles as
sütra rather than sütras, although both are correct, the Sanskrit being
either sütram (singular) or sütråñi (plural). For an English translation
of the Såµkhya-sütra along with the commentaries of Aniruddha and
Vij∆åna Bhikßu, see: The Samkhya Philosophy, trans. Nandalal Sinha,
Sacred Books of the Hindus, vol. 11, Allahabad: 1915; reprint, New
York: AMS Press, 1974; reprint, New Delhi: Oriental Books Reprint
Corporation, 1979. The Såµkhya-sütra is supposed to be the textbook
of the Såµkhya system, but the extant Såµkhya-sütra is clearly a later
compilation. It does, however, include undeniably ancient Såµkhya
teachings. The Såµkhya-kårikå serves in its place as the textbook of the
Såµkhya system. The Såµkhya-kårikå does not mention î≈vara.
34. Besides Vij∆åna Bhikßu’s commentary on Såµkhya-sütra 1.92,
see his introduction to his commentary (in the Sinha translation cited
in note 33, pp. 6-8). His view is followed by Jag Mohan Lawl in his
translation of the Såµkhya-sütra, titled The Sankhaya Philosophy of
Kapila, Edinburgh: Orpheus Publishing House, 1921. Lawl says in his
explanatory notes on verse 1.92, p. 57: “Some translators make a mistake here by thinking that Sankhaya Philosophy is atheistic, but they
are mistaken: he simply means that the inability of the worldly mind to
prove the existence of God does not prove there is no God, for Yogis
with higher consciousness can see and prove for themselves.” In a
similar vein, K. P. Bahadur in his translation of the Såµkhya-sütra,
titled The Wisdom of Saankhya, New Delhi: Sterling Publishers, 1978,
notes on verse 1.92, p. 75: “It should be noted that it is not said that
God does not exist, only that the evidence of His existence is not
there.”
35. See: The Mahatma Letters, letter #10, 3rd ed. p. 52: “Nevertheless
we deny most emphatically the position of agnosticism . . .”; p. 53:
“Pantheistic we may be called—agnostic NEVER.”; letter #54, p. 300:
“He makes of us Agnostics!! . . .”
36. Summarized from The Mahatma Letters, letter #22.
37. Buddhist scholars such as Edward Conze have written that
Buddhism is agnostic. See his Buddhism: Its Essence and Development,
1951, p. 39: “. . . the Buddhists adopt an attitude of agnosticism to the
40 God’s Arrival in India
question of a personal creator. . . .” This is a general assumption based
on the Buddhist teaching of the fourteen undefined points (avyåk®tavastu), that the Buddha refused to discuss. However, it does not take
account of the fact that the Buddha is shown in the Brahma-jåla Sutta
specifically denying that the world was created by God, Brahmå, and
in the Agga∆∆a Sutta stating how it in fact came about. This is hardly an
agnostic position.
Some Buddhist scholars have also attributed something akin to
monotheism to one phase of Buddhism, the Tantric phase involving
the concept of an Ådi-Buddha (e.g., Conze, op. cit., pp. 43, 191). This
attribution was made before these teachings became available in their
context (which happened after 1959 when Tibetan refugees brought
these teachings with them to India), and before many of the original
sources had been published, such as the Kålacakra Tantra and its
Vimalaprabhå commentary, or the Pradîpoddyotana commentary on the
Guhyasamåja Tantra. It is now clear that they are non-theistic like the
rest of Buddhism.
38. For more on the Såµkhya worldview, particularly in its relation
to the Wisdom Tradition, see my article, “Såµkhya and the WisdomReligion,” Fohat, vol. 4, no. 4, Winter 2000, pp. 84-86, 92-94.
Some have claimed that Såµkhya was originally theistic, and
later became non-theistic. The main evidence for this is found in the
Mahåbhårata, where God is included in passages that give distinctly
Såµkhya teachings. But as shown by Pulinbihari Chakravarti in his
Origin and Development of the Såµkhya System of Thought, pp. 54-58, the
Mahåbhårata presupposes the existence of earlier Såµkhya writings.
Thus it could easily have incorporated these Såµkhya ideas into its
own theistic setting.
Others have noted references in early writings such as the Jaina
Ía∂-dar≈ana-samuccaya and the Buddhist Tattva-saµgraha to both a
Såµkhya without God (nirî≈vara), and a Såµkhya with God (se≈vara).
However, the latter almost certainly refers to the Yoga system, since
the Yoga system was not described separately in these writings.
Johannes Bronkhorst, “God in Såµkhya,” Wiener Zeitschrift für die
Kunde Südasiens, vol. 27, 1983, pp. 149-164, attempts to show that the
earlier commentators on the Såµkhya-kårikå accepted the existence of
God, î≈vara. These references appear to me to refer to the î≈vara of the
Yoga system rather than î≈vara as God. See below.
39. Yoga-sütra 1.23, 1.24, 2.1, 2.32, 2.45.
40. Gangånåtha Jhå, The Yoga-Darshana, 2nd ed., Adyar, Madras:
Theosophical Publishing House, 1934, p. xiv. Nagin Shah has tried to
God’s Arrival in India 41
show that î≈vara in the Yoga-sütra refers to an “extra-ordinary person”
who has achieved the goal of yoga, for as long as he remains in the
body. See his article, “An Alternative Interpretation of Pata∆jali’s
Three Sütras on ˆ≈vara,” Sambodhi, vol. 4, no. 1, April 1975, pp. 1-6. He
provides a useful analysis of sütra 1.25 on omniscience.
41. M. D. Shastri, “History of the Word ‘ˆ≈vara’ and Its Idea,” Proceedings and Transactions of the Seventh All-India Oriental Conference, Baroda,
December 1933, Baroda: Oriental Institute, 1935, pp. 487-503; reprinted
with a few additions in The Princess of Wales Sarasvati Bhavana Studies,
vol. 10, ed. M. D. Shastri, Benares: Government Sanskrit Library, 1938,
pp. 35-63.
42. T. M. P. Mahadevan, Outlines of Hinduism, Bombay: Chetana,
(1st ed. 1956, 2nd ed. 1960,) reprint 1966, p. 138. Mahadevan here
echoes M. Hiriyanna, Outlines of Indian Philosophy, London: George
Allen & Unwin, 1932, pp. 323-324: “Whatever stimulus is required for
such change to take place comes from the past karma of the selves that
are on life’s pilgrimage at the time. This means the abolition of the
idea of God from the system, which is indeed a strange tenet to be
held by a school claiming to be orthodox par excellence.”
For the views of the early Pürva Mîmåµså authors on God, and
their denial of his existence, see: Ganganatha Jha, Pürva-Mîmåµså in
Its Sources, Benares: Benares Hindu University, 1942, chap. 5, “God,”
pp. 43-52.
43. Ga∫gånåtha Jhå, The Pråbhåkara School of Pürva Mîmåµså, 1st
ed., 1911; reprint, Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1978, pp. 249-250. Even
outside of the Pürva Mîmåµså system, there is a question of what the
Vedic deities really are. The word that is translated as “god” or “deity”
is deva or devatå. As noted by several scholars, the word deva does not
really mean a “god.” Vidhushekhara Bhattacharya writes: “Its literal
sense is ‘a shining one’ and it is used to denote anything that shines
in any way, or that which has some sort of glory or power” (The
Ågama≈åstra of Gau∂apåda, Calcutta: University of Calcutta, 1943;
reprint, Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1989, p. 22). He then gives references to the Upanißads where the following things are called devas:
ether, air, fire, earth, speech, mind, eye, ear, breath, etc.
Some scholars have felt that “angel” is a better translation of deva
than “god” or “deity.” See, for example, Ananda K. Coomaraswamy,
“Angel and Titan: An Essay in Vedic Ontology,” Journal of the American
Oriental Society, vol. 55, no. 4, Dec. 1935, pp. 373-419.
Sri Aurobindo saw the Vedic “gods” as outer symbols of inner
psychological experience. The various gods represent various aspects
42 God’s Arrival in India
of the psyche and what pertains to it. Thus, translations of the Vedas
produced by his school may use will-force, divine mind, intuition, etc.,
in place of Agni, Indra, Saramå, etc.
44. B®had-årañyaka Upanißad 1.4.8, 4.4.22, 6.4.14-18. The other nine
principal Upanißads are ˆ≈å, Kena, Ka†ha, Pra≈na, Muñ∂aka, Måñ∂ükya,
Taittirîya, Aitareya, and Chåndogya. This is the traditional list, having
ten only. Many modern translations include other Upanißads, and
sometimes also call these other ones principal.
45. Shastri, “History of the Word ‘ˆ≈vara’ and Its Idea,” 1938, p. 47.
Shastri does not give the Upanißad references, but refers instead to
“Concordance to the Principal Upanißads,” which as all readers know,
is by G. A. Jacob. Jacob lists under the entry “î≈vara” only the B®hadårañyaka Upanißad among the ten principal Upanißads, and gives for it
only 1.4.8 and 6.4.14-18. These are what Shastri refers to here. His
conclusion that î≈vara is found in only one of the ten older Upanißads
and only in this sense is incorrect. Two more î≈vara references in the
principal Upanißads may be found in Jacob’s Concordance under the
compound form, “sarve≈vara.” These are to B®had-årañyaka Upanißad
4.4.22, and Måñ∂ükya Upanißad, paragraph 6.
46. Shastri, “History of the Word ‘ˆ≈vara’ and Its Idea,” 1938, p. 38.
47. Shastri, “History of the Word ‘ˆ≈vara’ and Its Idea,” 1938, p. 47.
48. See: Paul Hacker, “Relations of Early Advaitins to Vaißñavism,”
Wiener Zeitschrift für die Kunde Süd- und Ostasiens, vol. 9, 1965, p. 147;
reprinted in Philology and Confrontation: Paul Hacker on Traditional and
Modern Vedånta, ed. Wilhelm Halbfass, Albany: State University of New
York Press, 1995, p. 33.
49. See: Paul Hacker, “Distinctive Features of the Doctrine and Terminology of ˛a∫kara: Avidyå, Nåmarüpa, Måyå, ˆ≈vara,” in Philology
and Confrontation, ed. Wilhelm Halbfass, Albany: State University of
New York Press, 1995, p. 94. This is an English translation of his
“Eigentümlichkeiten der Lehre und Terminologie ˛a∫karas: Avidyå,
Nåmarüpa, Måyå, ˆ≈vara,” Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenländischen
Gesellschaft, vol. 100, 1950, pp. 246-286.
50. See: David Reigle, “The Original ˛a∫karåcårya,” Fohat, vol. 5,
no. 3, Fall 2001, pp. 57-60, 70-71.
51. This letter was first published in “Echoes from the Past,” The
Theosophist, vol. 28, June 1907, quotation from p. 702 (this printing has
“impressional” for “impersonal”); reprinted in Letters from the Masters of
the Wisdom, compiled by C. Jinarajadasa, [First Series,] Adyar, Madras:
Theosophical Publishing House, 1919, no. XXX, p. 79; 5th ed., 1964,
p. 66. Corrections were made in the third edition, where this letter was
God’s Arrival in India 43
now “transcribed from the original at Adyar.” In the 1907 printing it is
dated 1881. Jinarajadasa says its date is probably 1882.
52. ˛a∫karåcårya, in attempting to show that brahman is conscious,
takes as his primary opponent the Såµkhya teaching of non-conscious
primary substance (pradhåna). It would seem that some people at that
time equated brahman with pradhåna. Gau∂apåda, in his commentary
on Såµkhya-kårikå 22, gives brahman as a synonym of pradhåna, also
called prak®ti. In the list of Såµkhya topics from the lost Ía߆i-tantra
found in the Ahirbudhnya-saµhitå, brahman is given first, where one
would expect pradhåna or prak®ti, and this is followed by purußa.
Several other early sources attribute the teaching of brahman to
Såµkhya, including the recently discovered Yukti-dîpikå Såµkhya
commentary. For a listing of these, with references, see: Pulinbihari
Chakravarti, Origin and Development of the Såµkhya System of Thought,
Calcutta: Metropolitan Printing and Publishing House, 1951; reprint,
New Delhi: Oriental Books Reprint Corporation, 1975; pp. 26-28.
53. Summarized from: T. M. P. Mahadevan, “The Idea of God in
Advaita,” The Vedanta Kesari, vol. 53, no. 1, May 1966, pp. 35-38.
54. Although Nyåya means logic, it is somewhat misleading to think
of the Nyåya system as only concerned with logic. Ingalls opens his
article cited in note 57 below as follows: “It has often seemed to me
that the teachings of the early Nyåya might better be called a philosophy of man than an exposition of logic. Certainly the greater part of
the Nyåyasütra deals with human problems rather than logical ones:
with man’s senses, mind and soul; with the means of knowledge he
may use and how he may best use them. Again, the method of dealing
with these subjects, as the Naiyåyikas themselves admit, is prevailingly
that of perception and experience (pratyakßa) rather than that of logic
(anumåna).”
55. Karl H. Potter, Encyclopedia of Indian Philosophies, vol. 2, Indian
Metaphysics and Epistemology: The Tradition of Nyåya-Vai≈eßika up to
Ga∫ge≈a, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1977, p. 7.
56. Ganganath Jha, “The Theism of Gautama, the Founder of
‘Nyåya,’” Proceedings & Transactions of the First Oriental Conference,
Poona, Held on the 5th, 6th and 7th of November 1919, Poona: Bhandarkar
Oriental Research Institute, vol. II, 1922, p. 283. Jha in his translation
of these three Nyåya texts does not bring out the fact that Gautama’s
position has here been reversed by the commentators. This translation was published serially in Indian Thought, vols. 4-11, 1912-1919, and
then reprinted in book form in 3 vols.; this was reprinted in 1984 by
Motilal Banarsidass, Delhi, and again in 4 vols. by the same publisher
44 God’s Arrival in India
in 1999, as The Nyåya-Sü†ras of Gau†ama, with the Bhåßya of Våtsyåyana
and the Vår†ika of U∂∂yo†akara. In a footnote on p. 1456, Jha tells us that:
“In regard to this Section there is a difference among Commentators.
According to the Bhåßya, the Vår†ika and Vishvanåtha, it is meant to
propound the Naiyåyika Si∂∂hånta that the Universe has been created
by God. . . . It is this interpretation that we have adopted in the translation.” So a reader of Jha’s English translation will never know that the
commentators have here reversed Gautama’s position.
Another translation, that of Mrinalkanti Gangopadhyaya titled
Nyåya: Gautama’s Nyåya-sütra with Våtsyåyana’s Commentary, Calcutta:
Indian Studies, 1982, follows the interpretation of Phañibhüßaña
Tarkavågî≈a, a modern translator of this text into Bengali. He regards
these verses as refuting the view that God alone—as independent of
the actions of living beings—is the cause of the world. He gives this
section a Sanskrit title stating this, kevala-î≈vara-kårañatå-niråkaraña
prakaraña, as if this is part of Våtsyåyana’s text, but it is not. Våtsyåyana
titles this section, î≈vara-upådånatå-prakaraña, which Jha fills out as
“Examination of the Theory that God is the Cause of the Universe.” It
appears that Phañibhüßaña here offers yet another interpretation of
these verses, unlike those of the classical commentators. Unlike
Våtsyåyana and Uddyotakara, but like Våcaspati Mi≈ra and Udayana,
he regards verse 4.1.19 as the view of another that is to be refuted. But
unlike Våcaspati Mi≈ra and Udayana, he does this by saying that God
alone as the cause (independent of human effort) is to be refuted,
rather than that God as material cause is to be refuted while God as
efficient cause is to be accepted. So a reader of Gangopadhyaya’s
translation, who assumes that this is Våtsyåyana’s interpretation, is in
fact getting Phañibhüßaña’s interpretation. This is to say nothing of
the original position of the author, Gautama.
57. Daniel H. H. Ingalls, “Human Effort Versus God’s Effort in the
Early Nyåya (NS. 4. 1. 19-21),” Felicitation Volume Presented to Professor
Sripad Krishna Belvalkar, ed. S. Radhakrishnan, et al., Banaras: Motilal
Banarasi Dass, 1957, p. 229.
58. See, for example, the clarification of meaning of Nyåya-sütra
4.1.21 in Chandra Sodha, “A Fresh Approach to ˆ≈varopådånatå in
Nyåya Sütra,” Glory of Knowledge (Professor Ram Murti Sharma Felicitation
Volume), ed. S. G. Kantawala, et al., Delhi: Eastern Book Linkers, 1990,
pp. 211-216. Ingalls had noted that this verse is extremely ambiguous
because one must fill in an understood subject and pronoun. Ingalls
understood it as saying that God is caused to act by human effort, thus
reflecting the Nyåya primacy of human effort, but still not denying the
God’s Arrival in India 45
existence of God. Sodha provides a more natural understanding of it,
as saying that the fruit is caused by the actions of man; it does not refer
to God (p. 216). This is stated more clearly by Francis X. Clooney, S.J.,
in “The Existence of God, Reason, and Revelation in Two Classical
Hindu Theologies,” Faith and Philosophy, Journal of the Society of Christian
Philosophers, vol. 16, no. 4, Oct. 1999, pp. 523-543. He translates:
“4.1.19. The Lord is the cause, since we see that human action is fruitless.
“4.1.20. This is not so since, as a matter of fact, no fruit is accomplished
without human action.
“4.1.21. Since that [action] is efficacious [only due to human effort],
the reason [put forth in 4.1.19, regarding the need to posit a Lord]
lacks force” (p. 527; bracketed material is his).
C. Bulcke, S.J., says in his 1947 monograph, The Theism of NyayaVaisesika: Its Origin and Early Development (Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass,
1968), p. 26: “. . . we intend to show, that whatever may have been the
position of Gautama, theism was not an original tenet of Nyåya. The
doctrine of karma as exposed in the Nyåya-Sütras leaves little room for
ˆ≈vara and all Naiyåyikas will be faced with the problem of a Supreme
Lord and a mechanical and inevitable law of retribution.”
Gopikamohan Bhattacharyya in his 1961 book, Studies in NyåyaVai≈eßika Theism (Calcutta: Sanskrit College), focuses on Udayana’s
Nyåya-kusumå∆jali, expounding the proofs for the existence of God.
Bhattacharyya therefore does not really deal with early Nyåya. He
opens his book with, “The Nyåya-Vai≈eßika philosopher is an uncompromising theist. . . .” He concludes his book with, “Monotheism is the
cream of Indian thought.” For a criticism of Bhattacharyya’s book, see
George Chemparathy, “Theism and Early Vai≈eßika System,” Kaviråj
Abhinandana Grantha, 1967, pp. 120-121, note 16.
John Vattanky, S.J., in his 1993 book, Development of Nyåya Theism
(New Delhi: Intercultural Publications), deals somewhat with early
Nyåya, but surprisingly, he seems to be unaware of the researches of
his predecessors in this area. Ingalls, for example, is neither referred
to nor cited in the bibliography. Vattanky can therefore naively say on
pp. 22-23: “The intuition of Gautama that God is to be considered the
cause of the world has remained the cornerstone of Nyåya theism and
for this reason alone Gautama deserves to be called the father of
Nyåya theism.”
59. Våtsyåyana twice acknowledges that Gautama’s verse on î≈vara
is the view of another. First, he introduces this section at 4.1.14 with
the words, ata˙ paraµ pråvådukånåµ d®ß†aya˙ pradar≈yante, which Jha
46 God’s Arrival in India
translates as, “We now proceed to show up the doctrines of philosophers (of several schools)—” (p. 1449). Second, he introduces verse
4.1.19, Gautama’s verse on î≈vara, with the words, athåpara åha, which
Jha translates as, “Another philosopher says—” (p. 1457). Yet in his
commentary Våtsyåyana treats this as Gautama’s own view.
60. See: S. Kuppuswami Sastri, “Råvaña-Bhåßya,” Journal of Oriental
Research, Madras, vol. 3, 1929, p. 5: “Such considerations may lend
support to the conjecture that the earlier Råvaña-Bhåßya was perhaps
dominated by atheistic and pro-Buddhist proclivities, such as might
have been quite in keeping with the text of the Vai≈eßika sütras, and
with the spirit of the tradition characterising the Vai≈eßikas as ardhavainå≈ikas, while the work of Pra≈astapåda gave the Vai≈eßika system a
theistic turn and presented its doctrines in an anti-Buddhist Åstika
setting.”
61. See: Johannes Bronkhorst, “God’s Arrival in the Vai≈eßika
System,” Journal of Indian Philosophy, vol. 24, 1996, p. 283: “We can
conclude that the Ka†andî [the commentary by Råvaña] did not yet
refer to God in its account of the destruction and creation of the
world.” See also p. 285.
The title of the present article is adapted from the title of this
one by Johannes Bronkhorst, which I acknowledge with appreciation.
62. See: ˛a∫karåcårya, Brahma-sütra-bhåßya, 2.2.11-12. The relevant
passages were translated and discussed by George Chemparathy in his,
“Theism and Early Vai≈eßika System,” Kaviråj Abhinandana Grantha,
Lucknow: Akhila Bhåratîya Saµsk®ta Parißad, 1967, on pp. 113-114.
Johannes Bronkhorst provides evidence that ˛a∫karåcårya’s summary
was probably based on the commentary by Råvaña, in his article,
“God’s Arrival in the Vai≈eßika System,” pp. 282-284.
63. The Da≈a-padårtha-≈åstra is one of two Hindu texts, the other
being the Såµkhya-kårikå, found in the Chinese Buddhist canon. Its
Sanskrit original is lost. An English translation was made from the
Chinese by H. Ui, and published in The Vai≈eßika Philosophy, according to
the Da≈apadårtha-≈åstra, London: Royal Asiatic Society, 1917; reprint,
Varanasi: Chowkhamba Sanskrit Series Office, 1962. Another English
translation was made by Keiichi Miyamoto, along with a re-translation
from Chinese back into Sanskrit, and a critical edition of the Chinese
text. This was published in The Metaphysics and Epistemology of the Early
Vai≈eßikas, Pune: Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute, 1996. Two
other re-translations of this book into Sanskrit have been published:
Dasa-Padarthi, trans. Uma Ramana Jha, Jammu: Shri Ranbir Kendriya
Sanskrit Vidyapeetha, 1977; and “Da≈apadårtha≈åstra,” by Karunesha
God’s Arrival in India 47
Shukla, in Journal of the Ganganatha Jha Research Institute, vol. 19, 1962-
1963, pp. 147-158; vol. 20-21, 1963-1965, pp. 111-130. These were both
made from H. Ui’s English translation, not from the Chinese text.
64. Padårthadharmasa∫graha of Pra≈astapåda, with the Nyåyakandalî of
˛rîdhara, trans. Ga∫gånåtha Jhå, originally published in The Pandit,
vols. 25-37, 1903-1915; reprint, Benares: E. J. Lazarus and Co., 1916;
reprint, Varanasi: Chaukhambha Orientalia, 1982. On this see also
George Chemparathy’s article, “The ˆ≈vara Doctrine of Pra≈astapåda,”
Vishveshvaranand Indological Journal, vol. 6, 1968, pp. 65-87. This should
be supplemented by George Chemparathy’s study of two fragments
from a lost text or texts of Pra≈astapåda and/or his followers that were
quoted in Kamala≈îla’s Tattva-saµgraha-pa∆jikå, “Two Little-Known
Fragments from Early Vai≈eßika Literature on the Omniscience of
ˆ≈vara,” Adyar Library Bulletin, vol. 33, 1969, pp. 117-134.
65. Vai≈eßikasütra of Kañåda, with the Commentary of Candrånanda, ed.
Muni ˛rî Jambuvijayaji, Baroda: Oriental Institute, 1961, Gaekwad’s
Oriental Series, 136, p. 2. On this recently discovered commentary
and its views on God, see also George Chemparathy’s article, “The
ˆ≈vara Doctrine of the Vai≈eßika Commentator Candrånanda,” ‰tam,
Journal of the Akhila Bharatiya Sanskrit Parishad, vol. 1, no. 2, Jan. 1970,
pp. 47-52.
66. The Vai≈eshika Dar≈ana, with the Commentaries of ˛ankara Mi≈ra and
Jayanáráyana Tarka Panchánana, ed. Jayanáráyana Tarka Panchánana,
Calcutta: Baptist Mission Press, 1861, Bibliotheca Indica 34, p. 8; The
Vai≈esika Sûtras of Kanâda, with the Commentary of ˛a∫kara Mi≈ra, trans.
Nandalal Sinha, Allahabad: Pâñini Office, 1911, Sacred Books of the
Hindus, 6; reprint, New York: AMS Press, 1974; reprint, Delhi: S. N.
Publications, 1986; p. 7; 2nd ed., revised and enlarged, Allahabad:
Pâñini Office, 1923, p. 7.
67. Vai≈eßikadar≈ana of Kañåda, with an Anonymous Commentary, ed.
Anantalal Thakur, Darbhanga: Mithila Institute of Post-Graduate
Studies and Research in Sanskrit Learning, 1957, p. 2. Although this
commentary was published as being anonymous, Anantalal Thakur
later identified the author of it as Bha††a Vådîndra. See his article,
“Bha††avådîndra—The Vai≈eßika,” Journal of the Oriental Institute,
Baroda, vol. 10, no. 1, Sep. 1960, pp. 22-31.
68. George Chemparathy, “The Testimony of the Yuktidîpikå Concerning the ˆ≈vara Doctrine of the På≈upatas and Vai≈eßikas,” Wiener
Zeitschrift für die Kunde Süd- und Ostasiens, vol. 9, 1965, p. 146.
69. Letters from the Masters of the Wisdom, [First Series,] letter #1,
1st ed. p. 9; 5th ed. p. 7; Combined Chronology, by Margaret Conger,
48 God’s Arrival in India
Pasadena: Theosophical University Press, 1973, p. 46; The Mahatma
Letters, chron. ed. p. 479.
70. The Mahatma Letters, letter #10, 3rd ed. p. 52.
71. The Mahatma Letters, letter #10, 3rd ed. pp. 57-58; this letter then
continues: “If it is objected that we too have temples, we too have
priests and that our lamas also live on charity . . . let them know that
the objects above named have in common with their Western equivalents, but the name. Thus in our temples there is neither a god nor
gods worshipped, only the thrice sacred memory of the greatest as the
holiest man that ever lived. If our lamas to honour the fraternity of the
Bhikkhus established by our blessed master himself, go out to be fed by
the laity, the latter often to the number of 5 to 25,000 is fed and taken
care of by the Sangha (the fraternity of lamaic monks), the lamassery
providing for the wants of the poor, the sick, the afflicted. Our lamas
accept food, never money, and it is in those temples that the origin of
evil is preached and impressed upon the people. There they are
taught the four noble truths—ariya sacca, and the chain of causation,
(the 12 nidånas) gives them a solution of the problem of the origin
and destruction of suffering.”
72. The Mahatma Letters, letter #10, 3rd ed. p. 53.
73. The Secret Doctrine, vol. 2, pp. 273-274. For the problem that this
hitherto unknown fact regarding belief in God makes for students of
the Wisdom Tradition, see: The Mahatma Letters, letter #134, 3rd ed.
pp. 454-456.
74. The Secret Doctrine, vol. 2, p. 200; see also vol. 2, p. 139 fn. The
other two monotheistic faiths now make up the bulk of the sons of
Abraham. In reference to these, an article titled, “The Akhund of
Swat,” H. P. Blavatsky Collected Writings, vol. 1, 1966, pp. 369-375, is of
considerable interest. It gives an account of a Sikh adept who in 1858
foretold the death of the Akhund twenty years later, saying further
(p. 374): “Then, the first hour will strike of the downfall of those twin
foes of truth—Christianity and Islam. The first, as the more powerful,
will survive the second, but both will soon crumble into fragmentary
sects, which will mutually exterminate each other’s faith.”
75. Letters from the Masters of the Wisdom, [First Series,] letter #1, 1st
ed. p. 11; 5th ed. p. 9; Combined Chronology, p. 47; The Mahatma Letters,
chron. ed. p. 480.
76. The Secret Doctrine, vol. 1, p. 653.
77. The Secret Doctrine, vol. 1, p. 643.
God’s Arrival in India 49
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54 God’s Arrival in India
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[The foregoing article was written by David Reigle, and published in
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bibliography were made February 2007 and May 2015.]