Part V — The Buddha and His Predecessors

Chapter I - The Buddha and the Vedic Rishis

• The Vedas are a collection of Mantras, i.e., hymns or chants. The reciters of these hymns are called Rishis.
• The Mantras are mere invocations to deities such as Indra, Varuna, Agni, Soma, Isana, Prajapati, Bramba, Mahiddhi, Yama and others.
• The invocations are mere prayers for help against enemies, for gift of wealth, for accepting the offerings of food, flesh and wine from the devotee.
• There is not much philosophy in the Vedas. But there were some Vedic sages who had entered into speculations of a philosophical nature.
• These Vedic sages were:

(1) Aghamarsana;
(2) Prajapati Parmesthin;
(3) Brahmanaspati, otherwise known as Brihaspati;
(4) Anila;
(5) Dirghatamas;
(6) Narayan;
(7) Hiranyagarbha; and
(8) Visvakar-man.

• The main problems of these Vedic philosophers were: How did the world originate? In what manner were individual things created ? Why have they their unity and existence ? Who created, and who ordained ? From what did the world spring up and to what again will it return ?
• Aghamarsana said that the world was created out of Tapas (heat). Tapas was the creative principle from which eternal law and truth were born. From these were produced the night (tamas). Tamas produced water and from water originated time. Time gave birth to the sun and the moon, the heaven and the earth, the firmament and light and ordained the days and nights.
• Brahmanaspati postulated the genesis of being from non-being. By the term non-existence, he denoted apparently the infinite. The existent originally sprang up from the non-existent. The non-existent (asat, nonens) was the permanent foundation of all that is existent (sat, ens) and of all that is possible and yet non-existent (asat).
• Prajapati Parmesthin started with the problem: " Did being come out of non-being ?" His view was that this was an irrelevant question. For him water was the original substance of that which exists. For him the original matter—water—came neither under the definition of being nor under that of non-being.
• Paramesthin did not draw any distinction between matter and motive power. According to him water transformed itself into particular things by some inherent principle to which he gave the name Kama, Cosmic Desire.
• Anila was another Vedic Philosopher. To him the principal element was air (vayu). It possesses the inherent capacity for movement. It is endowed with the generating principle.
• Dirghtamas maintained that all living beings rest and depend ultimately on the sun. The sun held up and propelled by its inherent force went backward and forward.
• The sun is composed of a grey coloured substance and so are lightning and fire.
• The sun, lightning and fire formed the germ of water. Water forms the germ of plants. Such were the views of Dirghatamas.
• According to Narayana, Purusha (God) is the first cause of the universe. It is from Purusha that the sun, the moon, the earth, water, fire, air, mid-air, the sky, the regions, the seasons, the creatures of the air, all animals, all classes of men, and all human institutions, had originated.
• Hiranyagarbha. From doctrinal point of view he stood midway between Parmeshthin and Narayan. Hiranyagarbha means the golden germ. It was the great power of the universe, from which all other powers and existences, divine and earthly, were derived.
• Hiranyagarbha means fire. It is fire that constituted the solar essence, the generating principle of the universe.
• From the point of view of Vishvakarman it was quite inadequate and unsatisfactory to hold that water was the primitive substance of all that is and then to derive from it this world as a whole by giving it an inherent power of movement. If water be the primitive substance which is endowed with the inherent principle of change, we have yet to account for that from which water derived its being, and derived the motive power, the generating principle, the elemental forces, the laws and all the rest.
• Vishvakarman held the view that it was God which was the motive power. God is first and God is last. He is earlier than the visible universe ; he had existed before all cosmic forces came into being. He is the sole God who created and ordained this universe. God is one, and the only one. He is the unborn one (aja) in whom all the existing things abide. He is the one who is mighty in mind and supreme in power. He is the maker—the disposer. As father he generated us, and as disposer he knows the fate of all that is.
• The Buddha did not regard all the Vedic Sages as worthy of reverence. He regarded just ten Vedic Rishis as the most ancient and as the real authors of the Mantras.
• But in the Mantras he saw nothing that was morally elevating.
• In his view the Vedas were as worthless as a desert.
• The Buddha, therefore, discarded the Mantras as a source from which to learn or to borrow.
• Similarly, the Buddha did not find anything in the philosophy of the Vedic Rishis. They were groping to reach the truth. But they had not reached it.
• Their theories were mere speculations not based on logic nor on facts. Their contributions to philosophy created no social values.
• He therefore rejected the philosophy of the Vedic Rishis as useless.