A new approach to the Vedas : an essay in translation and exegesis

A NEW APPROACH TO THE VEDAS

79 Vedic ideas are types not of “ things,” but of acts; thus not exactly the same as Platonic ideas, but corresponding to the types of Aristotle as understood by the schoolmen. ‘“ Names are all derived from action,” Brhad Devata, I, 31, and Nirukta, VII, 4. ‘‘ Because he creates the activity of everything (viva), he is called Vigsvakarma,”’ Brhad Devata, 11, 50. The identity of mama and karma as transmigrating factor is remarked by Keith, Rel. and Phil. of the Veda, p. 597: cf. also the opposition of nama and guna in the Mimdansa system. For the view that a thing is what it does, see also Vasubandhu, A bhidharmakosa, II, 56 d, Poussin, p. 280, and cf. dharma (pl.) as “ principles ”’ and dharma-cakva-pravartana as equivalent to “‘ utterance of the Word,” Saddharma Pupdarika, passim.

Nama-ripa, constituting the unity of the individual, are often rendered ‘‘ name and form,” but »a@ma is here the true “ form’’: the combination na@ma-ripa really corresponds to “soul and body,” as when, distinguishing form from substance, we say “‘ the soul is the form of the body.” Nama = Lat. forma, Greek eidos - vipa = Lat. figura. Cf. Mainonides, Guide . . . III, 8, “ Form can only be destroyed accidentally, i.e., on account of its connection with substance, the true nature of which consists in the property of never being without a disposition to receive form.” Keith, Aitareya Aranyaka, Pp. 239, Note 2, remarks, “ Even the Buddhist ra#pam is not a pregnant conception.”’ Of course not: the pregnant conception is nama, rapa being merely the sensible aspect. It is true that rapa, like English ‘‘ form,” may be used with reference either to intelligible or to sensible objects, but when “ informing form’’ is meant, rzpa is generally distinguished by a suitable determinant, as in sva-vapa, “intrinsic form,” or antarjneva vipa, “mental image.” Nama is noumenon, rapa phenomenon.

80 The Indian similes of the Word-wheel and World-wheel, a mechanical but living image equivalent to that of the Cosmic Horse and World-tree, and more specifically representing the revolution of the “ year,”’ require a more detailed treatment than can be given here. Briefly, “‘ we understand him as a wheel having a single felly, with a triple tire,” Svetdsvatava Up., I, 4: a wheel, that is, of which the hub is essence and the felly nature, ‘‘ triple” with respect to the three gunas. Cf. Eckhart, I, 357, ‘‘ This circle . . . is all the Trinity has ever wrought. Why is the work of the Trinity called a circle? Because the Trinity . . . is the origin of all things and all things return into their origin. This is the circle the soul runs. . . . So she goes round in endless chain. . . . Spent with her quest she casts herself into the centre. This point is the power of the Trinity wherein unmoved it is doing all its work. Therein the soul becomes omnipotent. . . . This is the motionless point and the unity of the Trinity. The circumference is the incomprehensible work of the Three Persons. . . . The union of the Persons is the essence of the point. In this point God runs through change without otherness, involving into unity of essence, and the soul as one with this fixed point is capable of all things.’ Or again, Eckhart, I, 56, ‘‘ The heaven adjoining the eternal now, wherein the angels are, is motionless, immovable. . ... The heaven the sun is in, moved by angelic force, goes round once a year. The heaven the moon is in, again, is driven by angelic force and goes round once a month. The nearer the eternal now, the more immovable they are, the further off and more unlike to the eternal now the easier to move so that they are spinning in this temporal now . . . all things get their life and being from the motion there imparted by the eternal now.”

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