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

BRHADARANYAKA UPANISAD

It will be understood that Vedic “‘ theology ”’ takes account of two distinct Trinities. In the one arrangement (Agni, Aditya, Vayu; Rudra, Visnu, Brahma) the Persons are distinguished by their natures (the characteristic gunas being tamas, sattva, and rajas) ; the names are essential and the relations mutual and reversible, so that any two may be thought of as aspects or emanations of the first, there being no logical order of manifestation. In the other arrangement (Supernal Sun and Waters—or Heaven and Earth—and Agni Vaisvanara or Ayus ; Siva, Sakti, Kumara; Manas, Vac, Prana, etc.), the Persons are distinguished by naturally progenitive relationships, gud Father, Mother, and Offspring, the names take on a more personal character, and there is a logical order of procession. The Christian and Indian Trinities can only be rightly compared when it is realised that while the Christian Father, Son, and Spirit correspond directly to Aditya, Agni Vaigvanara, and Vayu (procession being by way of utterance or spiration, not a generation), Father and Son, when the latter is spoken of as begotten by generation from ‘‘ conjoint principles” (St. Thomas, Sum. Th., I, Q. 27, A. 2), or as “ his understanding of himself,” correspond also to Manas and Prana, and to Agni and Agni Vaisvanara (“born of the Waters” or ‘“ born of Earth,” and whose nature is exemplary). There is lacking, then, in the Christian formulation, when the Son is thought of as natural and begotten, that Person who should be the second of the “‘ conjoint principles,” which principles can be no other than his Essence and his Nature ; no “‘ Wisdom ” or “‘ Nature,” corresponding to Vac or Prakrti, is recognized as a Person in the Christian arrangement of God. It is true that Christ takes on fleshly nature from—‘‘is natured by’’—the Virgin Mary, and that she is therefore called the ‘‘ Mother of God,” but that is not with respect to his eternal procession, merely with respect to the accident of his birth in Galilee. Abstracted from eventful generation, Christ is motherless.