Vivekananda on the Vedas (part 43)

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Parts 1 to 42 were posted earlier. This is part 43. Your comments are welcome... Vivekananda Centre London

 

Earlier postings can be seen at http://www.vivekananda.btinternet.co.uk/veda.htm

 

SWAMI VIVEKANANDA ON THE VEDAS AND UPANISHADS

By Sister Gayatriprana

part 43

4. All Schools of Hindu Thought Must Be Established on the Authority of the Genuine Upanishads

You must remember that what the Bible is to the Christians, what the Koran is to the Muslims, what the Tripitaka is to the Buddhist, what the Zend Avesta is to the Parsees, the Upanishads are to us [Vedantins]. (18)

The Upanishads are the Bible of India. They occupy the same place as does the New Testament. There are [more than] a hundred books comprising the Upanishads, some very small and some big, each a separate treatise. (19)

The Upanishads became the Bible of India. It was a vast literature, these Upanishads, and all the schools holding different opinions in India came to be established on the foundation of the Upanishads. (20)

It is better for us [Hindus] to remember that in the Upanishads is the primary authority; even the Grihya and Shrauta sutras [dharma-shastras] are subordinate to the authority of the Vedas. They are the words of the rishis, our forefathers, and you have to believe them if you want to become a Hindu. You may even believe the most peculiar ideas about the Godhead, but if you deny the authority of the Vedas, you are nastika (unorthodox). (21)

The essence of the knowledge of the Vedas was called by the name of Vedanta, which comprises the Upanishads; and all sects of India - dualists, qualified monists, monists, or the Shaivites, Vaishnavites, Shaktas, Sauras, Ganapatyas, each one that dares to come within the fold of Hinduism, must acknowledge the Upanishads of the Vedas. They can have their own interpretations and can interpret them in their own way, but they must obey the authority... That is why we want to use the word Vedantist instead of Hindu. All the philosophers of India who are orthodox have to acknowledge the authority of the Vedanta; and all our present-day religions, however crude some of them may appear to be, however inexplicable some of their purposes may seem, one who understands them and studies them can trace them back to the ideas of the Upanishads. So deeply have these Upanishads sunk into our race that those of you who are studying the symbology of the crudest religions of the Hindus will be astonished to find sometimes figurative expressions of the Upanishads - the Upanishads become symbolized after a time into figures, and so forth. Great spiritual and philosophical ideas in the Upanishads are with us today, converted into household worship in the form of symbols. Thus the various symbols used by us all come from the Vedanta, because in the Vedanta they are used as figures, and these ideas spread among the nation and permeated it throughout until they became part of everyday life as symbols. (22)

The Jnana Kanda of the Vedas comprises the Upanishads and is known by the name of Vedanta, the pinnacle of the Shrutis, as it is called…. The Vedanta is now the religion of the Hindus. If any sect in India wants to have its ideas established with a firm hold on the people it must base them on the authority of the Vedanta. They all have to do it, whether they are Dvaitists or Advaitists. Even the Vaishnavas have to go to the Gopalatapini Upanishad to prove the truth of their own theories. If a new sect does not find anything in the Shrutis in confirmation of its ideas, it will even go to the length of h a new Upanishad and making it pass current as one of the old original productions. There have been many such in the past. (23)

The Upanishads are many, and said to be one hundred and eight; but some declare them to be still larger in number. Some of them are evidently of much later date, as for instance, the Allopanisad in which Allah is praised and Muhammad is called the Rajasulla. I have been told that this was written during the reign of King Akbar to bring the Hindus and Muslims together, and sometimes they got hold of some word such as Allah, or Illa in the Samhita, and made an Upanishad on it. So in this Allopanisad, Muhammad is the Rajasulla, whatever that may mean. There are other sectarian Upanishads of the same species, which you find to be entirely modern; and it has been easy to write them, seeing that this language of the Samhita portion of the Vedas is so archaic, there is no grammar to it.... Given that, how easy it is to write any number of Upanishads, enough to make words look like old, archaic words, and you have no fear of grammar. Then you bring in Rajasulla or any other "sulla" you like. In that way, many Upanishads have been manufactured, and I am told it is being done even now. In some parts of India, I am perfectly certain, they are trying to manufacture such Upanishads among the different sects. But among the Upanishads are those which, on the face of them, bear the evidence of genuineness; and these have been taken up by the great commentators and commented upon, especially by Shankara, followed by Ramanuja and all the rest. (24)