Sunday 26 August 2012

Uddalaka and Yajnavalkya: Materialism & Idealism

Walter Ruben


The problem of when and how philosophy in India began is of great importance. In 1954, I started the theory that the first Indian philosopher was Uddalaka Aruni in Ch. Up. vi.1 According to my interpretation, he was a hylozoist, which means a primitive materialist. Such an interpretation must provoke criticism, because it seems at first sight impossible and is in contrast to all tradition that in the ancient Upanisads the doctrine of a materialist bas been preserved.2 In 1955, I published a German translation of this chapter of the Chandogya Upanisad along with other chapters from some other ancient Upanisads, e.g. of Yajnavalkya in Br. Up. iii-iv.3 In 1961, I wrote finally a paper about "the beginning of rational thinking in India",4 describing how the fight between materialism and idealism-between Uddalaka and Yajnavalkya-began in ancient India when a few and small Indian states in the Ganges-valley had been just founded in the iron-age in contrast to the mass of tribes, when class- struggle was beginning, when accordingly, ideological competition started, visible to us in the discus­sions between Vedic ritualists and their opponents-as, e.g., some hermits in the forests-when others, as the Vedic ritualistic intellectuals, started opposing Indra, criticizing him as a brahmicide, or when some critics attacked the main mythological teachings of the epic as regards the war of the Vedic gods against the demons. There is already recognizable some clash between Brahmins and Ksatriyas; enlightened Brahmins like Yajnavalkya, Usasti, etc. protested against orthodox ritualism with its old taboos. Sciences like medicine started fighting against religion, physicists against Brabmins; astronomy, geography, law, state-doctrine etc. began; discussions became characteristic of this new period of ancient Indian history, doubt was in fashion in all fields of consciousness, and only then the fight between materialism and idealism began on the basis of all this social and ideological struggle, especially after scientific thinking had begun, although the sciences were not yet fully developed. Uddalaka shows in his philosophy this new scientific type of thinking in his ways of arguing and proving his doctrines with reasonings and analogies, as a forerunner of later logicians who developed the analyses of anumana, drstanta, etc.

If Uddalaka was a hylozoist (primitive materialist) and the oldest Indian philosopher, as I argued, then be stands side by side with the oldest Greek philosopher, Thales, who also was a hylozoist and lived only a short time after Uddalaka. Perhaps Chinese philosophy also began in nearly the same period of the history of mankind with a similar type of materialism.5. Thus, the world-history of philosophy might come to the conclusion that philosophy and materialism had to begin with such steps of develop­ment, there being no other traditions of philosophy than those of India, China and Europe. Side by side with the types of Indian hylozoism-as that of Thales (water), Anaximenes (air) and Heraclitus (fire)-mankind has deve­loped the 'Indian and perhaps Chinese types, and comparing and c0ntrasting all these hylozoist-materialisms, our histo­rians of philosophy will one day come to a proper and comprehensive definition of hylozoism and its role in the development of philosophy, namely as the first or one of the first primitive forms of materialism. In. similar ways Yajnavalkya's idealism is to be compared and contrasted with Greek idealism of the Eleatics-Parmenides etc.-and the oldest Chinese idealism. In this way, the general history of philosophy helps the Indologist to understand the history of philosophy of India, while at the same time the Indologist with his interpretation of Indian materials enriches the general history of philosophy, which is the highest possible theory of history of all the different philosophies.

But was Uddalaka's doctrine really hylozoist-materialism? My revered teacher Herman Jacobi was the first to main­tain that Uddalaka taught some materialistic elements. He started from the struggle between the later Samkhyas who claimed that the sat of Uddalaka was matter (prakrti) while later Vedantins interpreted it as brahman.6 Jacobi stressed the point that in Vedic mentality the distinction between mind and matter was not yet quite clear and he illustrated 'this fact with the help of Uddalaka's text in "'hose cosmogony, sat, tejas etc. were thinking and willing. Although, thus, in Uddalaka's teaching the material elements were living, although, moreover, the distinction between matter and mind was not yet quite clear, he maintained that Uddalaka's doctrine was basically materialistic. 7

In 1940, H: V. Glasenapp quoted Uddalaka's philosophy with the same intention in order to show that the ancient Indians did not distinguish between mind and matter.8 But in 1949 he criticized Jacobi, maintaining that this doctrine could not be labelled as materialistic philosophy because the distinction between mind and matter was not clear in that ancient period.9 This is the reason why I, in 1954, characterized Uddalaka as hylozoist, which just means that according to his philosophy, matter was living' and thinking indeed. Glasenapp, in 1954 and 1956 attacked my interpretation without adding new arguments.10 The problem is, accordingly, whether hylozoism is to be regarded as materialism or idealism (pantheism). In 1961 Dale Riepe, following my interpretation, characterized Uddalaka's philosophy as "a hylozoist and perhaps even materialistic" view of the world.11 On the other hand, E. Zeller characterized Thales as early as 1851 as "pantheistic hylozoist", stressing the point that in accordance with the old fantastic interpretation of nature which everywhere preceded science, Thales thought everything to be living,12 and the cosmos to be ensouled and full of spirits,13 but that he did not teach the doctrine of a world-soul. Correspondingly, H. Jacobi already had observed that brahman was not mentioned in Uddiilaka's philosophy.14 In this regard Uddalaka is similar to Thales, both being hylozoists, not idealist, but rather primitive materialists.

When Jacobi and Glasenapp underlined the fact that in those old times mind and matter were not clearly distinguished, Glasenapp himself quoted Yajnavalkya des­cribing atman as mind, as vijnanaghana, vijnanamayapurusa etc. in contrast to all other things,15 - contrasting, thus, matter and mind as a full-fledged idealist. There is, on the other hand, in his idealism this link between mind and matter that minj is the origin of matter, as Glasenapp also held. But this thesis of Yajnavalkya does not, as Glasenapp pretends, involve that at that period the dis­tinction between mind and matter was not yet perfect and that, therefore, one cannot differentiate between the idealism of Yajnavalkya and the materialism of Uddalaka. On' the c0ntrary, the doctrine that mind is the primary reality and matter the secondary one is typical for idealism while materialism regards nature as the primary one.16 The doctrine of maya and vivarta is not yet to be found in Yajnavalkya's philosophy, indeed, in so far as his idealism is still primitive, just as Uddalaka's materialism is. Everything was just developing, and what we find in the ancient Upanisads is just the beginning of philosophy in its two antagonistic forms, materialism and idealism.

Let us now compare and contrast both these thinkers in some details in order to show their difference in mate­rialistic and idealistic thinking. Both, being contemporaneous, deal to a great extent with similar topics which were eminently important for the Brahmanical thinkers of that old period; but both do so in different ways.

1. Death

Uddalaka describes a dying man,-how he loses first his mind (the faculty of recognizing his relatives), then his speech, after that his breath, and finally, his warmth. This is quite a rational description of death based on sound observation. It is, at the same time, in fairly good but not quite perfect-concordance with Uddalaka's cosmo­gony, according to which out of sat developed tejah, apah and annam; annam becoming mind, apah breath, and tejah speech. He does not mention an eternal soul or the doctrine of karman in his chapter on death. Mind, speech, breath and warmth enter sat, sat being the ultimate or first living material which is eternal, and is truth: tat tvam asi.

Yajnavalkya, on the other hand, deals with the problem of death in several places. He teaches first how a man can become free from death by the help of vedic priests, climbing up to heaven (Br. Up. iii. 1, 3-6). He teaches then how the body of a dying man dissolves into earth etc., the mind enters the moon, eye the sun, breath the wind, speech the fire etc., but he adds, man himself,-his eternal soul,-is following the way of karman (Br. Up. iii. 2, 13). Yajnavalkya gives later on a hint that after death man's soul goes to Indra in the heart, the soul being indestructible (Br. Up. iii. 2). He teaches finally how the soul (purusa) leaves the weakening body like a ripe fruit leaving the tree, and turns to its origin, the atman. Just as a king leaves a village, accompanied by warriors, judges etc., the soul is accompanied by the pranas and enters the 'heart together with them. When then the eye leaves for the sun, the purusa enters the heart together with them. When then the eye leaves for the sun, the purusa does not see any longer,-he does not smell, taste, speak, think, etc. Together with the prii~tas he leaves the body, guided by his knowledge and karman in order to be reborn or to reach moksa (Br.. Up. iv. 3, 35 seq.).

Uddalaka observed rationalistically how thinking (recognizing) of a dying man, speaking and breathing stop one after another and how the body finally becomes cold. Yajnavalkya also taught that all the faculties of seeing, smelling, tasting, speaking, hearing, thinking, touching and knowing of a dying man disappear. But while Uddalaka observed death' with commonsense or even with the eyes of a physician, Yajnavalkya had no such scholarly interest but enumerated all faculties from seeing to knowing, regarding this only as a minor point, and described with much details the wandering of the eternal soul first into the heart and then out of the body, a wandering which he had never observed. He did not care for proper observation which can be controlled by everybody. His main interest was a religious one, not scientific. He was an idealist in contrast to the materialist Uddalaka.

Uddalaka next described a dying tree, which is being felled. The rasa leaves one bough after the other and finally the whole tree; he adds the rasa does not die. This life is satya (Ch. Up. vi. 11). According to Uddalaka, water (apah) is life or breath (prana) (Ch. Up. vi. 5, 2), and a man while fasting is obliged to drink water in order to preserve his life (Ch. Up. vi. 7, 1). The rasa of the tree is some kind of water and is at the same time the life of the tree. When a bough is cut, rasa and life leave it; but rasa or life is not destroyed but goes on existing in the sat into which it has gone after the death of the tree. Sat is living matter; it is eternal according to this hylozoism.

Yajnavalkya also described at the end of his long dis­cussion the death of a tree, comparing the tree with the body of a man, especially the rasa with the blood, coming out of a wounded tree, tree and body, respectively (Br. Up. iii. 9, 28 Sloka 2). But his interest is not focused on the rasa. He cares for the fact that a tree, when felled, is growing again from its root. Only if the root is des­troyed, the tree cannot grow again. He asks his adver­saries in the discussion: What corresponds to this growing again of the tree out of its root as regards a man? He also knows the answer: Rebirth out of brahman. Here again the difference between Yajnavalkya's religious intention and Uddalaka's materialism becomes clear.'

Yajnavalkya in another place maintains that at death blood and semen enter water, just as the body enters earth (Br,. Up. iii. 2, 13), when the soul follows the ways of karman, whilst Uddalaka taught that the ultimate living material into which the decaying body enters is eternal. Yajnavalkya taught that the individual body dissolves in the dead material which might be eternal, but the individual soul is what matters, being born again and again according to karman. Here again the religious idea of rebirth prevails in the doctrine of Yajnavalkya.

And his idealism becomes also clear in another place where he teaches that the heart is the base on which the semen is founded just as water is based on the semen and as Varuna, the protector of ,the western region, is based on water. In similar ways the other human facul­ties, like seeing etc., are based on the respective objects, the forms etc., which are founded in the heart, the facul­ties being on the other hand the base for a respective gods in one of the different regions. Thus the heart is the ultimate base of the world, - the subjective heart being the base of the objective forms etc. - which is an idealistic outlook.

In order to persuade his opponent Yajnavalkya adds that people, regarding a son who similar to his father, say that he has come out of the heart of his father. This custom proves, he pretends, that the semen descends from the heart (Br. Up. iii. 9, 21). But this cannot prove the doctrine that water is based on semen, Varuna on water in the western region, - in short, the idealism of Yajnavalkya cannot be proved in this way.

2. Sleep

Uddalaka interprets sleep (svapna) with the help of an etymo­logy as svam apitah: a sleeping man is gone into himself. He illustrates this fanciful etymology with the example of a bird which flies all around and finally sits down at the place of its binding. It seems that a falcon is meant which is bound to some place as long as it is not used for hunting, Thus, Uddalaka goes on, the manas flies all around till it sits down at its binding place, the breath (Ch. Up. vi. 8, 1-2). This means: The mind of a per-son awake wanders from object to object till the man gets tired, then manas comes back into the man (svam apitah) and settles on the breath. A sleeping man does not think indeed, but his breath goes on. Without breath there can be no think­ing, as all tile so-called magicians of the doctrine of breath-­wind 17 had shown. Breath binds mind to body according to Uddalaka.

This doctrine reminds us of the discussion between Yajna­valkya and Uddalaka where Uddalaka asks for the string which binds this world and the world beyond and all beings together, and Yajnavalkya answers: This string is the wind (Br. Up. iii. 7, 1-2). Uddalaka agrees to this answer. Wind and breath were regarded as the ultimate realities in macro-and-micro-cosms by the above-mentioned magicians of wind and breath, and Uddalaka was closely related to their way of thinking. 18 Yajnavalkya in this case answered the question of his opponent according to what he knew of his, - ie. Uddalaka's - conception of the importance of the binding wind-breath. But Yajnavalkya's own doctrine of sleep was quite different from that of Uddalaka.

Uddalaka imagined manas when awake as migrating out of the body and when it falls asleep returning into it, into svam, that is into atman into the Self, svam atmanam mean­ing body in this hylozoist-materialistic theory in concordance with the very old conception that the self is the body. 19

Yajnavalkya, on the other hand, spoke also in connec­tion with sleep of the bird, of an eagle or falcon which, out of fatigue, sits down. Similarly he goes on; the purusa hurries to the antah where he sees no dream (Br. Up. iv.3, 19). The manas in Uddalaka's doctrine wanders outside the body in order to come into contact with reality to get proper knowledge. But the purusa in Yajnavalkya's theory wanders to a region far away from the body in dream and sleep in order to enjoy freedom of the objective world of daily life. This difference marks again the difference between materialism and idealism.

This antah (end) of sleep is opposed to the antah of being awake (ib. 18), and the puru~a wanders along both anta~ just as a fish swims along both sides of a river. The antah-s are also called loka-s (worlds) or sthana-s (places), and there is a third sthana, the region of dreams, which connects the two other sthana-s. Standing in third dream-­place, the purusa looks at both the worlds, the world of suffering here and that of bliss beyond. And when he falls asleep, he creates with the material which he takes from this world the objects in the world of dreams-chariots, lakes, rivers, rejoicings, etc. On this occasion Yajnavalkya quotes some stanzas which deal with the phenomenon of dream in some­what other ways. They have a shamanistic outlook. According to them the soul of a sleeping man leaves the body, does not fall asleep itself, looks at the sleeping body, which is protected by breath, roams around as it wants, being eternal, the golden man, the single swan (ib. 11-12). So far this theory of sleep and dream is in full concor­dance with primitive shamanistic ideas which are well-known from Central Asia, etc.20 According to them mind or soul leaves the body in contrast to Uddalaka’s conception that in sleep mind comes back into the body.

Then the next stanza goes on: In sleep he creates many forms, enjoying women, eating or seeing dangers (ib. 13). This corresponds with Yajnavalkya's idealistic conception of the purusa creating in Dream Rivers etc., which is also in complete contrast to Uddalaka’s descrip­tion of sleep which looks very realistic, in correspon­dence with his general contrast of the materialism with Yajnavalkya's idealism.

Uddalaka later on describes how a man, falling asleep,21 enters sat and becomes unaware of his individuality, just as the rasa-s of different flowers lose their identity and the knowledge of it when they become one and the same mass of honey. But when the man awakes he gets back his individuality and its consciousness. Just as rivers become united in the ocean and (by evaporation and rainfall) come out of the ocean22 again without being conscious of having been united and having forgotten their individuality during their stay in the ocean, thus men also, when awakened, do not remember that they have been in sleep united in sat, losing their individuality and its conscious­ness (Ch. Up. vi, 9-10).

Correspondingly, Yajnavalkya taught that in sleep a father becomes a non-father, a mother a non-mother, worlds become non-worlds, gods non-gods, Vedas non­-Vedas, the thief a non-thief and in the same way a murderer of an embryo, a Candala, a Paulkasa, a sramana and a tapasa lose their identity (Br. Up. iv. 3, 22), because in sleep there is neither good nor evil. This stressing of the moral aspect is missing in Uddalaka’s teaching of sleep whilst Yajnavalkya is interested in des­cribing sleep as something happy, free from the sufferings of this world. He goes on: Sleeping, one does not see anything, but seeing itself (or rather the faculty of seeing) goes on being a faculty of the eternal subject which' in sleep does not practically see, because there is no object to be seen. The same holds true for all the other facul­ties-of smelling, tasting, speaking, hearing, thinking, touch­ing and recognizing. When the subject in this way stands alone without an object, it is in the stage of the brahman-­world, the highest bliss (ib. 23-33). Here again the idealism of Yajnavalkya is obvious: In sleep not only the subjective activities and characters of men disappear but also the objective world and the Vedas; of course they are extinct for the sleeping man only, but Yajnavalkya omits to make this restriction clear. Idealism is quite overt in Yajnaval­kya's views of the eternal soul as eternally seeing etc. Here again one observes the idealistic escapism of Yajna­valkya, for whom the highest bliss is to be free from this world, a point totally absent in Uddalaka’s materialism.

3. Mind

This materialism is further expressed in Uddalaka's doctrine that mind is becoming out of food just as breath (life) out of water and speech out of fire (Ch. Up. vi. 5). It was common among the old thinkers to identify speech with fire and breath (life) with water. But to claim that mind is food was something stupendous. It was the climax of this text of Uddalaka teaching his son Svetaketu (Ch. Up. vi. 1-7) and he felt the necessity to prove this thesis. Therefore, he used the churrning of milk as analogy to human digestion: just as milk is separated in three parts, food becomes threefold-its finest parts become mind, the middle ones flesh, the coarsest ones excrements. And finally he made his son undergo the experiment of fasting in order to show that drinking water keeps him alive but avoiding food makes him lose his thinking (rather memory). When he eats again, his knowledge, his mind, comes back, as we would say, or his mind is re­created by food, as Uddalaka taught. This conception reminds us of the later Samkhy ideas according to which buddhi is the first product of prakrti. But in Samkhya buddhi works only in connection with soul (purusa), while in Uddalaka's materialism there is no purusa, no eternal soul as the ultimate and only subject.

Yajnavalkya, on the other hand, identified atman with brah­man and mind, breath, seeing, hearing, earth, water, wind, etc. (Br. Up. iv. 3, 5) in concordance with his radical idealism, according to which the spiritual soul is the ultimate reality. He agreed in this respect with Samkhya who declared brahman to consist of mind (Ch. Up. iii. 14, 2), with Satyakama who identified one sixteenth of brahman with mind (Ch. Up. iv. 8, 3) or mind with brahman, as Yajnavalkya quoted him (Br Up. iv. 1,6) and with the anony­mous idealist of Ch. Up. iii. 18, 1. On another occasion Yajnavalkya taught that the mind of a dying man went to the moon (Br. Up. iii. 2, 13) in agreement with the teaching of one of the breath-wind magician in Br. Up. i. 3, 16. Perhaps Yajnavalkya in this context understood mind as the material base of thinking in the body. At all events he once stressed the point that there is inside mind the real subject, the antaryamin, who is governing not only mind but also breath, speech, seeing, hearing, knowing, semen, earth, water, fire, air, wind, heaven, sun moon, stars, all beings, in short, the whole world (Br Up. iii. 7, 3 seq.). This subject is the unseen seer, the unthought thinker, i.e. the absolute subject, the only thinker besides whom there is no other thinker. Yajnavalkya confessed that this ultimate subject cannot be recognized. Quite in contrast to Uddalaka he did not strive to prove the exis­tence and power 'of this spiritual subject. And, it is remarkable that he described this subject just in his dis­cussion with Uddalaka who had heard of such a 'governor of the whole world from inside' from a demon who had taken possession of a woman. Uddalaka listened to the unproved description of this antaryamin which was in sharp contrast to his own hylozoistic conception of mind being created out of matter in the form of food, and he kept silent at the end. The author, an idealist of this discussion, did not dare to make Uddalaka accept this idealistic religious doctrine of Yajnavalkya, but he avoided also to maintain Uddalaka’s repudiation of it.

In his discussion with Usasta, one of the breath wind magicians, Yajnavalkya also referred to this unknowable subject: You cannot think tile thinker of the thinking (Br.Up. 4, 2.) and he called this unknowable subject the aksaram (ib. 8, 11) which is atman-brahman. Knowing (of the supreme existence of) this innermost atman, real Brahmins give up all desire for practical success, reach childhood beyond all learning and become silent (Br. Up. iii. 5). In this way Yajnavalkya connects his agnostic doctrine of the ultimate reality of this only and unthink­able subject with his highest goal of world-detesting pessi­mism which stands in contrast to Uddalaka's materialism.

4. Monism.

Uddalaka wants to teach his pupil the one real which, being known, makes everything known, and this reality is the sat. He illustrates this monism with the examples of clay which being known make -all pots known, of copper and iron which being known make all products of these metals known. Knowledge of matter, of sat, is the goal of this materia­listic monism. As proof he gives illustrations from well-known handicrafts in Indian villages (Ch. Up. vi. 1).

Yajnavalkya, on the other hand, when he taught his beloved Maitreyi, declared that the main object of his philosophy was atman. By seeing, hearing, thinking and under­standing atman all is known (B[. Up. iv. 5, 6). Everything, the Brahmin-caste, the Ksatriya-caste, the worlds, the gods, the Vedas, all beings are in atman. Just as when a drum is beaten, the drum might be grasped but not the sounds outside the drum, in the same way the atman should be grasped and then all the worlds, gods, Vedas, beings, etc. are grasped. The conch-shell and the sounds resulting from its blowing, and the vina and her sounds are other exam­ples given by Yajnavalkya in this connection, being three altogether, just as Uddalaka had given three illustrations for his monism (Br. Up. iv. 5, 8-10).

Here again the idealism of Yajnavalkya stands in contrast to the materialism of Uddalaka. The illustration of clay, copper and iron is easily understood; but that of the sounds is strange. What the average man sees, observes and knows is the objective world (which corresponds to the sounds), and Yajnavalkya has himself on several occasions pointed out that it is impossible to know, see, hear etc. the ulti­mate subject, the atman-brahman (which corresponds to the drum etc.). But here he pretends that knowledge of the atman makes all the world known.

Uddalaka so understood his materialistic monism that he was not satisfied in maintaining only that it is suffi­cient to know sat the ultimate material; he moreover worked hard to teach his pupil how primary matter became the objective world of sun, moon, lightning and fire, of all the different things with their names and forms, of the human body, breath, mind etc.; how sleep, hunger, thirst and even an ordeal and teaching worked. In short he taught an encyclopedic materialistic monism.

Yajnavalkya, on the other hand, turned again and again to atman-brahman although he knew that it was impossible to know it. When asked, he could answer to a lot of questions as regards the phenomena of the world, but his main interest was, in contrast to Uddalaka, not to explain the becoming of the world but to become free from the world.

Correspondingly Uddalaka maintained that the world, being nothing else than a transformation of sat, was eternal and the sat could not develop out of an asat, because this was unthinkable (Ch. Up. vi. 2, 2). Today we would formulate: sat is according to definition being, not becom­ing out of something else, out of asat.

Yajnavalkya maintained quite the same as regards atman. He is eternal, he is born without a birth in a samsara, without any beginning and even in so called rebirth he cannot be born again (B r. Up. iii.). Reborn is atman only insofar as he received a new body. The progressive modern scientist agrees with Uddalaka that matter is eternal, without beginning and always changing its form. But he cannot understand Yajnavalkya who teaches religion rather than scientific philosophy.

Uddalaka in his philosophy does not deal with problems of rebirth, of an eternal soul, karman or moksa. With scholarly observation and understandable examples: he tries to convince his pupil to accept his materialistic hylozoist monism, quite in contrast to Yajnavalkya's idealism which is founded on introspection and the tradition of shamanism which was certainly living in prehistoric India and developed into yoga. Thus, it is possible to show the fundamental differ­ence between the materialism of Uddalaka and the idealism of Yajnavalkya, but insofar as hylozoism to a great extent looks similar to pantheism, the redactors of the Chandogyo­panisat accepted this materialistic philosophy into their idealistic-religious text-book and preserved this highly valuable document of old thinking. 



Reference

  1. W. Ruben, Geschichte der indischen Philosophie, Berlin 1954, 87 seq.; in my previous book, Die Philosophen der Upanishaden, Bern. 1947, 156 seq., I had called him a realist.
  2. Cf. my review of a book Die schosten Upanishaden (German translation of The Upanishads, Breath of Eternal of the Vedanta Press in Hollywood) in Orientalistische Literaturzeitung, 1953 Nr. 9/10, p. 462.
  3. W. Ruben, Beginn der Philosophie in Indien, Berlin 1955, 167 seq.
  4. W. Ruben, L'origine de la pensee rationelte dans l’Inde, La Pansee, revue du rationalism moderne, no. 99, Sept.-Oct. 1961, 75 seq.
  5. It seems that the Chinese materialistic conception of tao was developed from something similar to (la. (Cf. Jang Ching-Schun, Der chinesische Philosophie Laudse Lind seine Lehre, Berlin, 1955).
  6. In Festschrift Kuhn, Breslau 1916, 37 seq
  7. H. Jacobi, Die Entwicklung der Gottesidee bei den Indern, Bonn 1923, 11 seq; and Das Licht des Ostens, ed. by Maximilian Kern, Stuttgart-Berlin-Leipzig, p. 146 seq.
  8. H. V. Glasenapp, Entwickhuugsstufen des indischen Denkens, Halle 1940, 289 seq.
  9. H. V. Glasenapp, Die Philosophie der Indern, Stuttgart 1949, 126.
  10. H. V. Glasenapp, Der indische Materialismus, Asiatische Studien 8, 1954, and his review of my book in ZDMG 1956, 230.
  11. Dale Riepe, The Naturalistic Tradition in Indian Thought; Seattle 1961, 29. Cf. E. Frauwallner, Indische Philosophie I, Salzburg 1953, 90, about Uddalaka's cosmogony: it is not of the kind of an idealistic doctrine.
  12. E. Zeller, Die Philosophie der Grieehen I,1 (7th edition, Leipzig, 1923. 265 seq.)
  13. H. Diels, Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker I (3rd edition, Berlin, 1912) frgm. A 1 37 (Diogenes Laertius) and A 23 (Aetius).
  14. Jacobi loc. cir. 1923, 13.
  15. H. V. G1asenapp loecit. 1940, 321.
  16. V. I. Lenin, Materialismus und Emperiokritizismus, Berlin, 1949, 88.
  17. About these representatives of the Vaiyu-prana-doctrine of. W. Ruben, loc. cit. 1954, 80 and 84 seq.
  18. But he regards prana as a product of apah
  19. P. Deussen, Allgemeine Geschichte der Philosophie, I, 1 (3rd ed., Leipzig, 1920), 85, seq., 326 seq.
  20. Cf. Ruben in Act Orientalia xviii, 191 seq.
  21. I follow Deussen in contrast to Jacobi (loc. cit. 1923, 10: death).
  22. Yajnalkya uses the term ekayana in Br. Up. iv. 5. 12 for the organ of sense. 




Walter Ruben’s essay Uddalaka and Yajnavalkya: Materialism & Idealism was first published in Indian Studies: Past Present (1962-3), Calcutta. It also forms part of the volume Studies in th History of Indian Philosophy: An Anthology of Articles by Scholars Eastern and Western (Volume:I) edited by Debiprasad Chattopadhyaya (Published by KP Bagchi & Company, Calcutta; 1978)
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