Jaiminīya Upaniṣad Brāhmaṇa (JUB), is the oldest
known Upaniṣad and yet not many people are aware of it. The primary reason is
that the Vedāntins do not recognise JUB as a Upaniṣad and so awareness of it has
been confined to the small circle of people belonging to the Jaiminīya
tradition of the Sāmaveda. JUB is not a part of the eleven principal Upaniṣads
commented on by Adi Śaṅkarācārya. However, sections 4.18-21 of the JUB took
on a separate life of their own and later became Kena Upaniṣad.
It is unclear why this section of JUB was classified as an
authentic Upaniṣad by the Vedāntins but not JUB as a whole. This is in marked
contrast to Chāndogya-Upaniṣad, also part of the Sāmaveda but which did achieve
the status of principal Upaniṣad. Not many people are aware that in our earlier
records, Chāndogya-Upaniṣad was called the Chāndogya-Upaniṣad Brāhmaṇa.1
The principal Upaniṣads were, as a rule, written under the
aegis of a Vedic śākhā and were steeped in the cultural universe of the Vedic śākhā
to which they belonged. The earliest Upaniṣads —Jaiminīya Upaniṣad Brāhmaṇa,
Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad and Chāndogya-Upaniṣad—are difficult to
understand without knowing their Vedic background. Modern readers, unaware of
such historical context, usually rely on the commentary of our famous Vedāntin
āchāryas to interpret these ancient and often impenetrable texts. It was with the
Vedāntic commentaries starting 7th century CE that these Upaniṣads began
to circulate as an independent text unmoored from its traditional Vedic
background.
JUB belongs to the Jaiminīya branch of the Sāmaveda, while
the most famous Upaniṣad of the Sāmaveda, the Chāndogya-Upaniṣad,
belongs to the Kauthuma-Rāṇāyanīya branch. Similarly, Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad
comes from the Śukla Yajurveda and forms the last chapter of the Śatapatha
Brāhmaṇa. Understanding this lineage helps us to understand the text as
well. The terminology, the world view, the method of gaining liberation is
different based on the Vedic branch that the Upaniṣad belongs to.
JUB, consisting of four chapters, was first translated into
English in 1896 by Hans Oertel, an American Sanskritist. This is the only
English translation attempted so far. Despite its status as the earliest known
Upaniṣad, its academic study has been neglected in India. Textbooks on the Upaniṣads
do not mention it and, as explained earlier, contemporary Vedāntic scholars do
not teach it as part of their curriculum. I have been told that JUB is known
and recited in a surviving Sāmavedic schools in Kerala but am yet to confirm
it.
The Japanese Vedic scholar, Masato Fujii, is by far the most
erudite scholar of JUB and his numerous papers on this text are indispensable.2 Understanding JUB also requires
an in-depth understanding of Sāmaveda and familiarity with the technical
terminology related to sāman chants, especially the gayatra sāman.
I will not attempt to do that in this essay; instead, I will focus on just
three important topics where JUB makes a seminal contribution to the further development
of Hinduism: OM, prāṇa (breath) and rebirth.
Om
For the Vedic poets, certain words or phonemes properly
intonated have the potency to shape or alter our material universe. In the
beginning, the world was sonic, presenting itself as both the unmanifest and
the material universe. This primordial sound of creation is variously called akṣara,
vāc, and brahman. Ṛg Vedic sutra 10.71 and 10.125 extol the
creative role of vāc, the primal sound, as the mother of the universe.
However, the sacred syllable, Om, does not occur in the Ṛg
Veda Saṃhitā. Om is mentioned for the first time in the older Saṃhitā portion
of Sāmaveda (assuming Yajurveda came later). It is the Sāmavedic Jaiminiya
Brāhmaṇa that first explicitly integrates the syllable Om into the
inherited Vedic discourses on akṣara, vāc, and brahman.3 The Jaiminiya Brāhmaṇa also develops
the idea that Om, as a sound, embodies the three Vedas, uniting a range of
different Vedic recitational practices under a single rubric.4
The JUB being a Upaniṣadic text, pushes the concept of Om
towards ontology and transcendence. OM, proclaims JUB, is the essence (rasa)
of the three Vedas. This essence cannot be reduced further. JUB says:
(Om is) Indra, karma, imperishableness, the
immortal, the manifold, the numerous, the all, the light higher than the all;
righteousness, truth, distinction, decision which is not to be contradicted;
the ancient all, all speech…
All this world are pin together by
this syllable (Om). That same having pierced them flows tenfold, thousandfold,
ten thousandfold, hundred thousandfold, millionfold, ten millionfold, hundred
millionfold, billionfold, ten billionfold, hundred billionfold, thousand
billionfold. As a flood flowing in different directions (proceeding) farther
and farther becomes broader, even so this syllable proceeding farther and
farther becomes broader.5
Aside from the use of such staggeringly large numbers, this
paragraph captures the Sāmavedic bards’ attempt to capture the infinity and
profundity of the cosmic sound Om. The universe, according to the Vedas,6 manifested from subtle to the
gross. The syllable Om, the subtlest of the subtle, is the very sonic essence from
which the universe emerged and in which it is permeated. The chanter can
understand the very nature of existence and attain immortality through the
proper intonation and recitation of Om, says JUB.
Prāṇa and Meditation
Om, both as a cosmic sound and as a human chant, is
intimately connected with prāṇa at an individual and at a cosmic level. Through
the cosmic vibration of Om, the entire universe is pervaded with prāṇa. The
prāṇa governs all the vital functions of man not just as an individual prāṇa
of a living being but as the cosmic prāṇa which pervades the entire
universe. Through this prāṇa, man as a microcosm is connected with the
cosmos as a macrocosm: the speech connected with fire, the mind with the moon,
the sight with the sun, and the hearing with the quarters.
All the vital functions of humans emerged from the prāṇa
and, after death, the individual prāṇa will merge back into the supreme prāṇa,
because prāṇa is the eternal substance that every life goes back into.7 This prāṇic teaching
of JUB is a precursor to the Vedāntic idea of the unity of ātman and brahman.
Though the later Upaniṣad will substitute prāṇa with ātman or brahman,
the idea of a cosmic and individual prāṇa was the basis on which the ontological
edifice of Upaniṣad is built.
Prāṇa is also connected with the yogic teaching of prānāyāma.
The practice of prānāyāma is required to harness the cosmic prāṇa
through the human breath. The practice of prānāyāma is essential for internal cleansing
and for focusing the mind which is connected with breath.
Before the recitation or chanting of the Vedic mantras, the
practitioner performs a kind of mental concentration (yukti) through the
regulation of breath. The act of regulating the breath is connected with
identifying one’s own breath with the breath pervading the whole cosmos. Vedic scholar Fujji Masato, commenting on the
regulation of breath during the sāman chant, points out:
“The yukti is not just a
mental preparation for the sāman-chant but is, so to say, the
realisation of the transcendent sāman. As a means of this realisation
the act of regulating breath also must be connected with the transcendental
being such as the breath pervading the world.”8
The Upaniṣadic and later yogic literature is suffused with
metaphysical speculation on the ontological status of this prāṇa and its
role in achieving higher yogic cognition. The connection of the Vedic chant of
Om with regulated breathing and mental concentration forms one of the bases of the
early teaching of yoga in the Upaniṣads and the Dharmasūtras.
Rebirth
While the concept of rebirth is vaguely referred to in the
earlier Ṛg Veda,9 it is only in the Jaiminīya tradition that we find the emergence of karma and rebirth
as a coherent doctrine. In the Jaiminīya Upaniṣad Brāhmaṇa, as also the Jaiminīya
Brāhmaṇa, the deceased takes either of two paths available. In the first
path, the deceased goes to the sun but, unable to go beyond, comes back to the
moon. The moon is associated with rebirth, and it is the repository of all the
good deeds and sacrificial activity that the person did in his life. Now
drinking the rasa of his good deeds in the moon (or enjoying the fruits
of his good deeds in previous life), the person comes back to the earth. This
is the first path.
The second path is more complicated. It involves the role of
Sāmavedic priests to recite and intone correctly the sāman chant to help
the deceased to reach the path of the sun. The path involves a dialogue between
the deceased and the cosmic entities. As shown below, the deceased passes
through various cosmic entities before reaching the final goal:
the earth → the fire → the wind →
the intermediate region → the quarters → the day and night → the half-months →
months → the seasons → the year → the heavenly Gandharvas → Apsaras → the sky →
the gods → the sun ↔ the moon10
At the end of this path, the deceased reaches the sun, but
has full freedom to travel between the sun and the moon, which means that the
deceased has the option to stay in the sun (brahma loka) or come back to
the earth by taking the lunar path. In the later Upaniṣads, the lunar path
would be called the path of the fathers (pitṛayāna), which is the path
of rebirth, and the solar path would be called the path to the gods (devayāna)
the world of brahman from which there is no rebirth. The pitṛayāna
is associated with the householder life and Vedic sacrifice, while the devayāna
path is associated with asceticism and renunciation.11
In JUB, we see a glimpse of the idea of karma and rebirth discussed
at length for the first time in Indian textual literature. The fact that that
JUB suggests that your good karma stays with you after death and can be enjoyed
later, and there is a path back to earth after the enjoyment of karma, foreshadows a very sophisticated development of karma theory in later Indian religious
thought.
Conclusion
In this essay, I have avoided all the technicality related
to sāman chants and instead have teased out certain concepts and
doctrines central to the Jaiminīya tradition of the Sāmaveda, which then became
central to Hinduism. While modern Hindus tend to think of Hinduism as a
monolithic entity, it is these specialised and largely forgotten traditions that
provided the building blocks of what we call Sanātana Dharma.
These ancient Sāmavedic singers were both scholars and
mystics. They have preserved the oldest surviving music tradition (10th
century BCE) of Hindu civilisation and have influenced almost all the music
that has emerged from India. It is the Sāmaveda tradition that made seminal
breakthroughs in the science of prosody, melody and linguistics.
The Sāmavedic Upaniṣads—Chāndogya and JUB—are
the metaphysical texts of the Sāmaveda tradition. Their monumental speculation
on Om, its inner meaning and its connection to mind and prāṇa, has led
to the development of Yogic meditation and the sophisticated tantric
speculations on the emanation of cosmos from the primordial sound. A few trained Sāmavedic sāman singers among
the Namboodhris of Kerala and few scattered families in South India still
maintain their thousands-of-years-old family tradition. However, modernity does
not care for tradition, and we will have to see how long this ancient living
tradition survives.
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Kamlesh 7:08 PM | August 18, 2022