Ancient Indian History

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<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->                  An Archaeologist’s journey into Adi Sankara Bhashyas –II
                                       
                                              T.Satyamurthy. 
               
            In India, all philosophical speculations or thoughts that accept Vedas as authority are considered as Sanathana Dharma. Vedic tradition has two sides, Karma and Jnana.The philosophical system, Mimamsa, emphasized Karma side and raised a philosophy to justify and help the continuation of Vedic rites and rituals. Vedanta took to Jnnna side of Vedas and developed and elaborated philosophy out of it. Both these were direct continuation of Vedic Culture, but known as Mimamsa and for distinction between the two, the first is purva Mimamsa and the latter one is uttaara Mimamsa. Other philosophical systems, Sankya, yoga, nyaya, and vaiseshika based their philosophy on the basis of ordinary human experience and reasoning and they did not challenge the authority of Veda but were in harmony. Other heterodox systems of ancient India, the charvaka, Buddhism and Jainism arose mainly opposing the Vedic culture and they rejected the authority of Vedas.

            In all the systems, the foundation of philosophy is the experience and the chief tool is reason. The experience is again ramified into ordinary normal experience or truth discovered and accepted by people in general, and the experience of those saints who have the intuitive perception of truth. In both the cases their experience were transpired into the mundane world, through their own writing of through the writings of their disciples. In the above process, the Preacher has to explain or clarify the subject, whatever it may be even abstract, in a simple manner with the similes and examples that even a common man can understand. Always they preferred materials popular in contemporary period.

                   
          Adi sankara’s Advaita philosophy is generally summed up with another famous dhristanta, allegory of Rajju sarpa or known as rope and serpent. In order to explain the transcendental reality of the world and to establish the paramarthika or Supreme reality of Atman as the ultimate truth, Adi Sankara cites the perception of snake in the rope. Rather, the allegory is explained as under:

A man passing through a High way suddenly saw a snake interrupting his route, but on close perception, he found that the material perceived by him was only a rope and not snake. The moment he realized that he had mistook the rope for snake; the snake has disappeared or wiped out from his perception. Likewise, when real jnana emanates the ephemeral reality disappears and the aspirant realizes the ultimate Truth, ie, the real Brahman.


                                  “Brahma satyam jaganmitya.”


          The allegory here is simple but contains the quintessence of entire Advaita philosophy of Adi Sankara. He admits that as long as the person perceived the rope as snake his mind accepts the rope as snake. In other words in the rope actual snake was there till the moment he perceived it as rope. Once the real knowledge emerges the transcendental nature of the object suddenly disappears and the empirical reality emerges. Thus the aspirant getting the real jnana understands that what he had perceived was maya or illusion and attains the real knowledge of the Paramatman or the Truth of the Atman. In fact the prime importance of Advaita surrounds this theory of Illusion (Maya) and certainly Adi Sankara placed an example popular in nature so that even an ordinary aspirant can understand it clearly. As already stated elsewhere in the part I, Adi Sankara always place the allegories to establish his Doctrines with very popular well known objects or materials.
        It is pertinent to note here that the Advaita philosophy is based on the Veda texts and they also provide sufficient allegories here and there to clarify the thoughts of the Vedic Seers, but  with out reciting them Adi Sankara placed the noble experience with the allegories or examples of the contemporary period in which he lived.
        In the above context, he had snake as a revered object which could draw the attention of even common man. In India the snake was considered as the holy of the holiest thing and together with tree formed the object of worship in early period or even can be placed earlier than the earliest temple reported so far. This worship of natural objects or Forces is reported in Vedic texts and also other heterodox school of thoughts accepted them. The earliest Naga temple so far discovered in India is at Sonkh near Mathura. In the archaeological excavations Dr.H.Haertel from Germany had discovered the earliest brick temple dedicated to Naga. The practice of worshiping snake as the main deity is authenticated here. It is interesting to note that the excavator had dated the site, on stratigraphical grounds at least 100 years earlier than the beginning of the Common Era**.
         
          In Kerala, the birth place of Adi Sankara the tradition of worshipping Naga was very popular and the practice of having Sarpa Kavu (MiniTempleof Snake)continues even to day. This popular material had made him to place this as the allegory so that even a common man can understand the same. Thus his period may be earlier than the beginning of the Common Era. This is tom be further probed with other archaeological materials from Kerala.

        The snake and tree worship found a prominent role in early Buddhism also. In the Amaravati Stupa, in Andhra Pradesh, the worship of bhodhi tree is shown. Even in Jainism snake finds a dominating position, and one of the twentyfour thirtankaras, viz., and Parshvanatha’s crest is snake hood. Besides Adi Sankara all other heterodox schools also admit the well revered object snake as a religious symbol.                                                                (to be continued..)

**The beginning of Christian era is termed as Common era
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..... to be continued.