Abstract
In this paper, I offer a close comparative reading of a creation myth from chapter 1 of the Bṛhadāraṇyaka-Upaniṣad, which opens with the startling statement “ātmaivedam agra āsīt”, “in the beginning there was the self (ātman)”. I read this classical text with Śaṅkara, its foremost commentator, in dialogue with an ensemble of Indologists (Wilhelm Halbfass, Greg Bailey and Frederick Smith) and theorists (Walter Benjamin, Ramchandra Gandhi and Hélène Cixous), and vis-à-vis, the creation myth narrated in chapter 1 of the Book of Genesis. My aim is to decipher the intrinsic relation between identity, difference and diversity underlying the Upaniṣadic myth, and the ambivalent relationship (fear and desire) between self and other depicted here. The Upaniṣad presents a narrative of “the self first”, and implied is the aspiration to retrieve and rediscover this first self, the ātman, which precedes and encompasses everything else. I challenge this narrative drawing on Mukund Lath’s paper (J World Philos 4:6–23, 2003/2018). According to Lath, being is becoming, and change is a precondition of identity-formation. Identity, he argues, does not only accommodate but also invites change and plurality. Identity for Lath is a matter of creation, not restoration. It is pregnant with the future, not obsessed with premordiality. Lath’s unique case study for his counter-Upaniṣadic discussion of identity and self is classical Indian music, rāga music.
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Notes
On my use of the word “myth”, one of the readers for the JICPR remarked:
“The Upaniṣads are expositions of Reality, or in the least, it is a discourse on the concept of Reality. Hence, Upaniṣadic thought logically cannot be a myth. It may be referred to either as an idea, or discourse, or paradigm, or any other term that does not violate its original spirit. [… The term “myth” and the phrase] “creation-myth” indicates a pūrvagraha [a preconceived opinion, or judgement, or even prejudice, on behalf of the author]”.
In the spirit of difference, diversity and plurality, I’m quoting the reader, appreciating his or her insidership in the text, in the tradition.
Greg Bailey suggests that “the words eka eva are suggestive of the ātman in a state of absolute isolation, having undergone no modification” (2016, 64). In his reading, this state of “no modification” stands in contrast with the depiction of the ātman in BU 1.4.1 as puruṣavidhaḥ, “in the shape of a man”. The prefix vi in the compound puruṣavidhaḥ indicates according to Bailey, “a sense of distinction/modification”. He further suggests that the ātman is “in a modified state already”, unlike the “eka eva” ātman of BU 1.4.17. The Sanskrit articulation in 1.4.1, Bailey implies, anticipates what he refers to as “the transition of the ātman to worldly existence”. The phrase “eka eva”, on the other hand, signifies according to him sheer primordiality, prior and before any trace of creation.
This is the opening sentence of Aurobindo’s “Man and the Supermind”, in Essays Divine and Human (1997, 157).
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Raveh, D. Identity, Difference and Diversity: A Journey from the Bṛhadāraṇyaka-Upaniṣad to Mukund Lath. J. Indian Counc. Philos. Res. (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40961-024-00327-2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s40961-024-00327-2