Swami Krishnananda Shashtyabdapurti Mahotsava Commemoration Volume
A Souvenir released on Swami Krishnananda's 60th Birthday
Significance of the Uma Haimavati
by Dr. Satya Prakash Singh
(Episode in the Kena Upanishad)
In the course of explaining the nature of Brahman, the Kena Upanishad abruptly narrates an interesting story. According to it, Brahman brought victory to the gods. The gods attained greatness through It. But they thought that the victory was actually won by themselves and that the greatness was their own acquisition. Brahman, however, was aware of the claim of the gods. It, therefore, made Itself manifest upon them in the form of a demon. But the gods could not know as to who the demon was. They, therefore, asked Agni to know on their behalf the identity of the demon. Taking it to be an easy task, Agni rushed towards the demon forthwith. But, before he could ask the demon about its identity, the latter asked him about his own. In response to the query, Agni told the demon that he was Agni, the all-knowing god. Then he was again asked about his capability. Agni told the demon that he was capable of reducing to ashes everything whatever there was on the earth. The demon placed before Agni a blade of grass and asked him to burn it. Agni approached it with all the power at his command, but could not burn it. He immediately returned and confessed to the gods his inability to know the identity of the demon.
Then the gods asked Vayu to find out. Vayu also took it easy and rushed towards the demon. But, before he could ask the demon anything, he himself was questioned by the latter. Proudly he told the demon that he was Vayu, the god who breathed within the Mother. Then he was asked by the demon as to the power that lay in him. Vayu told that he could blow the demon away together with all that there was on the earth. Then the demon placed before Vayu a blade of grass and asked him to blow it away. Accepting the challenge, Vayu approached it with all the power and speed at his command, but failed to blow it away. He returned immediately and confessed before the gods that he could not understand the identity of the demon.
Finally they asked Indra, the Lord of plenty, to go and know who the demon was. Accepting the challenge, Indra rushed towards the demon, but, dramatically enough, the latter vanished from his sight. Now the space, which earlier was occupied by the demon, came to be filled by an extremely beautiful woman, Uma Haimavati by name. Indra asked her about the identity of the demon. She told him that it was Brahman which appeared in the form of the demon and that it was due to Its victory that they had attained greatness.
That is how, the Upanishad observes, Indra came to know of Brahman. Moreover, it is by virtue of coming nearest to the contact of Brahman that Agni, Vayu and Indra are regarded as higher than the other gods. From amongst these three also, since Indra came the closest to Brahman, he is regarded as still higher than the other gods. Indeed, it is he who first of all came to know of Brahman.
As regards the relevance of the episode in the Upanishad, it has been a matter of controversy in modern times, particularly in regard to its antiquity. Both sorts of opinion have been expressed, some taking it to be later than the first part of the Upanishad and some taking it to be even earlier. Hume, for instance, observes:
"The Kena Upanishad consists of two quite distinct parts. The prose portion, 14-34, is evidently the simpler and earlier. The portion 1-13 (all in verse, except 9) contains much more elaborated doctrine and would seem to be later in date of composition."
Max Muller, on the other hand, refers to the general opinion amongst the scholars holding it to be a later addition. But he himself is in a fix. On the one hand, in view of the "Brahmana character" of its prose he considers this latter half of the Upanishad as earlier than the first half, and on the other, in view of the irregularity of the metrical structure of the verses, he hesitates to assign the former half any later date. t The contradiction and the hesitation expose the unreliability of the opinions expressed in regard to the disparate origin of the text. In fact, a mixture of verse and prose is quite usual to the Upanishadic style. And it is also not that the scholars concerned with the problem are in any way less conscious of this fact. What indeed baffles them is the relevance of the story in the context of the high philosophy of the first part. While the abstruseness of the first part is quite evident, the second part has usually been taken as a legend intended, at the most, to impress upon the student the importance of humility in the knowledge of the Absolute. R.D. Ranade, for instance, observes:
"Unless a man is always humble in his effort after knowledge, it would not ever be possible for him to obtain it. Want of humility implies merely an annihilation of knowledge. It is possibly this lesson of humility which is illustrated in the interesting parable in the latter part of the Kenopanishad." But, such an assessment does not go well with the brevity of style the sage has adopted in the rest of the Upanishaic passage, both preceding and following the story .
Acharya Sankara sees as many as four alternative purposes behind the introduction of this story in the Upanishad. In the first place, he takes it to be meant for removing from the mind of the common man the misgiving that Brahman is a nonentity. The cause of the possible misgiving, as noted by the Acharya, is the incomprehensibility of Brahman. As against this, when it is pointed out as the ruler of all, higher than the gods, cause of the victory of the gods and the defeat of the demons, then the positivity of its existence as the Reality becomes self-evident. Secondly, it may be introduced here with a view to extolling the importance of metaphysical knowledge. If gods like Agni, Vayu and Indra, for instance, became so important in the whole galaxy of gods and if Indra became still more important by sheer knowledge, how important indeed this knowledge must be! In the third place, the Acharya considers it to be meant for bringing home to a person the difficulty involved in the knowledge of Brahman. If the knowledge was acquired with so much difficulty even by gods like Agni, Vayu and Indra, how much more difficult it must be for a man to acquire! Finally, Sankara considers it to be intended possibly for impressing upon the mind of the disciple the necessity of regarding Brahman as the real basis of our existence, doership, victory and indeed of everything that we are.
The suggestion of as many as four alterrnative reasons by the Acharya for the introduction of the story indicates how enigmatic the story must actually be in its setting. The sense of mystery attending upon the story, however, is further enhanced by the dramatic figuring of Uma Haimavati in it. Acharya Sankara takes her to be Vidya itself having assumed the form of a woman. He infers by her excessive beauty the unparallelled attractiveness of Vidya. In his view, the word Haimavati denotes Vidya's being adorned, like a woman, with golden ornaments, as it were. But, not feeling fully satisfied with this interpretation, the Acharya suggests an alternative one also. According to it, possibly it is Uma herself, the daughter of Himavan, who figures here intentionally so as to guide the gods with the knowledge acquired by her by virtue of living in the constant company of omniscient Siva, her husband.
On account of the twofold polarity of view in the Acharya himself regarding the meaning of the story, it is imperative to see if we can bring any precision to the interpretation, by any further consideration of the Upanishad as a whole and in the total perspective of Vedic thought. Starting with this end in view, what we find is that practically there are three parts in the text. One of them is the story itself and the others are those preceding and following the story. Another thing important to note is that while the setting of the middle part is divine, Adhidaivika, those of the initial and the concluding parts are spiritual, Adhyatmika. Between some of the items of the two planes also, there is close correspondence. The most important of these is the correspondence between the sense organs and the Prana mentioned in the first part and the gods mentioned in the second. Thus, corresponding to the gods Agni, Vayu and Indra in the story, we have Vak, Prana and Manas playing the leading role in the first part of the Upanishad. Just as in the story it is said that the gods were unable to know Brahman on their own, so in the first part, it is variously made out that Brahman cannot be understood by speech, Prana and Manas, and of course, by the eye and the ear.
Whatever the gods may be in their original form, what the Upanishad is con corned with is their representation in the human personality in the form of the various senses, the Prana and the mind. In a way, the whole story is a dramatisation of the effort of the human being to know the Absolute on different levels of cognition. As Agni is the god of speech, his deployment at the very outset to know Brahman is symbolic of man's effort to cognise Brahman on the level of speech. Historically speaking, it is interesting to note that the word Brahman has been used in the Vedas more frequently in the sense of a sacred word than in the sense of Reality. But, that is only a representative use, in the same way as any word is representative of the object it is used to denote. Accordingly, in the story, Agni comes face to face with the Yaksha, who is just a representative or epiphany of Brahman. But, being the god of speech, he cannot understand the reality behind the representation. Psychologically, though capable of being given a name, the Absolute cannot be described exactly through speech. For, speech itself draws its power of expression from the Absolute. This is what the Upanishad observes in its first section:
"That which is not expressed through speech but by which speech itself is expressed, know that to be Brahman and not what is ordinarily meditated on." (Kena Up. I. 5)
So is the case with the god Vayu. He is represented in the human personality by the principle of vitality. Vayu's failure to know Brahman is symbolic of the inaccessibility of the Absolute to vitality. An object can be accessible to a particular organ of knowledge only when it has some correspondence of nature with the organ. The word Brahman denotes in the Vedas a certain force no doubt, and hence, Vayu has a certain claim over it in regard to cognition. But, as the Absolute is not a sheer force, whether physical or vital, the vital with us cannot know its secret. At its best, it can only have a distant sense of emanation from the Absolute.
As regards Indra, he is represented in us by mind. In regard to the mind's capability of knowing Brahman, the Upanishad has already said that Brahman cannot be thought about by the mind; rather the mind itself is thought about by Brahman. As such, mind, in itself, is incapable of knowing Brahman. While speech and vitality have some sort of a tangible representation of Brahman in them in the form of word and vital force, mind at its best can have in it only an abstract image of Brahman. Accordingly, in the story, while the emanation of Brahman comes in close contact with Agni and Vayu and even converses with them, it wholly disappears from Indra when he approaches it. But, while speech and vitality, despite being tangibly connected with Brahman, are unconscious of It owing to lacking in self-consciousness, the mind, though directly unconnected with it, can understand the same reflectively by virtue of its proximity to consciousness which in its pure form is the very nature of Brahman. It is this nature of Brahman which, in the story, appears in the form of Uma Haimavati. Of course, the context does not bear out the contention that the beautiful lady appearing here is necessarily the wife of Siva and daughter of Himavan. For, if it were she, Indra may be supposed either to have had cognition of her beforehand or not to have had any cognition of her at all. If he had previous cognition of her, the words striyam bahusobhamanam ought not to have been used for her. Conversely, if he had not cognised her previously, he ought to have enquired of her her name before knowing that she was Uma Haimavati. As such, it seems likely that after Haimavatim in the text the word iva is understood, denoting thereby that the lady was as beautiful as Uma Haimavati. In view of the cryptic style the Upanishad adopts particularly in its prose portion, the above suggestion does not seem improbable.
That Indra is symbolic of mind, is also vindicated by the sequel which puts forward the sudden flash of lightning as an intimate symbol, adesa, of Brahman, in the face of which the eyes are closed. In fact, the mind is usually unaware of Brahman. If it is aware at all, the awareness is as sudden and momentary as the flash of lightning. Just as the eyes are closed when faced by the flash of lightning, and indeed it is the after-effect of the flash on the eyes which is seen by the latter, even so, when the mind perchance comes to realise Brahman intuitively, the realisation, though luminous, is extremely short-lived indeed that it comes to be recognised as such only after it has passed through the mind. It is in fact the memory of the flash which is taken for the actual realisation of Brahman. The basis of the memory is the pure consciousness in which the flash is retained. The flash is brought to memory by the will-power which, in its turn, can be developed through what the Upanishad suggests as Tapas, Dama and Karma. When the will-power is developed through the practice of Tapas, Dama and Karma, and eventually the horizon of the mind is so broadened as to become one with Satya, truth itself, then the realisation of Brahman stays in the mind in all its ramifications as described in the Vedas. This is what is meant by the characterisation of Tapas, Dama and Karma as the support of the Upanishad dealing with Brahman, of the Vedas as its organs, and of the truth as its abode. Then, instead of being felt as the momentary flash of lightning, the realisation of Brahman stays so permanently in the mind as if one were observing the sun as an eye in the sky staring upon oneself, as the Rig Veda observes with reference to the highest form of Vishnu:
Tad vishnoh paramam padam
Sada pasyanti surayah
Diviva chakshuragatam. (RV.I.22.20)
The above psychology devised by the Upanishad in its last section under the caption Athadhyatmam, explains well the disappearance of the demon as soon as approached by Indra and the latter's coming to know of it as Brahman when informed as such by Uma Haimavati, the embodiment of pure consciousness, which in its turn can be owned through Tapas, Dama, Karma, knowledge and truth as is, of course, suggested later on by the archetypal instance of Siva.