Rig Veda to Purana - Maintaining Continuity Part 4

So we see a continuous evolution and development to suit the needs of the age. There never was a period which did not contribute to the cycle of spiritual evolution. The rich tradition of Rig Veda was still there. The Upanishadas ensured that the needs of the jnanis were taken care of and they upheld the tradition of Rig Veda by simply replacing the various names with one single name – the impersonal Brahman who manifests as Personal God or Iswara and who holds sway over the world using the force called Maya. Maya is also identified with Prakrti, the eternal nature and all natural forces. So the devas of Rig Veda become various Mayik phenomenon. Puranas evolved around the personal gods and divine incarnations and they also contained the Itihasa or history of the human race – genealogy of kings. Although in effect Puranas gave rise to sects but they catered to the spiritual needs of almost every section of the society, but their main source of inspiration has always been the Vedas – The Rig Vedas and the later Upanishadas. They were the revelations or Shrutis and therefore fit for every age, while Puranas because of catering to the needs of a certain age remained as Smritis. Says Swami Vivekananda, “Sometimes it has been urged without any ground whatsoever that there is no ideal of Bhakti in the Upanishads. Those that have been students of the Upanishads know that that is not true at all. There is enough of Bhakti in every Upanishad if you will only seek for it; but many of these ideas which are found so fully developed in later times in the Puranas and other Smritis are only in the germ in the Upanishads. The sketch, the skeleton, was there as it were. It was filled in in some of the Puranas. But there is not one full-grown Indian ideal that cannot be traced back to the same source — the Upanishads”. The greatest philosopher and religious teacher of modern age further says, “To understand Bhakti, therefore, we have got to understand these Puranas of ours. There have been great discussions of late as to their authenticity. Many a passage of uncertain meaning has been taken up and criticized. In many places it has been pointed out that the passages cannot stand the light of modern science and so forth. But, apart from all these discussions, apart from the scientific validity of the statements of the Puranas, apart from their valid or invalid geography, apart from their valid or invalid astronomy, and so forth, what we find for a certainty, traced out bit by bit almost in every one of these volumes, is this doctrine of Bhakti, illustrated, reillustrated, stated and restated, in the lives of saints and in the lives of kings. It seems to have been the duty of the Puranas to stand as illustrations for that great ideal of the beautiful, the ideal of Bhakti, and this, as I have stated, is so much nearer to the ordinary man.”

So the graduation from Rig Veda to Puranas through Ramayana and Mahabharata is the gradual progression of the yoga of Bhakti in order to cater to the needs of common men and in order to bring the concept of Moksha to everybody. The renaming of gods and change of their statuses is secondary, response to the needs of the society and should not be given much importance. Only it is to be remembered that rather than holding the power of the Supreme Being with reverence, sages, now wanted to love and worship the supreme being Himself as divine and human manifestation, to establish relationships like father, mother, son, master, friend and lover and ultimately, the Self itself leading from knowledge to devotion and back to knowledge.

The concept of Self and the evolution to the Upanishadic knowledge has been one of the most wonderful transformation. The seed was already there in Rig Veda, but the Rig Vedic seers had tried to discover the Supreme Being in His powers, in His manifestations in Natural Forces. Sri Aurobindo however said that the Vedic seers were no fools. They knew that macrocosm and microcosm are one and the same. Through the symbols in external nature they have basically covered an inward journey and they have generously put together a path of self-discovery for the ardent spiritual aspirant, not for lay men. What they realized as Indra, Mitra or Varuna in the external world are also present in the internal world and they are the powers of the Supreme Being in the form of Atman, although the concept of Atman is not evident in all hymns. Some hymns, esp. the Devisukta, provides a glimpse that Atman is all pervading Brahman, there is nothing beside the Brahman. This concept was taken from the Rig Vedas in the seed form and was nourished, nurtured and developed in Upanishadas. Puranas also were based on the concept of eternal Atman but their emphasis was on the dualism and hence the concept of Atman was not dealt with as extensively as in Vedanta. But the continuity of thought remained and what is perceived as disjoint and different injunctions, is in reality a transition of emphasis from one concept to another, a development of the thought process to evolve higher and higher ideals culminating in the Advaita Vedanta, the crest jewel of philosophy of India.