Chapter 4Satyakama Jabala

The story of Satyakama Jabala occupies five sections, the third to the eighth, of the fourth chapter in the Chhandogya Upanishad. The Chhandogya seems to be the most ancient of the extant Upa- nishads. It speaks of Krishna, son of Devaki, and Dhritarashtra Vaichitravirya in a tone that would justify us in assuming that it regarded them not as ancient and far-off names but as men who had walked the earth in living memory. The movement of philosophic speculation of which the Upanishads are the extant record, was an attempt to pass from the old ritualistic karma to the freedom of the jnanamarga. According to the writer of the Gita, this was not a new movement, but a return to a past and lost discipline; for Sri Krishna says to Arjuna of the true or sajnan karmamarga he reveals to him, “This is the imperishable Yoga I declared unto Vivaswan, Vivaswan revealed it to Manu and Manu to Ixvacu told it. Thus was it known to the royal sages by hereditary transmission, till by the great lapse of time this yoga was lost, O scourge of thy foes. This is the same ancient Yoga that I have told unto [thee] today, because thou art my lover and my friend; for this is the highest of all the inner truths.” The Dwapara Yuga was the age of Kuru preeminence and the Kurus were a great practical, warlike, ritualistic, juristic race of the Roman type, with little of the speculative temper or moral enthusiasm of the eastern Coshalas, Videhas, Kashis, Chedis. The West of India has always been noted for its prac- tical, soldierly, commercial bent of mind in comparison with the imaginative and idealistic Eastern races and the scholastic, logical and metaphysical South. According to the Hindu theory of the Yugas, it is in the Dwapara that everything is codified, ritualised, formalised. In the Satya Vishnu descends among men as Yajna. Yajna is the spirit of adoration and sacrifice, and in the Satya yajna reigns in the hearts of men, and there is no need

Kena and Other Upanishads: Part Two of external ritual, external sacrifices, elaborate law, government, castes, classes and creeds. Men follow the law by the necessity of their purified nature and their complete knowledge. The king- dom of God & the Veda are in the hearts of His people. In the Treta the old perfect order begins to break and Vishnu descends as the chakravarti raja, the warrior and ruler, Kartavirya, Par- surama, Rama, and the sword, the law and the written Veda are instituted to govern men. But there is still great elasticity and freedom and within certain limits men follow the healthy im- pulse of their nature, only slightly corrupted by the first descent from purity. It is in the Dwapara that form and rule have to take the place of the idea and the spirit as the true governors of religion, ethics and society. Vishnu then descends as Vyasa, the great codifier and systematiser of knowledge. At the end of the Dwapara, when Sri Krishna came, this tendency had reached its extreme development, and the form tended to take the place of the idea and the rule to take the place of the spirit not only in the outward conduct but in the hearts of men. Nevertheless an opposite tendency had already begun. Dhritarashtra himself was an earnest inquirer into the inner meaning of things. Great Vedantists were living and teaching, such as the rishi Ghora to whom Sri Krishna himself went for the word of illumination. Sri Krishna was the intellectual force that took up all these scattered tendencies and, by breaking down the strong formalism of the Dwapara, prepared the work of the Kali. In the Gita he denounces those who will not go outside the four corners of the Veda and philosophises the whole theory of the sacrificial system; he contemptuously dismisses the guidance of the set ethical systems and establishes an inward and spiritual rule of conduct. To many of his time he seems to have appeared as a baneful and destructive portent; like all great revolutionary innovators, he is denounced by Bhurisravas as a well known misleader of men and corrupter of morals. It is the work of the Kali Yuga to destroy everything by questioning everything in order to establish after a struggle between the forces of purity and impurity a new harmony of life and knowledge in another Satyayuga.

Notes on the Chhandogya Upanishad After the destruction of the conservative Kurus and Pan- chalas at Kurukshetra, the development of the Vedanta com- menced and went on progressing till in its turn it reached its extreme & excessive development in the teachings of Buddha and Shankaracharya. But at the period of the Chhandogya it is in its early stage of development. The first sections of the Upanishad are taken up with an esoteric development of the inner meaning of certain parts of the sacrificial formulae, which in itself is sufficient to show that the work belongs to the first stratum of Vedantic formation. The story of Satyakama is one of the most typical in the Upa- nishad. It is full of sidelights on early Vedantic teaching, Yogic sadhan and that deep psychical knowledge which the writer took for granted in the hearers of his work. So much knowl- edge, indeed, is thus taken for granted that it is impossible for anyone not himself a practiser of Yoga, to understand anything but its broad conclusions. The modern commentators, Shankara included, have approached it in order to establish particular metaphysical doctrines, not to elucidate its entire significance. I shall take the side that has been neglected; for what to the European inquirer are merely “the babblings of children”, bear to the Yogin an aspect of infinite truth, value and significance. Chapter II “Now Satyakama Jabala spoke unto his mother Jabala and said ‘Mother, I shall go and lead the life of the Brahmacharin; tell me what is my gotra.’ But she answered him, ‘This I know not, my son, of what gotra thou art; resorting to many as a serving woman in my youth I got thee, therefore I know not of what gotra thou art. But Jabala is my name and Satyakama is thine, Satyakama Jabala therefore call thyself.’ So he came to Haridrumata the Gautama and said, ‘I would stay with my Lord as a Brahmacharin, let me therefore enter under thee.’ And he said to him, ‘My son, of what gotra art thou?’ But the other answered, ‘This, alas, I know not of what gotra I am; I asked my

Kena and Other Upanishads: Part Two mother and she answered me, Resorting to many in my youth as a serving woman I got thee, therefore I know not of what gotra thou art, but Jabala is my name and Satyakama is thine; Satyakama Jabala therefore am I.’ And he said to him, ‘None who is not a Brahmin can be strong enough to say this; gather the firewood, my son, I will take thee under me, for thou didst not depart from the truth.’ He admitted him and put forth four hundred cows weak and lean and said, ‘These, my son, do thou follow as a herd,’ and he set the cows in motion and said, ‘Return not until they are a thousand.’ And he fared abroad with them during the years till they were a thousand.” So the story opens, and simple as it seems, it already con- tains several points of capital importance in understanding the ideas of the time and the principles of the old Vedantic sadhana. Satyakama, as we gather from other passages, was one of the great Vedantic teachers of the time immediately previous to the composition of the Chhandogya Upanishad. But his birth is the meanest possible. His mother is a serving girl, not a dasi at- tached to a permanent household whose son could have named his father and his gotra, but a paricharika, serving for hire at various houses, “resorting to many”, and therefore unable to name her son’s father. Satyakama has, therefore, neither caste, nor gotra, nor any position in life. It appears from this story as from others that, although the system of the four castes was firmly established, it counted as no obstacle in the pursuit of knowledge and spiritual advancement. The Kshatriya could teach the Brahmin, the illegitimate and fatherless son of the serving girl could be guru to the purest and highest blood in the land. This is nothing new or improbable, for it has been so throughout the history of Hinduism and the shutting out of anyone from spiritual truth and culture on the ground of caste is an invention of later times. In the nature of things the usual rule would be for the greater number of spiritual preceptors to be found in the higher castes, but this was the result of natural laws and not of a fixed prohibition. It is noticeable also from this and other instances that it was the father’s position that fixed the son’s, and the mother’s seems to have been of very minor

Notes on the Chhandogya Upanishad importance. The question about the gotra was of importance, probably, with regard to the rites and other circumstances of initiation. Satyakama must have known perfectly well that he was the illegitimate son of a serving woman, but he wished to know his father’s name and gotra because he would have to tell it to his guru. Even after knowing the worst, he persisted in his intention of taking up spiritual studies, so that he can have had no fear of being rejected on account of his base origin. His guru, impressed by his truthfulness, says, “None but a Brahmin would have the moral strength to make such an avowal.” It can hardly be meant by this that Satyakama’s father must have been a Brahmin, but that since he had the Brahmin qualities, he must be accepted as a Brahmin. Even the Kshatriya would have hesitated to speak so truthfully, because the Kshatriya is by nature a lover of honour and shuns dishonour, he has the sense of mana and apamana; but the true Brahmin is samo manapamanayoh, he accepts indifferently worldly honour and dishonour and cares only for the truth and the right. In short the Gautama concludes that, whatever may be Satyakama’s physical birth, spiritually he is of the highest order and especially fitted for a sadhaka; na satyad agat, he did not depart from the truth. The second point is the first action of the guru after the cer- emony of initiation. Instead of beginning the instruction of this promising disciple he sends him out with four hundred miserable kine, more likely to die than prosper and increase, and forbids him to return till he has increased them to a thousand. Wherefore this singular arrangement? Was it a test? Was it a discipline? But Haridrumata had already seen that his new disciple had the high Brahmin qualities. What more did he require? The perfect man is a fourfold being and one object of Vedan- tic discipline is to be the perfect man, siddha. When Christ said, “Be ye perfect as your Father in heaven is perfect,” he was only repeating in popular language the Vedantic teaching of sadharmya, likeness to God.