Rött, vitt, svart - Vedisk kosmologi och klassificering i Chāndogya-Upaniṣad 3:1-11 och 6

Abstract

Chapter 6 of the Chāndogya Upaniṣad has often been treated in works on early Indian philosophy, as well as in some comparative studies on color symbolism. Attempts to place it in a larger framework against the background of late Vedic religion are, however, few, the rationalistic and “tradition-challenging” appearance of the text having repeatedly been emphasized. But the doctrine contained in the text – a cosmologic teaching on the three elements constituting the universe, each being characterized by a color (red, white, black) – and their microcosmic counterparts in the human body, does have some clear affinities to the worldview of the Brāhmaṇas and Āraṇyakas, which posits a series of similar correlations (bandhu-) between macro- and microcosmos. In the present study, Chāndogya Upaniṣad 6 is compared to the text 3.1-11 of the same Upaniṣad, and to the previously almost unstudied Jaiminīya-Upaniṣad-Brāhmaṇa 1.25-26, both of which contain related sets of macro-microcosmic elements, with specific colors assigned to each of them. Special attention is paid to the terminology used in these texts, where not only identical phrases occur, but also technical terms connecting their cosmic “correlations” to the larger Vedic framework of classifications. The correlations established in the texts, and their symbolic colors, are then compared to similar ideas in Middle and Late Vedic texts (Brāhmaṇas, Āraṇyakas, the early Upaniṣads). Attempts are also made to explain these correlations on the basis of the Vedic priestly worldview; this includes classification and cosmology, as well as mythology. The conclusion is that the correlations expressed in the relevant texts from the Chāndogya Upaniṣad are, mostly, inherited from older thinking; this holds not only for such common Vedic correlations as that between fire or heat and speech, but also for, e.g., food and mind and the color black. The best kind of approach to an “early philosophical” Upaniṣadic text, like Chāndogya Upaniṣad 6, is, thus, often to study it against the background of late Vedic speculative thinking – including that of the Brāhmaṇas (often judged as expressions of priestly dogmatism and dry ritualism, as contrasted with the inquisitive spirit of the Upaniṣads) – rather than comparing it to much later Indian philosophical doctrines, as has usually been the fate of the present text.