w it is in general non-existent; it
has no empirical but only a metaphysical reality [Footnote ref 1]." This
however seems to me to be wholly irrelevant, since the Hira@nyagarbha
doctrine cannot be supposed to have any philosophical importance
in the Upani@sads.

The Theory of Causation.

There was practically no systematic theory of causation in the
Upani@sads. S'a@nkara, the later exponent of Vedanta philosophy,
always tried to show that the Upani@sads looked upon the cause

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[Footnote 1: Deussen's _Philosophy of the Upanishads_, p. 201.]

53

as mere ground of change which though unchanged in itself in
reality had only an appearance of suffering change. This he did
on the strength of a series of examples in the Chandogya
Upani@sad (VI. 1) in which the material cause, e.g. the clay, is
spoken of as the only reality in all its transformations as the pot,
the jug or the plate. It is said that though there are so many
diversities of appearance that one is called the plate, the other the
pot, and the other the jug, yet these are only empty distinctions of
name and form, for the only thing real in them is the earth which
in its essence remains ever the same whether you call it the pot,
plate, or Jug. So it is that the ultimate cause, the unchangeable
Brahman, remains ever constant, though it may appear to suffer
change as the manifold world outside. This world is thus only
an unsubstantial appearance, a mirage imposed upon Brahman,
the real _par excellence_.

It seems however that though such a view may be regarded
as having been expounded in the Upani@sads in an imperfect
manner, there is also side by side the other view which looks
upon the effect as the product of a real change wrought in the
cause itself through the action and combination of the elements
of diversity in it. Thus when the different objects of nature have
been spoken of in one place as the product of the combination
of the three elements fire, water and earth, the effect signifies a real
change produced by their compounding. This is in germ (as we
shall see hereafter) the Pari@nama theory of causation advocated
by the Sa@mkhya school [Footnote ref 1].

Doctrine of Transmigration.

When the Vedic people witnessed the burning of a dead body
they supposed that the eye of the man went to the sun, his breath
to the wind, his speech to the fire, his limbs to the different pa