Swami Vivekananda And Maharishi Manu

Manu is an ancient archetypal figure in the Hindu tradition.

The Rig Veda (RV) speaks of a Manu. He established Agni in the Yajna to bring the divine godheads (RV 1.13.4).  He instituted the sacrifice (RV 1.44.11).

He personified humanity, as he was an ancient human being of knowledge (RV.1.139.9). Vedic Gods Rbhus were his very human progeny (RV 3.60.3) who through good deeds became Gods.

Sri Aurobindo in his commentary on the Rig Vedic hymns to mystic fire, speaks of Manu as the human in the evolutionary pathway.

Thus, Manu of the Vedas symbolises an important evolutionary jump – manifestation of a virtue that though found abundantly in non-human organisms, became the defining feature of human evolution.

This virtue is revealed in subsequent Hindu sacred texts as in Satapatha Brahmana (SB, 1.8.1) and in Mahabharata (MB Vanaparva-Markandeya Samasya Parva). There are similarities and a crucial difference though between the two narratives.

In both the fish is a helpless, small creature, almost insignificant in size. In both the fish and Manu meet when the latter is doing austerities or preparing for ablutions. In SB, in the very beginning of the encounter itself, the fish declares that if Manu helps it, it would save him: ‘Preserve me: I shall save thee’. It could be considered as transactional.

On the other hand, in MB the appeal is only to the heart of Manu. There is only a footnote of a hint that it might repay the kindness.

In both the condition of big-fish-eat-small-fish is told by the fish and it beseeches Manu to save it from this condition of the animal realm.

As the well known story goes, the flood comes and Manu is saved by the fish.

From this Iyengar sees the small fish being troubled by the menacing bigger fish to itself becoming the gigantic fish saving all as the human shallowness giving way to expansion of the spirit through empathy.

Manu the thinking man differs and ‘must regard all creatures as himself’ and ‘he himself becomes them all for the purpose of his universal love.’

What does this have to do with Swami Vivekananda?

During the time Swami Vivekananda arose on the spiritual horizon of humanity, Charles Darwin had already taken the world by storm. Evolution was changing the mindscape of humanity and the religious paradigm was undergoing a heavy churning.

Western world that had the foundations of its prosperity in imperialism and colonialism, not to mention the notions of racial superiority, had created out of the scientific discovery of Darwinian evolution, the pseudoscientific social Darwinism.

Cold-hearted inhumanity innate in colonialism was rationalised as having a scientific basis.   

In such a scenario, Swami Vivekananda confirmed evolution but rejected social Darwinism:

Such an argument Swami Vivekananda finds as ‘fallacious from beginning to end’.

According to Swami Vivekananda, even though in the animal kingdom ‘such laws as struggle for existence, survival of the fittest, etc.’ appeared evident he thought that such a social Darwinian model ‘seemed true’ only to a ‘certain extent.’ But in human society ‘where there is the manifestation of rationality, we find the reverse of these laws.’ He says:

The parallels between the Manu-fish encounter and the view of Swami Vivekananda on evolution, with respect to transition from the biological evolution to meta-biological evolution, are strikingly similar.

In both Manu’s encounter with the fish and in the view of Swami Vivekananda on evolution, the animal nature and the competition that prevails in the animal kingdom is recognised. Both Manu and Swami Vivekananda, separated by at least three thousand years, point out that in the human phase of evolution, with the emergence of the thinking man or Manu, the predominant law of evolution changes from competition to sacrifice for the benefit of the weak. By not eliminating the weak but by preserving them, the humanity actually becomes capable of surviving chaotic situations.

Decades after the samadhi of Swami Vivekananda, leading humanists of the West would also speak the same vision - the vision of a qualitative shift in evolution:

--Anthropologist and Christian mystic Teilhard de Chardin wrote about transition into 'noosphere' from biosphere.

--Julian Huxley, writing about future evolution of humanity, on the occasion of hundred years of the publication of Origin of Species, envisioned 'a science of human possibilities'.

Finally, Swami Vivekananda pointed out that we need not think that such great persons like Manu existed only in the hoary past. Talking to his devotee he explained:

These words were told to his disciple Sarat Chandra Chakravarti in the year 1899.