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.

According to Sri Aurobindo Manu is ‘Man the Doer …  perfecting himself by works, is lifted by the divine will to Vijnana, to the ideal self of true knowledge, right action and emotion’ thus ascending to the ‘Tapas where Agni is’.

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.

A great Vedic scholar and one of the topmost civil servants of Mysore of early twentieth century, Mandayam Narayan Iyengar, in his insightful analysis of the narrative points out the deep Vedic symbolism encoded in the narrative:

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.

Selfishness of humans makes humanity ‘small, limited, mutually antagonistic entities, swallowing one another under the principle of might is right’. That is the animalistic human. He has not outgrown the competition and selfish aggression as the most important survival tools.

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.’

Then Iyengar points out that if seen in the light of this inner meaning then it becomes clear that it is through the Yajna that Manu ‘got a wonderful daughter who calls herself Benediction or Blessing, and who is Ida’ which means ’libation, prayer, goddess of devotion’ representing ‘the blessedness of mind-born Sraddha’. Then Iyengar states the most important implication that is present in the text:

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.

Social Darwinism justified a man-eat-man world. It justified racism and racial purging and enslaving of what were considered as ‘inferior races.’ It justified colonial exploitation and saw the famines which were affected on the colonies as a kind of Darwinian-Malthusian necessities.

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’.

To him evolution was that process through which ‘you and I, and plants and animals, and every particles of life that exists must reach the Infinite Ocean of Perfection.’ This has ethical implications for human evolution and its building of civilisations.  

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:

--Jonas Salk, the virologist who came up with Polio vaccine, wrote about human evolution being 'metabiological 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.

On January 11, 1950, just a day before the 87th birth anniversary of Swami Vivekananda, Dr. Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar said this about the Hindu Code Bill he had drafted:

[Post script: M.A.Narayan Iyengar, who held held high positions in the Mysore Civil Service, established Vedanta Society and was a great devotee of Holy Mother Sarada Devi. He later obtained sanyasa and became Swami Srivasananda at Sri Ramakrishna Ashram, Bangalore.]