The Development of Hindu Iconography c9.45.4

c9.45.4

At best, various symbols, all abstract principles such as prāṇāḥ (vital breaths), prajñā (intellect), ānanda (bliss) or ananta (eternity), etc., were utilised by the thinkers in their attempts to realise the true nature of the Brahman; even such terms with intimate associations with sacrifice as uktha and the udgītha, and the sacrificial horse were thus used in the Upaniṣads of the respective schools of the Ṛgveda, Sāmaveda and the Yajurveda.¹ The fundamentally speculative character of this literature, confined mostly to the domain of the intellectual, was certainly not conducive to the origin and growth of iconism.