A History of Sanskrit Literature c27.s1.4

c27.s1.4

The Vedic schools developed also a tendency to mysticism which is seen in the Āraṇyakas and the Upaniṣads, which are attached more or less closely to the great Brāhmaṇas. We may see in these works a tendency to fissure within the Vedic schools themselves: some preferred the sacrifice and the ritual, others sought to go behind it to the significance of the sacrifice, of the gods to whom it was offered, of life and man, and of the universe. The Upaniṣads are clearly in origin closely connected with Vedic schools, but their ideas inevitably transcend the school limit and prepare the way for that period of intellectual exchange which issues in the systems of philosophy, which, we may be sure, were not the outcome of any Vedic school as such. Theology and theosophy naturally, with the gradual transformation of the Vedic system, passed beyond the sphere of the old schools and were handed down in new forms of organization.