A History of Sanskrit Literature c18.2

c18.2

The beginnings of Indian philosophy, which are to be found in the latest hymns of the *Rigveda* and in the *Atharvaveda*, are concerned with speculations on the origin of the world and on the eternal principle by which it is created and maintained. The *Yajurveda* further contains fantastic cosmogonic legends describing how the Creator produces all things by means of the omnipotent sacrifice. With these Vedic ideas are intimately connected, and indeed largely identical, those of the earlier Upanishads. This philosophy is essentially pantheistic and idealistic. By the side of it grew up an atheistic and empirical school of thought, which in the sixth century B.C. furnished the foundation of the two great unorthodox religious systems of Buddhism and Jainism.