A History of Ancient Sanskrit Literature, so far as it illustrates the Primitive Religion of the Brahmans c6.38

c6.38

No wonder that a nation like the Indian cared so little for history; no wonder that social and political virtues were little cultivated, and the ideas of the Useful and the Beautiful scarcely known to them. With all this, however, they had what the Greek was as little capable of imagining as they were of realising the elements of Grecian life. They shut their eyes to this world of outward seeming and activity, to open them full on the world of thought and rest. Their life was a yearning after eternity; their activity a struggle to return into that divine essence from which this life seemed to have severed them. Believing as they did in a divine and really existing eternal Being (τὸ ὄντως ὄν), they could not believe in the existence of this passing world. If the one existed, the other could only seem to exist; if they lived in the one, they could not live in the other. Their existence on earth was to them a problem, their eternal life a certainty. The highest object of their religion was to restore that bond¹ by which their own self (âtman) was linked to the eternal Self (paramâtman); to recover that unity which had been clouded and obscured by the magical illusions of reality, by the so-called Mâyâ of creation. It scarcely entered their mind either to doubt or to affirm the immortality of the soul², except in later times, and then only for philosophical and controversial purposes.³ Not only their religion and literature, but their very language, reminded them daily of that relation between the real and the seeming world. The word *âtman*, for instance, which in the Veda occurs often as *tman*, means life, particularly animal life. Thus we read, Rv. i. 63. 8., “Increase, O bright Indra! this our manifold food, like water all over the earth; by which, O Hero! thou givest us life, like sap, to move every where.” Here *tman* means the vital principle, and is compared with the juice that circulates in plants. In another hymn, addressed to the horse which is to be sacrificed (Rv. i. 162. 20.), the poet says, “Mâ tvâ tapat priya âtmâ-piyantam,” literally, “Let not thy dear self burn or afflict thee as thou approachest the sacrifice.” Here *priya âtmâ* corresponds to the Greek φίλον ἦτορ. But we find *âtman* used, also, in a higher sense in the Veda. For instance, Rv. i. 115. 1., “Sûrya âtmâ jagatas tasthushaś cha:” “the sun is the soul of all that moves and rests.”¹ Most frequently, however, *tman* and *âtman* are employed for self, just as we say, My soul praises, rejoices, for I praise, I myself rejoice. This is the most usual signification of *âtman* in the later Sanskrit, where it is used like a pronoun. Yet *âtman* means there also the soul of the universe, the highest soul or Self (*paramâtman*) of which all other