Studies in the Epics and Puranas c8.36

c8.36

While the authors of the Brāhmaṇas treated cosmogonic myths from their liturgical point of view, the authors of the Upaniṣads viewed them from the philosophical standpoint and utilized them to illustrate the oneness of Brahman and its presence in all created things. Accordingly such philosophical abstractions as Brahman, Ātman, Not-Being or Being are frequently substituted for Prajāpati, and from this first principle are derived the worlds or the Vedas, or other cosmical and psychical agencies. These notions have been developed and combined in various ways; but it is always stated that the first principle, after having created things, entered them, so that it is present in them, and in a way, is identical with, and yet different from, them. "It is impossible," as has rightly been observed by Dr. Jacobi, "to reduce the variety of opinion on the origin of the world contained in the Upaniṣads, to one general idea underlying them."16