A History of Indian Literature v1.c8.s3.143

v1.c8.s3.143

Deussen ¹ has taken endless trouble to discover sense and meaning in the "philosophical" hymns of the Atharvaveda, and to establish certain coherent ideas in them. He finds, for instance, in Ath. X, 2, and XI, 8, the idea that deals with the "realisation of Brahman in man," and this in X, 2, "more from the physical teleological aspect," and XI, 8, "more from the psychical aspect." ² I cannot discover so much philosophy in these hymns; I believe, rather, that here too we have only pseudo-philosophers, who did not announce a new doctrine of the world-soul in man, but who found this doctrine already existing in entirety and proclaimed it in mystically confused disconnectedness. While in a celebrated hymn of the Ṛgveda (X, 121) a deep thinker and a true poet refers in bold words to the splendour of the cosmos and sceptically asks about the creator, in Atharvaveda, X, 2, a verse-maker enumerates, one after the other, all the limbs of man, and asked who has created them :