A History of Indian Literature v1.c8.s9.3

v1.c8.s9.3

(The entire thought of the Upaniṣad philosophers revolves around the two conceptions of *Brahman* and *Ātman*; )and it is necessary to get a clear idea of these conceptions, in order to be able to understand the philosophy of the Upaniṣads. The etymology of the word "*Brahman*" is doubtful.³) If we turn to the St. Petersburg Sanskrit Dictionary we find "Brahman" explained as "the devotion which appears as the craving and fulness of the soul," and strives after the gods, while according to Deussen,¹ the Brahman is supposed to be "the will of man, striving upwards to that which is sacred and divine." These explanations may correspond to Jewish-Christian ideas of divinity, but are diametrically opposed to the *Indian* conception of the relationship between gods and men, as we know it in the Saṃhitās and Brāhmaṇas.² What the word signifies etymologically is not certain. But in the Veda itself "Brahman" occurs countless times in the meaning of "prayer" or "magic formula"; there is nowhere any thought of devotion or exaltation to the divine, but it always means mere formulae and verses containing secret magic power, by which man desires to influence divine beings, or to obtain, or even to force something from them. When a later period united these magic formulae and prayers in "books" or school texts as the three Vedas these were called *trayī vidyā* or "threefold knowledge," also briefly "the Brahman." But as divine origin was ascribed to this Veda or Brahman—the two words being used with exactly the same meaning—and as the sacrifice, which, as we have seen, was itself conceived as a superhuman, nay superdivine power, was, according to the Indian view, derived from the Veda or contained in the Veda,³ so at last this Brahman or sacred knowledge, came to be called the first created thing (brahma prathamajam), and finally even to be made into the creative principle, the cause of all existence (brahma svayambhu). Thus the Brahman as divine principle is a conception of the priestly philosophy, and quite explicable in the light of the brahmanical views upon prayer and sacrifice.¹