The Religion of the Veda: The Ancient Religion of India (from Rig-Veda to Upanishads) c10.117

c10.117

After a survey of these manifold, all of them more or less shaky attempts to account for the universe and man, one impression, which I have spoken of before, grows mightily. I mean the presence of intellectual subtlety, the absence of sentiment. Anything like a practical bearing of all these earlier monotheistic and monistic creations upon the Hindu mind and heart seem as yet almost altogether wanting. In a sense they are not religious, but crudely philosophical. That is, if we define religion as the intimate, mutual, personal relation between man and the higher powers that surround him. In so far as they are religious in this sense these monotheistic and monistic creations do not advance perceptibly beyond the stage of the polytheistic nature gods, the ritual, and the sorcery of earlier times. The extravagant power of Prajāpati is still nothing more than a cause for cajolery: