The Religion of the Veda: The Ancient Religion of India (from Rig-Veda to Upanishads) c11.52

c11.52

In the seething caldron of the earlier speculation there occur yet two other conceptions which have become pretty well crystallised even before the time of the Upanishads. The first of these is the conception of the *ātman*, which means first “breath,” and then “self.” As far as the early poetry is concerned there is not the least doubt about the primary meaning of *ātman*.¹ It is familiarly correlated with wind, “the breath of the gods.”² The *ātman* or soul of man after death returns to mingle with the wind from which it is supposed to have come.³ The later Veda abounds in crude and fanciful psycho-physical observations in which the parts and functions of the human body, the little cosmos, are correlated more or less skilfully with the phenomena of the outer world, the big cosmos. An important thought of this sort is, that the human body is pervaded by plural breaths, *prāṇas* or *ātmans*; these vivify the body, and are the essential part, the *ego*, of the living individual. Several of the older Upanishads contain a fable, resembling the Latin fable of “the belly and the members.” The vital powers are quarrelling among themselves for supremacy. They bring their case before Prajāpati, “the lord of creatures.” Prajāpati advises them to leave the body one by one and to observe which loss affects it most. The voice, the eye, the ear, the mind departed, discommoding the body quite a good deal. But when the breath was on the point of departing, "just as the proud steed from the Indus would pull and tear the pegs of his tether, so it pulled and tore the other vital powers." And they yielded the palm to the *ātman*. Hence a text declares: "From the *ātman* all the members spring into existence. Of all things that come into existence the *ātman* is the first."