The Religion of the Veda: The Ancient Religion of India (from Rig-Veda to Upanishads) c11.57

c11.57

It is easy to see that with all the refinement of the term *ātman* in its final outcome, it certainly has a strong physical touch, at least in the beginning of its use. The final shaping of the idea consisted in associating, or rather fusing, with this *ātman* another conception, coming from a totally different quarter, namely, the olden Vedic sphere of devotion, prayer, holy performance, in fact religion in general. Even in the Vedic hymns, as we have seen, the epithet "Goddess" is freely given to the numerous names for prayer, devotion, religious emotion, and kindred ideas. Unquestionably the *sāvitrī* stanza owes its puzzlingly paramount position in Hindu religion to the same estimate of devotion as a thing essentially divine.¹ We have also made acquaintance with a symbolic "Lord of Prayer," Brihaspati, an important, but not lasting attempt to pour the sacred function of the poets and priests into the mould of a personal god. He marks one of those false starts towards personal monotheism in which the later Veda abounds. More and more the sacred word, the constant companion of the sacrifice, is felt to be a kind of uplifting spiritual essence. The sacred word is ˙*brahma*. Starting as prayer,² charm, sacred formula, religious act, it becomes the symbol of holy thought and holy utterance (λόγος), the outpouring of the soul in its highest longings. It is the best wish of a spiritually minded and gifted people that becomes for a while personal god, and at last the divine essence of the universe. The conception is intellectually not as subtle and abstract as the monistic philosophical conception of “That Only True Being,” which comes entirely from the head. But from the point of view of heart-felt emotion it is the most exalted divine conception of gentile folk. Such is *the brahma*, used in the neuter gender, not yet the masculine God Brahma who, after a renewed personification is placed at the head of the later Hindu so-called trinity, Brahma, Vishnu, and Çiva: “The *brahma* is the word, the truth in the word is *brahma*. Through *brahma* heaven and earth are held together.”