The Religion of the Veda: The Ancient Religion of India (from Rig-Veda to Upanishads) c11.59

c11.59

² Professor Oldenberg regards "zauberfluidum" as the original meaning of *brahma*. But does "magic essence" really explain, and does it not itself stand in need of explanation? Anyway it seems to me that this distinguished scholar's present sympathy with what may be called ethnological explanations of religious phenomena, that is the theory that such phenomena must necessarily begin somewhere in the lowest bathos of savage folk belief, is leading him on a trail farther than that trodden by this word.