[Pramāṇa](https://indike.org/pramana/) › [Studies](https://indike.org/pramana/ins) › [Religion and philosophy](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.religion) › [The Religion of the Veda: The Ancient Religion of India (from Rig-Veda to Upanishads)](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.religion.bloomfield-1908) › c4.5 # The Religion of the Veda: The Ancient Religion of India (from Rig-Veda to Upanishads) c4.5 The Religion of the Veda: The Ancient Religion of India (from Rig-Veda to Upanishads) c4.5 - **Language:** English ### [c4.5](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.religion.bloomfield-1908.c4.5) 3. These delegates—one from each Institution or myth and ceremony. The reader of these pages will, I hope, learn to his satisfaction how the religion of the Veda rests upon a prehistoric foundation which is largely nature myth; how it continues in the Rig-Veda hymns as hieratic ritual worship of polytheistic gods; how this religion grew more and more formal and mechanical in the Yajur-Vedas and Brāhmaṇas, until it was practically abandoned; how and when arose the germs of higher religious thought; and, finally, how the motives and principles that underlie this entire chain of mental events landed Hindu thought, at a comparatively early period, in the pantheistic and pessimistic religion of the Upanishads which it has never again abandoned. - [Previous: c4.4](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.religion.bloomfield-1908.c4.4) - [Next: c4.6](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.religion.bloomfield-1908.c4.6) - [Up: c4](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.religion.bloomfield-1908.c4) --- Source: [https://indike.org/pramana/ins.religion.bloomfield-1908.c4.5](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.religion.bloomfield-1908.c4.5) · Pramāṇa