The Religion of the Veda: The Ancient Religion of India (from Rig-Veda to Upanishads) c6.s1.40

c6.s1.40

The many thousand formulas of this sort which occur in the Yajur-Veda and its accessory literature are now for the first time collected in my Vedic Concordance. I am sure that the enduring impression which they leave upon the mind, aside from their partial foolishness, is that of a formalism and mental decay upon the very brink of dissolution. The practices which accompany these formulas, though they contain much that is natural and vigorous, are also covered up by silly details of formalism, so that it is often difficult to discover their real human meaning. It is remarkable, however, that new life springs up on this arid waste. It is as though this phase of Hindu religion had prepared itself by its very excesses for a salutary and complacent hara-kiri. In its last outcome, in the very same Brahmanical schools where all this folly runs riot, spring up the Upanishads, those early theosophic treatises of India which pave the way for her enduring philosophies. The Upanishads in reality, though not professedly, sweep aside the ritual like cobwebs, and show the Hindu mind, not yet perfectly trained, but far from choked; and quite capable of carrying on the development of Hindu religions to the really great results which they eventually reach.