The Religion and Philosophy of the Veda and Upanishads v2.c39.s2.32

v2.c39.s2.32

But beside these ideas there is to be found a much more fruitful source of philosophy, the creation of the conception of the Brahman as a cosmic principle. The origin of the meaning of Brahman is uncertain: it is interpreted by the Vedānta school, absurdly, as the absolute from *vṛh*, 'twist', 'tear away'; the view of Max Müller⁶ is that it denotes what grows, from *vṛh* in the sense of 'grow', that which expresses itself in speech or in nature as force. The view of Deussen⁷ is that it is the human will in its striving to the divine, when the individual in prayer returns to the timeless, spaceless, individualless self of his, which is God. These senses are somewhat elaborate, and render it difficult to think that the word really had any such meaning: neither for the views of Max Müller nor for that of Deussen is there any support in the actual use of the word in the Rigveda. There at any rate the word naturally and normally means prayer, but there are further developments: it can mean spell, for the prayer may be a spell,⁸ and not real prayer, and it often means holy speech and the holy writ, the three-fold Veda. It is not necessary to trace to the original sense of Brahman the fact that the Vedic poet regards himself often as inspired: we cannot really think it probable, and certainly no argument had yet been adduced to show, that the prayer was felt to be the voice of God speaking in the prayer. But in many passages it seems as if Brahman must be taken rather as holy power than as prayer or holy rite: the gods are said to discuss the Brahman, and, when the greatness of the Brahman is celebrated, it is clear that more than the mere word may be intended. But the growth of the idea of Brahman as a suitable expression for the absolute must have been greatly furthered by the extraordinary value attached to the prayer and to the spell. The prayer rapidly passes over to the lower rank: in one late hymn of the Rigveda¹ a prayer is offered that Agni should in union with the Brahman drive away disease. The spell appears repeatedly by itself in the Atharvaveda as a power to destroy evil of all kinds, and the Brahman is actually set over against the three Vedas as a power of equal force.² It is a very easy step from the conception of the Brahman as the prayer, which brings into operation the activity of the gods, or as the spell which is the cause of results aimed at by men, and from the conception of the whole body of such spells and prayers, to develop the use of the term to cover the idea of holy power generally, and this rendering is applicable in many passages of the Brāhmaṇas, where the idea of holy writ is too vague and the idea of the absolute is too elaborate.