The Religion and Philosophy of the Veda and Upanishads v2.c39.s2.74

v2.c39.s2.74

Apart from the most improbable etymology, suggested by Hertel, which has been discussed above, there is, as we have seen, no ground to find more in the word than, in the first place, prayer, and the development which it undergoes is in all probability to be attributed to the growth of the importance of the prayer in the mind of the priest, not in the realization of the subjective nature of prayer as the striving towards the divine, which is in reality the human, will. The Brahman is, therefore, rather a conception of the ritual and of religion, not a psychological principle, and it is in my opinion impossible to accept the view of Deussen,⁷ that the Ātman is evolved from the Brahman by developing the conception of the subjective element, which lay in the latter. The conception of the Brahman and the Ātman is late, and has every appearance of being a syncretism⁸ due to the fact that the two expressions had by diverse ways come to be regarded as expressions for the same thing, the highest reality and unity of the universe, and the history of the Ātman suggests that it had from the first an independent existence. This view is certainly strengthened by the fact that the opinion of Deussen is based to some degree on a new etymology, which he suggests for that word: in place of the root *an*, 'breathe', *at*, 'move', or *av* (=*vā*), 'blow', and connexion with the Greek ἀτμός, ἀϋτμήν, and Germanic *atum*, *aedhm*, he suggests that it is a highly abstract word derived from the roots *a* seen in *aham*, ‘I’, and *ta*, ‘this’, so that it denotes ‘this I,’ the self, which in due course is felt to be the final expression possible for the ultimate fact of existence, arrived by stripping away the various coverings which envelop the ultimate reality, the covering of the body, the covering of the mind, the covering of the intellect. This view he supports, not merely by the undoubted difficulties¹ in the explanation of the form Ātman, and of the corresponding form in the Rigveda, without the *ā*, but also by the suggestion that the development of meaning assumed from ‘wind’, in which sense it is found only four times in the Rigveda, to ‘self’ is more difficult than the development of meaning which his own etymology would give. Thus he thinks from ‘this I’ could easily spring the view of the body in contrast to the outer world, and thence the trunk in contrast to the limbs, and on the other hand the sense of the soul in opposition to the body, and real being in opposition to unessential things. The possibility of such an etymology must, however, be denied: without pretending that the problems of the relation of Ātman and Tman is easy, or that the etymology is certain, the fact remains that the word does mean ‘wind’ in the Rigveda,² that the normal use of it there is ‘breath of life’, and that the meaning ‘wind’ is harder to deduce from ‘breath’, than vice versa, and that to deduce either ‘wind’ or ‘breath’ from the conception of ‘this I’ is extremely difficult.