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The Religion and Philosophy of the Veda and Upanishads v2.c40.s1: § 1. The Origin of the Upaniṣads

The Religion and Philosophy of the Veda and Upanishads v2.c40.s1

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§ 1. The Origin of the Upaniṣads

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NATIVE tradition ¹ derives the term Upaniṣad, by means which will not bear scrutiny, from roots which yield as its sense either that which destroys innate ignorance, or that which leads to the Brahman. It is more important to note that from an early period the utmost stress is laid on the secret character of the instruction contained in these works: the rule is that they are the highest mysteries, and that their doctrines should not be imparted to any pupil, other than a son, who has not already studied with the teacher for a year and who does not intend himself to become a teacher. The same view is enforced by the facts recounted in the texts: when the deepest part of the discussions arrives, the two concerned go apart and talk of the new doctrine of action as the source of human fate.

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¹ Cf. Çaṅkara on BAU. p. 2; KU. p. 73; TU. p. 9; Muṇḍ. p. 261.

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When, therefore, we seek for an origin of the term which will not defy the laws of etymology, it is necessary to find something which will accord with this essential nature of secrecy. The word is derived obviously from the prefixes *upa-ni* and *sad*, 'sit', and the only natural meaning is a session, a sitting down near some person, who naturally is assumed to be the teacher. This accords with the mode of teaching followed in India, which, as we have seen, involved the sitting of the pupil and the teacher facing each other, while the latter repeated the lesson to be learned by the former. The lessons of the teacher to his pupil were not public in the ordinary sense of the word: to be practicable they naturally required quiet, but the ritual texts show us more than that: they bear witness that certain texts of special importance were to be taught to the pupil in the forest, and not in the normal place, the abode of the teacher. With this accords admirably the fact that the Upaniṣads form parts of, or are attached in the case of the most important and old of these works to, texts which tradition gives the names of Āraṇyaka.² The name must clearly, as held by Oldenberg, have been derived from the fact that the discussions contained in these works were studied in the forest;

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the alternative view ³ that the Āraṇyakas were specially intended for study by the Vānaprasthas, men who, after serving their apprenticeship as Brahman students and having performed as householders their duties, retire to the forests to study, is clearly a more advanced conception than that obtained in the early Upaniṣads. The later view is an artificial conception, and one which grew up only with the strict division of stages of life enjoined on Brahmans, if not always observed. Naturally, however, the Āraṇyakas, in so far as they are texts of allegorical interpretation of the sacrifice, were studied by such Vānaprasthas more than were the Brāhmaṇas proper, which were rather ritual in their interest, and presumed that the sacrifice was actually being performed. The Āraṇyakas in their more distinctive portions deal with the meaning of the offering, without necessarily assuming that it will be performed : they sometimes suggest modes of performing the sacrifice by meditation and repetition—as of the Hotṛ formulae only. But the distinction of Brāhmaṇa and Āraṇyaka is not an absolute one : in no case have we in the works handed down to us Brāhmaṇas which always suppose the performance of ritual, or Āraṇyakas which assume that it is not to be performed.

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Nor can we see why the distinction, which was probably the real one between the Brāhmaṇas and the Āraṇyakas, the comparative sanctity of their contents, should have attached itself to precisely the ceremonies to which it did so attach itself. The ritual texts of the different Vedas show us clearly the fact that certain rites and texts were regarded as especially sacred, to be performed outside the village, and these texts are contained not merely in Āraṇyakas but even in the Saṁhitā form.¹ Thus the Pravargya rite is treated in this fashion in the Taittirīya Āraṇyaka iv and v, while the Mantras concerned are also to be found in the later part of the Vājasaneyi Saṁhitā,² in which they are followed by other Mantras, containing certain dread names of the Maruts and certain invocations of formidable character used in the horse sacrifice. The Āraṇyagāna of the Sāmaveda and the Āraṇyaka Saṁhitā contain the secret texts of that Veda,³ and the Aitareya ⁴ and Çāṅkhāyana Āraṇyakas ⁵ present the secret texts of the Rigveda, of which the most important is that concerning the Mahāvrata, an old and popular rite, while the former contains also the Mahānāmnī verses,⁶ which appear in a form strange to the manner of the Rigveda and akin to that of the Sāmaveda, in which they are also found. Both texts contain also certain mystic doctrines regarding the Saṁhitā form of the text of the Rigveda, and the Çāṅkhāyana deals also with the Mantha.

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Both also include, like the Taittirīya, philosophical Upaniṣads. The Aitareyins and the Kauṣītakins of the Rigveda placed the Mahāvrata ceremony in the rank of a fit subject for an Āraṇyaka, but the Yajurveda allowed it to appear in the Saṁhitā, and the Sāmaveda treats of it in the Pañcaviṅça and Jaiminīya Brāhmaṇas. But we can realize how from their superior sanctity the tendency grew for these treatises to be used as the places of the record of the secret doctrines, which gradually, in the mind of the priests, took the place of the more material performance of the ritual.

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² Oldenberg, *Prolegomena*, pp. 291 ff.; GN. 1915, pp. 382 ff. Cf. ÇGS. ii. 12. 11; vi; ĀÇS. viii. 14.

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³ Deussen, *Sechzig Upanishad's*, p. 7, following the Indian (Āruṇeya Up. 2) tradition of an Āraṇyaka as a Brāhmaṇa for those engaged in the vow of forest life (Sāyaṇa on AA. i. 1; Aufrecht, *Aitareya Brāhmaṇa*, p. iii). The other view is, however, also traditional. Winternitz (*Gesch. d. ind. Lit.* i. 202, n. 1) agreed with Deussen but (iii. 616) with Oldenberg. Oltramare (*L'histoire des idées théosophiques*, i. 63, n. 1) suggests 'introduction' or 'initiation', hence mystic doctrine.

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¹ See Oldenberg, GN. 1915, pp. 382–401.

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² xxxvi. 1–xxxix. 6; 7; 8–13. See also TA. i. 32; ApÇS. xv. 20. 1 ff.; BÇS. ix. 19; BhGS. iii. 6; MÇS. iv. 7. 1 ff.; KÇS. xviii. 4. 24; xx. 8. 5; PGS. ii. 15. 6; ÇB. xiii. 3. 4. 1; xiv. 1. 1. 26 ff. The additional matter in TA. iv. 22–7 is parallel to that in VS. xxxix, while iv. 21 has the Dadhigharma (ApÇS. xv. 18. 17), a rite parallel to the Pravargya at the midday pressing.

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³ GGS. iii. 1. 28 ff.; 2. 1 ff.; 54; JGS. i. 16 f. The CU. is, of course, treated in this way, and perhaps also the Mantra Brāhmaṇa, which precedes the CU. The Sāmans of this type are especially full of insertions and are longer.

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⁴ See Keith, *Aitareya Āraṇyaka* (1908).

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⁵ Trans. Keith (1909). See also JRAS. 1908, pp. 364–87.

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⁶ Cf. Oldenberg, GN. 1915, pp. 375–81, whose ingenious reconstruction of the original form is, however, not wholly convincing. The verses are known to TS. v. 2. 11. 1; MS. iii. 12. 21; VS. xxiii. 35; AV. xi. 7. 6. Scheftelowitz (ZII. i. 58–68), who inclines to overestimate the age of the verses, as of Rigvedic rank, unfortunately ignores entirely Oldenberg’s work.

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As the distinction between Brāhmaṇa and Āraṇyaka is not an absolute one, though the Āraṇyakas tend to contain more advanced doctrines than the Brāhmaṇas, so the distinction between Upaniṣad and Āraṇyakas is also not absolute, tradition actually incorporating the Upaniṣads in some cases in the Āraṇyakas. The most that can be said is that the term Upaniṣad, when applied to a text, normally denotes that it contains speculation mainly on the nature of the universe and of the Ātman or the Brahman. Its use in the Upaniṣad is in one or other of the senses ‘secret word’ or ‘phrase’, ‘secret text’ or ‘secret import’. Thus, when the phrase¹ *neti neti*, ‘not so, not so’, is used as an expression of the highest unity, that is an Upaniṣad; or again the word *jalān* ² as indicating that in which beings breathe, perish, and are born, or the phrase ³ *satyasya satyam*, ‘the truth of the true’, or *tadvanam* ⁴ as the final end is so described. In the texts of the Taittirīya school in special the phrase is used at the end of a section of philosophical teaching as a description of that teaching. Or the word is applied to a special subject of knowledge, such as the meaning of the word Om. In a slightly different way we hear of a man’s Upaniṣad, which denotes his secret rule of life, such as that one should not beg.⁵ In these senses the term Āraṇyaka is never used, and thus we can perhaps see why the two different words Āraṇyaka and Upaniṣad came into being. The former is a name, denoting the generic character of the texts, as those which from their secret nature must be dealt with in the special manner of being studied in the forest; the latter is a secret text, imparted at such a secret session, and in course of time more and more specifically appropriated to the description of secrets which were of philosophical character. Beyond these generalisms we are hardly likely to be able to penetrate.

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¹ BAU. ii. 3. 6.

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² CU. iii. 14. 1.

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³ BAU. ii. 1. 20; 3. 6.

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⁴ Kena 31 (JUB. iv. 21. 6).

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⁵ Kauṣ. ii. 1, 2. Cf. the Aupaniṣadika chapters on secret charms of the Arthaçāstra and Kāma Sūtra.

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Two different theories of the origin of the term have, however, been urged and require some notice. It is the view of Oldenberg¹ that the real sense of Upaniṣad is worship or reverence, that the word expresses the same ideas as Upāsanā,² and that it is due to the constant practice of the text to recommend the adoration of the Brahman or the Ātman under the guise of some symbol. There can be no doubt about the fact of the use of symbols in this way, but it is certain that the use of *upa-sad* as a verb in the Upaniṣads is always quite clearly distinguished from the meaning ‘worship’, and relates only to the going to a teacher, and sitting beside him for instruction: it is admitted that in this sense the normal use is *upa-sad*, not *upa-ni-sad*, but it is also plausible that the choice of the term was dictated by the fact that Upasad has in the ritual a very definite meaning of its own, which rendered the selection of a different word desirable to describe the action intended. In the second place it is clear that the idea of reverence or worship must have passed away at an early date from its original sense, and that, therefore, there is nothing to commend it on the ground of simplicity as an explanation: the Taittirīya Upaniṣad uses the term of the mere knowledge of the combination of letters, and the sense ‘rule’, as in ‘not to beg’, cannot be deduced from ‘worship’ as easily as ‘secret instruction’ can be deduced from ‘session’, beside a teacher, as opposed to a gathering for open discussion, Pariṣad or Saṁsad. In the third place, though this is not at all conclusive, the Ātman or the Brahman is not properly the object of reverence at all, since reverence implies the very duality which the Upaniṣads deny, and, if in reality the origin of the word lay in that sense, then it must be admitted that the Upaniṣads bear a name which their essential doctrine transcends. This of course is quite possible in itself: the other two considerations set out make it improbable.

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¹ ZDMG. l. 457 ff.; liv. 70 ff.; *Die Lehre der Upanishaden*, pp. 37, 348. The epic invests an absurd Niṣad as a form of literature besides Upaniṣad.

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² Senart (*Florilegium Melchior de Vogüé*, pp. 575 ff.) argues that Upāsanā means ‘knowledge’, but this is clearly unproved.

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The view of the word taken by Deussen³ differs from that adopted above, which sees in it a natural counterpart to the term Āraṇyakas, and derives it from the tradition of the Vedic school teaching, in that it assumes a break in the development of the thought of India. For that view it should be observed that there is the advantage of continuity: the Brāhmaṇas shade off imperceptibly into the Āraṇyakas, the Āraṇyakas shade off into the Upaniṣads without violent change of any kind. But on the theory of Deussen we are not to adopt the view that secret import on the subjective, and secret instruction on the objective side, were the meanings developed from the secret teaching in the forest. On the contrary we are to believe that, at this point at a time when the Brahmans were still bent on the study of the ritual, the warrior class developed a new and striking philosophy,⁴ which they expressed in secret formulae like *tajjalān*,¹ called Upaniṣads, because the essence of their character was secret communications, and that these doctrines were accompanied by secret explanations, from which in the course of time arose the first Upaniṣads. We must, it is claimed and has been argued by Garbe² with great emphasis, accept the view that it was not to the Brahmans, but to the warriors, to the princes, and the nobles, and to the wisdom of kings that India owed its philosophy.

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³ *Phil. of Up.*, pp. 16 ff.

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⁴ *Per contra* Hopkins (JAOS. xxii. 335) conjectures that Yoga practices were grafted on to the Upaniṣad doctrine from the ‘royal knowledge’; he gives no ground save that Yoga first appears in the Upaniṣads of the Yajurveda, the royal Veda, and this is certainly not an argument of any value.

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¹ More correctly *jalān*.

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² *Beitr. zur ind. Kulturgeschichte*, pp. 3 ff.; Winternitz, *Gesch. d. ind. Lit.* i. 198 ff., modified in iii. 615 f.

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This argument rests on facts recorded in the texts themselves, in which kings appear as authorities on philosophy. In the Chāndogya Upaniṣad³ five learned Brahmans desire to learn from Uddālaka Āruṇi the nature of the Ātman Vaiçvānara: he doubts his ability to explain it, and as a result all six betake themselves to the king Açvapati Kaikeya, who gives them instruction, after first demonstrating the inaccuracy of their knowledge. In a narrative which is preserved in the Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad⁴ and in the Kauṣītaki Upaniṣad⁵ a scholar, Gārgya Bālāki, undertakes to set out the nature of the Brahman to the king Ajātaçatru of Kāçī: he propounds twelve views—or in the Kauṣītaki sixteen—which are all defective, and the king then explains the Ātman to him by the principle of deep sleep, prefacing his instruction by the observation that it is a reverse of the rule for a Brahman to betake himself to a Kṣatriya for instruction. Another legend in the Chāndogya⁶ shows the Brahmans being instructed in the nature of ether, as the ultimate basis of all things, by the king Pravāhaṇa Jaivali. It is added that Atidhanvan once gave the same knowledge to Udaraçāṇḍilya, and the former name might be that of a prince. Less important is the fact⁷ that the Brahman Nārada is represented in the Chāndogya as being the recipient of information from Sanatkumāra, later the god of war, who tells the former that all his Vedic lore is a mere name. The great text regarding the doctrine of transmigration⁸ is set out by Pravāhaṇa Jaivali to Āruṇi with the remark that the Brahmans have never before had this information, which so far had remained the monopoly of the Kṣatriyas. In a third version of this account, given in the Kauṣītaki Upaniṣad,⁹ the king is Citra Gāṅgyāyani.

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³ v. 11–24. For the plan cf. JB. i. 22–5, where Janaka instructs five Brahmans on the Agnihotra.

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⁴ ii. 4.

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⁵ iv.

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⁶ i. 8 and 9.

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⁷ CU. vii.

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⁸ BAU. vi. 2; CU. v. 3–10. The rendering of *praçāstrtvam* as ‘rule’ here is clearly wrong, though adopted by Deussen (*Sechzig Upanishad’s*, p. 141) and Hertel (*Weisheit der Upanischaden*, p. 77).

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⁹ i.

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Now it is always difficult to believe in the sudden evolution of new doctrines, actually associated in the name with the conception of the absolute of the Brahman class, by circles, whose duty was presumably to wield the weapons of war, and who at any rate failed to retain the control of these doctrines: it is absolutely certain that the Upaniṣads, as we have them, are not the work of warriors, that they were handed down by priests, and that, if the warrior class originated these doctrines, they failed to continue the interest they had shown in them.¹ Stress must also be laid as against the supporters of the theory on the divergent views taken by them of the real work done by the Kṣatriyas. To Garbe they appear to have revolted from the sacrifice, and to have introduced a monist philosophy, centring in the idea of the Brahman—presumably appropriated by them, with a curious sense of humour, from their rivals. The doctrine of Karman is expressly claimed as theirs, so that they must be held, while adopting a monist philosophy, to have insisted on the importance of morality. On the other hand, the Brahmans were forced to adopt this Kṣatriya view by the pressure of public opinion, which compelled them to adopt it into their own system. This, frankly, appears a very curious conception; it is remarkable that the public should insist on a philosophic monism, when we remember that throughout Indian history we find every form of worship pursued with a painful eagerness and precision, and when we remember also how little popular opinion anywhere insists on a strict monism, especially one which empties life of any reality. A further difficulty arises when we find that the Kṣatriyas are credited by Garbe² with the creation of the Sāṁkhya philosophy as a revolt against prevailing views; apparently one set of Kṣatriyas operated against another, and, as he accepts Kṣatriya doctrines as the basis of Buddhism, we find that the great schism in Indian views was that of one Kṣatriya view against another. Hertel,³ again, who accepts the doctrine of the Kṣatriya origin of the philosophy of the Upaniṣads, ignores the fact that the doctrine of Karman is their chief claim, and insists instead that they were rationalists who depersonalized the old gods, substituting in lieu the idea of nature powers—called by them *faute de mieux*, through the poverty of language of the time, deities, and whose philosophy was essentially a monism atheistic, materialistic, and morally indifferent. Judged on this basis it may be doubted if the praise lavished on the Kṣatriyas at the expense of the Brahmans would have exactly been acceptable to them.

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¹ A further complication is adduced by those who believe that Buddhism was promoted by Kṣatriyas of Mongolian origin (V. Smith, *Oxford History of India*, p. 47); the precise relations of these sets of Kṣatriyas does not appear to be explained by their supporters.

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² In *Sāṁkhya-Philosophie*², p. 13, Garbe shows less assurance than formerly.

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³ *IF.* xli. 188.

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As has been indicated, stress is naturally laid in support of the theory of Kṣatriya influence on the explicit assertion of the king that the knowledge of transmigration had never belonged to any Brahmans, but the assertion is a very odd one: the king claims that the ‘giving of instruction’ has been the possession of the warriors because the Brahmans have not studied this doctrine, but even for India such a thought is absurd and meaningless, and reduces the claim of the king to what, it seems, is an idle vaunt. Then again, as it is impossible to deny that the Ātman-Brahman doctrine has a long previous history in the Brāhmaṇas, and is a logical development of the idea of unity of the Rigveda, we must admit that the warrior class must have shared in the intellectual development, which produced that idea, and then started a fresh view—which nevertheless was based on the Brahman, not the Kṣatra—in opposition to the sacrifice, while the priests were deeply engaged in the sacrifice. But the sacrifices were essentially not matters in which the priest acted for himself: he aimed at securing the profit of his patron, and the patrons for the great sacrifices must have been in the main the very warrior class, which we are to assume turned with disgust from the sacrifice.¹ The true solution of the problem is suggested by the obvious difficulties of the position of the maintainers of the theory: we must adopt a solution which explains why the whole Upaniṣad tradition is Brahmanical, and yet why the texts record actions of importance as regards the doctrine by the princes of earth. It is absurd to imagine that these references would have been left to stand had the Brahmans found them derogatory to their dignity: the sense of historical accuracy must have been very strong, incredibly so indeed, which would have induced a priesthood to preserve an exact account of the royal founders of each doctrine, and that they did so is sufficiently disproved by the mere fact that they clearly did not preserve a true account even of the Brahman founders of their doctrines. The prominence of Yājñavalkya can hardly be historical, since he is also the great ritual teacher of the Çatapatha Brāhmaṇa, and the device of assuming more than one man of the same name is absurd in this as in many other cases, since the texts assume that the two are the same: nor again does any one really believe that Sanatkumāra was a human king.

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¹ Actually we find Janaka instructing Yājñavalkya regarding the Agnihotra, and as a boon becoming a Brahman. See ÇB. xi. 6. 2, and see JB. i. 22–5.

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The explanation² becomes simple enough when we look at the Brāhmaṇas and the Rigveda: there we find that kings are often mentioned as generous donors: that there are lists of the great kings who performed sacrifices, and who beyond all things gave fees to the priest, just as in historical times great kings, like Puṣyamitra and Samudragupta, boast of their offerings. It was clearly necessary for the priests, who abandoned the doctrine of sacrifice, to live: they, therefore, had to find patrons and they must accordingly, like their predecessors, the sacrificial priests, represent their teachings as worth large sums. As a king must sacrifice to give gifts, so he must at least understand, and take part in discussions, to give gifts, and the position of the kings might easily be wholly deduced from the needs of the priest. But it would be unnecessary, and, it may be added, perhaps unjust to hold this view: the thought of the Upaniṣads with all its demerits is a far nobler thing than the thought of the Brāhmaṇas: as later among the Buddhists, the minds which could rise from the mere sacrifice to the consideration of the self were quite capable of accepting help from other minds: of low origin, Satyakāma, whose mother was a mere slave girl Jabālā, who ran about with men and who could not tell his father, was taken as a pupil by Hāridrumata and attained the complete knowledge:¹ even the epic, in one of its juster moments, allows a learned Çūdra honour and permits a merchant to instruct a Brahman.² In modern India saints of the highest rank have been other than Brahmans in caste. The princes were now and then seers, like Divodāsa, son of Vadhryaçva,³ and they may for their part have now and then wearied of the sacrifice, and sought a higher truth, just as, inversely, we hear of seers who sought kingly rank for their offspring,⁴ and there may be that degree of accuracy in the figure played by them in the legends.⁵ But that the philosophy of the Brāhmaṇas as seen in the Upaniṣads is essentially the development of the philosophy of the Brāhmaṇas cannot reasonably be doubted. Nor is there any ground for thinking that the philosophy had its chief home anywhere save in the holy ground of the Brahmans, the land of Kurukṣetra, which seems to have been in this period as in the earlier epoch the place of Brahmanical culture *par excellence*.⁶ The culture was not absolutely restricted to that area: the mention of Açvapati Kaikeya carries us further to the northwest, while we hear of Brahmans who dwelt in Magadha,⁷ though that was rare. The Kauṣītaki Upaniṣad⁸ preserves for us in the movements of Gārgya Bālāki the traces of the extent of the activity of the new movement: he went among the Kurus, the Pañcālas, the two folks then being joined, the Kāçis and Videhas, and the Vaças and Matsyas, and among the Uçīnaras. All this accords with the extent of the land in which the sacrifice was prevalent, and the addition of the Kosalas would complete the list: doubtless their omission here is mere chance. Other allusions to countries do not show any substantial extension of the geographical horizon of the authors: the Vindhya mountains are, it seems, known to the Kauṣītaki Upaniṣad, and this is perhaps a proof that the Vedic civilization was extending southwards⁹ in greater degree than in the preceding period. The references to the Indus region, whence came salt and noble horses, suggest that it was afar off, but against this is to be set the mention of Gandhāra as not at all a distant country in the Chāndogya Upaniṣad.¹⁰ But culture was not in any event rigidly confined to the middle country: scholars in their wanderings penetrated as far as the Madras, on the Hyphasis.¹¹

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² Keith, JRAS. 1908, pp. 468–73; Bloomfield, *Rel. of Veda*, pp. 220 ff.; Oldenberg, *Buddha*⁵, p. 73, n. 1; *Die Lehre der Upanishaden*, pp. 166 ff.; Oltramare, *L'histoire des idées théosophiques*, i. 64 ff.; Weber, *Religionssoziologie*, ii. 155 ff.; Dahlmann, *Der Idealismus der ind. Rel.*, pp. 126 ff.

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¹ CU. iv. 4.

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² MBh. iii. 216. 13 f.

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³ JB. i. 222; PB. ix. 2. 8.

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⁴ Cf. Viçvāmitra (JB. ii. 221) and Aṣṭaka; Keith, *Rig-Veda Brāhmaṇas*, p. 67.

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⁵ That Raikva (CU. iv. 1) was a Çūdra (Hertel, IF. xli. 189) is certainly wrong.

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⁶ Macdonell and Keith, *Vedic Index*, ii. 125, 126; often in JB.

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⁷ ÇA. vii. 13; cf. Oldenberg, *Buddha* (ET.), p. 400, n. There is no doubt in the Sūtra period of the contempt felt for Magadha and its Brahmans; a Māgadha is prescribed for an undignified rite in JB. ii. 404, and in the Vrātyastoma.

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⁸ iv. 1; Keith, JRAS. 1908, p. 367.

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⁹ Cf. Keith, *Aitareya Āraṇyaka*, p. 200.

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¹⁰ CU. vi. 14. 1.

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¹¹ BAU. iii. 3. 1.

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Inevitably the question arises, how far in this period thought was affected by the growing intermixture of the people with the aborigines or earlier inhabitants, Dravidians or others. It has frequently been suggested that the philosophy of the Upaniṣads is essentially Dravidian rather than Aryan, and plausible grounds can be adduced in this sense.¹ Thus, we may be fairly certain that, as time went on, Dravidian blood came more and more to prevail over Aryan, though in candour we should admit that the evidence on this head is purely speculative in the absence of any real knowledge of the Aryan physical type which entered India. In the second place the changes in language may be due to Dravidian influence;² here again the evidence is scanty enough, in the absence of independent evidence of the Dravidian languages for the period of the Brāhmaṇas and Upaniṣads, and the difficulty of tracing to them any definite influence on the language; the use of cerebral or domal letters, and forms like the second future (*kartāsmi*) or perfect participle used verbally (*kṛtavān*), or the development of constructions with the indeclinable gerund, may have been encouraged by tendencies among the Dravidians; but this cannot be definitely established. That Rudra-Çiva is mainly aboriginal is rather a guess based on the belief that the name denotes ‘red’ than an ascertained fact, and we have no assurance on the strength of which we could claim that the use of trance and asceticism or caste were Dravidian elements appropriated by the Aryans. The pantheism of the Upaniṣads may be deemed to be a philosophical development from the animistic views which Jainism and in a sense Buddhism presents, and which may be contrasted with the anthropomorphic nature gods of the Aryans, and a contrast may be drawn between Iranian religion and Indian,³ suggesting that the former presents us a picture of the practical Aryan mind as opposed to the more mystic Indian intelligence. These contentions, we may admit, do not lead to any assured results in the sense of establishing the Dravidian⁴ claim. What they indicate is the unquestionable fact that the Upaniṣads, as in some degree all earlier thought in India, represent the outcome of the reflections of a people whose blood was mixed. We may, if we desire, call the Upaniṣads the product of Aryo-Dravidian thought; but, if we do so, we must remember that the effect of the intermixture must be regarded in the light of chemical fusion, in which both elements are transformed.

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¹ A. E. Gough in his *Philosophy of the Upanishads* explains their demerits as due to racial intermixture. For a recent claim for the Dravidians, see G. W. Brown, *Studies in honor of Bloomfield*, pp. 75 ff. Frazer (*ERE.* *s. v.*) states the case for intermingling happily. See below, Appendix G.

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² Konow, *Linguistic Survey*, iv. 278 ff.

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³ Cf. above, Chap. 27, § 4.

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⁴ It may be noted that Dravidian religion, as we know it, shows no special affinity to Sumerian as described, *e. g.* in *Camb. Anc. Hist.* i. 371, 384, 441 ff.

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