The Religion and Philosophy of the Veda and Upanishads v2.c40.s5.25

v2.c40.s5.25

Another set of conceptions is rather different: they are not so much real efforts to explain the absolute as merely to bring it into contact with the sacrifice: it was clearly the most natural thing in the world for the various schools, which were contemporary with the development of the Brahman, to apply to the chief concepts of their special branch of Vedic literature the idea of identification with the absolute. Thus the schools of the Rigveda fixed upon the Uktha,³ the litany, especially that of the Mahāvrata ceremony as the absolute, the Sāmaveda schools chose the Sāman and in special the Udgītha,⁴ and the schools of the Yajurveda the horse⁵ offered at the sacrifice. Much more common is the view that by the mystic syllable, Om, originally no more perhaps than a formal word of assent, the Brahman is denoted.⁶