The Religion and Philosophy of the Veda and Upanishads v2.c40.s6.11

v2.c40.s6.11

The impossibility of ascribing these views of the absolute and the world to attempts to solve the problem suggested by the transcendental view of the absolute is seen in the many cases where the realism is material and gross: thus the old doctrine of the creator, the primeval substance created by him, and his entry into it, which appears in the Aitareya Upaniṣad,⁴ cannot be treated as a later development of a primitive identification of the universe and the absolute: it derives directly from the Brāhmaṇas, and shows the early, not the later, date of the Upaniṣad, as compared with the doctrine of Yājñavalkya. The same primitive ideas must be seen in the view that the Puruṣa dwells in the body as a span in height, as flame without smoke.