The Religion and Philosophy of the Veda and Upanishads v2.c41.23.4

v2.c41.23.4

Nor is it of any importance that the character of that teacher as a prophet, a magician, a believer in purification, and a mystic is comparable with certain types of Indian sage. The view that the world is incapable of producing similar figures under similar or even different circumstances is one which must be proved first before mere similarities prove anything, and Empedokles’ claim to be a god, degraded to earth, is un-Indian, being derived from the Orphic doctrine of man’s defilement. The fact that a dislike to flesh as food sprung up among the believers in transmigration like Empedokles is perfectly true:³ it is, however, striking that in India itself the belief was of more tardy appearance as at all general than the date of Empedokles,⁴ and was not so far as we can see caused by the doctrine of transmigration. The great sage, Yājñavalkya, with whose name the doctrines of the Upaniṣads are mainly connected, was a beef-eater with decided views as to the condition in which he ate it. It is also argued that the position of the gods in the view of Demokritos, who holds with Empedokles that nothing arises from nothing, is precisely the position of the gods in Indian thought, as seen in the Upaniṣads, where they cease to be anything more considerable than a number of superior beings, not very essentially different from men. But this argument is clearly of no weight.