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Buddha: His Life, his Doctrine, his Order c7.s1.t1: Symbolism of the Offering—The Absolute

Buddha: His Life, his Doctrine, his Order c7.s1.t1

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English

Symbolism of the Offering—The Absolute

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THE rudiments of Indian speculation extend back to the lyric poetry of the Rig Veda. Here, in the oldest monument of Vedic poetry, among songs at sacrifice and prayers to Agni and Indra for protection, prosperity, and victory, we discover the first bold efforts of a reflecting mind, which turns its back on the spheres of motley worlds of gods and myths, and, in conscious reliance on its own power, approaches the enigmas of being and origination:—

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“Nor Aught nor Naught existed, yon bright sky
Was not, nor heaven’s broad roof outstretched above.
What covered all? What sheltered? What concealed?
Was it the water’s fathomless abyss?

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“There was not death—yet was there naught immortal,
There was no confine betwixt day and night;
The only One breathed breathless by itself,
Other than It there nothing since has been.

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“Darkness there was, and all at first was veiled
In gloom profound—an ocean without light—
The germ that still lay covered in the husk
Burst forth, one nature, from the fervent heat.

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“Who knows the secret? who proclaimed it here, Whence, whence this manifold creation sprang? The gods themselves came later into being— Who knows from whence this great creation sprang?

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“He from whom all this great creation came, Whether His will created or was mute, The Most High Seer that is in highest heaven, He knows it—or perchance even He knows not.”*

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And in another song a poet speaks, who, estranged from the faith in the old deities, seeks after the one God, “who alone is Lord over all that moves:”

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“He who gives breath, He who gives strength; Whose command all the bright gods revere, Whose shadow is immortality, whose shadow is death;— Who is the God to whom we shall offer our sacrifice?

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“He through whose greatness these snowy mountains are, And the sea, they say, with the distant river (the Rasâ)— He of whom these regions are the two arms;— Who is the God to whom we shall offer our sacrifice?

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“He through whom the sky is bright and the earth firm— He through whom the heaven was ’stablished, nay the highest heaven— He who measured out the space in the sky?— Who is the God to whom we shall offer our sacrifice?

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“He who by His might looked even over the waters Which held power and generated the sacrificial fire, He who alone is God above all gods;— Who is the God to whom we shall offer our sacrifice?†”

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Each strophe of the lyric ends in these words: “who is the God to whom we shall offer our sacrifice?” The gap is clearly perceptible which lies between inquiring hymns like this and the positive faith of an earlier age, which knew, but inquired not regarding the gods to whom they should make sacrifice.

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∗ Rig Veda, x.

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¹²⁹ Translated by Max Müller. † Ibid., x.

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¹²¹ Translated by Max Müller.

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We can only touch with brief comment this first flash of conscious thought of the Indians regarding the fundamental questions of the universe and life. The development of speculation—or, rather, its self-development out of a world of phantasms—first assumes a connected progressive form at a time which is later—probably much later—than that to which these hymns, quoted from the Rig Veda, belong. It was that period of widely ramified and exuberant literary production which has given birth to the endless mass of sacrificial works and mystic collections of dogmas and discourses, written in prose, which are usually named Brâhmana, Aranyaka, and Upanishad. The age of these works, upon which alone we can rely for this portion of our sketch, we can determine only approximately and within uncertain limits. We shall scarcely be much in error, if we place their origin somewhere between the ninth and seventh centuries before the Christian era. The development of thought, which was progressing in this period, while resting apparently on the basis of the old faith in gods, had really undermined that faith, and, forcing its way through endless voids of fantastic chimeras, had at last created a new ground of religious thought, the belief in the undisturbed, unchangeable universal-Unity, which reposes behind the world of sorrow and impermanence, and to which the delivered, leaving this world, returns. On this very foundation, moreover, centuries after the Brahmanical thinkers had laid it, were the doctrine and the church built, which were named after the name of Buddha.

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We now proceed to trace step by step the process of that self-destruction of the Vedic religious thought, which has produced Buddhism as its positive outcome.

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At the time when this process begins, all spiritual exercises which are performed in India are concentrated round one focus, the sacrifice. The world, which surrounds the Brahmans, is the place of sacrifice; the matters, of which, above all others, he has knowledge, are those relating to sacrificial duties. He must understand the sacrifice with all its secrets, for understanding is all-subduing power. By this power the gods have chained the demons—"mighty," so runs the promise for those who have knowledge, "doth he himself become, and powerless becomes his enemy and controverter, who possesses such knowledge."

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The elements, of which this knowledge of the meaning of the sacred sacrificial rites consists, are twofold; some spring from the spiritual bequests of the past, and others are a newly-acquired possession.

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On the one side, the legacy inherited from the time of the simple belief in Agni and Indra and Varuna, and all the hosts of gods, before whom fathers and ancestors had bowed themselves in prayer and sacrifice. Every hand laid on the offering points to these. When the offerer seizes the sacred implement, he says, "I grasp thee at the call of god Savitar, with the arms of the Açvins, with Pûshan's hands." If the sacrificial object is to be consecrated with sprinkling of water, he says to the waters, "Indra hath chosen you as his associates at the conquest of Vritra; ye have chosen Indra as your associate at the conquest of Vritra." And from early morn until evening there resound at the place of sacrifice praises and songs to Ushas, the redness of dawn, the divine maiden, who, with her glistening steeds, approaches the dwellings of man, dispensing blessings; to Indra, who, fired by the soma-draught, breaks in wild battle the legions of demons with his thunderbolt; to Agni, the benign god, the heavenly guest, who beams in the habitations of men, and bears their sacrificial gifts to heaven.

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But the world of the old gods, the living gods of flesh and blood, can no longer of itself alone satisfy the mind of the later age. Ever stronger becomes the tendency to name by their proper names the powers which govern the wide world and the life of man. There is space; the Indians named it “the regions of the world.” There is time, with its creating and destroying power; the Indians named it “the year.” There are the seasons, the moon, day and night, earth and air, the sun—“he who burns,” and the wind—“he who blows.” There are the breath-powers, which pass through the human body. There are thought and speech, “which are one with each other and yet separate.” The movements and operations of these powers govern the course of the universe, and bring men weal and woe.

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And now men look for an answer, in the new language of their own age, to the question which the sacrifice and the world of gods, to whom sacrifice is made, suggest to the thought. Then the atmosphere assumes a state in which mysteries and symbols increase. In all the surroundings of the Brahman at the altar of sacrifice, and above all in the sacred office which he there performs, the god Agni and the god Savitar will no longer be present alone, but there shall be there all the hidden powers which move to and fro in the universe, “for the universe,” it is said, “is swayed by the movement of sacrifice.” What meets the eye in the offering is not merely it is or appears to be, but there is something further—that which it signifies. Speech and action have a double signification, the apparent and the hidden; and, if human knowledge follows the apparent, yet the gods love the hidden and abhor the apparent.

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Numbers have mysterious power, words and syllables have mysterious power, rhythms have mysterious power. There is an imaginary play between imaginary forces which is subject to no law of perceptibility. Consecration (dîkshâ) escapes from the gods; they search for it through the months; they find it neither with summer nor with winter, but they find it with the months of the cool season (çiçira); therefore man must consecrate himself when the months of the cool season have come round. The metra fly up to heaven to bring the soma-draught; the voice speaks standing in the seasons.

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The system of offering is a type of the year, or, briefly, the sacrifice is the year; the officiating priests are the seasons of the year; the objects offered up are the months. We should import something foreign into these plays of thought if we attempted to trace in them any sharply-defined line of demarcation between the being and the signifying, between the reality and its representative; the one overlaps the other. "Prajâpati (the Creator) created as his image that which is the offering. Therefore people say the offering is Prajâpati. For he created it as his image."

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Morning after morning, and evening after evening, two offerings are placed in the sacred fire; the one is the past, the other the future; the one is to-day, the other the morrow. To-day is certain; therefore, the first of both offerings will be made with an utterance of sacrificial formula, for speech is certainty. The morrow is uncertain; therefore, the second offering will be made in silence, for silence, as the Indian says, is the uncertain.

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In the confused cloud-world of these mysteries, there lurk, concealed from the eye of the ignorant, countless enemies of the destinies of the children of men; days and nights roll on, and bear away with them the blessings which the good deeds of men had won for them; above the realm of changing days and nights the sun, "who shines," is enthroned; and "he who burns is death. Since he is death, therefore the creatures who dwell below him die; those who live beyond him are the gods; therefore are the gods immortal. His rays are the traces, wherewith all these creatures are yoked to life. Whosoever life he wishes, he draws to himself and he departs—he dies." But the wise man knows formulas and offerings, which exalt him above the region of rolling days and nights, and above the world, in which the sun, with his heat, has power over life and death. Day and night rob not him of the reward of his works; he sets his life free from death—"that is the deliverance from death, which is in the Agnihotra offering."

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The world thus darkens down for the fancy of this race to a dismal arena for the movement of unlimited lifeless shapes. Symbols are heaped unceasingly on symbols; wherever thought turns, new gods and new miraculous powers confront it, each as formless as the rest. That God, it is true, who was before all gods and all existences, the creator of worlds, Prajâpati, who was alone in the beginning and desired "might I become a plurality, might I produce creatures," stands out above all; and in the hot work of toilsome creation he gave forth from himself the worlds, and gods and men, and space and time, and thought and speech. But even the thought of Prajâpati, the lord of beings, evoked no louder response from the breast of the believer; the image of the Creator floats hazily among others in the great, gray, shapeless mist, which surrounds the world of creatures.

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Wherever we look in the vast mass of monuments, which the strange activity of that age has bequeathed to us, there is nowhere to be seen an operation of the inquiring mind, proceeding from the depths, nowhere that effort of bold thought, which plays for a heavy stake and wins. That imbecile wisdom which knows all things and declares all things, sits enthroned in self-content in the middle of its absurd images, and not even quakes before the spectral hosts which it has conjured up; wherefore should the wise tremble, who knows the word before which spirits and demons bow? One generation after another grows up under the ban of confused thoughts, and one after another unwearied adds its quota to the contributions of departed races, and then it also passes away.

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Our eyes must accustom themselves, until they have learned to see in the dim light of this shadow-land, in which the fanciful images of those ages move, crowding formlessly together. But then even here there reveals itself a kind of natural law operating in the region of the spiritual. Let us first on our part trace what is preserved to us in the oldest monuments of those speculations, and then the work of later generations successively, and thus as we mount up layer by layer, the picture which we see changes, and the changes have connection and meaning.

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The more important of these conceptions of the fancy gradually emerge from the confused mass, press into the foreground, trample down the weak, and step triumphantly into the centre of every circle. The powers and symbols, on whose working the Indian thinker fancies the system of the universe to rest, are what they are, not in and by themselves alone, but the farther thought goes, the more clearly do they appear to rest on great fundamental forces, from which their existence is principally derived, or in which they are again merged, when the goal of their being is reached. From the surface, where each phenomenon presents itself as something different from every other, the speculative imagination strives to pierce into the depths below, in which lies the unifying bond of all diversity. Man looks for the essence in things, and the essence of the essence,* for the reality, the truth of phenomena, and the truth of the true. This quest of the substance is necessarily a search for unity in all diversity. And thus thought lays hold separately upon one single group of phenomena, connected by a common feature, and regards them as united in a common root, and ere long thought passes all bounds and boldly declares, so and so is the universe. And then it lets go what it laid hold of; that one phenomenon which had just now been declared to be the universe is lost again in the floating crowd of all the powers, which hold sway in man and the world, in space and time, in word and speech.

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In none of the Vedic texts can we trace the genesis of the

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∗ Cf. "Chândogya Upanishad," i. 1, 2:—"The essence of all beings is the earth, the essence of the earth water, the essence of water the plants, the essence of plants man, the essence of man speech, the essence of speech the Rig Veda, the essence of the Rig Veda the Sâma Veda, the essence of the Sâma Veda the Udgîtha (which is Om). That Udgîtha (Om) is the best of all essences, the highest, deserving the highest place, the eighth."

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The conception which lies at the bottom of this eight-fold series of essence, essence of the essence, and so on, is (in the words of Max Müller) something like this:—"Earth is the support of all beings, water pervades the earth, plants arise from water, man lives by plants, speech is the best part of man, the Rig Veda the best part of speech, the Sâma Veda the best extract from the *Rik*, Udgîtha, or the syllable Om, the crown of the Sâma Veda."

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Later on, where the idea of the Brahma will claim our attention, we shall have to speak of the symbolical relation or of the hidden intrinsic identity, which the Indian fancy detects between nature and the world of language, especially the sacred word. This passage has an important bearing on this, inasmuch as it shows how, in the mind of the Indian, the objects of nature point back through a series of middle terms, to the word of the Veda, and finally to the Om, the most suitable expression of the Brahma, as it were to the life-giving power in them.

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conception of the unity in all that is, from the first dim indications of this thought until it attains a steady brilliancy, as clearly as in that work, which, next to the hymns of the Rig Veda, deserves to be regarded as the most significant in the whole range of Vedic literature, the “Brâhmana of the hundred paths.”

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The “Brâhmana of the hundred paths” shows us first and foremost how from these confused masses of ideas the notion of the “ego” presses to the front of all others, and will domineer over them, in the language of the Indians: the Âtman, the subject, in which the forces and functions of human life find root and footing. The breath-powers penetrate the human body and give it life; the Âtman is lord over all breath-powers; he is the central power, which works and creates in the basis of personal life, the “innominate breath-power,” from which the other “nominate” breath-powers derive their being. “A decade of breaths truly,” so says the Brâhmana, “dwells in man; the Âtman is the eleventh, on him are dependent the breath-powers.” “From the Âtman come all these members (of the human body) into being,” “of all that is, the Âtman is the first.”

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A central point is here found for the domain of human personality, with its limbs and its faculties, that power which is the intrinsic and essential, working in all forms of life. And what the Indian thinker has conceived in the particular “ego” extends in his idea, by inevitable necessity, to the universe at large beyond him; according to him microcosm and macrocosm continuously play corresponding parts, and here and yonder similar appearances point significantly to each other. As the human eye resembles the cosmic eye, the sun, and as the gods, resembling in the general system the human breath-powers, act as the breath-powers of the universe, so also the Âtman, the central substance of the “ego,” steps forth on the domain of the bare human individual, and is taken as the creating power that moves the great body of the universe. He, the lord of the breath-powers, the firstling, from whom the limbs of the body were formed, is at the same time the lord of the gods, the creator of creatures, who has caused the worlds to proceed from his "ego;" the Âtman is Prajâpati. Yea, the very expression occurs, "the Âtman is the universe." At this stage this phrase is only one play of the fancy among a thousand others, not the thought grasped in its fulness, that the boundless universe and the restricted "ego," which contemplates it, are in truth one. A crowd of other figures pushes to the front and diverts the attention from the Âtman, who is the universe; but the expression once uttered, though it die away, works on in secret and awaits the time when he who once uttered it, will turn his thoughts back to it.

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Meanwhile from another train of conceptions another power not less potent pushes itself forward, with a claim to be recognized as the great cosmic energy. The sacred word, the established guide in sacrifice, is preserved in its three forms of hymn, formula, and song,* making up the "threefold knowledge" of those who knew the Vedas. The spiritual fluid, which bears the sacred word and its supporters, the Brahmans, floating above the profane word and the profane world, is the Brahma :† it is the power which dwells in hymn, formula, and song, as the power of holiness; "the truth of the word is the Brahma."

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∗ That is Ric (hymn of the Rig Veda), Yajus (sacrificial formula of the Yajur Veda), Sâman (songs contained in the Sâma Veda).—Translator.

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† It will not be superfluous to bear in mind that the times, of which we are speaking, know nothing of the god Brahman. While "brahman," "brâhmana" occur frequently enough in the oldest texts in the signification of "Priest," the god Brahman appears first only in the very latest parts of the Veda.

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The world of the word is to the Indian another microcosm. In the rhythm of the sacred song he hears the echoes of the rhythm of the universe resound.* Thus must that substance from which the sacred word derives its being, also be a power which operates at the basis of all things. The fanciful subtleties, regarding the enigma of the Brahma reposing in the

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* Of the countless passages which could be quoted in illustration of this, let us merely refer to one, to the working out by the theologians of the Sâma Veda of the idea of the symbolic relation of the Sâman-(song-) diction with its five parts (“ Chândogya Upanishad,” ii. 2, etc.). “Let a man meditate on the fivefold Sâman as the five worlds. The hinkâra is the earth, the prastâva the fire, the udgîtha the sky, the pratihâra the sun, the nidhana heaven.—Let a man meditate on the fivefold Sâman as rain. The hinkâra is wind (that brings the rain); the prastâva is ‘the cloud is come;’ the udgîtha is ‘it rains;’ the pratihâra, ‘it flashes, it thunders;’ the nidhana ‘it stops.’ There is rain for him and he brings rain for others, who, thus knowing, meditates on the fivefold Sâman as rain.”

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And then it goes on through a series of other comparisons; the Sâman with its five parts represents the waters, the seasons, the animals, and more of the like. Often these symbolizings rest upon nothing more than the most meaningless superficialities, as when the matter treated of is the three syllables of the word udgîtha (sacred song), “ut (ud) is breath, for by means of breath a man rises (ut-tishthati); gî is speech, for speeches are called giraḥ; tha is food, for by means of food all subsist (sthita).” [“ Chând. Up.,” i. 3, 6. To this passage Max Müller furnishes from Irish sources interesting parallels in the fanciful conceits of the Christians of the Middle Ages.] However senseless such fancies may appear to us, they cannot be overlooked as precursors of the most important event in the religious development of India. In the symbolical interpretation or mystical identification, which the individual word or the individual sacred song furnishes, of the individual phenomenon in the life of nature or of the ego, the ultimate tendency of this development is being shaped: the identification of the central power in the whole range of the sacred word (Brahma), with the central power of the human person (Âtman), and with the life-centre of nature: the genesis of the idea of the universal One.

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Vedic text, and the priestly pride of the human supporters of the Brahma, combine to elevate this entity to a dominant position in the Indian’s world of thought. “He makes,” it is said of the priest who completes a specific sacrificial operation, “the Brahma the head of this universe; therefore the Brahman is the head of this universe.” There was an ancient Vedic ode which began: “On truth is the earth founded, on the sun is the heaven founded. By the right do the Adityas (the supreme gods, the sons of the Aditi, the infinite) consist.” Now it is said “the Brahma is the word, the truth in the word is the Brahma.” “The Brahma is the right.” “By the Brahma are the heavens and the earth held together.”

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Here is an example furnished more illustrative than anything else of the peculiarities of Indian thought. This gradual, persistent pressure of an idea, which arises not from the contemplation of visible nature, but from the speculation about the sacredness of the holy Vedic text—the pressure of this idea and of this word until all the loftiest and deepest conceptions which the mind can grasp are associated with this word.

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This stage is not attained at one bound. When it is said, “The Brahma is the noblest among the gods,” it is also said in another place in proximity to this, “Indra and Agni are the noblest among the gods.” Well, the power of sacred truth, which the Indian calls the Brahma, has stepped into a position among the most prominent forces of the universe; it is recognized as the power which holds the heavens and the earth together, but it is not yet the first and last—the one and all. The young upstart among the ideas is not yet sufficiently powerful to push the ancient creator and ruler of the worlds, Prajâpati, from his throne; but he is become the nearest to this throne. “The spirit, Prajâpati,” thus says the Brâhmana of the hundred paths, “wished: May I become a plurality—

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may I propagate myself." He exerted himself—he took on himself severe pangs. When he exerted himself, when he had endured severe pangs, he created the Brahma first, the threefold knowledge. That became a support for him; therefore people say, "The Brahma is the support of this universe." Therefore, he who has learned (the sacred word) has gained a support, for what is the Brahma is the support. "The Brahma," it is also said, "is the first-born in this universe." It is not yet the everlasting unborn, from which everything that is has been born, but it is the first-born among the children of Prajâpati, the father of worlds.

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There is something of the calm uncontrollable necessity of a natural process in this emerging or growth of both these notions, the Âtman and the Brahma, each of which first gains the dominant position in its own circle, and is then carried forward by the progress of thought into the expanse of worlds; and there also plays an ever-widening part. Though the images which were originally associated with each, in the mind of the Indian, were so different, yet it could not but be that, in the course of such a development, the thought of the Âtman should assimilate itself continually more and more to that of the Brahma, and that of the Brahma to that of the Âtman. "The first-born in this universe is the Brahma," as has been said. And of the Âtman it is said in another place, "Of all that exists, the first existent is the Âtman." The Brahma is the face of the universe, and "the firstling of this universe" is the Âtman. The Brahma displays himself in hymn, formula, and song; "the nature of the Âtman consists," it is further said, "of hymn, formula, and song." The definite, obviously presented, and limited meaning, which simple consciousness had at one time attached to the idea of the Âtman, and to the idea of the Brahma, extends itself to unlimited ranges, and then the difference between the two ideas gradually vanishes. The imagination of the Indian, eager to grasp the unity underlying things, is wanting in the power to preserve the images of the different notions within their several limitations, and in their separation from each other.

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And the remaining barriers are passed at last. What heretofore emerged momentarily, and was again lost in the current of an erratic imagination, is grasped anew by the mind, to be lost no more again: the conception of the great everlasting and eternal One, in which all diversity vanishes, from which are spirit and universe, and in which they live and move. It is called the Âtman, it is called the Brahma; Âtman and Brahma converge in the One, in which the yearning spirit, wearied of wandering in a world of gloomy, formless phantasms, finds its rest. "That which was," it is written, "that which will be, I praise, the great Brahma, the One, the Imperishable, the wide Brahma, the One Imperishable." "To the Âtman let man bring his adoration, the spiritual, whose body is the breath, whose form the light, whose soul the æther, who assumes what forms he will, quick as a thought, full of right purpose, full of right performance, the source of every vapour, of every essence, who extends to all the regions of the world, who pervades this universe, silent and unmoved. Small as a grain of rice, or barley, or hirse, or a millet-seed, this spirit dwells in the ego; golden, like a light without smoke, is he; wider than the heavens, wider than the æther, wider than this earth, wider than all the range of being; he is the ego of the breath, he is my ego (Âtman); with this Âtman shall I, when I separate from this state, unite myself. Whosoever thinketh thus truly, there is no doubt. Thus said Çândilya."

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A new centre of all thought is found, a new god, greater than all old gods, for he is the All; nearer to the quest of man’s heart, for he is the particular ego. The name of the thinker who was the first to propound this new philosophy, we know not;* the circle of people in which it found response must have been at that time very narrow. But they were the most enlightened of the Indian people, and we see how for them all other thoughts fade, and all other quests are merged in the one quest, the quest of the Âtman, the foundation of things. The parting words of the wise man, who leaves his home and speaks for the last time with his wife, have reference to the Âtman. The debates of the Brahmans, who come together at the gorgeous sacrificial solemnities at the courts of kings, deal with the Âtman. Many a lively description has come down to us, showing how Brahmans eager for the fray, and Brahman females not less eager for the contest, have crossed lances in argument regarding the Âtman. The wise Gârgî says to Yâjnavalkya, “As an heroic youth from Kâçi or Videha bends his unbent bow, and takes two deadly arrows in his hand, I have armed myself against thee with two questions, which solve for me.” And another of those opponents, whom the legend of the “Brâhmana of the hundred paths” represents as confronting Yâjnavalkya in this great tournament of debate, and as being conquered by him, says to him, “When anyone says ‘that is an ox, that is a horse,’ it is thereby pointed out.

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∗ The names of the teachers in whose mouths our texts put the discourses regarding the Âtman cannot be regarded otherwise than with distrust. In the “Çatapatha Br.” Yâjnavalkya appears as the one who has most successfully advocated the new doctrines at the court of the Videha king. But while the first books of the said text, which must have been compiled at a not inconsiderable length of time before the development of these speculations, frequently quote Yâjnavalkya as an authority, the rôle which he plays in the later books must be a fabrication. The traditions, which give Çândilya a similar place in the history of Indian thought, are hardly deserving of greater credence.

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Point out to me the revealed, unveiled Brahma, the Âtman, which dwells in everything: the Âtman, which dwells in everything, what is that, O Yâjnavalkya?" Thus the combatants commence, and the princes listen to the debate, to see which has the deeper knowledge of the Brahma; and he who conquers in the fight gains the Brahmani cows, with horns hung with gold. And side by side with these highly-coloured court scenes, where renowned masters from all lands, who have knowledge of the Âtman, contend with each other for fame, patronage, and reward, the same text gives us another very different picture: "Knowing him, the Âtman, Brahmans relinquish the desire for posterity, the desire for possessions, the desire for worldly prosperity, and go forth as mendicants." This is the earliest trace of Indian monasticism; from those Brahmans who, knowing the Âtman, renounce all that is earthly, and become beggars, the historical development progresses in a regular line up to Buddha, who leaves kith and kin, and goods and chattels, to seek deliverance, wandering homeless in the yellow garb of a monk. The appearance of the doctrine of the eternal One and the origin of monastic life in India, are simultaneous; they are two issues of the same important occurrence.

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