Buddha: His Life, his Doctrine, his Order c7.s1.t3.65

c7.s1.t3.65

We cannot here attempt to give a more detailed picture of this peculiar invasion of the popular consciousness by the speculative idea; our sources of information completely forbid it. This much only we know with certainty, that the process of which we speak had not only completed itself in the age of earlier Buddhism, but that a considerable period must have elapsed since its completion. Scarcely any divine being is so familiar to the imagination of the Buddhists as Brahmâ Sahampati; at all important moments in the life of Buddha and his followers, he is wont to leave his Brahma-heaven and to appear on earth as the profoundly humble servant of holy men. And from this one principal Brahman the Buddhist imagination has created whole classes of Brahma-gods, who have their place in different Brahma-heavens:—one more finger-post in addition to many others, indicating the impossibility of those Vedic texts, in which the origin of the doctrine of the universal One is exhibited, coming at all near the Buddhist period, in which the god Brahman has already developed himself from the Brahma, and the whole system of the Brahma-divinities from the god Brahman.