The History of Buddhist Thought c15.4

c15.4

There is a great difference from what we know of the brahmins directly from their sacred literature and the picture we find of them in the Buddhist Scriptures. The brahmin literature with which we are concerned consists firstly of the Brāhmaṇas, extensive prose works expounding the hymns of the Vedas,¹ theorizing about the ritual of the sacrifice, and developing speculations about its meaning. These extend into cosmogonic theories, for the sacrifice had come to be conceived as a ritual which keeps the whole universe going on in its due course. Appended to a Brāhmaṇa is usually an Āraṇyaka, “forest treatise,” and added to this or forming part of it is an Upanishad, a work of “secret teaching”. All these works were secret or esoteric in the sense that they were confined to the brahmin schools, and as they were unwritten they could only be learnt by an initiated member of the school. But the Upanishads developed theories of the world and the soul going far beyond the teaching of the Vedas. They were the secret teaching in a special sense. These speculations led to new upanishads being composed, and though they are all said to belong to one or other of the Vedas, they are mostly quite independent works. We are here concerned only with those supposed to be early enough to be independent of Buddhist influence. The most important of these are the Bṛhadāraṇyaka and Chāndogya Upanishads.¹