Myths of the Hindus & Buddhists

Philosophytime when the Aryans were not yet settled in the Gangesvalley, but lived amongst the tributaries of the Indus, welearn of a time when there was no caste, no privilegedworship, no Brahmanical system of government, but therewere many pastoral tribes governed by hereditary kinglets.The old Vedic religion consisted in the worship of thepersonified powers of Nature, gods of the sky, the air,and the earth. Gradually the belief in these distinctdeities yields to a conviction that they are manifestationsof One, who has many names, such as Prajapati, Vishvakarma,&c., but is finally called Brahman, a wordwhich in the earlier hymns means nothing but the powerof prayer,in a way analogous to the Christian conceptionof the Logos. To this was added the idea that thisBrahman was nothing but the all-pervading Self (atmari),to know whom is to know all.Thus we get side by sidetwo phases of religion the old sacrificial cult, wherebymeans of moralmen seek to win a place in Paradise bybehaviour and offerings to the gods and the search for;the highest knowledge, the knowledgeof the Brahman.This position was reached before the time of Buddha;the fully developed Brahmanical system above describedattained shape in the succeeding centuries.PhilosophyThe prevailing philosophy (there are, of course, othersystems also, though all are closely interconnected), thedoctrine of esoteric reality to which the above exotericscheme is related, is a form of uncompromising monismcalled the Vedanta ; it maintains that there is but OneReality, the Brahman, of which naught whatever can beThis is thepredicated.Unshown, the Unknown God ;whatever qualitiesor attributes one might wish to use to397