________________
116
THE KEY OF KNOWLEDGE. Biblical elohim, and the Arabic iläh furnish instances of the second, and Word, Logos, Ishvara and Brahmâ of the fifth significance of God. The use of the pronoun 'we' with reference to God is also indicative of the second class.
As regards the significance of the words elohim and žlah, we may refer to the 'Encyclopædia of Religion and Ethics' (Vol. VI. p. 248), which points out:
* The word Ilah (identical with the eloah of Job).........appears from its form to be originally a plural, and, indeed, of the earlier Semitic il (Heb. el), on the analogy of shifah from shaf-at, 'lip' (where the at is a feminine affix). Of ilah itself the Biblical elohim is a further plural, of which, curiously, there appears to be a trace in the Arabic vocative of Allah, viz., illahumma, which the native grammarians find the greatest difficulty in explaining."
The fact that the word Allah is traceable to two different roots indicates the comprehensive nature of the derivation ; it does not contradict either of the two views which, as will be fully shown, in a later chapter, are the two aspects of truth. As a matter of fact, the primary root of the word seems to be the sound el, represented by the letter , the Sanskrit la, which is an epithet of Indra, a poetic personification of Life, the hidden Light, i.e., consciousness. According to Harold Bayley,
“The word huyl is equal to heol, haul, or houl, the Celtic name for the Sun. It is seemingly from heol, the eternal El, that we derive our adjectives hale, whole, and holy. The Teutonic for Holy is hel, heli, heil, or ala, i.e., Ella, God that has existed for ever, the All and the Whole. In apparently all languages the word signifying holy has. been derived from the divinely honoured sunlight."* El, thus, like lah, is a symbol for the hidden light divine. Mr. Bayley has traced many words containing
** The Lost Language of Symbolism,' Vol. I. p. 329.
Jain Education International
For Private & Personal Use Only
www.jainelibrary.org