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THE UPANIŞADS Though theism in the ordinary sense thus really is incompatible with the general spirit of the Upanişads, we occasionally come across it in them. In the Katha Upanişadı references are made to a God who appears to be differentiated from the individual soul. A clearer indication of it is seen in the Svetāśvatara Upanişad, where we find all the requirements of theism-belief in God, soul and the world and the conviction that devotion to the Lord is the true means of salvation. But even here the personal conception more than once gets assimilated to the impersonal or all-comprehensive Absolute; and it is difficult to believe that we have here anything more than monotheism in the making, though some scholars like Bhandarkar are of a different opinion and take it as distinctly personal. 3 the case anywhere in the Upanişads or in the literature of the earlier period. Where the word Brahmā occurs as in the Mundaka Upanisad (I. i. 1), it is not the name of the Highest but represents Prajā-pati regarded as a secondary deity or the first embodied' (prathama-ja). See SS. p. 281.
I. ii. 23. ? i. 10 and 12.
3 Vaisnavism, Saivism, etc. p. 110.
