Handbook of History of Religions

SR No.: 007634
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: Edward Washburn
Publisher: Sanmati Tirth Prakashan Pune
Total Pages: 678
Language: English
Classification: Book_English
File Size: 2 MB

Page 478

Here brahma, which word already in the Yajur Veda has taken to itself the later philosophical signification, is merely prayer, the meaning which in the Rig Veda is universal.
The note struck in this hymn is not unique:
(THE POET.)
Eager for booty proffer your laudation To Indra; truth (is he),[7] if truth existeth; 'Indra is not,' so speaketh this and that one; 'Who him hath seen? To whom shall we give praises?'
(THE GOD.)
I am, O singer, he; look here upon me;
All creatures born do I surpass in greatness. Me well-directed sacrifices nourish, Destructive I destroy existent beings. [8]
These are not pleas in behalf of a new god. It is not the mere god of physical phenomena who is here doubted and defended. It is the god that in the last stage of the Rig Veda is become the Creator and Destroyer, and, in the light of a completed pantheism, is grown too great to retain his personality. With such a protest begins the great revolt that is the sign of an inner evolution extending through the Br[ra]hmanas and Upanishads. Indra, like other gods,[9] is held by the rite; to the vulgar he is still the great god;[10] to the philosopher, a name. The populace respect him, and sacerdotalism conserves him, that same crafty, priestly power, which already at the close of the Rig Vedic period dares to say that only the king who is subject to the priest is sure of himself, and a little later that killing a priest is the only real murder. We have shown above how the real divinity of the gods was diminished even at the hands of the priests that needed them for the rites and baksheesh, which was the goal of their piety. Even Praj(=a]pati, the Father-god, their own creation, is mortal as well as immortal.[11]