Great Indian Religion

Author(s): G T Bettany
Publisher: Ward Lock Bowden and Co

Page 38

THE EARLY VEDIC RELIGION. teacher. These books consequently became the most important Vedic treatises for learned Hindus. Max Müller considers that although the Upanishads are later than the Brahmanas, their germs already existed in the Rig Veda; and the earliest of them, he says, will always maintain a place in the literature of the world among the most astounding productions of the human mind in any age and in any country.
The Khandogya Upanishad, which continues the succession of the Sama-Veda, is one of the most important The syllable Hindu philosophical books. It begins by the
Om. astonishing advice to the Western mind), "Let a man meditate," or as some translate it, “Let à man worship’ the syllable Om.” The real meaning is, first, that by prolonged repetition of the syllable, the thoughts should be drawn away from all other subjects and concentrated on the subjects of which that syllable was the symbol. It was the beginning of the Veda, and the essence of it, the symbol of all speech and all life. Om therefore represented man's physical and mental powers, and especially the spirit or living principle, and this is identified later with the spirit in the sun or in nature; and the beginning of this Upanishad teaches that no sacrifices, however perfectly performed, can secure salvation, while meditation on Om alone, or what is meant by it, will secure salvation or immortality. Finally the discussion reaches the highest philosophical subjects. The The origin of declaration that the origin of the world is ether, the world in "for all beings take their rise from the ether,
ether and return into the ether; ether is older than these, ether is their rest,” has a striking significance when compared with the sentiments and speculations of philosophers at the British Association in 1888. But there is a further elevation of the ether, which includes more than the physical, for after defining Brahman as the immortal with three feet in heaven, the Upanishad says: “The Brahman is the same as the ether which is around us; and the ether which is around us is the same as the ether which is within us. And the ether which is within, that is the ether within the heart. That ether in the