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OUTLINES OF INDIAN PHILOSOPHY
welfare the offerings and especially the prayers of mankind; "prayer is a 'tonic' of the gods"; "Indra for his battles is fortified by prayer" (offered to him); phrases like these occur frequently in the Rigveda; thus the idea became more and more prominent that human prayer is a power which surpasses in potency even the might of the gods. In the momentsof religious devotion man felt himself raised above his own individuality, felt awakening in himself that metaphysical power on which all worlds with their gods and creatures are dependent. By this curious development (comparable to the history of the Biblical Aóyos) Brahman, the old name for prayer, became the most usual name for the creative principle of the world. An old Rigvedic question "which was the tree, which was the wood, of which they hewed the earth and heaven"? is repeated in a Brâhmana text. and followed by the answer: "The Brahman was the tree, the wood from which they hewed the earth and heaven." Here the term Brahman has become already what it has been through all the following centuries -- the most common name for the eternal and changeless principle of the world.
History of the Atman
9. A better name even than Brahman, and perhaps the best name which philosophy has found in any language to designate the principle of the world, is the word Âtman, which properly is the exact equivalent of the english "Self". Thus Âtman means that which remains if
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