Page:A history of Sanskrit literature (1900), Macdonell, Arthur Anthony.djvu/241

 The first half of chapter v. is almost identical with the beginning of chapter vi. of the Bṛihadāraṇyaka. It is chiefly noteworthy for the theory of transmigration which it contains. The second half of the chapter is important as the earliest statement of the doctrine that the manifold world is unreal. The sat by desire produced from itself the three primary elements, heat, water, food (the later number being five—ether, air, fire, water, earth). As individual soul (jīva-ātman) it entered into these, which, by certain partial combinations called "triplication," became various products (vikāra) or phenomena. But the latter are a mere name. Sat is the only reality, it is the Ātman: "Thou art that." Chapter vii. enumerates sixteen forms in which Brahma may be adored, rising by gradation from nāman "name," to bhūman, "infinity," which is the all-in-all and the Ātman within us. The first half of the last chapter discusses the Ātman in the heart and the universe, as well as how to attain it. The concluding portion of the chapter distinguishes the false from the true Ātman, illustrated by the three stages in which it appears—in the material body, in dreaming, and in sound sleep. In the latter stage we have the true Ātman, in which the distinction between subject and object has disappeared.

To the Sāmaveda also belongs a very short treatise which was long called the Talavakāra Upanishad, from the school to which it was attached, but later, when it became separated from that school, received the name of Kena, from its initial word. It consists of two distinct parts. The second, composed in prose and much older, describes the relation of the Vedic gods to Brahma, representing them as deriving their power from and entirely dependent on the latter. The first part, which is metrical