Page:History of India Vol 1.djvu/222

174 Hindus expressed their sublime conception of the minute but all-pervading and Universal Being whom they called Brahma, or God.

In the same Upanishad is told the beautiful story of Svetaketu, who stayed with his teacher from his twelfth year to his twenty-fourth, and then returned home, "having then studied all the Vedas, conceited, considering himself well read, and stern." But he had yet things to learn which were not ordinarily taught in the schools of the age, and his father Uddalaka Aruneya taught Til the true nature of the Universal Being in such similes as these:—

"As the bees, my son, make honey by collecting the juices of distant trees, and reduce the juice into one form; and as these juices have no discrimination, so that they might say, 'I am the juice of this tree or that,' in the same manner, my son, all these creatures, when they have become merged in the True, know not that they are merged in the True.

"These rivers, my son, run, the eastern (like the Ganges) towards the east, the western (like the Indus) towards the west. They go from sea to sea (i.e. the clouds lift up the water from the sea to the sky and send it back as rain to the sea). They become indeed sea. And as those rivers, when they are in the sea, do not know, 'I am this or that river,' in the same manner, my son, all these creatures, proceeding from the True, know not that they have proceeded from the True.

"'Place this salt in water and then wait on me in the morning.'