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78 pantheistic philosophy of the Upaniṣads. The change of name is significant and indicates that a new side of thought has become prominent: Brahman is the "prayer," or the "spell," which is uttered by the priest and it is also the holy power of the prayer or the spell, so that it is well adapted to become a name for the power which is at the root of the universe. When, therefore, this Brahman is converted into the subject of asceticism, it is clear that it is assuming the features of Prajāpati, and that two distinct lines of thought are converging into one. The full result of this process is the creation of a new god, Brahmā, which is the masculine of the neuter impersonal Brahman. Yet this new deity is not an early figure: he is found in the later Brāhmaṇas, such as the Kauṣītaki and the Taittirīya, as well as in the Upaniṣads and the still later Sūtra literature, in which he is clearly identified with Prajāpati, whose double, however, he obviously is. Was there, as has been suggested, ever a time when Brahmā was a deity greater than all others in the pantheon? The answer certainly cannot be in the unrestricted affirmative, for the epic shows no clear trace of a time when Brahmā was the chief god, and the evidence of the Buddhist Sūtras, which undoubtedly make much of Brahmā Sahampati (an epithet of uncertain sense), is not enough to do more than indicate that in the circles in which Buddhism found its origin Brahmā had become a leading figure. It is, in fact, not unlikely that in the period at the close of the age of the Brāhmaṇas, just before the appearance of Buddhism, the popular form of the philosophic god had made some progress toward acceptability, at least in the circles of the warriors and the Brāhmans. But if that were the case, it is clear that this superiority was not to be of long duration, and certainly it never spread among the people as a whole.

Of these rivals of Brahma in popular favour Viṣṇu shows clear signs of an increasing greatness. The gods, as usual, were worsted in their struggles with the Asuras, and for the purpose of regaining the earth which they had lost they approached the