Page:The Religion of the Veda.djvu/225

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The Beginnings of Hindu Tl1e050p11y 209

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order to understand the origin and nature of the higher religion of the Veda it is necessary to twist many threads into a single skein. It is a question of when, where, by whom, and how; each phase of this question, if considered aright, will contribute to the clearness of the whole.

As regards the time when higher religious motives appear, I would remind my hearers of the indeﬁnite and relative character of Vedic chronology. The older Upanishads, the Vedic texts which profess higher religion or theosophy, are written in about the same language and style as the soucalled Brah-

mana texts. These latter, as you may remember,“

are prose works which, quite like the Hebrew Taln mud, deﬁne the sacriﬁce with minute prescript and illustrative legend. And the older Upanishads are part of the Brahmanas; the majority of the older Upanishads, through the medium of the Aranyakas, join their theosophic speculations right on to the dead ritual. To some extent the bones of the ritual skeleton rattle about in early theosophy in quite a lively fashion. The Upanishads and theosophy are part of the Veda; neither Hindu believer nor west- ern critic has ever doubted that. Now the thought of the Upanishads has its forerunners in all parts of Vedic literature clear back to the Rig-Veda; in the

1 See above, p. 43. I4