Page:The Religion of the Veda.djvu/242

 226 The Religion of the Veda

Here, I think, is where the good Brahman, of whom Professor Garbo will not hear, comes in. The Brahman authors of the Upanishads, just as high- minded Brahmans of all ages, were honest and liberal enough to permit all ﬁt men to participate in higher religious activity, in wisdom and in piety. Nay. they express particular admiration in such participa- tion, because, after all, there was to them something unexpected in all this. They were carried away by it to a certain ecstasy, the kind of ecstasy that goes with a paradox, as when the son of a peasant in Europe works his way to a professorship in a uni.- versity. As regards the Rojas, or other nobles, we must not forget, too, that they were after all the source from which all blessings flowed. Even in theosOphic occupation the Brahman remains, as I have said before, the poor cleric with the Raja as his Mmcenas. I think that any one who reads these statements of royal proﬁciency in the highest wisdom attentively will acknowledge that they are dashed in the Upanishads, as they are in the Ritual, with a goodly measure of capraz‘z'o beerwlmiz'ce. In other words, the genuine admiration of high-minded nobles. is not necessarily divorced from the subconscious mess that it is well to admire in high places. Even really good Brahmans might do that.

If King Janaka of Vidcha punctuates the Brahman