Page:The Religion of the Veda.djvu/289

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Tho Final Philosophy of the: Veda 273

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namely, tho Oltltl‘l'l Vcdic sphere of devotion, prayer, holy performance, in fact religion in general. Even

. in tho Vctlic hymns, as wo have scan, the epithet:

“ Goddess” is froon given to the numorous names for prayer, devotion, religious emotion, and kindred idcas. Unquostionably tho .rrfoz'z‘r‘z’ stanza owes its puzzlineg paramount position in Hindu religion to tho same estimate of devotion as a thing essentially <1iivino.l We have also mado acquaintance with a symbolic “Lord of Prayer,” Brihaspati, an important, but not lasting attempt to pour the sacred function of the poets and priests into the mould of a personal god... Ho marks one of those false starts towards personal monotheism in which the later Veda abounds. More and more the sacred word, the constant com» panion of tho sacriﬁce, is felt to be a kind of uplift- ing spiritual essence. The sacred word is ﬁrm/9mm Starting as prayer,” charm, sacred formula, religious act, it becomes the symbol of holy thought and hon utterance (Ariyos'), the outpouring of the soul in its highest longings. It is the best: wish of a spiritually

1 Soc above, p. 202.

'5' Professor Olrlenberg regards “ zauberﬁuidum” as the original meaning of (Brahma. But does ” magic essence ” really explain, and does it not itself stand in need of explanation? Anyway it seems to 13:11: that this distinguished Scholar’s present sympathy with what may be called ethnological caplanatinns of religious phenomena, that is the thcory that such phenomcna must necessarily begin somewhere in the lowest bathos of savage folk belief, is leading him on a trail farther

than that troddsn by this word. 18