Page:The Religion of the Veda.djvu/51

 The Veda 35 rifice!" And finally-O deepest bathos !-"May the sacrifice prosper through the sacrifice!" ¹ The many thousand formulas of this sort which occur in the Yajur-Veda and its accessory literature are now for the first time collected in my Vedic Concordance. I am sure that the enduring im- pression which they leave upon the mind, aside from their partial foolishness, is that of a formalism and mental decay upon the very brink of dissolution. The practices which accompany these formulas, though they contain much that is natural and vigor- ous, are also covered up by silly details of formalism, so that it is often difficult to discover their real human meaning. It is remarkable, however, that new life springs up on this arid waste. It is as though this phase of Hindu religion had prepared itself by its very excesses for a salutary and complacent hara-kiri. In its last outcome, in the very same Brahmanical schools where all this folly runs riot, spring up the Upanishads, those early theosophic treatises of India which pave the way for her endur- ing philosophies. The Upanishads in reality, though not professedly, sweep aside the ritual like cobwebs, and show the Hindu mind, not yet perfectly trained, but far from choked; and quite capable of carrying ¹ Cf. Winternitz, Geschichte der Indischen Litteratur, Part First, P. 155 ff.