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 The Veda 57 themselves, who regard the Upanishads as divine revelation. With all due respect for these great thinkers, I believe that Sanskrit scholars in general incline to a soberer estimate of the Upanishads. With the Hindu view of revelation we need not quarrel. As to the question whether the Upanishads are inspired, we may safely intrust its decision to the broadening spirit of the conception of inspiration, which at the present time is everywhere in evidence in the world. More to the point is, that the Upanishads contain in fact no system of thought, though they did un- questionably inspire later Hindu systematic phi- losophy. We are often vexed with their unstable, contradictory, and partly foolish statements. The commanding thought of the Upanishads-monism, or the doctrine of unity precedes the Upanishads in the Rig-Veda; unfortunately we do not know by how many years or centuries. Above all, we cannot and should not forget that underneath Upanishad thought, as underneath all advanced Hindu thought, is found the belief in transmigration of souls, a picturesque notion which to the very end retains the quality of folk-lore, rather than the quality of philosophy. But to the Hindus of the Upanishads this belief is an axiom. After all, the prime interest 1 See below, p 254.