A new approach to the Vedas : an essay in translation and exegesis

NOTES

Devaia, 11, 86, VII, 123, VIII, 46 and or ; in VIII, 56, Rg Veda, X, 145, is called an aupanisada bhava vytta hymn, which is rendered by Macdonell as “‘ esoteric evolutional hymn.”

94 [panisad as a verb with the sense “ to sit near’ (with a view to hearing a discourse, as we speak of sitting under a lecturer) may be noted in Jaiminitya Upanisad Brahmana, WI, 3, 7, and Aztareya Brahmana, U1, 2, 3.

Bloomfield, in J.A.O.S., XV, 144, argues “ that mantra and brahmana are for the least part chronological distinctions; that they represent two modes of literary activity, and two modes of literary speech, which are largely contemporaneous. . . . Both forms existed together, for aught we know, from earliest times.’’ Needless to remark that brahmana includes, to a certain degree, upanisad.

It may be stated as a law, that a given traditional text represents no more than a comparatively late fixation and publication of doctrines long previously taught orally. Cf. Satapatha Brahmana, XIV, t, 1, 26 and 27,and Mundaka Up.,I, 2, 12 and 13; and the lists of teachers in pupillary succession, e.g., Brhadaranyaka Up., XI, 6.

With the distinction between the Vedic samhitas on the one hand and the Brahmanas and Upanisads on the other, may be compared the distinction between the Babylonian liturgies ‘‘ repeated in the temples ” and the “‘ wisdom literature . . . not written to be repeated in the temples ’’; this wisdom literature ‘shows an increasing scepticism concerning the value of this life,’’ and whereas “‘ life unto distant days,” in Babylonian liturgies, like amyta in Rg Veda, X, 129, 2, may have meant rather fullness of life and length of days than “ immortality,” it was precisely in the wisdom literature and especially towards the end of the Babylonian empire that there was developed a “ doctrine of final escape from mortality,” Langdon, S., Tammuz and Ishtar, pp. 11, 14,

38, 41.

95 The “‘ appearance of polytheism ”’ is a secondary development in tradition, and this development had alveady taken place antecedently to the Vedas as we possess them. What Professor Langdon has to say of the Sumero-Accadian pantheon is absolutely pertinent, viz., ‘‘ The complicated Sumerian pantheon was obviously the work of theologians and of gradual growth. Almost all the names of deities express . . . some personification of natural powers, ethical or cultural functions, perfectly intelligible to the Sumerologist . . . names given to definite mythological conceptions by clear thinking theologians and accepted in popular religion. . . . Since in their mythology all the gods descended from An, the Sky-god, it is extremely probable that the priests who constructed the pantheon were monotheists at an earlier stage, having only the god An, a word which actually means ‘high’ . . . (that is) not a mythology springing from primitive religion, but speculation based upon nature, spiritual, and ethical values,’’ Semitic mythology, p. 89. Cf. “ le monde des dieux (sc. the Aditya-mandala) relativement homogéne a l’origine, se soit differencié plus tard,’’ Przyluski, Brahma Sahampati, Journal Asiatique, CCV, 1924, pp. 155-163.

The ‘“‘ abstract deities ’’ of Vedic scholarship, for example, represent essential names not yet divided from their source and independently personalised: a multiplication of deities, or rather of angels, takes place by a gradual treatment of essential names as though these had been personal designations, as for example in the case of Kama, ViSvakarma, Tvastr, Prajapati.