further by identifying Prajāpati with the performer, or patron, of the sacrifice, the sacrificer; every sacrifice thus becoming invested—in addition to its cosmic significance—with the mystic power of regenerating the sacrificer by cleansing him of all guilt and securing for him a seat in the eternal abodes.
Whilst forming the central feature of the ritualistic symbolism, this triad—Prajāpati, sacrifice (oblation, victim), sacrificer—is extended in various ways. An important collateral identification is that of Prajāpati (and the sacrificer) with Agni, the god of fire, embodied not only in the offering-fire, but also in the sacred Soma-altar, the technical name of which is agni. For this reason the altar, as representative of the universe, is built in five layers, representing earth, air and heaven, and the intermediate regions; and in the centre of the altar-site, below the first layer, on a circular gold plate (the sun), a small golden man (purusha) is laid down with his face looking upwards. This is Prajāpati, and the sacrificer, who when regenerated will pass upwards through the three worlds to the realms of light, naturally perforated bricks being for this purpose placed in the middle of the three principal altar-layers. One of the fourteen sections of the Śatapatha-brāhmaṇa, the tenth, called Agni-rahasya or “the mystery of Agni (the god and altar),” is entirely devoted to this feature of the sacrificial symbolism. Similarly the sacrificer, as the human representatiye of the Lord of Creatures, is identified with Soma (as the supreme oblation), with Time, and finally with Death: by the sacrificer thus becoming Death himself, the fell god ceases to have power over him and he is assured of everlasting life. And now we get the Supreme Lord in his last aspect; nay, his one true and real aspect, in which the sacrificer, on shuffling off this mortal coil, will himself come to share—that of pure intellectuality, pure spirituality—he is Mind: such is the ultimate source of being, the one Self, the Purusha, the Brahman. As the sum total of the wisdom propounded in the mystery of Agni, the searcher after truth is exhorted to meditate on that Self, made up of intelligence, endowed with a body of spirit, a form of light, and of an ethereal nature; holding sway over all the regions and pervading this All, being itself speechless and devoid of mental states; and by so doing he shall gain the assurance that “even as a grain of rice, or the smallest granule of millet, so is the golden Purusha in my heart; even as a smokeless light, it is greater than the sky, greater than the ether, greater than the earth, greater than all existing things;—that Self of the Spirit is my Self; on passing away from hence, I shall obtain that Self. And, verily, whosoever has this trust, for him there is no uncertainty.” (J. E.)
BRAHMANISM, a term commonly used to denote a system of religious institutions originated and elaborated by the Brāhmans, the sacerdotal and, from an early period, the dominant caste of the Hindū community (see Brahman). In like manner, as the language of the Āryan Hindūs has undergone continual processes of modification and dialectic division, so their religious belief has passed through various stages of development broadly distinguished from one another by certain prominent features. The earliest phases of religious thought in India of which a clear idea can now be formed are exhibited in a body of writings, looked upon by later generations in the light of sacred writ, under the collective name of Veda (“knowledge”) or Śruti (“revelation”). The Hindū scriptures consist of four separate collections, or Samhitās, of sacred texts, or mantras, including hymns, incantations and sacrificial forms of prayer, viz. the Ṛich (nom. sing. ṛik) or Ṛigveda, the Sāman or Sāmaveda, the Yajus or Yajurveda, and the Atharvan or Atharvaveda. Each of these four text-books has attached to it a body of prose writings, called Brāhmaṇas (see
Brāhmaṇa), intended to explain the ceremonial application of the texts and the origin and import of the sacrificial rites for which these were supposed to have been composed. Usually attached to these works, and in some cases to the Saṃhitās, are two kinds of appendages, the Āraṇyakas and Upanishads, the former of which deal generally with the more recondite rites, while the latter are taken up chiefly with speculations on the problems of the universe and the religious aims of man—subjects often touched upon in the earlier writings, but here dealt with in a more mature and systematic way. Two of the Saṃhitās, the Sāman and the Yajus, owing their existence to purely ritual purposes, and being, besides, the one almost entirely, the other partly, composed of verses taken from the Ṛigveda, are only of secondary importance for our present inquiry. The hymns of the Ṛigveda constitute the earliest lyrical effusions of the Āryan settlers in India which have been handed down to posterity. They are certainly not all equally old; on the contrary they evidently represent the literary activity of many generations of bards, though their relative age cannot as yet be determined with anything like certainty. The tenth (and last) book of the collection, however, at any rate has all the characteristics of a later appendage, and in language and spirit many of its hymns approach very nearly to the level of the contents of the Atharvan. Of the latter collection about one-sixth is found also in the Ṛigveda, and especially in the tenth book; the larger portion peculiar to it, though including no doubt some older pieces, appears to owe its origin to an age not long anterior to the composition of the Brāhmaṇas.
The state of religious thought among the ancient bards, as reflected in the hymns of the Ṛigveda, is that of a worship of the grand and striking phenomena of nature regarded in the light of personal conscious beings, endowed with a power beyond the control of man, though not insensible to his praises and actions. It is a nature worship purer than that met with in any other polytheistic form of belief we are acquainted with—a mythology still comparatively little affected by those systematizing tendencies which, in a less simple and primitive state of thought, lead to the construction of a well-ordered pantheon and a regular organization of divine government. To the mind of the early Vedic worshipper the various departments of the surrounding nature are not as yet clearly defined, and the functions which he assigns to their divine representatives continually flow into one another. Nor has he yet learned to care to determine the relative worth and position of the objects of his adoration; but the temporary influence of the phenomenon to which he addresses his praises bears too strongly upon his mind to allow him for the time to consider the claims of rival powers to which at other times he is wont to look up with equal feelings of awe and reverence. It is this immediateness of impulse under which the human mind in its infancy strives to give utterance to its emotions that imparts to many of its outpourings the ring of monotheistic fervour.
The generic name given to these impersonations, viz. deva (“the shining ones”), points to the conclusion, sufficiently justified by the nature of the more prominent objects of Vedic adoration as well as by common natural occurrences, that it was the striking phenomena of light which first and most powerfully swayed the Āryan mind. In the primitive worship of the manifold phenomena of nature it is not, of course, so much their physical aspect that impresses the human heart as the moral and intellectual forces which are supposed to move and animate them. The attributes and relations of some of the Vedic deities, in accordance with the nature of the objects they represent, partake in a high degree of this spiritual element; but it is not improbable that in an earlier phase of Āryan worship the religious conceptions were pervaded by it to a still greater and more general extent, and that the Vedic belief, though retaining many of the primitive features, has on the whole assumed a more sensuous and anthropomorphic character. This latter element is especially predominant in the attributes and imagery applied by the Vedic poets to Indra, the god of the atmospheric region, the favourite figure in their pantheon.
While the representatives of the prominent departments of nature appear to the Vedic bard as co-existing in a state of independence of one another, their relation to the mortal worshipper being the chief subject of his anxiety, a simple method of classification was already resorted to at an early time, consisting in a triple division of the deities into gods residing in the sky, in the air, and on earth. It is not, however, until a later stage,—the first clear indication being conveyed in a passage of the
