222 The Religion of the Veda
Kamarila of the Vedanta Philosophy, one may fairly doubt the unredeemed stupidity of the Brahmans at any period of India’s history. I would, for my part, question more particularly the expression “ all at once ” in the above statement.
Mental revolutions rarely come all at once, least of all in India. The evidence of India’s remarkably continuous records shows that every important Hindu thought has its beginning, middle, and final development. As regards theosophy, its beginnings are found in the Vedic hymns; its middle in the Upanishads; and its final development in the “ Sys~ terns ” of Philosophy, like the Vedanta and Sanlthya of later times. I am afraid that Professor Garbo has somehow gotten into the state of mind that there is only one kind of good Brahman, namely, a dead Brahman, to paraphrase a saying about that other Indian, the American Indian. Selfishness, foolish- ness, bigotry, and cruelty galoremthe marks of these same Brahmans have left in their compositions, fool« ishly as behooves knaves. But there were, and there are, Brahmans and Brahmans. The older Upanifl shads, written in approximately the same language and style as the so-called prose Brahmana (Talmudic) texts, figuring largely as parts of these compositions, were composed by Brahmans who had risen to the conviction that not “the way of works ” lies the
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