In most of the texts which we have examined the words Brahman and Atman are so impersonal that they cannot be replaced by God.  In other passages the conception of the deity is more personal.  The universe is often said to have been emitted or breathed forth by Brahman.  By emphasizing the origin and result of this process separately, we reach the idea of the Maker and Master of the Universe, commonly expressed by the word Isvara, Lord.  But even when using this expression, Hindu thought tends in its subtler moments to regard both the creator and the creature as illusions.  In the same sense as the world exists there also exists its creator who is an aspect of Brahman, but the deeper truth is that neither is real:  there is but One who neither makes nor is made[197].  In a land of such multiform theology it would be hazardous to say that Monotheism has always arisen out of Pantheism, but in the speculative schools where the Upanishads were composed, this was often its genesis.  The older idea is that a subtle essence pervades all nature and the deities who rule nature:  this is spiritualized into the doctrine of Brahman attributed to Yajnavalkya and it is only by a secondary process that this Brahman is personified and sometimes identified with a particular god such as Siva.  The doctrine of the personal Isvara is elaborated in the Svetasvatara Upanishad of uncertain date[198].  It celebrates him in hymns of almost Mohammedan monotheism.  “Let us know that great Lord of Lords, the highest God of Gods, the Master of Masters, the highest above, as God, as Lord of the world, who is to be glorified[199].”  But this monotheistic fervour does not last long without relapsing into the familiar pantheistic strain.  “Thou art woman,” says the same Upanishad[200], “and Thou art man:  Thou art youth and maiden:  Thou as an old man totterest along on thy staff:  Thou art born with thy face turned everywhere.  Thou art the dark-blue bee:  Thou the green parrot with the red eyes.  Thou art the thunder cloud, the seasons and the seas.  Thou art without beginning because Thou art infinite, Thou, from whom all worlds are born.”

CHAPTER VI

RELIGIOUS LIFE IN PRE-BUDDHIST INDIA

In reading the Brahmanas and older Upanishads we often wish we knew more of the writers and their lives.  Rarely can so many representative men have bequeathed so much literature and yet left so dim a sketch of their times.  Thought was their real life:  of that they have given a full record, imperfect only in chronology, for though their speculations are often set forth in a narrative form, we hear surprisingly little about contemporary events.

The territory familiar to these works is the western part of the modern United Provinces with the neighbouring districts of the Panjab, the lands of the Kurus, Pancalas, and Matsyas, all in the region of Agra and Delhi, and further east Kasi (Benares) with Videha or Tirhut.  Gandhara was known[201] but Magadha and Bengal are not mentioned.  Even in the Buddha’s lifetime they were still imperfectly brahmanized.