arose before the fifth century.  The Sankhya is perhaps a somewhat similar brahmanization of the purely speculative ideas which may have prevailed in Magadha and Kosala.[761] Though these districts were not strongholds of Brahmanism, yet it is clear from the Pitakas that they contained a considerable Brahman population who must have been influenced by the ideas current around them but also must have wished to keep in touch with other Brahmans.  The Sankhya of our manuals represents such an attempt at conciliation.  It is an elaboration in a different shape of some of the ideas out of which Buddhism sprung but in its later history it is connected with Brahmanism rather than Buddhism.  When it is set forth in Sutras in a succinct and isolated form, its divergence from ordinary Brahmanic thought is striking and in this form it does not seem to have ever been influential and now is professed by only a few Pandits, but, when combined in a literary and eclectic spirit with other ideas which may be incompatible with it in strict logic, it has been a mighty influence in Indian religion, orthodox as well as unorthodox.  Such conceptions as Prakriti and the Gunas colour most of the post-Vedic religious literature.  Their working may be plainly traced in the Mahabharata, Manu and the Puranas,[762] and the Tantras identify with Prakriti the goddesses whose worship they teach.  The unethical character of the Sankhya enabled it to form the strangest alliances with aboriginal beliefs.

Unlike the Sankhya, the Vedanta is seen in its most influential and perhaps most advantageous aspect when stated in its most abstract form.  We need not enquire into its place of origin for it is clearly the final intellectual product of the schools which produced the Upanishads and the literature which preceded them, and though it may be difficult to say at what point we are justified in applying the name Vedanta to growing Brahmanic thought, the growth is continuous.  The name means simply End of the Veda.  In its ideas the Vedanta shows great breadth and freedom, yet it respects the prejudices and proprieties of Brahmanism.  It teaches that God is all things, but interdicts this knowledge to the lower castes:  it treats rites as a merely preliminary discipline, but it does not deny their value for certain states of life.

The Vedanta is the boldest and the most characteristic form of Indian thought.  For Asia, and perhaps for the world at large, Buddhism is more important but on Indian soil it has been vanquished by the Vedanta, especially that form of it known as the Advaita.  In all ages the main idea of this philosophy has been the same and may be summed up in the formula that the soul is God and that God is everything.  If this formula is not completely accurate[763]—­and a sentence which both translates and epitomizes alien metaphysics can hardly aspire to complete accuracy—­the error lies in the fact to which I have called attention elsewhere that our words, God and soul, do not cover quite the same ground as the Indian words which they are used to translate.