by the sacrificer was fulfilled in due course like the fulfilment of a natural law in the physical world. The sacrifice was believed to have existed from eternity like the Vedas. The creation of the world itself was even regarded as the fruit of a sacrifice performed by the supreme Being. It exists as Haug says "as an invisible thing at all times and is like the latent power of electricity in an electrifying machine, requiring only the operation of a suitable apparatus in order to be elicited." The sacrifice is not offered to a god with a view to propitiate him or to obtain from him welfare on earth or bliss in Heaven; these rewards are directly produced by the sacrifice itself through the correct performance of complicated and interconnected ceremonies which constitute the sacrifice. Though in each sacrifice certain gods were invoked and received the offerings, the gods themselves were but instruments in bringing about the sacrifice or in completing the course of mystical ceremonies composing it. Sacrifice is thus regarded as possessing a mystical potency superior even to the gods, who it is sometimes stated attained to their divine rank by means of sacrifice. Sacrifice was regarded as almost the only kind of duty, and it was also called karma or kriyā (action) and the unalterable law was, that these mystical ceremonies for good or for bad, moral or immoral (for there were many kinds of sacrifices which were performed for injuring one's enemies or gaining worldly prosperity or supremacy at the cost of others) were destined to produce their effects. It is well to note here that the first recognition of a cosmic order or law prevailing in nature under the guardianship of the highest gods is to be found in the use of the word Ṛta (literally the course of things). This word was also used, as Macdonell observes, to denote the "" 'order' in the moral world as truth and 'right' and in the religious world as sacrifice or 'rite1'" and its unalterable law of producing effects. It is interesting to note in this connection that it is here that we find the first germs of the law of karma, which exercises such a dominating control over Indian thought up to the present day. Thus we find the simple faith and devotion of the Vedic hymns on one hand being supplanted by the growth of a complex system of sacrificial rites, and on the other bending their course towards a monotheistic or philosophic knowledge of the ultimate reality of the universe.

1 Macdonell's Vedic Mythology, p. 11.

Cosmogony-Mythological and philosophical.

The cosmogony of the Ṛg-Veda may be looked at from two aspects, the mythological and the philosophical. The mythological aspect has in general two currents, as Professor Macdonell says, "The one regards the universe as the result of mechanical production, the work of carpenter's and joiner's skill; the other represents it as the result of natural generation'." Thus in the Rg-Veda we find that the poet in one place says, "what was the wood and what was the tree out of which they built heaven and earth?" The answer given to this question in TaittirīyaBrāhmaṇa is "Brahman the wood and Brahman the tree from which the heaven and earth were made." Heaven and Earth are sometimes described as having been supported with posts. They are also sometimes spoken of as universal parents, and parentage is sometimes attributed to Aditi and Dakṣa.

Under this philosophical aspect the semi-pantheistic Manhymn attracts our notice. The supreme man as we have already noticed above is there said to be the whole universe, whatever has been and shall be; he is the lord of immortality who has become diffused everywhere among things animate and inanimate, and all beings came out of him; from his navel came the atmosphere; from his head arose the sky; from his feet came the earth; from his ear the four quarters. Again there are other hymns in which the Sun is called the soul (atman) of all that is movable and all that is immovable. There are also statements to the effect that the Being is one, though it is called by many names by the sages'. The supreme being is sometimes extolled as the supreme Lord of the world called the golden egg (Hiranyagarbha®). In some passages it is said "Brahmaṇaspati blew forth these births like a blacksmith. In the earliest age of the gods, the existent sprang from the non-existent. In the first age of the gods, the existent sprang from the non-existent: thereafter the regions sprang, thereafter, from Uttānapada"." The most remarkable and sublime hymn in which the first germs of philosophic speculation

1 Macdonell's Vedic Mythology, p. 11.

2 R. V. x. 81. 4.

3 Taitt. Br. II, 8. 9. 6.

4 Macdonell's Vedic Mythology, p. 11; also R. V. 11. 15 and IV. 56.

• Muir's translation of R. V. x. 72; Muir's Sanskrit Texts, vol. v. p. 48.

with regard to the wonderful mystery of the origin of the world are found is the 129th hymn of R. V. x.

1. Then there was neither being nor not-being.
The atmosphere was not, nor sky above it.
What covered all? and where? by what protected?
Was there the fathomless abyss of waters?
2. Then neither death nor deathless existed;
Of day and night there was yet no distinction.
Alone that one breathed calmly, self-supported,
Other than It was none, nor aught above It.
3. Darkness there was at first in darkness hidden;
The universe was undistinguished water.

That which in void and emptiness lay hidden
Alone by power of fervor was developed.

4. Then for the first time there arose desire,
Which was the primal germ of mind, within it.
And sages, searching in their heart, discovered
In Nothing the connecting bond of Being.

6. Who is it knows? Who here can tell us surely
From what and how this universe has risen?
And whether not till after it the gods lived?
Who then can know from what it has arisen?

7. The source from which this universe has risen,
And whether it was made, or uncreated,

He only knows, who from the highest heaven
Rules, the all-seeing lord-or does not He know1?

The earliest commentary on this is probably a passage in the Śatapatha Brāhmaṇa (X. 5. 3. 1) which says that "in the beginning this (universe) was as it were neither non-existent nor existent; in the beginning this (universe) was as it were, existed and did not exist: there was then only that Mind. Wherefore it has been declared by the Rishi (Rg-Veda X. 129. 1), 'There was then neither the non-existent nor the existent' for Mind was, as it were, neither existent nor non-existent. This Mind when created, wished to become manifest,—more defined, more substantial: it sought after a self (a body); it practised austerity: it acquired consistency?." In the Atharva-Veda also we find it stated that all forms of the universe were comprehended within the god Skambha3.

Thus we find that even in the period of the Vedas there sprang forth such a philosophic yearning, at least among some who could 1 The Rigveda, by Kaegi, p. 90. R. V. X. 129.

See Eggeling's translation of S. B., S. B. E. vol. XLIII. pp. 374, 375.

3. A. V. X. 7. 10.

question whether this universe was at all a creation or not, which could think of the origin of the world as being enveloped in the mystery of a primal non-differentiation of being and non-being; and which could think that it was the primal One which by its inherent fervour gave rise to the desire of a creation as the first manifestation of the germ of mind, from which the universe sprang forth through a series of mysterious gradual processes. In the Brāhmaṇas, however, we find that the cosmogonic view generally requires the agency of a creator, who is not however always the starting point, and we find that the theory of evolution is combined with the theory of creation, so that Prajapati is sometimes spoken of as the creator while at other times the creator is said to have floated in the primeval water as a cosmic golden egg.

Eschatology; the Doctrine of Atman.

There seems to be a belief in the Vedas that the soul could be separated from the body in states of swoon, and that it could ✓exist after death, though we do not find there any trace of the doctrine of transmigration in a developed form. In the Śatapatha Brāhmaṇa it is said that those who do not perform rites with correct knowledge are born again after death and suffer death again. In a hymn of the Rg-Veda (x. 58) the soul (manas) of a man apparently unconscious is invited to come back to him from the trees, herbs, the sky, the sun, etc. In many of the hymns there is also the belief in the existence of another world, where the highest material joys are attained as a result of the performance of the sacrifices and also in a hell of darkness underneath where the evil-doers are punished. In the Satapatha Brāhmaṇa we find that the dead pass between two fires which burn the evildoers, but let the good go by1; it is also said there that everyone is born again after death, is weighed in a balance, and receives reward or punishment according as his works are good or bad. It is easy to see that scattered ideas like these with regard to the destiny of the soul of man according to the sacrifice that he performs or other good or bad deeds form the first rudiments of the later doctrine of metempsychosis. The idea that man enjoys or suffers, either in another world or by being born in this world according to his good or bad deeds, is the first beginning of the moral idea, though in the Brahmanic days the good deeds were 1 See Ś. B. 1. 9. 3, and also Macdonell's Vedic Mythology, pp. 166, 167.

more often of the nature of sacrificial duties than ordinary good works. These ideas of the possibilities of a necessary connection of the enjoyments and sorrows of a man with his good and bad works when combined with the notion of an inviolable law or order, which we have already seen was gradually growing with the conception of ṛta, and the unalterable law which produces the effects of sacrificial works, led to the Law of Karma and the doctrine of transmigration. The words which denote soul in the Rg-Veda are manas, ātman and asu. The word atman however which became famous in later Indian thought is generally used to mean vital breath. Manas is regarded as the seat of thought and emotion, and it seems to be regarded, as Macdonell says, as dwelling in the heart'. It is however difficult to understand how atman as vital breath, or as a separable part of man going out of the dead man came to be regarded as the ultimate essence or reality in man and the universe. There is however at least one passage in the Rg-Veda where the poet penetrating deeper and deeper passes from the vital breath (asu) to the blood, and thence to ātman as the inmost self of the world; "Who has seen how the first-born, being the Bone-possessing (the shaped world), was born from the Boneless (the shapeless)? where was the vital breath, the blood, the Self (ätman) of the world? Who went to ask him that knows it?" In Taittiriya Aranyaka I. 23, however, it is said that Prajāpati after having created his self (as the world) with his own self entered into it. In Taittirīya Brāhmaṇa the atman is called omnipresent, and it is said that he who knows him is no more stained by evil deeds. Thus we find that in the pre-Upanisad Vedic literature ātman probably was first used to denote "vital breath" in man, then the self of the world, and then the self in man. It is from this last stage that we find the traces of a growing tendency to looking at the self of man as the omnipresent supreme principle of the universe, the knowledge of which makes a man sinless and pure.

Conclusion.

Looking at the advancement of thought in the Rg-Veda we find first that a fabric of thought was gradually growing which not only looked upon the universe as a correlation of parts or a 1 Macdonell's Vedic Mythology, p. 166 and R. V. viii. 89.

2 R. V. I. 164. 4 and Deussen's article on Ätman in Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics.