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Updated: May 24, 2025
The names of Vâsudeva and Sankarshaṇa occur in old inscriptions and the Greek Heliodoros calls himself a Bhâgavata on the column found at Besnagar and supposed to date from the first part of the second century B.C. The Pâncarâtra was not Brahmanic in origin and the form of the Sânkhya philosophy from which it borrowed was also un-Brahmanic.
The Pitakas allude several times to the pride of the Sâkyas, and in spite of the gentleness and courtesy of the Buddha this family trait is often apparent in his attitude, in the independence of his views, his calm disregard of Brahmanic pretensions and the authority that marks his utterances.
He wished to keep this whole continually before the mind, but in attempting to describe it he fell into that besetting intellectual sin of India, the systematizing of the imaginary. Ages, continents and worlds are described in detailed statements which bear no relation to facts. Thus, Brahmanic cosmogony usually deals with a period of time called Kalpa.
Polytheism was shown to be the soil from which all trinitarian conceptions naturally spring the Brahmanic, Zoroastrian, Homeric, Plotinian, as well as the Christian trinity the latter being a Greek idea engrafted on a Jewish stalk.
Neither do I think that Europe is likely to adopt Buddhist or Brahmanic methods of thought on any large scale. Theosophical and Buddhist societies have my sympathy but it is sympathy with lonely workers in an unpopular cause and I am not sure that they always understand what they try to teach.
That was to be the task of the Danish scholar Westergaard, of the Frenchmen De Saulcy and Oppert, and of the Englishmen Morris and Rawlinson, not to mention others less celebrated. We shall have to return to this subject later. The knowledge of Sanskrit, and the investigation of Brahmanic literature, had inaugurated a scientific movement which has gone on ever since with increasing energy.
The Rig Veda is clearly older than the others: its elements are anterior to the Brahmanic liturgy and are arranged in less complete subservience to it than in the Yajur and Sâma Vedas. The restriction of the words Veda and Vedic to the collection of hymns, though convenient, is not in accordance with Indian usage, which applies the name to a much larger body of religious literature.
The reason assigned in Brahmanic literature for Vishṇu's appearance in this character is that he wished to mislead the enemies of the gods by false teaching, or that out of compassion for animals he preached the abolition of Vedic sacrifices.
According to ancient Brahmanic ritual a king at his inauguration trod on a tiger's skin and a golden plate; he was shod with shoes of boar's skin, and so long as he lived thereafter he might not stand on the earth with his bare feet.
This is no less true of those theistic movements which are by no means amiably disposed toward our religion. The modern theistic movement first found definite expression and impetus in the life and teaching of that noble son of India, Ram Mohan Roy, who hailed from the Brahmanic aristocracy of Bengal. He was born in 1774 just before the birth of American Independence.
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