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Updated: May 24, 2025
Grief localizes us, love particularizes us, but thought delivers us from personality.... To be a man is a poor thing, to be a man is well; to be the man man in essence and in principle that alone is to be desired. Yes, but in these Brahmanic aspirations what becomes of the subordination of the individual to duty?
The older Upanishads are connected with the other parts of the Vedic canon and sometimes form an appendix to a Brâhmaṇa so that the topics discussed change gradually from ritual to philosophy . It would be excessive to say that this arrangement gives the genesis of speculation in ancient India, for some hymns of the Rig Veda are purely philosophic, but it illustrates a lengthy phase of Brahmanic thought in which speculation could not disengage itself from ritual and was also hampered by physical ideas.
It was a popular idea which became so strong that neither priests nor Bhikshus could ignore it and in its ultimate result it is hard to say whether Buddhist or Brahmanic elements are more prominent. Both Avalokita and Krishna are Devas.
The whole of them are dedicated to the attainment of one object, "the advancement of dharma, or of the Law of Buddha." Sakra is a common name for the Brahmanic Indra, adopted by Buddhism into the circle of its own great adherents; it has been said, "because of his popularity." He is generally styled, as here, T'een Ti, "God or Ruler of Devas."
On the other hand the Lankâvatâra Sûtra which was translated into Chinese in 513 and therefore can hardly have been composed later than 450, is conscious that its doctrines resemble Brahmanic philosophy, for an interlocutor objects that the language used in it by the Buddha about the Tathâgatagarbha is very like the Brahmanic doctrine of the Âtman.
For twelve centuries or more after the death of this great genius Indian religion flows in two parallel streams, Buddhist and Brahmanic, which subsequently unite, Buddhism colouring the whole river but ceasing within India itself to have any important manifestations distinct from Brahmanism.
The date of the earliest of them is about B.C. 600; that is an age anterior to the rise of Buddha. They consist of various disquisitions on the nature of man, the Supreme Being, the human soul, and immortality. They are part of Sanscrit Brahmanic literature, and have the authority of revealed, in contradistinction to traditional truth.
It obviously becomes more and more prominent in later works. But the idea itself is old, for it is clearly the same that produced a belief in the Brahmanic mantras, particularly the mantras of the Atharva Veda, and early Buddhism did not reject mantras in their proper place.
What Fontenelle did as a piece of graceful wit, some Freethinkers do without any wit at all. They object to laughing at the gods, whether Christian, Brahmanic or Mohammedan; and perhaps they would extend the same friendly consideration to Mumbo Jumbo. Strange that people should be so tender about ghosts! Especially when they don't even believe them to be real ghosts.
Though decadent Buddhism differed little from the sects which surrounded it, early Buddhism did offer a decided contrast to the Brahmanic schools in its theories as to human nature as well as in ignoring tradition and sacerdotalism. We may argue that Buddhism is merely Vaishnavism or Śaivism in travelling dress, but its rejection of Brahmanic authority is of capital importance.
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