Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: May 24, 2025
Buddhist and Brahmanic mythology represent two methods of working up popular legends. The Mahâbhârata and Puranas introduce us to a moderately harmonious if miscellaneous society of supernatural personages decently affiliated to one another and to Brahmanic teaching. The same personages reappear in Buddhism but are analogous to Christian angels or to fairies rather than to minor deities.
In any case, Buddhism was predominant in Muttra for several centuries. It no doubt forbade the animal sacrifices of the Brahmans and favoured milder rites. It may even offer some explanation for the frivolous character of much in the Kṛishṇa legend. Most Brahmanic deities, extraordinary as their conduct often is, are serious and imposing.
On ascending the steps, however, and passing a small square Brahmanic chapel, where we paid a trifling fee to the priests who reside there for the purpose of protecting the place, the entire front of the excavation revealed itself, and with every moment of gazing grew in strangeness and solemn mystery. The shaîtya is hewn in the solid rock of the mountain.
He then attached himself to Brahmanic ascetics, from whom he learned their philosophy; and after this he devoted himself for six years to a life of fasting and penance, the Brahmanic method for drawing nearer the goal of the religious life. After this period he gave up his fasting, not having profited by it as he had expected, and returned to an ordinary diet.
They are not so much the heroes of legends, as protectors: they are interesting not for their past exploits but for their readiness to help believers or to testify to the true doctrine. Still there was a great body of Buddhist and Jain legend in ancient India which handled the same stories as Brahmanic legend—e.g. the tale of Krishna—but in a slightly different manner.
Even in his most mythological aspects, Mâra is not a deity of Hell. He presides over desire and temptation, not over judgment and punishment. This is the function of Yama, the god of the dead, and one of the Brahmanic deities who have migrated to the Far East. He has been adopted by Buddhism, though no explanation is given of his status.
And I shall, O good Brahmana, describe to thee what is pleasing to them, after having bowed down to Brahmanas as a class. Do thou learn from me the Brahmanic philosophy. This whole universe unconquerable everywhere and abounding in great elements, is Brahma, and there is nothing higher than this. The earth, air, water, fire and sky are the great elements.
One of the main theses of the Nârâyaṇîya is the identity of Nârâyaṇa and Vâsudeva, the former being a Brahmanic, the latter a non-Brahmanic name for the Deity. The celebrated Bhagavad-gîtâ which is still held in such respect that, like the New Testament or Koran, it is used in law courts for the administration of oaths, is an early scripture of the Bhâgavata sect.
The first churches produced by civilized men arose in India in the sixth century B.C. out of the bosom of Brahmanism, whose failure to establish a church was due in part to its dependence on philosophical speculation. Of the protests against the Brahmanic orthodoxy the most important were Buddhism and Jainism.
This Brahmanic method, the yoga by which the devotee sought to escape from all the accidents of being and to make himself one with the great Self, the Buddha had tried for six years; but he had given it up for a year when the hour of his enlightenment struck, and he explicitly condemns for others the path he had found unprofitable for himself.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking