they constantly
emphasise this claim. It is difficult for us to realise that these are
the same men who have created the Brahmanic culture of India, which,
however we may criticise it from the Western point of view, is
essentially a gentle life, a field in which moral feeling and
intellectual effort have born abundance of goodly fruit. Yet if we
look more closely we shall see that even these ritualists, besotted as
they may seem to be with their orgies of priestcraft, are not wholly
untouched by the better spirit of their race. Extremes of sanctity,
whether it be ritualistic or anti-ritualistic sanctity, always tend in
India--and in other countries as well--to produce supermen. And if
our priesthood in the Brahmanas feel themselves in the pride of
spiritual power lifted above the rules of moral law, they are not in
practice indifferent to it. Their lives are for the most part gentle
and good. Though "truth" in the Brahmanas usually means only
accordance with the ritual and mystic teachings of the Triple Science,
it sometimes signifies even there veracity and honesty also.
Truthfulness in speech is the hall-mark of the Brahman, says
Haridrumata Gautama to Satyakama Jabala (Chhand. Up. IV. iv. 5); and
even in the Brahmanas a lie is sometimes a sin. If conservatism
compels the priests to keep obscene old practices in their rituals,
they are not always satisfied with them, and voices begin to be heard
pleading that these rites are really obsolete. In short, a moral sense
is beginning to arise among them.

Now the moral law, in order that it may be feared, needs to be
embodied in the personality of a god. Most of their gods inspire no
fear at all in the souls of the Brahmans; but there is one of whom
they have a dread, which is all the greater for being illogical.
Prajapati is a vast impersonality, too remote and abstract to inspire
the soul with either fear or love. The other gods--Indra, Agni, Soma,
Varuna, Vishnu, and the rest--are his offspring, and are moved like
puppets by the machinery of the ritual of sacrifice created by him.
However much they may seem to differ one from another in their
attributes and personalities, they are in essence one and negligible
in the eyes of the master of the ritual lore. In the beginning, say
the Brahmanas, all the gods (except Prajapati, of course) were alike,
and all were mortal; then they performed sacrifices and thereby became
immortal, each with his peculiar attributes of divinit