erwise they showed great
pliancy and receptivity, for they combined Vedic rites and mythology
with such systems as the Sankhya and Advaita philosophies, both of which
really render superfluous everything which is usually called religion
since, though their language is decorous, they teach that he who _knows_
the truth about the universe is thereby saved.

The best opinion of India has always felt that the way of knowledge or
Jnana was the true way. The favourite thesis of the Brahmans was that a
man should devote his youth to study, his maturity to the duties and
ceremonies of a householder, and his age to more sublime speculations.
But at all periods the idea that it was possible to know God and the
universe was allied to the idea that all ceremonies as well as all
worldly effort and indeed all active morality are superfluous[169]. All
alike are unessential and trivial, and merit the attention only of those
who know nothing higher. Human feelings and interests qualified and
contradicted this negative and unearthly view of religion, but still
popular sentiment as well as philosophic thought during the whole period
of which we know something of them in India tended to regard the highest
life as consisting in rapt contemplation or insight accompanied by the
suppression of desire and by disengagement from mundane ties and
interests. But knowledge in Indian theology implies more intensity than
we attach to the word and even some admixture of volition. The knowledge
of Brahman is not an understanding of pantheistic doctrines such as may
be obtained by reading _The Sacred Books of the East_ in an easy chair
but a realization (in all senses) of personal identity with the
universal spirit, in the light of which all material attachments and
fetters fall away.

The earlier philosophical speculations of the Brahmans are chiefly found
in the treatises called Upanishads. The teaching contained in these
works is habitually presented as something secret[170] or esoteric and
does not, like Buddhism or Jainism, profess to be a gospel for all. Also
the teaching is not systematized and has never been unified by a
personality like the Buddha. It grew up in the various _parishads_, or
communities of learned Brahmans, and perhaps flourished most in north
western India[171]. There is of course a common substratum of ideas but
they appear in different versions: we have the teaching of Yajnavalkya,
of Uddalaka Aruni and other masters and each