t the Supreme Lord
in his last aspect; nay, his one true and real aspect, in which the
sacrificer, on shuffling off this mortal coil, will himself come to
share--that of pure intellectuality, pure spirituality--he is Mind: such
is the ultimate source of being, the one Self, the Purusha, the Brahman.
As the sum total of the wisdom propounded in the mystery of Agni, the
searcher after truth is exhorted to meditate on that Self, made up of
intelligence, endowed with a body of spirit, a form of light, and of an
ethereal nature; holding sway over all the regions and pervading this
All, being itself speechless and devoid of mental states; and by so
doing he shall gain the assurance that "even as a grain of rice, or the
smallest granule of millet, so is the golden Purusha in my heart; even
as a smokeless light, it is greater than the sky, greater than the
ether, greater than the earth, greater than all existing things;--that
Self of the Spirit is my Self; on passing away from hence, I shall
obtain that Self. And, verily, whosoever has this trust, for him there
is no uncertainty." (J. E.)

BRAHMANISM, a term commonly used to denote a system of religious
institutions originated and elaborated by the _Brahmans_, the sacerdotal
and, from an early period, the dominant caste of the Hindu community
(see BRAHMAN). In like manner, as the language of the Aryan Hindus has
undergone continual processes of modification and dialectic division, so
their religious belief has passed through various stages of development
broadly distinguished from one another by certain prominent features.
The earliest phases of religious thought in India of which a clear idea
can now be formed are exhibited in a body of writings, looked upon by
later generations in the light of sacred writ, under the collective name
of _Veda_ ("knowledge") or _Sruti_ ("revelation"). The Hindu scriptures
consist of four separate collections, or _Samhitas_, of sacred texts, or
_mantras_, including hymns, incantations and sacrificial forms of
prayer, viz. the _Rich_ (nom. sing. _rik_) or _Rigveda_, the _Saman_ or
_Samaveda_, the _Yajus_ or _Yajurveda_, and the _Atharvan_ or
_Atharvaveda_. Each of these four text-books has attached to it a body
of prose writings, called _Brahmanas_ (see BRAHMANA), intended to
explain the ceremonial application of the texts and the origin and
import of the sacrificial rites for which these were supposed to have
been composed. Usually atta