phere, and in the sky.
Of this Vedic triad mention is frequently made in the Brahmana writings.
On the other hand the term _prajapati_ (lord of creatures), which in the
_Rigveda_ occurs as an epithet of the sun, is also once in the
_Atharvaveda_ applied jointly to Indra and Agni. In the Brahmanas
Prajapati is several times mentioned as the thirty-fourth god; whilst in
one passage he is called the fourth god, and made to rule over the three
worlds. More frequently, however, the writings of this period represent
him as the maker of the world and the father or creator of the gods. It
is clear from this discordance of opinion on so important a point of
doctrine, that at this time no authoritative system of belief had been
agreed upon by the theologians. Yet there are unmistakable signs of a
strong tendency towards constructing one, and it is possible that in
yielding to it the Brahmans may have been partly prompted by political
considerations. The definite settlement of the caste system and the
Brahmanical supremacy must probably be assigned to somewhere about the
close of the Brahmana period. Division in their own ranks was hardly
favourable to the aspirations of the priests at such a time; and the
want of a distinct formula of belief adapted to the general drift of
theological speculation, to which they could all rally, was probably
felt the more acutely, the more determined a resistance the military
class was likely to oppose to their claims. Side by side with the
conception of the Brahma, the universal spiritual principle, with which
speculative thought had already become deeply imbued, the notion of a
supreme personal being, the author of the material creation, had come to
be considered by many as a necessary complement of the pantheistic
doctrine. But, owing perhaps to his polytheistic associations and the
attributive nature of his name, the person of Prajapati seems to have
been thought but insufficiently adapted to represent this abstract idea.
The expedient resorted to for solving the difficulty was as ingenious as
it was characteristic of the Brahmanical aspirations. In the same way as
the abstract denomination of sacerdotalism, the neuter _brahma_, had
come to express the divine essence, so the old designation of the
individual priest, the masculine term _brahma_, was raised to denote the
supreme personal deity which was to take the place and attributes of the
Prajapati of the Brahmanas and Upanishads (see BRAHMAN)