dently is the faith which not only was
taught to the masses, but which, as is universally assumed in the law,
the masses accept; whereas philosophers alone accept the _[=a]tm[=a]_
religion of the Upanishads, and the Br[=a]hmanas are not intended for
the public at all, but only for initiated priests.

What, then, is the religious belief and the moral position of the
Hindu law-books? In how far has philosophy affected public religion,
and in what way has a reconciliation been affected between the
contradictory beliefs in regard to the gods; in regard to the value of
works on the one hand, and of knowledge on the other; in regard to
hell as a means of punishment for sin on the one hand, and
reincarnation (_sams[=a]ra_) on the other; in regard to heaven as a
reward of good deeds on the one hand, and absorption into God on the
other; in regard to a personal creator on the one hand, and a First
Cause without personal attributes on the other?

For the philosophical treatises are known and referred to in the early
codes; so that, although the completed systems post-dated the
S[=u]tras, the cosmical and theological speculations of the earlier
Upanishads were familiar to the authors of the legal systems.

The first general impression produced by a perusal of the law-books is
that the popular religion has remained unaffected by philosophy. And
this is correct in so far as that it must be put first in describing
the codes, which, in the main, in keeping the ancient observances,
reflect the inherited faith. When, therefore, one says that
pantheism[7] succeeded polytheism in India, he must qualify the
assertion. The philosophers are pantheists, but what of the vulgar? Do
they give up polytheism; are they inclined to do so, or are they
taught to do so? No. For there is no formal abatement in the rigor of
the older creed. Whatever the wise man thought, and whatever in his
philosophy was the instruction which he imparted to his peers, when he
dealt with the world about him he taught his intellectual inferiors a
scarcely modified form of the creed of their fathers. How in his own
mind this wise man reconciled the two sets of opinion has been shown
above. The works of sacrifice, with all the inherited belief implied
by them, were for him preparatory studies. The elasticity of his
philosophy admitted the whole world of gods, as a temporary reality,
into his pantheistic scheme. It was, therefore, neither the hypocrisy
of the Roman augur,