m there descended a scale of beings, above whom were set
three great lords, Brahma the Creator, Vishnu the Preserver, and Siva
the Destroyer, collectively the Tri-murti, the Hindu trinity expressed
in the mystically ineffable syllable Om. Between the trinity and man
came other gods, a whole host, powers of light and powers of darkness,
the divine and the demoniac fused in a hierarchy surprising but not
everlasting. Eventually the dream shall cease, the bubble break, the
universe collapse, the heavens be folded like a tent, the Tri-murti
dissolved, and in space will rest but the Soul of Things, at whose
will atoms shall reassemble and forms unite, dis-unite and reappear,
depart and return, endlessly, in recurring cycles.

That conception, the basis perhaps of the theory of cosmological days,
is perhaps also itself but a dream, yet one that, however defective,
has a beauty which must have been too fair. Brahma, Vishnu, Siva,
originally regarded as emanations of the ideal, became concrete.
Consorts were found for them. From infinity they were lodged in idols.
A worship sensuous when not grotesque ensued, from which the ideal
took flight.

That was the work of the clergy. Brahmanism is also. The archaic
conflict between light and darkness, the triumph of the former over
the latter, diminished, at their hands, into the figurative. That is
only reasonable. It was only reasonable also that they should claim
the triumph as their own. Without them the gods could do nothing. They
would not even be. In the _Rig-Veda_ and the _Vedas_ generally they
are transparent. The subsequent evolution of the Paramatma, the
Tri-murti and the hierarchy, had, for culmination, the apotheosis of a
priesthood that had invented them and who, for the invention, deserved
the apotheosis which they claimed and got. They were priests that were
poets, and poets that were seers. But they were not sorcerers. They
could not provide successors equal to themselves. It was the later
clergy that pulled poetry from the infinite, stuffed it into idols and
prostituted it to nameless shames.

In the _Bhagavad-Gita_ it is written: "Nothing is greater than I. In
scriptures I am prayer. I am perfume in flowers, brilliance in light.
I am life and its source. I am the soul of creation. I am the
beginning and the end. I am the Divine."

That is Brahm. Ormuzd has faded. Zeus has passed. Jupiter has gone.
With them the divinities of Egypt and the lords of the Chaldean sk