nimal. Thought-activity as meditation, is here taking the place
of an external worship in the form of sacrifices. The material
substances and the most elaborate and accurate sacrificial rituals
lost their value and bare meditations took their place. Side
by side with the ritualistic sacrifices of the generality of the
Brahmins, was springing up a system where thinking and symbolic
meditations were taking the place of gross matter and
action involved in sacrifices. These symbols were not only
chosen from the external world as the sun, the wind, etc., from
the body of man, his various vital functions and the senses, but
even arbitrary alphabets were taken up and it was believed that
the meditation of these as the highest and the greatest was productive
of great beneficial results. Sacrifice in itself was losing
value in the eyes of these men and diverse mystical significances
and imports were beginning to be considered as their real truth
[Footnote ref 3].

_______________________________________________________________________

[Footnote 1: Winternitz's _Geschichte der indischen Litteratur_, I.
pp. 197 ff.]

[Footnote 2: The story of Maitryi and Yajnavalikya (B@rh. II. 4)
and that of Satyakama son of Jabala and his teacher (Cha. IV. 4).]

[Footnote 3: Cha. V. II.]

36

The Uktha (verse) of @Rg-Veda was identified in the Aitareya
Ara@nyaka under several allegorical forms with the Pra@na [Footnote
ref 1], the Udgitha of the Samaveda was identified with Om, Pra@na,
sun and eye; in Chandogya II. the Saman was identified with Om, rain,
water, seasons, Pra@na, etc., in Chandogya III. 16-17 man was
identified with sacrifice; his hunger, thirst, sorrow, with initiation;
laughing, eating, etc., with the utterance of the Mantras;
and asceticism, gift, sincerity, restraint from injury, truth, with
sacrificial fees (_dak@si@na_). The gifted mind of these cultured Vedic
Indians was anxious to come to some unity, but logical precision
of thought had not developed, and as a result of that we find in the
Ara@nyakas the most grotesque and fanciful unifications of things
which to our eyes have little or no connection. Any kind of
instrumentality in producing an effect was often considered as pure
identity. Thus in Ait. Ara@n. II. 1. 3 we find "Then comes the origin
of food. The seed of Prajapati are the gods. The seed of the gods
is rain. The seed of rain is herbs. The seed of herbs is food. The
seed of food is seed. The seed of