486 BRAHMANISM AND BUDDHISM 



theosophic thought would not have existed without the technicalities 

 of the sacrifice and its intellectual scintillations, but it is easy to see 

 that it owes a great deal of its development to the sacrifice. Wisdom- 

 searching Rajas weary of the world, Janaka and Ajatac,atru, Buddha 

 and Bimbisara, have as much to do with the development of Hindu 

 religion as the thirst for new truth native in the Brahmans them- 

 selves. They are the Maecenases of the "poor clerics," and they, 

 having a superabundance of the world, are attracted permanently 

 to the things beyond. So, without doubt, early theosophy grew 

 under the same patronage, in a natural desire of the Brahmans to 

 vitalize the outer forms of the ritual technicalities; in a natural desire, 

 too, to obtain position and reputation by something better than the 

 handling with rigid correctness of firewood and sacrificial ladle, of 

 soma drink and oblations of melted butter. 



The extent to which the riddle habit had taken hold of those early 

 philosophers may be seen in the outer form of the riddles themselves. 

 In the cases hitherto mentioned, the question is stated in full, and 

 the answer is given in full. But this is not the only form. Sometimes 

 (Aitareya Brahmana, 5, 25, 15 ff.) the riddle is put in a concise 

 categorical statement, instead of a question; the answer again 

 follows. Again and this is the most common form the riddle is 

 put either in the form of a categorical statement or a question; the 

 answer is withheld : either it is held to be too obvious, or the object is 

 to impart additional interest and mystery to the riddle. Finally 

 there are riddles (Aitareya Brahmana, 5, 25, 23; Ac.valayana Qrau- 

 tasutra, 8, 13, 14) which contain only the answer to a question, 

 which is presupposed and easily supplied. Countless statements 

 based on remote analogies, harboring violent paradoxes, indeed at 

 first sight nonsense, are in reality riddles. There is hardly anything 

 in the wide world of things and thoughts which does not share some 

 quality with something else: this is enough to justify identification. 

 When the essence or outer form fails, the name opens the door to 

 a labyrinth of etymological crookedness in which every road leads 

 to every goal : the name and the thing (ndma and rupa) are of equal 

 value and dignity. 



The Rig- Veda, the most important of Hindu books, contains two 

 riddle hymns of great interest, about neither of which the last word 

 has been said. One (8, 29) is a hymn of ten small crisp stanzas which, 

 I venture to say, is a so-called nivid, or invitation to the gods to 

 come to the sacrifice. But what kind of an invitation? Instead of 

 the usual clear note of fervent call, ten varieties of gods are merely 

 indicated by their most salient qualities. The names of the gods are 

 never mentioned, but instead catch-words, as it were leit-motifs in 

 the Wagnerian sense, which describe them so definitely as to leave no 

 doubt as to which one is meant. The stanzas are arranged so that the 



