THE ORIGIN OF THEOSOPHY 489 



was the one born lord of all that is. He established the earth and this 

 sky who is the god to whom we should offer our oblations?" 



3. " He who through his power became the sole king of this breath- 

 ing and slumbering world; he who governs all, men and beasts 

 who is the god to whom we should offer our oblations?" 



There are two points which impress themselves forcibly in connec- 

 tion with these riddles as we see them put into the service of philo- 

 sophic speculation. First, the cool intellectuality of Hindu theosophy, 

 its clever yet often mechanical play with terms, and its growingly 

 'rigid and logical definitions are unquestionably in a measure the 

 children in direct descent of the riddle habit, which has found its 

 way from folk-lore beginnings into myth, liturgy, and philosophy. 

 That the Hindus of the time of our texts took these things seriously, 

 we can see from the name they have given the entire habit and 

 practice brahmodya, discussion of the brahma. The name is in 

 any case daring; but it would be childish, unless, at the time of its 

 giving, the higher rather than the lower, the mystic philosophic (in 

 the broadest sense) rather than the trivial, riddles were in the mind's 

 eye. Anyhow it is quite clear that in India, and, so far as I know, 

 in India only, the riddle, to use the French expression, has arrived. 

 It has there become a vehicle and doubtless also a promoter of 

 higher, or, let us say, more cautiously, persistently complicated 

 thought, and it approaches in dignity the other earlier efforts to 

 solve the mystery of existence and the universe, as they appear in 

 the theosophic hymns of the Veda and in the prose Upanishads. 



There is a second matter upon which these riddles throw strong 

 light. A distinguished scholar has recently advanced the theory that 

 Hindu philosophy is not, as has been tacitly assumed, the product 

 of Brahmanical intellect, but that it was due to the spiritual efforts 

 of the Royal or Warrior Caste. Professor Garbe, 1 of the University of 

 Tubingen, is an eminent student of Hindu philosophy, and at the 

 same time well versed in the early literature of the Vedas. He is 

 not an admirer of Brahman civilization: on more than one occasion 

 has he poured out the vials of his just wrath against the many preten- 

 sions and the cruelties which the Brahmans have practiced during the 

 period of their ascendency in India through several millenniums. But 

 not content with that, he believes that the Brahmans were not only 

 bold bad men, but also that they were too stupid to have worked 

 their way from the sandy wastes of ritualism to the green summits 

 where grows the higher thought of India, notably that monism 

 which is the Hindu intellectual idea par excellence. For centuries 

 the Brahmans w^ere engaged in excogitating sacrifice after sacrifice, 

 and hair-splitting definitions and explanations of senseless ritualistic 



1 See the first article in his volume of essays, entitled " Beitrage zur Indischen 

 Kulturgeschichte " (Berlin, 1903). 



