ON ACCOUNTS Oi'' THE CREATION. 243 



Here we see a few traces of tradition, but the sclieiue is 

 fast becoming a cosmology, — a self-begetting process. 



But the reflective Hindoo intellect afterwards advanced to 

 a profound and thorough-going form of Pantheistic Emana- 

 tion, which I shall give in Professor Duncker's words, 

 occasionally abridged {Hist, of Antiq., vol. iv., p. 800, and 

 elsewhere). 



Brahman — such is the line of argument in the Vedanta — 

 ''is the one eternal, self-existent essence, unutterable and 

 unchangeable. It developes into the world, and is thus 

 creative and created. As milk curdles, as water becomes 

 snow and ice. Brahman congeals into matter." 



It becomes first ether, then air, then fire, then water, and 

 then from water it becomes earth. From these elements 

 arise the finer and coarser bodies, with which the souls of the 

 gods, spirits, men, and animals are clothed. These souls go 

 forth from Brahman like sparks from a crackling fire, — a 

 metaphor common in the book of the law ; they are of one 

 essence with Brahman, and parts of the great world-soul. 

 (Elsewhere, the order of their emanation from the impersonal 

 one is given thus : — (1) Personal Brahman ; (2) old Vedic 

 godsj such as Indra, &c. ; (3) air-spirits ; (4) holy and pure 

 men ; (5) animals, plants, and finally stones and inorganic 

 matter.) This soul is the world, but also outside and above 

 it ; to it must everything return, for all that is not Brahman 

 is impure, without foundation and perishable. In this view 

 there lies a contradiction which did not escape the keen pene- 

 tration of a reflective spirit. Brahman is intended to be not 

 only the intellectual, but also the material basis of the world. 

 It is regarded as absolutely non-material, eternal, and un- 

 changeable ; and yet the material, changeable world is to rise 

 out of it, the sensible out of the non-sensible, and the material 

 out of the immatei'ial. In order to remove this dualism and 

 contradiction which the orthodox doctrine introduced into 

 Brahman, the speculative Hindoos seized upon a means which, 

 if simple, was certainly bold : they denied the existence of the 

 whole sensible world, they allowed matter to be lost in 

 Brahman. There is only One Being ; this is the highest soul 

 (param-atman), and besides this there is nothing. What 

 seems to exist beyond this is mere illusion. The world, i.e., 

 matter, does not exist, but only seems to exist, and the cause 

 of this illusion is Maya, or deception. Of this the sensible 

 world is a product, like the reflection of the moon in water, 



and the mirage in the desert This universal deity is 



conceived of as a being at rest ; its activity and development 



s2 



