OF THE VEDAS. 
87 
various places various forms, in accordance with his deeds, 
just as the body grows when food and drink are poured into 
it." " That incarnate self according to his own qualities 
chooses (assumes) many shapes, coarse or subtile, and having 
himself caused his union with them, he is seen as another 
and another, through the qualities of his acts, and through 
the qualities of his body."^" And so this great Atma is 
both the material and eificient cause of all finite existences. 
" As from blazing fire, sparks, being like unto fire, fly forth 
a thousandfold, thus are the various beings brought forth 
from the imperishable and return hither also." " The sky 
is his head, his eyes the sun and the moon, the quarters his 
ears, his speech the Vedas, the wind his breath, his heart the 
universe ; from his feet came the earth ; he is indeed the 
inner self of all things." "As all spokes are contained in 
the axle and in the felloe of a wheel, all beings and all selfs 
are contained in that self."^^ 
Professor Max Miiller, in his Introduction to Vol. I 
of the " Sacred Books of the East," says, that " Atman was 
looked upon at the same time as the starting point of all 
phenomenal existence, the root of the world, the only thing 
that could truly be said to be, to be real and true. As the 
root of all that exists, the Atman was identified with the 
Brahman, which in Sanskrit is both masculine and neuter, 
and with the Sat, which is neuter only, that which is, or 
Saty, the true, the real. It alone exists in the beginning 
and for ever ; it has no second. Whatever else is said to 
exist, derives its real being from the Sat. How the one Sat 
becomes many, how what we call creation, which they call 
emanation (TrpooSo?) constantly proceeds and returns to it, 
has been explained in various more or less fanciful ways by 
1" Svetasavatara Upanishad, III. 9 ; V. 11, 12. Brihadaryanaka Up., 8 
Brahmana. 
" Mundaka Up. 
Brihadaryanaka Up-, II. 5, 15. 
