150 
thought. Were it consistent, its failure would be stih ™re signal to m»y 
being but fractions of the one, and this one an i mfii arte spmt ““ 
takes refuge in poetry, and struggles to utter, by luxuriant simihtudes, w 
language cannot with, accuracy express. 
Coleman, in his Hindoo Mythology, says the same thing (p. 1) =— 
The early writers exhaust language in endeavours to “Pyss ^ 
character and attributes, and the superlative power and dig 7 ag 
unity— the highest conception of which man is capab . P g d He 
« The Almighty, Infinite, Eternal, Incomprehensible, Self-existen g 
who sees evening, tough never seen-He who 
description-He from whom the universe pro^eds-who r ■ P^ 
—the Light of all lights— whose power is too infinite to he g 
One Being— the True and Unknown Brahm.” 
The Rig- Veda is generally acknowledged to be abort 
old. It is a collection of prayers and hymns. One p 
thus : — 
May my soul, which mounts aloft in my waking hours as an ethereal 
spark antf which, even in my slumber has a like ascent, soaring to a great 
distance as an emanation of the Light of lights, be united by devout medita- 
tion with the Spirit supremely high and supremely mtelligent.t 
And in one of its hymns on Creation, the same Infinite Spirit 
is thus spoken of : — - 
Who knows, and shall declare when and why 
This creation (ever) took place 1 . , 
The gods are subsequent to the production of the world. 
Who, then, can know from whence 
This varied world comes ? 
He, who in highest heaven is Euler does know : 
But not another can possess that knowledge. 
1 1 T will only give one other illustration, taken from the 
Bhagavet Geeta, which is an episode in the great nation^ poem 
called the Mahabharatta, and is certainly between 
thousand years old. In this part of the poem Argun, the hero, 
is addressed in the following language - 
I am the Creator of all things, and all things P r ° c ® e ^ j am a p. 
the beginning, the middle, and the end of all things , 
grasping death ; and I am renovation. 
Quoted in Hunt’s Essay on Pantheism, p. 8. 
+ Idem, p- 7. 
