131 
1877.] G. S. Leonard —The Mythic History of the God Viraj . 
spiritual essence and not its transubstantiality into matter. For the text 
says “ The spirit of Viraj, presiding over all material forms, is said to be 
embodied in the shape of the universe, but when that ever wakeful soul is 
said to preside over individual souls on earth, he is understood as a 
superintending spiritual substance.” The Commentary on the above pas¬ 
sage states : “ Viraj Purusha’s filling the world with his substance signifies, 
his presiding over individual souls in a divine and not material form.” This 
explanation proving the spirituality of Viraj’s essence, keeps him aloof 
from the charge of materialism. 
The atheistic pantheism of Spinoza maintaining the absorption of the 
infinite god (Brahm) in nature is entirely ignored by the Vedas, for it has 
been inveighed against by Dr. Bajendralala Mitra in the introduction to 
his English version of the Ch’handogya Upanishad, where he maintains a 
Theistic Pantheism by upholding the existence of the finite world in the 
infinite essence of God. “ Uddalaka,” says he, “ instead of supposing with 
pantheists the absolute consubstantiality of God and Nature,—of God and 
the whole universe being of one and the same substance—makes the Deity 
create the universe first, and then shed out as it were, a ray of his light. 
His doctrine in short, is not the absorption of the infinite into the finite— 
of God in Nature—but of the finite in the infinite—Nature in God.” Spi¬ 
noza with his iron logic has fallen into a downright fallacy by supposing 
the extinction of the divine essence and personality by their pervasion or 
diffusion over the universe, because the Veda, granting even the infinity of 
the universe, declares God is perfect and so is the universe which is derived 
from him, as a prototype of the divine archytype. The subtraction of the 
perfect from the perfect leaves the remainder perfect. This doctrine of 
the Veda though a seeming paradox, is however true of infinite quantities, 
for if you take infinity from infinity, the remainder is also infinity. 
The terminology of the Vedas using the word emanation for causation 
or creation, and diffusion and pervasion for omnipresence, as also the use of 
the ablative case for the instrumental, has oftentimes misled the learned to 
understand the Vedantic theism as a material pantheism. But the literal 
acceptation of such grammatical and verbal terminations cannot fail also to 
bring the charge of pantheism home to the Bible and other sacred writings, 
where the language is glowing and elevated. 
Virajism is sometimes liable to the charge of finitism, from not having 
existed prior to the creation, but being coeval with the existence of the 
finite world, to which he is said to be subservient as the world is subservient 
to him. All this is very true, because Viraj had no being before the crea¬ 
tion of the world, but the Eternal Being that had an existence before crea¬ 
tion manifested himself either as Viraj or governor of the world after he 
had created it, or emitted a spark of himself for presiding over it. In tho 
