The Origin Of Brahmanism

Excerpt from Brahman a Study on the History of Indian Philosophy Two countries share the honor of being the birthplaces of the chief historic religions of the world, Palestine-Arabia and India. The one is the ancestral home of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam; the other, of Brahmanism and Buddhism. Genetically, Judaism is the mother of both Christianity and Mohammedan ism, as Brahmanism is the mother of Buddhism. Buddhism, Christianity, and Mohammedanism belong to the class of instituted religions, in that they go back into great creative personalities, after which they are respectively named; whereas Judaism and Brahmanism, the mother religions of the world, are properly characterized as spontaneous, since they have their origin in the tribe rather than in the individual. The one allied group of religions, namely Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, grew up and made its earliest conquests in the region having the Mediterranean for its center. The other group, represented by Brahmanism and Buddhism, appeared and spread in India-China and the neighboring regions, the second ancient center of the world's civilization. The sacred language of Judaism is Hebrew, and the sacred language of Brahmanism, Sanskrit. Hence both linguistically and racially the western group springs from a Semitic source, while the eastern springs from an Aryan source. Thus the history of religion has to do primarily with two geographical centers, Palestine and India; with two races, Semitic and Aryan; and with two languages, Hebrew and Sanskrit. In this monograph I purpose to make a special study of the doctrine of Brahman, the central conception of Indian philosophy and religion. Accordingly, it will be a study both in the history of philosophy and in the history of religion. The method will be genetic and comparative. It will be genetic, for the conception of Brahman will be traced through the Vedas, the Upanishads, the Vedanta-Sutras, and the Commentary of Çankaracarya. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.