The Religions of India Handbooks on the History of Religions, Volume 1, Edited by Morris Jastrow

Although the faith of India seems to have completed a circle, landing at last in a polytheism as gross as was that of the Vedic age, yet is this a delusive aspect, as will appea...

While the pantheistic believer proceeded to anthropomorphize in a still greater degree the _[=a]tm[=a]_ of his fathers, and eventually landed in heretical sectarianism; while th...

The hymns of the Rig Veda may be divided into three classes, those in which are especially lauded the older divinities, those in which appear as most prominent the sacrificial g...

In the epic the later union of the sectarian gods is still a novelty. The two characters remain distinct enough. Vishnu and Çiva are different gods. But each in turn represents...

Besides the Rig Veda and the Atharva Veda there are two others, called respectively the S[=a]ma Veda and the Yajur Veda.[1] The former consists of a small collection of verses,...

Archaeologia, 'ancient lore,' is the meaning of Pur[=a]na _(pur[=a]na_, 'old'). The religious period represented by the extant writings of this class is that which immediately f...

While the great heresies that we have been describing were agitating the eastern part of India,[1] the old home of Brahmanism in the West remained true, in name if not in fact,...

For a long time after the Vedic age there is little that gives one an insight into the views of the people. It may be presumed, since the orthodox systems never dispensed with t...

If in Hinduism, and even in Brahmanism, there are certain traits which, with some verisimilitude, may be referred to the immediate environment of these religions, how stands it...

In the Vedic hymns man fears the gods, and imagines God. In the Br[=a]hmanas man subdues the gods, and fears God. In the Upanishads man ignores the gods, and becomes God.[1]

papers on Thugs); Elphinstone, i. 369, 371 (Bh[=a]ts and Ch[=a]rans), 384 (Thugs and Decoits). C[=a]itanyas, Hunter, Statistical Account, Williams and Wilkins, _loc. cit_.; On '...

In the last chapter we have traced the character of two great gods of earth, the altar-fire and the personified kind of beer which was the Vedic poets' chief drink till the end...

India always has been a land of religions. In the earliest Vedic literature are found not only hymns in praise of the accepted gods, but also doubts in regard to the worth of th...

Besides the phases of pure Aryan and modified Aryan religions which have already been examined, there are represented in India several other aspects of civilized religion; for,...

Agni is the altar-fire. Originally fire, Agni, in distinction from sun and lightning, is the fire of sacrifice; and as such is he great. One reads in v. 3. 1-2, that this Agni i...

One cannot read the Upanishads without feeling that he is already facing an intellectual revolt. Not only in the later tracts, which are inspired with devotion to a supreme and...

Only one of the great atmospheric deities, the gods that preëminently govern the middle sphere between sky and earth, can claim an Aryan lineage. One of the minor gods of the sa...

Nothing is more usual than to attempt a reconstruction of Aryan ideas in manners, customs, laws, and religious conceptions, by placing side by side similar traits of individual...

The Aryan Hindus, whose religions we describe in this volume[1], formed one of the Aryan or so-called Indo-European peoples. To the other peoples of this stock, Persians, Armeni...

The hymns of the Rig Veda inextricably confused; the deities of an earlier era confounded, and again merged together in a pantheism now complete; the introduction of strange god...

Jolly, _loc. cit._., p. 339. Sacrifices: Hillebrandt, Das altind. Neu-u. Vollmondsopfer, and Nationale Opfer, Festgruss an Böhtlingk; Lindner, Die Diksk[=a], and _loc. cit._, Er...

[Footnote 11: That is, when the latter are grouped as in the following list. Our point is that, despite new faith and new gods, Vedic polytheism is taught not as a form but as a...

Oriental and Linguistic Studies, ii. p. 149, JAOS. iii. 291, 331; Müller, Second Series of Science of Language, Biographies of Words.[11] General interpretation of divinities, M...

The growing interest both in this country and abroad in the historical study of religions is one of the noticeable features in the intellectual phases of the past decades. The m...

[Footnote 63: These three are the witnesses for the soul at the judgment, xii. 322. 55. V[=a]yu, Wind, is said to be even mightier than Indra, Yama, Indra and Varuna, _ib._ 155....

Veda, Congress, 1874; Ludwig, Die philosophischen und religiösen Anschanungen des Veda; also Ludwig, Rig-Veda, iii (Mantra-Literatur), pp. 262, 284, 301, and his works, Ueber Me...

Roth, _ib_. iv. 514, divisions of the Rig Veda; Bergaigne, Recherches sur l'histoire de la Samhit[=a] du Rig Veda, JA. (1886 and following years), also on the liturgy, _ib_. 188...

Hinduism; W.J. Wilkins, Modern Hinduism; Wilson, On the Sikhs, JRAS. 1846, p. 43; Prinsep, Origin of Sikh Power; MacGregor, History of Sikhs;[53] Kab[=i]r; Trumpp, [=A]digranth,...

Religion); Stevenson, JRAS. 1846, p. 337; P[=a]ñcar[=a]tra, Hall, V[=a]savadatta. C[=a]rv[=a]ka, Colebrooke, Muir, _loc. cit_. Var[=a]hamihira, see above. Fate: IA. xviii. 46. S...