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III. BRĀHMANISM
Veda
INDIAN orthodox philosopliy arose from the ancient Aryan religion of the Veda. Originally the Vedic pantheon with its host of gods depicted the universe as filled with the projections of inan's experiences and ideas about himsell. The features of human birth, growth, and death, and of the process of generation, were projected on the course of nature. Cosmic forces and phenomena were personalized. The lights of the heavens, the varieties and aspects of clouds and storm, forests, mountain masses and river courses, the properties of the soil, and the niysteries of the underworld were understood and dealt with in terms of the lives and commerce of divinc beings who themselves reflected the human world. These gods were supermen endowed with cosmic powers and could be invited as guests to feast on oblations. They were invoked, flattered, propitiated, and pleased.
In Greece this ancient stage of Aryan belief was represented in the mythology of the Homeric age, which was continued in the tragedy of the Athenian theater. However, with the appearancc of Greek philosophical criticism in Ionian Asia Minor
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