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BRAHMANISM
and its development by philosophers and sophists from Thales to Socrates (supported then by the advance of the natural sciences, with rational astronomy-i.e., cosmology based on mathematics-in the lead), the primitive, dieamlıke, anthropomorplic projections were withdrawn from the natural scene. Myth was no longer accepted as a valid interpretation of the processes of nature. The human features and biographics of the gods were rejected, even satirized; the archaic mythology and religion collapsed; the brilliant community of the Olympians fel. And this debacle was followed, shortly, by the collapse of the Gicek city-states themselves, in the period of Alexander the
Great.
No such Twilight of the Gods occurred in the sphere of the ancient Hindu thinkers. The guardian deitics of the world were not overthrown, but incorporated in an amplificd and deepened vision, like local puppet-kings within the empire of a mightier lord. The One Presence, which was experienced as the Self (ātinan), or Holy Power (brahman), within and beyond the many, took to itself the whole charge of the Indian libido, absorbed its entire interest; and this universal spiritual monarchy seriously threatened the reign of the gods, greatly reducing them in significance and prestige. Nevertheless, as viceroys and special emissaries, transcendentally invested, as it were, with their powers and insignia of office, the deitics remained in their high seats, only serving a new function. They were recognized as themselves inanifestations of that omnipresent, supporting inner Power, to wliich all serious attention was being turned. This universal ground was understood to be identical within all things-unchanged through the changing forms. It abides supreme within the unfolding shapes of the phenomenal universe, whether in the grosser spheres of normal human experience or in the more rarified of the empyrean. Moreover, it transcends them all, and is infinitely beyond. Gradually, with the development of this type of Brāhmanical speculative
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| SR No. | 007309 |
| Book Title | Philosophies of India |
| Original Sutra Author | N/A |
| Author | Heinrich Zimmer, Joseph Campbell |
| Publisher | Routledge and Kegan Paul Ltd |
| Publication Year | 1953 |
| Total Pages | 709 |
| Language | English |
| Classification | Book_English |
| File Size | 34 MB |