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BRAHMANISM
transcendent immaterial monad (puruṣa) is thus itself trancended.
The chief motivation of Vedic philosophy, from the period of even the earliest philosophic hymns (which are preserved in the later portions of the Ro-Veda), has been, without change, the search for a basic unity underlying the manifold of the universe. Brāhmanical thinking was centered, from the beginning, around the paradox of the simultaneous antagonism-yetidentity of the manifest forces and forms of the phenomenal world, the goal being to know and actually to control the hidden power behind, within, and precedent to all things, as their hidden source. This search, or inquiry, was conducted, furthermore, along two main lines, which amounted, fundamentally, to the same. The first-answering the question, “What is the one and only essence that has become diversified?"-sought the highest power behind the formations of the outer world, while the second, directing the gaze inward, asked, "What is the source from which the forces and organs of my own life have proceeded?” The self-analysis of man was thus developed as a parallel discipline, correlative and contributive to the speculative evaluation of external powers and effects.
In contrast to its transitory products or manifestations, the micromacrocosmic essence itself was carly regarded as inexhaustible, cangeless, and undecaying; for it was experienced inwardly as a well of holy power. To know it, therefore, to gain access to it through knowledge (jñāna), meant actually to participate in its fearlessness, bliss, immortality, and boundless strength. Moreover, to attain to these meant to transcend, in some measure, the threat of death and the miseries of lifewhich was a pressing, very scrious, general concern in those ancient times of incessant war, during and just subsequent to the great migration of the Aryan tribesmen into the subcontinent of India, when the struggle of the feudal chieftains for supremacy was in full career, and the world was beset with enemies and
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