Note 34 — III. THE VEDA AND ZEND-AVESTA. THE VEDA.
Reading edition
In writing the above, I was thinking rather of the mental process that was necessary for the production of such words as bráhman, âtman, and others, than of their idiomatic use in the ancient literature of India. It might be objected, for instance, that bráhman, neut. in the sense of creative power or the principal cause of all things, does not occur in the Rig-veda. This is true. But it occurs in that sense in the Atharva-veda, and in several of the Brâhmanas. There we read of 'the oldest or greatest Bráhman which rules everything that has been or will be.' Heaven is said to belong to Bráhman alone (Atharva-veda X. 8, 1). In the Brâhmanas, this Bráhman is called the first-born, the self-existing, the best of the gods, and heaven and earth are said to have been established by it. Even the vital spirits are identified with it (Satapatha-brâhmana VIII. 4, 9, 3).
In other passages, again, this same Brahman is represented as existing in man (Atharva-veda X. 7, 17), and in this very passage we can watch the transition from the neutral Bráhman into Bráhman, conceived of as a masculine:
Ye purushe bráhma vidus te viduh parameshthinam, Yo veda parameshthinam, yas ka veda pragâpatim, Gyeshtham ye brãhmanam vidus, te skambham anu samviduh. 'They who know Bráhman in man, they know the Highest, He who knows the Highest, and he who knows Pragâpati (the lord of creatures), And they who know the oldest Brãhmana, they know the Ground.'
The word Brãhmana which is here used, is a derivative form of Bráhman; but what is most important in these lines is the mixing of neuter and masculine words, of impersonal and personal deities. This process is brought to perfection by changing Bráhman, the neuter, even grammatically into Bráhman, a masculine,—a change which has taken place in the Âranyakas, where we find Bráhman used as the name of a male deity. It is this Bráhman, with the accent on the first, not, as has been supposed, brahmán, the priest, that appears again in the later literature as one of the divine triad, Bráhman, Vishnu, Siva.
The word bráhman, as a neuter, is used in the Rig-veda in the sense of prayer also, originally what bursts forth from the soul, and, in one sense, what is revealed. Hence in later times bráhman is used collectively for the Veda, the sacred word.
Another word, with the accent on the last syllable, is brahmán, the man who prays, who utters prayers, the priest, and gradually the Brahman by profession. In this sense it is frequently used in the Rig-veda (I. 108, 7), but not yet in the sense of Brahman by birth or caste.