Page:The Religion of the Veda.djvu/4

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iv
Preface
myth and ceremony. The reader of these pages
will, I hope, learn to his satisfaction how the religion
of the Veda rests upon a prehistoric foundation
which is largely nature myth; how it continues in
the Rig-Veda hymns as hieratic ritual worship of
polytheistic gods; how this religion grew more and
more formal and mechanical in the Yajur Vedas and
Brahmanas, until it was practically abandoned; how
and when arose the germs of higher religious
thought; and, finally, how the motives and prin-
ciples that underlic this entire chain of mental
events landed Hindu thought, at a comparatively
early period, in the pantheistic and pessimistic re-
ligion of the Upanishads which it has never again
abandoned.
JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY,
BALTIMORE, April, 1907.
MAURICE BLOOMFIELD.
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