314 OWEN BERKELEY-HILL
qualities (unexplained), made up of seven elementary substanceis (the white, red, grey, smoke-coloured, yellow, brown, pale fluid In the body which is produced from the juice of the food), made up of three kinds of mucus (unexplained, probably the three humours, viz., wind, gall, phlegm), twice-begotten (from the father's seed and from the mother's blood), partaking of various kinds of food (that which is eaten, drunk, licked and sucked up), is the body.'
We may now proceed to review that phase of Brahmanism which Monier Williams i calls the Mythological or Polytlieistic. This phase has for its sacred books the two great legendary heroic poems (Itihasa), the Mahabarata and Ramayana, and, in later times, the Puranas. Monier Williams* writes as follows:
'The religious instincts of the mass of the Hindus found no real satisfaction in the propitiation of the forces of nature and spirits of the air, or in the cold philosophy of pantheism, or in homage paid to the memory of a teacher held to be nowhere in existence. They needed devotion (bhakti) to personal and human gods, and these they were led to find in their own heroes'.
Hence the idea spread that all visible forms on earth are
- emanations' from the one eternal Entity, 'like drops from an
ocean or like sparks from fire'. They maintained that the highest human manifestations of the eternal Brahma are the Brahmans, and that above the human Brahmans there exists a series of super- natural beings, demi-gods, inferior gods, superior gods and so on up to the primeval male god Brahma, the first personal product of the purely spiritual Brahma when overspread by Maya or illusory creative force. But as creation involves maintenance of being and disintegration, Brahma is associated with two other personal deities, Vishnu the Preserver, and Rudra-Siva, the Dissolver and Reproducer. These three gods, concerned in the threefold operation of integration (evolution), maintenance and disintegration, are typified by the three letters composing the mystic syllable OM (AUM) — yet another manifestation of the flatus-complex. Another interesting point is the idea that at the end of vast periods of time, called, 'days of Brahma', each lasting 4,320,000,000 human years, the whole universe is re-absorbed, and after remaining dor- mant for equally long periods, is again evolved. A 'day' of Brahma is said to be divided thus :
- Monier Williams: op. cit., p. 41.
» Monier Williams; op. cit, p. 42. .
