iv Preface

myth and ceremony. The 1‘L:uder of these pages will, I hope, learn to his satisfaction how the religion of the Veda rests upon :1 prehistoric foundation which is largely nature myth; how it continues in the Rig-Veda hymns as hieratic ritual worship of pulytheistic gncls; how this religion grmv more and more formal and mechanical in the Yzzjur-Vuil:is and Braihmanas, until it was practically :1lJ:1mlnnenl; how and when arose the germs of higlier religious thought; and, finally, how the motives and prin- ciples that underlie this entire chain of mental events landed Hindu thought, at :1 comparatively early period, in the panthcistlc and pessimistic re-

. ligion of the Upanishacls which it has never again

abandoned. MAURICE l5i.o0M1«'x1~:LD.

joxms I-Iovxms Uxvivznsrrv. BALTIMORE, April, 1907.