‘Then you say, Vāsettha, that not one of the Brāhmans, or of their teachers, or of their pupils, even up to the seventh generation, has ever seen Brahman (the God of the Brāhmans) face to face. And that even the Ṛishis of old, the utterers of the ancient verses, which the Brāhmans of to-day so carefully intone and recite precisely as they have been handed down—even they did not pretend to know or to have seen where or whence or whither Brahman is. So that the Brāhmans versed in the three Vedas have forsooth said thus: “To a state of union with that which we know not and have not seen, we can show the way and can say: ‘This is the straight path, this is the direct way which leads him who acts according to it, into a state of union with Brahman[44].’” ‘Now what think you, Vāsettha? Does it not follow, this being so, that the talk of the Brāhmans, versed though they be in the three Vedas, is foolish talk? ‘Verily, Vāsettha, that Brāhmans versed in the three Vedas should be able to show the way to a state of union with that which they do not know, neither have seen—such a condition of things has no existence. ‘As when a string of blind men are clinging one to the other, neither can the foremost see, nor can the middle one see, nor can the hindmost see, just so is the talk of the Brāhmans versed in the three Vedas[44].’ These no doubt were trenchant words, but it might easily be shown that the Brāhmans themselves did not scruple to use almost as strong language against their own revelation. For instance, the Ćhāndogya Upanishad (p. 473) speaks of the Veda as ‘mere name’ (nāma eva). The Bṛihadāraṇyaka Upanishad declares that when a man is in a condition of knowledge, ‘the gods are no gods to him, and the Veda no Veda;’ and the Muṇḍaka describes the sacrificial Veda as inferior to Brahma-vidyā. And in truth every Hindū was allowed to choose one of three ways of securing his own salvation. The first was ‘the way of works’ (Karma-mārga), that is to say, of sacrifices (Yajña), of ceremonial rites, of lustral washings, penances and pilgrimages, as enjoined in the Mantra and Brāhmaṇa portion of the Veda, in Manu, the Law-books and parts of the Purāṇas. The second was ‘the way of faith’ (bhakti), meaning by that term devotion to one or other of certain commonly worshipped personal deities,—a way leading in later times to the worship of Ṡiva and Vishṇu (unfolded in the Purāṇas), and involving merely heart-devotion, without sacrificial or ceremonial acts. The third was ‘the way of knowledge’ (Jñāna), as set forth in the Upanishads. The mediæval Brāhman Kumārila—a really historical teacher—advocated the first way; another teacher of less note, Ṡāṇḍilya, advocated the second; another celebrated historical teacher, Ṡaṅkara, advocated the third. Even in Gautama’s time any one of these ways or all three together might be chosen, so long as the authority of the Brāhmans was not impugned.