[Footnote 27: Some of the Upanishads have been tampered with, so that all of the contradictions may not be due to the composers. Nevertheless, as the uncertainty of opinion in regard to cosmogony is quite as great as that in respect of absorption, all the vagueness cannot properly be attributed to the efforts of later systematizers to bring the Upanishads into their more or less orthodox Vedantism.] [Footnote 28: In 4. 10. 5 _kam_ is pleasure, one with ether as _brahma_, not as wrongly above, p. 222, the god Ka.] [Footnote 29: This Upanishad appears to be sectarian, perhaps an early Çivaite tract (dualistic), if the allusion to Rudra Çiva, below, be accepted as original.] [Footnote 30: As is foreshadowed in the doctrine of grace by V[=a]c in the Rig Veda, in the _Çvet_, the _Katha_, and the _Mund_. Upanishads (_K. 2. 23; M_. 3. 2. 3), but nowhere else, there enters, with the sectarian phase, that radical subversion of the Upanishad doctrine which becomes so powerful at a later date, the teaching that salvation is a gift of God. "This Spirit is not got by wisdom; the Spirit chooses as his own the body of that man whom He chooses."] [Footnote 31: See above. As descriptive of the immortal conscious Spirit, there is the famous verse: "If the slayer thinks to slay, if the slain thinks he is slain; they both understand not; this one (the Spirit) slays not, and is not slain" (_Katha_, 2. 19); loosely rendered by Emerson, 'If the red slayer think he slays,' etc.] [Footnote 32: The fact remarked by Thibaut that radically different systems of philosophy are built upon the Upanishads is enough to show how ambiguous are the declarations of the latter.] [Footnote 33: Compare Barth, _Religions_, p. 76.] * * * * * CHAPTER XI. THE POPULAR BRAHMANIC FAITH For a long time after the Vedic age there is little that gives one an insight into the views of the people. It may be presumed, since the orthodox systems never dispensed with the established cult, that the form of the old Vedic creed was kept intact. Yet, since the real belief changed, and the cult became more and more the practice of a formality, it becomes necessary to seek, apart from the inherited ritual, the faith which formed the actual religion of the people. Inasmuch as this phase of Hindu belief has scarcely been touched upon elsewhere, it may be well to state more fully the object of the present chapter.