It also lessened the importance of deities
as being the supreme masters of the world and our fate, and the
tendency of henotheism gradually diminished their multiple
character and advanced the monotheistic tendency in some
quarters. Thirdly, the soul of man is described as being separable
from his body and subject to suffering and enjoyment in another
world according to his good or bad deeds; the doctrine that the
soul of man could go to plants, etc., or that it could again be reborn
on earth, is also hinted at in certain passages, and this may
be regarded as sowing the first seeds of the later doctrine of
transmigration. The self (_atman_) is spoken of in one place as the
essence of the world, and when we trace the idea in the Brahma@nas
and the Ara@nyakas we see that atman has begun to mean the
supreme essence in man as well as in the universe, and has thus
approached the great Atman doctrine of the Upani@sads.
CHAPTER III
THE EARLIER UPANI@SADS [Footnote ref 1]. (700 B.C.-600 B.C.)
The place of the Upani@sads in Vedic literature.
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