"Brahma" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of the human race, the doctrine of the Brahmins, and especially in its final transfiguration and highest perfection, Buddhism. This also expounds the myth of a creation of the world by God, but it does not celebrate this act as a boon, but calls it a sin of Brahma which he, AFTER HAVING EMBODIED HIMSELF IN THIS WORLD, must atone for by the infinite sufferings of this very world. He finds his salvation in the saints who, by perfect negation of the "will of life," by the sympathy with all suffering which alone fills their heart, ...
— Correspondence of Wagner and Liszt, Volume 2 • Francis Hueffer (translator)
... Cumont, "that in modern Europe the faithful had deserted the Christian churches to worship Allah or Brahma, to follow the precepts of Confucius or Buddha, or to adopt the maxims of the Shinto; let us imagine a great confusion of all the races of the world in which Arabian mullahs, Chinese scholars, Japanese ...
— The Oriental Religions in Roman Paganism • Franz Cumont
... literature seem puny and trivial; and I doubt if that philosophy is not to be referred to a previous state of existence, so remote is its sublimity from our conceptions. I lay down the book and go to my well for water, and lo! there I meet the servant of the Bramin, priest of Brahma and Vishnu and Indra, who still sits in his temple on the Ganges reading the Vedas, or dwells at the root of a tree with his crust and water jug. I meet his servant come to draw water for his master, ...
— Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience • Henry David Thoreau
... the Moslem darkly muttered there; "Brahma," the jewelled Indies of the East Sighed through their spices with a languid prayer; "Christ?" faintly ...
— The Galaxy, Volume 23, No. 2, February, 1877 • Various
... of Apollo at Delos. The Great Hare made the earth, and, as will afterwards appear, was the inventor of the arts of life. On the whole, the Iroquois and Algonkin myths agree in finding the origin of life in an upper world beyond the sky. The earth was either fished up (as by Brahma when he dived in the shape of a boar) by some beast which descended to the bottom of the waters, or grew out of the tortoise on whose back Ataentsic fell. The first dwellers in the world were either beasts like Manabozho ...
— Myth, Ritual, and Religion, Vol. 1 • Andrew Lang
... Plate II., figure 1. This figure of the Lingham presents a kind of Trinity, the vase represents Vishnu, from the middle of which rises a column rounded at the top representing Siva, and the whole rests upon a pedestal typifying Brahma. From the Voyage aux Indes Orientales et à la Chine, par M. Sonnerat, depuis 1774 jusqu'en 1781. Tom. ...
— Aphrodisiacs and Anti-aphrodisiacs: Three Essays on the Powers of Reproduction • John Davenport
... Hindu, all religious tenets and aspirations are centred in the idea of BRAHMA, the one, pervading, illimitable substance, without multiple, division or repetition. This idea has two modes or phases, 1st. as representing the absolute, self-included Brahma; 2nd. as representing Brahma in connection with, relative to, the world. In the latter, Brahma is creator of ...
— Hindu Law and Judicature - from the Dharma-Sastra of Yajnavalkya • Yajnavalkya
... sacrifices, the thousand-eyed lord of Sachi became crowned with success. There the fierce Mahadeva, the eternal lord of every creature, has taken up his abode after having created all the worlds and there he dwelleth, worshipped with reverence by thousands of spirits. There Nara and Narayana, Brahma and Yama and Sthanu the fifth, perform their sacrifices at the expiration of a thousand yugas. There, for the establishment of virtue and religion, Vasudeva, with pious devotion, performed his sacrifices extending for many, many long years. There ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Part 2 • Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa
... student is, according to Hindu notions, unable to do more than commit the sacred texts to memory. In the first place all Vedic texts must, in order to be understood, be read together with running commentaries such as Saya/n/a's commentaries on the Sa/m/hitas and Brahma/n/as, and the Bhashyas ascribed to Sa@nkara on the chief Upanishads. But these commentaries do not by themselves conduce to a full comprehension of the contents of the sacred texts, since they confine themselves ...
— The Vedanta-Sutras with the Commentary by Sankaracarya - Sacred Books of the East, Volume 1 • George Thibaut
... They wear on earth will serve in Paradise,) There to recline among Heaven's native maids, And crown the Elect with bliss that never fades— Well hath the Prophet-Chief his bidding done; And every beauteous race beneath the sun, From those who kneel at BRAHMA'S burning fount,[33] To the fresh nymphs bounding o'er YEMEN'S mounts; From PERSIA'S eyes of full and fawnlike ray, To the small, half-shut glances of KATHAY;[34] And GEORGIA'S bloom, and AZAB'S darker smiles, And the gold ringlets of the Western Isles; All, all are ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... the arch enables the owner to suspend it from the thatched ceiling of his hut; and thus the parrot swings about, listening to his master's pious ejaculations. At dusk, many of these men may be seen parading through the bazaar, with their pets in their hands, the latter loudly vociferating that Brahma is the greatest of gods, or that Krishna and Radha were a loving couple; and so on. I have often been amused at this mode of displaying religious ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 429 - Volume 17, New Series, March 20, 1852 • Various
... There is only Brahma, and the rest of us merely imagine that we are,—it is wonderful how the human mind should have found room for such a thought. It is still more wonderful to think that the idea is not so inconsistent as it sounds, and the real difficulty is, rather, to prove ...
— Glimpses of Bengal • Sir Rabindranath Tagore
... four spanking Arabs in gold-mounted trappings,—a fat and elaborate coachman, very solemn,—two tall hurkarus, or avant-couriers, supporting the box, one on either side, with studied symmetry, like Siva and Vishnu upholding the throne of Brahma,—four syces running at the horses' heads, each with his chowree, or fly-flapper, made from the tail of the Thibet cow,—a fifth before, to clear the way,— a basket of Simpkin, which is as though one should say Champagne, behind, and our own banyan, our man of contracts and ready lakhs, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... black cock, and many of the chickens were during the first year perfectly white, but acquired during the second year black feathers; on the other hand, some of the chickens which were at first black became during the second year piebald with white. A great breeder[87] says, that a Pencilled Brahma hen which has any of the blood of the Light Brahma in her, will "occasionally produce a pullet well pencilled during the first year, but she will most likely moult brown on the shoulders and become quite unlike her original colours in the second year." The same thing occurs with Light ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, Volume II (of 2) • Charles Darwin
... breeds are the Brahma, Cochin, and Langshan. These are very large, but rather slow-growing fowls, and are not noted as layers. They are far less popular in America, even as meat-producers, ...
— Agriculture for Beginners - Revised Edition • Charles William Burkett
... reading what he can on the subjects that his proposed narratives treat of and by reading similar narratives already written by others. If he wishes to tell what he knows about rattlesnakes, buzzards, pet coyotes, Brahma cattle, prickly pear, cottonwoods, Caddo Lake, the Brazos River, Santa Fe adobes, or other features of the land, let him bolster and put into perspective his own knowledge by reading what others have said on the matter. Knowledge ...
— Guide to Life and Literature of the Southwest • J. Frank Dobie
... distinctive characteristics of the female sex; in which that of the male is placed, in order to complete this mystic symbol of the ancient religion of the Brahmans; who, in their sacred writings, speak of Brahma ...
— The Sex Worship and Symbolism of Primitive Races - An Interpretation • Sanger Brown, II
... his position aloft in the Trayastrims'as heaven, when he was coming down, there were made to appear three flights of precious steps. Buddha was on the middle flight, the steps of which were composed of the seven precious substances. The king of Brahma-loka [4] also made a flight of silver steps appear on the right side, where he was seen attending with a white chowry in his hand. Sakra, Ruler of Devas, made a flight of steps of purple gold on the left side, where he was seen attending and holding ...
— Chinese Literature • Anonymous
... gods under the same law. I was stared at, hooted at, grinned at, chattered at, by monkeys, by parrakeets, by cockatoos. I ran into pagodas, and was fixt for centuries at the summit, or in secret rooms; I was the idol; I was the priest; I was worshiped; I was sacrificed. I fled from the wrath of Brahma, through all the forests of Asia; Vishnu hated me; Seeva laid wait for me. I came suddenly upon Isis and Osiris; I had done a deed, they said, which the ibis and the crocodile trembled at. I was buried for a thousand years, in stone coffins, ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Vol. V (of X) - Great Britain and Ireland III • Various
... name Mona, applied both to Man and Anglesea, I have little doubt we may find its root in the Sanscrit man, to know, worship, &c., whence we have Manu the son of Brahma, Menu, Menes, Minos, Moonshee, and Monk. The name Mona would seem to have been applied to both islands, as being specially the habitation of the Druids, whose name probably came either from the Celtic Trow-wys, ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 204, September 24, 1853 • Various
... "Mahabarata," Brahma created the most beautiful female being ever known, and called her Tillotama. He presented her in turn to all the gods, in order to witness their wonder and admiration. Siva's desire to behold her was so great that it developed in him ...
— A Series of Lessons in Gnani Yoga • Yogi Ramacharaka
... this confusing set of terms. Brahm[a] is the first person of the Hindu divine triad—the Creator—who along with the other two persons of the triad, has proceeded from a divine essence, Brahma or Brahm. Brahma is Godhead or Deity: Brahm[a], is a Deity, a divine person who has emanated from the Godhead, Brahma. Br[a]hmas or theists, believers in Brahma, are a religious body that originated in Bengal in the nineteenth ...
— New Ideas in India During the Nineteenth Century - A Study of Social, Political, and Religious Developments • John Morrison
... for the cow; and perhaps never doubts that, if he adds to this solemn devotion to Juggernaut, the Gooroos, and the Dewtahs, and performs carefully his ablutions in the Ganges, he shall wash away all his sins, and obtain, by the favor of Brahma, a seat ...
— The world's great sermons, Volume 3 - Massillon to Mason • Grenville Kleiser
... of hair pushed over the screen. But it was black-bound-with-silver, Brahma bless us, and a moment later Martin was giving me one of his ...
— No Great Magic • Fritz Reuter Leiber
... Brahmins; it is that their sacred books are filled with contradictions. But the people do not know of them, and the doctors have solutions ready, figurative meanings, allegories, symbols, express declarations of Birma, Brahma and Vitsnou, which should close the ...
— Voltaire's Philosophical Dictionary • Voltaire
... was notorious, and it was evident to all that he had immense faith in his gods. He was as strict in the performance of his devotions as in the payment of his debts, nor was there any altar, whether of Brahma, or of Vishnu, or of Shiva, at which he failed to offer both prayers and gifts. He observed the rules of religion and of business with admirable regularity, and enjoyed the reputation of one whose conduct ...
— The Unknown Quantity - A Book of Romance and Some Half-Told Tales • Henry van Dyke
... Artistically they are Buddhist transformations of Brahma and of Indra. Enveloped by the absorbing, all-transforming magical atmosphere of Buddhism, Indra can now wield his thunderbolts only in defence of the faith which has dethroned him: he has become a keeper of the temple gates; nay, has even ...
— Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan - First Series • Lafcadio Hearn
... an enormous Brahma cock and ten hens, which number was pretty equally divided into her three classes. She was very proud of her purchases, and indeed they were fine fowls. In the evening I made some allusion to the cost of all this carpenter work, carriage-hire, ...
— Rudder Grange • Frank R. Stockton
... with Nature stood far as the poles asunder from the monotheistic attitude of the Hebrew. The individual, it is true, was nothing in comparison with Brahma, the All-One; but the divine pervaded and sanctified all things, and so gave them a certain value; whilst before Jehovah, throned above the world, the whole universe was but dust and ashes. The Hindoo, wrapt in the contemplation of Nature, described her at great length and for her ...
— The Development of the Feeling for Nature in the Middle Ages and - Modern Times • Alfred Biese
... happy thing to do When twenty years united to a shrew. Released, he hopefully for entrance cries Before the gates of Brahma's Paradise. "Hast been through Purgatory?" Brahma said. "I have been married," and he hung his head. "Come in, come in, and welcome, too, my son! Marriage and Purgatory are as one." In bliss extreme he entered heaven's door, And knew the peace he ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... showing that Christian belief had in some pious minds gone through substantially the same cycle which an earlier form of belief had made ages before in India, when the Supreme Being was represented with one body but with the three faces of Brahma, Vishnu, ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... do not pretend to be philologists—who know what Amen is, and, moreover, how we got it. We got it from our ancestors, the priests of ancient Rome; and they got the word from their ancestors of the East, the priests of Buddh and Brahma." ...
— The Romany Rye • George Borrow
... I must confess that I did not make much of it. In that maze of superstition, the most I could do was to pick up a thread here and there. The yogi had referred to the White Night of Siva, and I soon found out that Siva is one of the gods of Hinduism—one of a great trilogy: Brahma the creator, Vishnu the preserver, and Siva the destroyer. He had also spoken of the attributes of Kali, and, after a little further search, I discovered that Kali was Siva's wife—a most unprepossessing ...
— The Gloved Hand • Burton E. Stevenson
... away, she ran down the path. Polly, with her clutch of Brahma eggs in her hand, that she was taking to the Bannisdale Bridge Farm, leant ...
— Helbeck of Bannisdale, Vol. II • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... edition of these travels, mentioned in the introduction. This place, therefore, may be Lassa, in the kingdom or province of Ou, in Middle Thibet, the residence of the Dalai Lama, situate on a branch of the Sampoo, or great Brahma-pootra, or Barampooter river, which joins the Ganges in the ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 1 • Robert Kerr
... and its dim and portentous traditions! and what a reflex of Nineveh's palmy days are the winged lions exhumed by Layard! What more authentic tokens of Mediaeval piety and patience exist than the elaborate and grotesque carvings of Albert Drer's day? The colossal Brahma in the temple of Elephanta, near Bombay, is the visible acme of Asiatic superstition. And can an illustration of the revival of Art, in the fifteenth century, so exuberant, aspiring, and sublime, be imagined, to surpass the Day and Night, the Moses, and other statues ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... which brought, as it was intended to do, a Third Silesian War; death of about a million fighting men, and endless woes to France and Austria in particular. An exquisite Diplomatist this Kaunitz; came to be Prince, almost to be God-Brahma in Austria, and to rule the Heavens and Earth (having skill with his Sovereign Lady, too), in an exquisite and truly surprising manner. Sits there sublime, like a gilt crockery Idol, supreme over the populations, for near ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVI. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Ten Years of Peace.—1746-1756. • Thomas Carlyle
... relative position may be demonstrated in various ways. The theosophic explanation involving the familiar idea of the "pairs of opposites" would be something as follows. According to the Hindu-Aryan theory, Brahma, that the world might be born, fell asunder into man and wife—became in other words name and form[A] The two universal aspects of name and form are what philosophers call the two "modes of consciousness," one of time, and the other of space. These are the two gates through ...
— The Beautiful Necessity • Claude Fayette Bragdon
... cover of the beehive, and rush into the house shrieking with wrath and terror over the result; Maggie might upset the milk, and John drag the kitten about the room by its tail,—no matter! the father of the family continued to sit unmoved as Brahma. But when Leonard entered the door, some appearance of life began to show itself in Michael. He untwisted his legs, moved a little to make room on the settle, and even went so far as to make an entering wedge of conversation ...
— Flint - His Faults, His Friendships and His Fortunes • Maud Wilder Goodwin
... some of the simpler and more common joys of life. The conception that was implicit in the disciplines of the older philosophies is still open to the philosophy of evolution. Behind it, as behind the "self-hypnotised catalepsy of the devotee of Brahma," the Buddhist aspirations to Nirvana, the apatheia of the Stoics, there may lie a recognition of the worthlessness of the individual: an equable acceptation of one's self as part of a process: a triumph of intelligence over selfishness. Finally, behind the sharp division made between man ...
— Thomas Henry Huxley; A Sketch Of His Life And Work • P. Chalmers Mitchell
... quasi-theological controversy about natural selection, and let me have your opinion when we meet in London. Do you consider that the successive variations in the size of the crop of the Pouter Pigeon, which man has accumulated to please his caprice, have been due to "the creative and sustaining powers of Brahma?" In the sense that an omnipotent and omniscient Deity must order and know everything, this must be admitted; yet, in honest truth, I can hardly admit it. It seems preposterous that a maker of a universe should care about the crop of a pigeon solely to please man's silly fancies. But if ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume II • Francis Darwin
... exclaimed Ludwig, with sudden sharpness. "Don't I love you as the fakir loves his Brahma—as the Carthusian loves his Virgin Mary? Don't I ...
— The Nameless Castle • Maurus Jokai
... fowls came running to be fed, the big Brahma hen who had watched the ducklings was seen wandering forlornly about, and clucking mournfully for her young brood—she could not find them anywhere. Had she been able to speak, she might have told how a large white Aylesbury ...
— The Adventures of A Brownie - As Told to My Child by Miss Mulock • Miss Mulock
... which, he thinks, may therefore be supposed to have been of foreign introduction (Crawfurd's Grammar, Dissertation clxxxiii.). It must be remembered, however, that among the Hindus the goose is worshipped at the festivals of Brahma, and that, being thus in a manner sacred, its Sanskrit name would naturally be in use wherever the Hindu religion spread. Brahma is represented as riding on ...
— A Manual of the Malay language - With an Introductory Sketch of the Sanskrit Element in Malay • William Edward Maxwell
... gnome foraged among his ancient wares, and finally arranged before me some antique bronzes, so-called at least; fragments of malachite, little Hindoo or Chinese idols, a kind of poussah-toys in jade-stone, representing the incarnations of Brahma or Vishnoo, and wonderfully appropriate to the very undivine office of holding papers and ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery In Four Volumes - Mystic-Humorous Stories • Various
... universal, and it formed part of the idea of a Trinity. Among the Hindus, the philosophers speak of the manifested Brahman as Sat-Chit-Ananda, Existence, Intelligence, and Bliss. Popularly, the Manifested God is a Trinity; Shiva, the Beginning and the End; Vishnu, the Preserver; Brahma, the Creator of the Universe. The Zoroastrian faith presents a similar Trinity; Ahuramazdao, the Great One, the First; then "the twins," the dual Second Person—for the Second Person in a Trinity is ever dual, deteriorated in modern days into an opposing ...
— Esoteric Christianity, or The Lesser Mysteries • Annie Besant
... water lilies in the fountains of our city parks, to her man, beast, and insect pay grateful homage. In Egypt, India, China, Japan, Persia, and Asiatic Russia, how many millions have bent their heads in adoration of her relative the sacred lotus! From its center Brahma came forth; Buddha, too, whose symbol is the lotus, first appeared floating on the mystic flower (Nelumbo nelumbo, formerly Nelumbium speciosum). Happily the lovely pink or white "sacred bean" or "rose-lily" of the ...
— Wild Flowers, An Aid to Knowledge of Our Wild Flowers and - Their Insect Visitors - - Title: Nature's Garden • Neltje Blanchan
... Varuna and Salava, and Asmavarsha weapons, I assailed him, profusely showering shafts. But, O king, he instantly swallowed up even all these weapons of mine. And when all those (weapons) had been swallowed up, I discharged the weapon presided over by Brahma. And when the blazing arrows issuing from that weapon were heaped upon him all around, and being thus heaped over by that mighty weapon discharged by me, he increased (in bulk). Then all the world became oppressed with the energy begotten of the weapon hurled by me, and the firmament and all the ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa Bk. 3 Pt. 2 • Translated by Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... who was regarded by the Indian people as the supreme ruler of life and death, was worshipped as the highest ideal of perfection. To become like Brahma, to lose all desires for riches and power, was recognised as the most exalted purpose of existence. Holy thoughts were regarded as more important than holy deeds, and many people went into the desert and lived ...
— The Story of Mankind • Hendrik van Loon
... in Fairport. The walls were white and clean, so were the little ladders that led up to different kinds of roosts, where the fowls sat at night. Some roosts were thin and round, and some were broad and flat. Mrs. Wood said that the broad ones were for a heavy fowl called the Brahma. Every part of the little house was almost as light as it was out doors, on account of ...
— Beautiful Joe - An Autobiography of a Dog • by Marshall Saunders
... her words, scrutinise her actions, punish her body to save her soul: if, indeed, such salvation be possible, for (my tongue falters while I tell it) this girl, this child, the native of a Christian land, worse than many a little heathen who says its prayers to Brahma and kneels before Juggernaut—this girl ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte
... suggested, [Greek: pais], "child," with its numerous derivatives in the scientifical nomenclature and phraseology of to-day. In Sanskrit we have putra, "son," a word familiar as a suffix in river-names,—Brahmaputra, "son of Brahma,"—pota, "the young of an animal," etc. Skeat thinks that our word boy, borrowed from Low German and probably related to the Modern High German Bube, whence the familiar "bub" of American colloquial speech, is ...
— The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought • Alexander F. Chamberlain
... marriage which your Majesty contracted with this lady, his daughter, privately and by mutual agreement. Because By us thou art esteemed the most illustrious Of noble husbands; and Sakoontala Virtue herself in human form revealed. Great Brahma hath in equal yoke united A bride unto a husband worthy of her:— Henceforth let none make blasphemous complaint That he is ...
— Hindu Literature • Epiphanius Wilson
... faculty of looking two ways at once, like Brahma; and my optics were irresistibly ...
— Inez - A Tale of the Alamo • Augusta J. Evans
... philosophers of Europe, who are directly or indirectly indebted to the Upanishads, far from realising their debt, maintain that the Brahma of India is a mere abstraction, a negation of all that is in the world. In a word, that the Infinite Being is to be found nowhere except in metaphysics. It may be, that such a doctrine has been and still is prevalent ...
— Sadhana - The Realisation of Life • Rabindranath Tagore
... Brahma, who is identical with all of us, produces the world by a kind of fall from his primeval state and remains therein until he has redeemed himself. In the latter there is no god; man being his own handiwork and sin and evil the result of his blind striving after individual ...
— The Sceptics of the Old Testament: Job - Koheleth - Agur • Emile Joseph Dillon
... be out of place to say just a word about the Indian gods mentioned in the stories. It must be remembered that the main Hindu gods are three in number. They are all sprung from a common origin, Brahma, but they are quite separate beings. They do not form a trinity, i.e. three in one or one in three. And each of them has a wife and a family. The following genealogical tree will, ...
— Deccan Nursery Tales - or, Fairy Tales from the South • Charles Augustus Kincaid
... that our race is aesthetically more mythological than all others. If we consider the religious teaching of various Aryan peoples, from the most primitive Vedic idolatry to the successive religions of Brahma and Zend, of the Celts, Greeks, Latins, Germans, and Slavs, we shall see how widely they differ from the religious conceptions and ideas of other races. The vein of fanciful creations is inexhaustible, and there is a wealth of symbolic combinations and a profusion ...
— Myth and Science - An Essay • Tito Vignoli
... same time when Brahma-datta was reigning in Benares, the future Buddha was born one of a peasant family; and when he grew up he gained his living ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... of the gods. Therefore, we need not be surprised that in good time a revelation came to this effect: "When man was divided how many did they make him? What was his mouth? What his arms? What his legs and feet? Brahma was his mouth, Kshatriya his arms, Vaisya his thighs, and ...
— Round the World • Andrew Carnegie
... the Brahma-sutras which was composed by the Reverend Bodhayana has been abridged by former teachers; according to their views the words of the Sutras will be explained ...
— The Vedanta-Sutras with the Commentary by Ramanuja - Sacred Books of the East, Volume 48 • Trans. George Thibaut
... can but enable sectarians to understand that all so- called sacred books are essentially the same—that Brahma and Baal, Jupiter and Jehovah are really identical; if I can but make them cognizant of the crime they commit in decrying honest criticism; if I can but convince them that the ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... scriptures consequently give various accounts of its origin from mixed marriages between the four classical castes. "Concerning the traditional parentage of the caste," Sir H. Risley writes, [1] "there seems to be a wide difference of opinion among the recognised authorities on the subject. Thus the Brahma Vaivartta Purana says that the Kumbhakar or maker of water-jars (kumbka), is born of a Vaishya woman by a Brahman father; the Parasara Samhita makes the father a Malakar (gardener) and the mother a Chamar; while the Parasara Padhati ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume IV of IV - Kumhar-Yemkala • R.V. Russell
... when the bowl was full, he emptied it out and began filling it again, his doom consisting in measuring the sea until the judgment-day." This floating on the leaf is suggestive of ancient Indian myths, and reminds us of Brahma sitting on a lotus and floating across the sea. Vishnu, when, after Brahma's death, the waters have covered all the worlds, sits in the shape of a tiny infant on a leaf of the fig tree, and floats on the sea of milk sucking the toe of ...
— The Folk-lore of Plants • T. F. Thiselton-Dyer
... with a certain scorn, shaking his head. No. Every one to his own. He was of his race and lived in voluntary solitude among the whites. Man can do nothing against the sympathies and aversions of the blood. Brahma, who was the sum of divine wisdom, separated all creatures ...
— Luna Benamor • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... which is another and more elaborate system of galleries, rectangular in arrangement and enclosing a cruciform structure, at the centre of which rises a huge tower with a circular base. Fifty towers, decorated with quadruple faces of Brahma, are built at intervals upon the galleries, the whole temple ranking as perhaps the most remarkable of the ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 2, Part 1, Slice 1 • Various
... Clovis, "just as wolves are always ravening from mere force of habit, even after they've hopelessly overeaten themselves. I've got a fine bit of colour painting later on," he added, "where I describe the dawn coming up over the Brahma-putra river: ...
— The Chronicles of Clovis • Saki
... and Hsuan Chuang relates how King Harsha organized a festival during which an image of the Buddha was carried on an elephant while the monarch and his ally the king of Assam, dressed as Indra and Brahma respectively, waited on it like servants.[116] Such festivities were congenial to the Sinhalese, as is attested by the long series of descriptions which fill the Mahavamsa down to the very last book, by what Fa-Hsien saw about 412 and by the ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, An Historical Sketch, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Charles Eliot
... the teaching of the Incarnation. The supreme God, Brahma, had already been incarnated in many persons since the dawn of history. But the highest incarnation of Him was still to come. Well, Jesus Christ was this highest incarnation of Brahma in ...
— The Agony of the Church (1917) • Nikolaj Velimirovic
... through all. That there is a correlation of spiritual forces, and that all the various phenomena are the one manifestation of this Infinite Life, which is called by some God, by others Lord, by others Brahma, by others Jehovah, by others Allah, the meaning of them all being exactly the same as that expressed in the Bible by the name of God, in whom we live, move, and breathe and have our being; that we are the manifestation of Him. In short, our real ...
— A California Girl • Edward Eldridge
... white Brahma chickens, having surreptitiously effected an entrance into the sacred precincts of the flower-garden, were now diligently prosecuting their experiments in entomotomy right in the heart of a border of choice carnations. ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... the daughter of Nilakantha, a fanatical Brahmin priest, who has withdrawn to a ruined temple deep in an Indian forest. In his retreat the old man nurses his wrath against the British invader, prays assiduously to Brahma (thus contributing a fascinating Oriental mood to the opening of the opera), and waits for the time to come when he shall be able to wreak his revenge on the despoilers of his country. Lakme sings Oriental duets with her ...
— A Second Book of Operas • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... the true goddess? Hindoo wisdom long ago regarded the world as the dream of Brahma. Must we hold with Fichte that it is the individual dream of each individual ego? Every fool would then be a cosmogonic poet producing the firework of the universe under the dome of the infinite. But why ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... the deities who ruled enshrined In Elephanta's caves, And Brahma's wailings fill the odorous wind That stirs Amboyna's waves! The ancient gods amid their temples fall, And shapes of some near doom, Trembling and waving on the Future's wall, ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 6 June 1848 • Various
... not recommend him to read the first half of the article; but the second half, by my friend Mr. Sully, is really very good. He will there find it said that in some of the philosophies of ancient India, the idea of evolution is clearly expressed: "Brahma is conceived as the eternal self-existent being, which, on its material side, unfolds itself to the world by gradually condensing itself to material objects through the gradations of ether, fire, water, ...
— Mr. Gladstone and Genesis - Essay #5 from "Science and Hebrew Tradition" • Thomas Henry Huxley
... with barbarism—it is mere fetish; the savages of West Africa are all spirit- worshippers. But there is something philosophic in the worship of the heroes of the human race, and the true hero is the benefactor. Brahma, Jupiter, Bacchus, were all benefactors, and, therefore, entitled to the worship of their respective peoples. The Celts worshipped Hesus, who taught them to plough, a highly useful art. We, who have ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... and grewsome Hades,[FN22] had marked out the prince once more as the victim of his blossom- tipped shafts and his flowery bow. How, indeed, could he hope to escape the doom which has fallen equally upon Brahma the Creator, Vishnu the Preserver, and ...
— Vikram and the Vampire • Sir Richard F. Burton
... the Apostles. They then began to maintain that they had the full and exclusive truth. You see, if I say there is a God: the first cause of the Universe, everyone can agree with me; and such an acknowledgment of God will unite us; but if I say there is a God: Brahma, or Jehovah, or a Trinity, such a God divides us. Men wish to unite, and to that end devise all means of union, but neglect the one indubitable means of union—the search for truth! It is as if people in an enormous building, where the light ...
— The Light Shines in Darkness • Leo Tolstoy
... administration of justice, he had an open mind, absolutely free from prejudice, eager to receive impressions. Born and bred a Muhammadan, he nevertheless consorted freely and on equal terms with the followers of Buddha, of Brahma, of Zoroaster, and of Jesus. It has been charged against him that in his later years he disliked learned men, and even drove them from his court. It would be more correct to say that he disliked the prejudice, the superstition, ...
— Rulers of India: Akbar • George Bruce Malleson
... spot might be safely referred to a period very anterior both to the Newar and Khat Bhotiya dynasties (who preceded the Newars) of Nepaul, since the sacred books of the Hindus leave scarcely any room to doubt, that the religion of Brahma has been established from the most remote antiquity in this secluded valley, where there are nearly as many idols as inhabitants, there not being a fountain, a river, or hill within its limits, that is not consecrated ...
— An Account of The Kingdom of Nepal • Fancis Buchanan Hamilton
... name (pronounce Aj- to rhyme with trudge) meaning both unborn and a goat, is a name of the sun (who was a goat in Assyria), the soul, Brahma, Wishnu, Shiwa, the God of Love, and others. It was also the name of ...
— An Essence Of The Dusk, 5th Edition • F. W. Bain
... we have a bird of ideal size, neither too large nor too small, weighing about three pounds more than the undersized Leghorn, and about three pounds less than the oversized Brahma; we have a bird of ideal color, too—a single, soft, even tone, and no such barnyard daub as the Rhode Island Red; not crow-colored, either, like the Minorca; nor liable to all the dirt of the White Plymouth ...
— The Hills of Hingham • Dallas Lore Sharp
... with four fires around him under the fifth fire, that terrible sun which endlessly devours and resuscitates all living things; who fixes his imagination in turn for weeks at a time on the foot of Brahma, then on his knee, on his thigh, on his navel, and so on, until, beneath the strain of this intense meditation, hallucinations appear, when all the forms of being, mingling together and transformed into each other, oscillate ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot
... with indifference. His mind revolved around a weightier theme than any 'lady of fashion;' like a newly discovered moon, he flew around the earth, and with miraculous speed. He stopped in China to say 'Confucius;' in India, to say 'Brahma;' in Persia, to say 'Ormuzd;' and so on around. My dear Lenox, if you had asked him whether Ormuzd was at peace with all the world, he would have retired into himself, for he hadn't the faintest idea. As for music, or any fine art, he never approached it but ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... Alexandrian Schools were the followers of Indian Yogis, more especially was their theurgy brought from India by Pythagoras, according to the tradition. There still exist in India hundreds of Yogis who follow the system of Patanjali, and assert that they are in communion with Brahma. Nevertheless, most of them are do-nothings, mendicants by profession, and great frauds, thanks to the insatiable longing of the natives for miracles. The real Yogis avoid appearing in public, and spend their lives in secluded retirement and studies, ...
— From the Caves and Jungles of Hindostan • Helena Pretrovna Blavatsky
... in the ken of these new levellers gods and men were put on the same plane. Brahmanism has never forgiven Buddhism for ignoring the gods, and the Hindoos finally drove out the followers of Gautama from India. It eventuated that after a millenium or so of Buddhism in India, the old gods, Brahma, Indra, etc., which at first had been shut out from the ken of the people, by Gautama, found their places again in the popular faith of the Buddhists, who believed that the gods as well as men, were all progressing toward the blessed Nirvana—that sinless life and holy calm, which ...
— The Religions of Japan - From the Dawn of History to the Era of Meiji • William Elliot Griffis
... object in view. A life that is aimless is a sad spectacle, not so bad perhaps as a ruined life, but not much more admirable. The Hindoos believe that the destiny of mankind was lost in the personality by absorption in the Brahma, and most persons are so aimless in life and so devoid of any higher or nobler purpose that they lose their individuality in the great Brahma of society. A man is an individual, not a mere unit in a mass; a personality, not a mere member of a body ...
— Twentieth Century Negro Literature - Or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating - to the American Negro • Various
... Aunt Sarah's spare time was devoted to her chickens, which fully repaid her for the care given them. She was not particular about fancy stock, but had quite a variety—White Leghorns, Brown Leghorns, big, fat, motherly old Brahma hens that had raised a brood of as many as thirty-five little chicks at one time, a few snow-white, large Plymouth Rocks and some gray Barred one. The latter she liked particularly because she said they were much, more talkative than any of the others; they certainly did appear ...
— Mary at the Farm and Book of Recipes Compiled during Her Visit - among the "Pennsylvania Germans" • Edith M. Thomas
... before beginning the discussion of this subject, I beg to remind the reader that a priest of Priapus regarded his sistrum as being just as sacred as a Catholic priest now considers any vessel or robe used in the service of mass, and that the priests of Brahma look on the Lingam with as much reverence and awe as did the Levites on the Ark of the Covenant and the Holy of Holies. Phallic worship is a religion, the oldest abstract religion in existence. Fundamentally the Creator—the Life Giver—is the phallic worshiper's god. Is he very far wrong ...
— Religion and Lust - or, The Psychical Correlation of Religious Emotion and Sexual Desire • James Weir
... and disagreeable; yet it is plain that an improved voice in a beautiful breed would double the bird's value from an aesthetic point of view. As things now are, the fine voices are in a very small minority. Some bad voices in artificial breeds, i.e., those which, like the Brahma and Cochin, diverge most widely from the original type—are perhaps incurable, like the carrion crow's voice; for that bird will probably always caw harshly in spite of the musical throat which anatomists find in it. We can only listen to our birds, and begin experimenting with those ...
— Birds in Town and Village • W. H. Hudson
... road? Fables there are, hallowed by hoary age, Fables and ancient creeds, that men have made To give them power with ignorance and fear; Fables of gods with human passions filled: Fables of men who walked and talked with gods; Fables of kalpas passed, when Brahma slept And all created things were wrapped in flames, And then the floods descended, chaos reigned, The world a waste of waters, and the heavens A sunless void, until again he wakes, And sun and moon and stars resume their rounds, Oceans receding show the mountain-tops, And then the hills and spreading ...
— The Dawn and the Day • Henry Thayer Niles
... and Ceylon. They symbolise Sakya Buddha entering Nirvana. Such a recumbent figure, perhaps the prototype of these, was seen by Hiuen Tsang in a Vihara close to the Sal Grove at Kusinagara, where Sakya entered that state, i.e. died. The stature of Buddha was, we are told, 12 cubits; but Brahma, Indra, and the other gods vainly tried to compute his dimensions. Some such rude metaphor is probably embodied in these large images. I have described one 69 feet long in Burma (represented in the cut), but others exist of much greater ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... a wonderful thing for the appetite, and Vane soon began with a sixteen-year-old growing appetite upon the white bread, home-made golden butter, and the other pleasant products of the doctor's tiny homestead, including brahma eggs, whose brown shells suggested that they must have been boiled ...
— The Weathercock - Being the Adventures of a Boy with a Bias • George Manville Fenn
... the Hindu Scriptures, and of which there are four, the Rig, Yagust, Saman and Atharvan, are asserted to have been revealed by Brahma. The fourth is, however, rejected by some authorities and bears internal evidence of a later composition, at a time when hierarchical power had become greatly consolidated. These works are written in an obsolete Sanscrit, the parent of the more recent idiom. They constitute ...
— History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, Volume I (of 2) - Revised Edition • John William Draper
... his thoughts to another avenue. If Christ is to come again, and the holy word explicitly states that He will, why not Buddha? Why not Brahma? Why not ...? Again a hiatus. This time something snapped in his head. He sank back in his chair. Buddha! Was there ever a Buddha? And if there was not, was there ever such a personality as Christ's? Scholar that he was he knew that myth-building was a pastime for the Asiatic imagination, ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... of language. They can not, it seems, leave off the use of language which is only appropriate to the Christian idea. Their divinity, by their own confession, differs essentially from God, and let them use a different word to describe it. Let them do like their heathen brethren in India, call it Brahma, or whatever else they please, and cease "stealing Heaven's livery to serve the devil." Let them cease to profane religion and offend common sense by giving the name of the glorious Father of Spirits to their million-headed ...
— The Christian Foundation, Or, Scientific and Religious Journal, Volume I, No. 7, July, 1880 • Various
... "There is a twofold law: that of Sankhyas, or intellectual devotion, and that of Yogis, or practical devotion. Men must strive after the highest knowledge, that of Brahma, and also seek after right conduct." "What," asked Arguna, "is the cause of sin?" To which the Holy One replied, "Love and hatred, for hatred is begotten of love, and ignorance of moral distinctions and of anger; from all this comes unreasonableness ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books, Volume XIII. - Religion and Philosophy • Various
... Gautama's time, the brahmas or singers of sacred songs of ancient India formed themselves into a caste or priesthood; and the word "Brahma," from meaning a sacred singer, became the name of the supreme deity; in time, as the nation grew, other gods were taken into the religion. Thus we find in pre-Buddha times the trinity of gods: Brahma, Vishnu, and Siva, with their wives, Sarasvati or ...
— Critical & Historical Essays - Lectures delivered at Columbia University • Edward MacDowell
... whether by force of will, or by ecstatic contemplation, or by potent charms, in communion with the great Spirit of Nature, or with mighty cosmic influences—with Powers of Light or of Darkness; with Oromasdes or Arimanes, Brahma or Siva, Jehovah or Baal; with Zoroastrian Devs, Persian Genii, guardian angels or attendant demons; with the Virgin Queen of heaven—whether as Selene, Astarte, Hecate, or the Madonna; with the Prince ...
— The Faust-Legend and Goethe's 'Faust' • H. B. Cotterill
... am I, I.' As if he had said, 'All is for the soul, and the soul is Vishnu; and animals and stars are transient paintings; and light is whitewash; and durations are deceptive; and form is imprisonment; and heaven itself a decoy.'" All of which we see reproduced in Emerson's poem "Brahma."—"The country of unity, of immovable institutions, the seat of a philosophy delighting in abstractions, of men faithful in doctrine and in practice to the idea of a deaf, unimplorable, immense fate, is Asia; and it realizes this faith in the social institution of caste. On the ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... outward aspects may differ, they are of the same blood and know it. A featherweight bantam cock will stand up to an elephantine brahma and fight him according to the rules of the ring and next minute pay compliments to his lady in language which she will be at no loss to understand. And if the artificial conditions of their life were removed, they would soon all lapse alike to the image of ...
— Concerning Animals and Other Matters • E.H. Aitken, (AKA Edward Hamilton)
... poetry, and one of which we may measure the magnitude by looking at the influence and tendencies of the great Homeric poems of Greece. It is these which give us Kali, Rama, Krishna, Siva, and Vishnu, and which helped to determine the preponderance of the two last over Brahma—Brahma being the Creator; Vishnu, the Preserver; and Siva, the Destroyer. The highest antiquity which has been given to the epics is the second century B.C.; and ...
— The Ethnology of the British Colonies and Dependencies • Robert Gordon Latham
... words used to designate the element bound up with breathing, or the act of breathing, served at the same time to express the relationship of man to the Divine, or even the Divine itself. One need think only of the words Brahma and Atma of the ancient Indians, the Pneuma of the Greeks, the Spiritus of the Romans. The Hebrews expressed the same idea when they said that Jehovah had breathed the breath of life into man and that man in this way ...
— Man or Matter • Ernst Lehrs
... of creative force in history, when great thoughts are born, and then again Brahma, as the Hindoos say, ...
— Ragnarok: The Age of Fire and Gravel • Ignatius Donnelly
... magnificent plumage and sprightly bearing. On even a casual examination it will be discovered that these little fowls are an exact reproduction of the game fowl in miniature. The same identical proportions, symmetry and shape. Take the lordly Brahma and the bantam bearing the same name, and the same exact proportions prevail. And so it should be with the small Boston terrier. They should possess the same proportions and symmetry as the larger. Remember always that when the dog is bred too much away from the bulldog type, a great loss ...
— The Boston Terrier and All About It - A Practical, Scientific, and Up to Date Guide to the Breeding of the American Dog • Edward Axtell
... tell you that when they have written three tons about me, they shall as little understand me as the Cosmos I reflect. Does the pine contradict the rose or the lotusland the iceberg? I am Spain, I am Persia, I am the North Sea, I am the beautiful gods of old Greece, I am Brahma brooding over the sun-lands, I am Egypt, I am the Sphinx. But oh, dear Lucy, the tragedy of the modern, all-mirroring consciousness that dares to look on God face to face, not content, with Moses, to see the back parts; nor, with the Israelites, to gaze on Moses. Ach, ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... success. He was not, properly speaking, insane; he only spoke his mind more freely than many others of his class. The poor fellow died in the Cork union, during the famine. He had lived a happy life, contemplating his own perfections, like Brahma ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume I (of II) • Augustus De Morgan
... Alan threw himself across the blaster housing, frantically locking his arms around the barrel as the robot's treads churned furiously in the sticky mud, causing it to buck and plunge like a Brahma bull. The treads stopped and the blaster jerked upwards wrenching Alan's arms, then slammed down. Then the whole housing whirled around and around, tilting alternately up and down like a steel-skinned water monster trying to dislodge a tenacious crab, while ...
— Survival Tactics • Al Sevcik
... home no less in the interstellar spaces outside of all the atmospheres. The semi-materialistic idealism of Milton was a gross and clumsy medium compared to the imponderable ether of "The Over-soul" and the unimaginable vacuum of "Brahma." He followed in the shining and daring track of the Graius ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. X (of X) - America - II, Index • Various
... beautiful story of Philemon and Baucis, Jupiter and Mercury reward the aged couple who had so hospitably received them by warning them of the approaching deluge. The fables of Phaedrus and Aesop represent Mercury and Demeter as wandering and enjoying the hospitality of men. In India it is Brahma and Vishnu who generally wander. In the Edda, Odin, Loki, and Hoenir thus roam about, or Thor, Thialfi, and Loki. Sometimes Odin appears alone as a horseman, who turns in at night to the smith's house, and gets him to shoe his horse, a ...
— Popular Tales from the Norse • Sir George Webbe Dasent
... fables are caricatures of Rabbinical legends which began with "Lilith," the Spirit-wife of Adam: Nature and her counterpart, Physis and Antiphysis, supply a solid basis for folk-lore. Amongst the Hindus we have Brahma (the Creator) and Viswakarm, the anti-Creator: the former makes a horse and a bull and the latter caricatures them with an ass and a buffalo, ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... are called, but few chosen.' Our ancestors placed a mythical interpretation on this text; but we know that it means:—many are called to the sorrows of life, but few are chosen to inherit the delights of wealth and happiness. Buddha told us, 'Poverty is the curse of Brahma'; Mahomet declared that 'God smote the wicked with misery'; and Christ said, 'The poor ye have always with you.' Why, then, should we concern ourselves about the poor? They are part of the everlasting economy of human society. ...
— Caesar's Column • Ignatius Donnelly
... beams; hence the legends of the first ages begin their thread. In the cosmogony of the Hindoos, it was on the summit of the sacred mountain Maha-meru, which rises in the midst of the seven dwipas, or great peninsulas, like the stalk between the expanded petals of a lotus, that Brahma, the creator, sits enthroned on a pillar of gold and gems, adored by Rishis and Gandharbhas; while the regents of the four quarters of the universe hold their stations on the four faces of the mountain. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 347, September, 1844 • Various |
