rakriti_, or elemental nature, and the soul,
or _atma_, find their source in Brahm; and thus it practically
vitiates the fundamental teachings of both systems. At the same time,
it also teaches the separate existence of individual souls, which is
anti-Vedantic.

As we study carefully the contents of this remarkable work, we are
impressed equally with its excellences and defects, with its sublime
teachings and absurd contentions. Generally speaking, it may be said
to be characterized by notions which are, at the same time, supremely
attractive to the East and unintelligible and repellent to the West.

1. Considering first its teaching concerning God, we find emphasized
that monistic teaching of Hindu Pantheism which has been the dominant
note in the faith of India from the first. But it is not the strictly
spiritual and the unequivocal Pantheism of Vedantism, which is purely
idealistic and which bluntly denies the existence of everything but
Brahm itself. It is rather a mixture of the dual and the non-dual
teaching of the two dominant, contending philosophies of the land.
Krishna tells us that he is not only the supreme Spirit, but also that
the material universe is a part of himself. "O Son of Pritha! I am the
Kratu, I am the Yagna, I am the Svadha, I am the product of the herbs,
I am the sacred verse. I too am the sacrificial butter, I the fire, I
the offering. I am the father of this universe, the mother, the
creator, the grandsire, the thing to be known, the means of
sanctification, ... the source and that in which it merges, the
support, the receptacle, and the inexhaustible seed.... All entities
which are of the quality of goodness, and those which are of the
quality of passion and of darkness, know that they are, indeed, all
from me; I am not in them, but they are in me. The whole universe,
deluded by these three states of mind, develops from the qualities,
does not know me who am beyond them and inexhaustible; for this
delusion of mine, ... is divine and difficult to transcend."

"There is nothing else higher than myself; all this is woven upon me
like numbers of pearls upon a thread. I am the taste in water, I am
the light in the sun and the moon."[2]

[Footnote 2: The translation which I follow here is that of Mr.
Telang, in "The Sacred Books of the East," which is, on the whole,
both exact and more intelligible than most other translations.]

These and many other similar expressions represent an evident e