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The Beginnings of Hindu Theosophy
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salvation that is knowledge. Countless Brahman names crowd these texts: Naciketas and Çvetaketu, Gārgya and Yājnavalkya, and many others. Even the wives or daughters of great Brahmans, Gārgī and Maitreyī, take part in spiritual tourneys, and occasionally, as in the case of Gārgī in the Great Forest-Upanishad (3. 6 and 8), rise to a subtler appreciation than the Brahman men of the mystery of the world and the riddle of existence.

The scholars mentioned have been attracted to their position by the interesting fact that the Upanishads narrate several times that the ultimate philosophy was in the keeping of men of royal caste, and that these warriors imparted their knowledge to Brahmans. This is put in such a way that the Brahman, after having aired his own stock of theosophy "lays down" before the king's superior insight. The king is then represented as graciously bestowing his saving knowledge upon the Brahman. Once or twice, however, the king turns braggart, and mars his generosity by claiming that the warrior caste are the real thing, and that they alone in all the world are able to illumine these profound and obscure matters. Thus the extreme example of this kind is narrated in two Upanishads.[1] The Brahman Çvetaketu Āruni, ignorant of the doctrine of transmigration, is com-

  1. ↑ Brihad Āranyaka Upanishad 6. 2; Chāndogya Upanishad 5. 3.
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