Brahman

Brahman refers to the concept of a supreme cosmic principle or essence which is indispensible to nearly all schools of Hinduism. Typically, Brahman is described to be eternal, omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent, although most philosophers agree it its ultimately indescribable in the span of unenlightened human experience. Brahman forms the basis of all that exists in the universe, rendering it a monistic concept. Not only is Brahman the fabric of all being, but it is also mysteriously described as permeating all of non-being, as well. Even the human soul, or atman, is widely believe by most Hindus to be identical with Brahman. While this notion is first touched upon in the Vedas, it was first developed in detail within the Upanishads, commentaries upon the Vedic texts.

Early Formulations of Brahman

The Vedas

Originally in the Rg Veda, Brahman is presented as a neuter noun, referring to the activity of prayer, with tonal accent on the first syllable. The term was derived from the Sanskrit root brh, referring to the process of growth or increasing. The concept of Brahman, then, seems to touch upon the expansion of breath in the chest which is analogous to the extension of the individual performing the prayer from human to cosmic proportions through prayer. This sense of the term touches upon the power of prayer which is experienced by the person who prays during the recitation of sacred words. Later, the Vedic texts themselves as a fixed body were seen as the embodiment of this power. Through this notion, brahman was seen as the lynchpin of sacrifice, bringing together humanity, deity, and the physical world. Material offerings and the prayers accompanying them connect human beings to the religious ideal, with the spoken words resonating the correspondence created between divinity and sacrificer during ritual actions. Thus, the brahman's power is the human realization through speech of the power of the gods themselves, allowing them to become identical with the greater cosmic order. This notion of brahman, however, was hardly the immutable and eternal force that it would come to be later on, but rather a principle which was constructed or developed by those carrying out the ritual.

The alternate use of brahman in the Vedas is as a masculine noun with tonal accent on the second syllable, and this refers to the person who knows and speaks the aforementioned utterances. This individual came to be seen as one of the four main priests overseeing a ritual in systematized Vedic texts, the silent observer who corrects difficulties in the execution of a sacrifice. Although this and the aforementioned use of brahman in the Vedas are fundamentally different understandings of the term than those that would be developed by the later Vedanta schools, they are no doubt important in the evolution of the term. The power experienced in terms of oneness between the gods brahman (person performing the prayer) by way of the brahman (the prayer itself) is most likely a precursor to the identifications of brahman with atman which became so popular in the Upanishads, as well as the later monistic schools such as Advaita Vedanta.

Alternative etymologies argue that the term is derived from the Sanskrit root brah, which referred to speaking in riddles. Scholars suggest that such a root captures the enigmatic or paradoxical nature of the concept: Brahman is the cosmic riddle which cannot be solved by way of a direct answer, but rather by an answer that must remain unspoken. However, this theory and others concerning this root brah are faced with difficulties created by the multifarious connotations in which the term seems to be used.

Even with these original meanings of brahman in mind, the Vedic texts contain ideas which foreshadowed later formulations of the term Brahman which referred to the monistic essence of the universe. While the Vedic texts are largely centred around henotheism and ritualism, phrases such as Ekam Sat, Vipraha Bahudha Vadanti (Truth is One, though the sages know it as many) (Rig Veda 1:164:46) suggest that Vedic sages had some awareness of a deeper unified reality underlying the multiplicty of physical forms and godly personalities they wrote about. As a whole, the Vedas provide numerous suggestions as to what this monistic essence actually is, such as hiranya-garbha (the golden germ), Agni (the Vedic deity who represents fire who was seen to be present within all things), and narayana (the primordial man), among others.

Upanishads

The term Brahman would be greatly expanded in the Upanishads, commentaries on the Vedas, and its meaning would the sole referent for universal oneness in the Hindu tradition. In the Upanishads, brahman began to bear cosmological significance it did not have in the Vedas, as it came to designate the impersonal causal principle which pervaded the universe. it is here that Brahman is first considered to be the sum total of all that ever is, was, or ever will be, including the human soul, or Atman. Even the individual personal gods played such an important role in early Vedic Hinduism are considered to be manifestations of Brahman.

The Upanishads further attest to the monistic essence of Brahman by famously claiming that it is identical to the human soul, or atman. Perhaps no phrase in the Upanishads better captures the new monistic connotation of Brahman better than Chandogya Upanishad 6.8.7 during a dialogue between Uddālaka and his son Śvetaketu which states "tat tvam asi", which translates to "that thou art." Generally the concept of "that" is believed to refer to the oneness in the universe that subsumes all objects and persons, and has been interpreted to mean that the human soul or consciousness is either wholly or partially equivalent to the Ultimate Reality.

Mythological Understanding

Brahman came to be appreciated in the overt religious tradition through the worship of the creator god Brahman, one third of the trimurti along with Siva and Vishnu, whose name no doubt derives from the same source. Through its more tangible form represented by Brahma, Brahman came to be connected with the aforementioned hiranyagarbha. An original creation story is recounted in the Laws of Manu, where the golden egg is told to have grown up from Brahma's seed which he implanted in primordial waters. From this embryonic state, Brahma is birthed from the golden egg as Purusha, the cosmic man who was particular significance in the earlier myths from the Rg Veda. Brahma the god, bearing traits of the more abstract brahman he represents, is the singular form of existence and as such can only set the physical universe in order through a process of self-reproduction. Hence, he inherits a place in stories involving incest typologies (specifically, sexual reproduction through his daughter Vac, or "speech") parallel with the earlier myths of Prajpati, the creator god of the Vedas. Therefore, it can be said that Brahman carries on earlier creation myths in order to provide concrete illustrations of brahman's more nebulous attributes. However, Brahma has been largely overlooked throughout the history of Hinduism when compared to the other members of the trimuriti, who have seen large cult traditions develop in their names. Instead, Brahman remained an abstract concept.