Crossword-Solution: HMA 3 letters, 2 clues 🏆 scrabble score: 8

And then, in meditation wrapt, he thought Upon Nârâyana, the lord supreme, And Vâsudeva, lord of deities, Šiva, and Brâhma the eternal god, And Krish.na clothed in glory.

After the period of the Brâhmaṇas the theory that deities manifest themselves to the world in avatâras or descents, that is in our idiom incarnations, becomes part of popular theology.

Still we may feel some security as to the sequence, if not the exact dates, of the great divisions in Indian religious literature such as the period of the Vedic hymns, the period of the Brâhmaṇas, the rise of Buddhism, the composition of the two great epics, and the Puranas.

What we call the Rig Veda is strictly speaking the mantras of the Rig Veda or the Rig-Veda-Saṃhitâ: besides this, there are the Brâhmaṇas or ceremonial treatises, the Âraṇyakas and Upanishads containing philosophy and speculation, the Sûtras or aphoristic rules, all comprised in the Veda or Śruti (hearing), that is the revelation heard directly by saints as opposed to Smṛiti (remembering) or tradition starting from human teachers.

The Rig Veda asks whether in the beginning there was being or not being, and the later Vedas and Brâhmaṇas are filled with discussions as to the meaning of ceremonies, which show that the most dreary formalism could not extinguish the innate propensity to seek for a reason.