ABSTRACT
The Vedic gods melted here into an abstract philosophical Absolute. But there was one remarkable qualification attached to this philosophical Divinity. The Upanishads endorsed the emotional mystical method of Yoga as the way of realisation of this Absolute. The profound effect of the two strains of Vedic culture, the Aryan and the Dravidian, as they were fused together into a perfect whole by gradual stages, will become obvious as traces the development of subsequent philosophy and religion. In the process of the deification of the abstract philosophical conceptions, it was designed to symbolise these three aspects of the Universe or God. As Creator, the Supreme Being was called Brahma, as preserver, Vishnu, and as destroyer, Siva. Patanjali, who defined Yoga as the “repression of the activities of the understanding,” took his stand by the Samkhya hypothesis, that the soul has become lost in the seemingly real world which the buddhi and its complementary functions create out of their experience.
