Part 4

Tycho's marriage with a peasant-girl in 1573 somewhat strained his family relations. He delivered lectures in Copenhagen by royal command in 1574; and in 1575 travelled through Germany to Venice. The execution of his design to settle at Basel was, however, anticipated by the munificence of Frederick II., king of Denmark, who bestowed upon him for life the island of Hveen in the Sound, together with a pension of 500 thalers, a canonry in the cathedral of Roskilde, and the income of an estate in Norway. The first stone of the magnificent observatory of Uraniborg was laid on the 8th of August 1576; it received the finest procurable instrumental outfit; and was the scene, during twenty-one years, of Tycho's labours in systematically collecting materials--the first made available since the Alexandrian epoch--for the correction of astronomical theories. James VI. of Scotland, afterwards James I. of England, visited him at Uraniborg on the 20th of March 1590. But by that time his fortunes were on the wane; for Frederick II. died in 1588, and his successor, Christian IV., was less tolerant of Tycho's arrogant and insubordinate behaviour. His pension and fief having been withdrawn, he sailed for Rostock in June 1597, and re-commenced observing before the close of the year, in the castle of Wandsbeck near Hamburg. He spent the following winter at Wittenberg, and reached Prague in June 1599, well assured of favour and protection from the emperor Rudolph II. That monarch, accordingly, assigned him the castle of Benatky for his residence, with a pension of 3000 florins; his great instruments were moved thither from Hveen, and Johannes Kepler joined him there in January 1600. But this phase of renewed prosperity was brief. After eleven days' illness, Tycho Brahe died on the 24th of October 1601, at Benatky, and was buried in the Teynkirche, Prague.

Tycho's principal work, entitled _Astronomiae Instauratae Progymnasmata_ (2 vols., Prague, 1602-1603) was edited by Kepler. The first volume treated of the motions of the sun and moon, and gave the places of 777 fixed stars (this number was increased to 1005 by Kepler in 1627 in the "Rudolphine Tables"). The second, which had been privately printed at Uraniborg in 1588 with the heading _De Mundi Aetherei recentioribus Phaenomenis_, was mainly concerned with the comet of 1577, demonstrated by Tycho from its insensible parallax to be no terrestrial exhalation, as commonly supposed, but a body traversing planetary space. It included, besides, an account of the Tychonic plan of the cosmos, in which a _via media_ was sought between the Ptolemaic and Copernican systems. The earth retained its immobility; but the five planets were made to revolve round the sun, which, with its entire cortege, annually circuited the earth, the sphere of the fixed stars performing meanwhile, as of old, its all-inclusive diurnal rotation (see ASTRONOMY: _History_). Under the heading _Astronomiae Instauratae Mechanica_, Tycho published at Wandsbeck, in 1598, a description of his instruments, together with an autobiographical account of his career and discoveries, including the memorable one of the moon's "variation" (see MOON). The book was reprinted at Nuremberg in 1602 (cf. Hasselberg, _Vierteljahrsschrift Astr. Ges._ xxxix. iii. 180). His _Epistolae Astronomicae_, printed at Uraniborg in 1596 with a portrait engraved by Geyn of Amsterdam in 1586, were embodied in a complete edition of his works issued at Frankfort in 1648. Tycho vastly improved the art of astronomical observation. He constructed a table of refractions, allowed for instrumental inaccuracies, and eliminated by averaging accidental errors. He, moreover, corrected the received value of nearly every astronomical quantity; but the theoretical purpose towards which his practical reform was directed, was foiled by his premature death.

See J.L.E. Dreyer's _Tycho Brahe_ (Edinburgh, 1890), which gives full and authentic information regarding his life and work. Also Gassendi's _Vita_ (Paris, 1654); _Lebensbeschreibung_, collected from various Danish sources, and translated into German by Philander von der Weistritz (Copenhagen and Leipzig, 1756); _Tyge Brahe_, by F.R. Friis (Copenhagen, 1871); _Prager Tychoniana_, collected by Dr F.I. Studnicka (Prague, 1901), a description of the scanty Tychonian relics which survived the Thirty Years' War and are still preserved at Prague. (A. M. C.)

BRAHMAN, a Sanskrit noun-stem which, differently accented, yields in the two nominatives _Brahma_ (neut.) and _Brahma_ (masc.), the names of two deities which occupy prominent places in the orthodox system of Hindu belief. Brahma (n.) is the designation generally applied to the Supreme Soul (_paramatman_), or impersonal, all-embracing divine essence, the original source and ultimate goal of all that exists; Brahma (m.), on the other hand, is only one of the three hypostases of that divinity whose creative activity he represents, as distinguished from its preservative and destructive aspects, ever apparent in life and nature, and represented by the gods Vishnu and Siva respectively. The history of the two cognate names reflects in some measure the development of Indian religious speculation generally.

The neuter term _brahma_ is used in the _Rigveda_ both in the abstract sense of "devotion, worship," and in the concrete sense of "devotional rite, prayer, hymn." The spirit of Vedic worship is pervaded by a devout belief in the efficacy of invocation and sacrificial offering. The earnest and well-expressed prayer or hymn of praise cannot fail to draw the divine power to the worshipper and make it yield to his supplication; whilst offerings, so far from being mere acts of devotion calculated to give pleasure to the god, constitute the very food and drink which render him vigorous and capable of battling with the enemies of his mortal friend. It is this intrinsic power of fervent invocation and worship which found an early expression in the term _brahma_; and its independent existence as an active moral principle in shaping the destinies of man became recognized in the Vedic pantheon in the conception of a god _Brihaspati_ or _Brahmanaspati_, "lord of prayer or devotion," the divine priest and the guardian of the pious worshipper. By a natural extension of the original meaning, the term _brahma_, in the sense of sacred utterance, was subsequently likewise applied to the whole body of sacred writ, the _tri-vidya_ or "triple lore" of the Veda; whilst it also came to be commonly used as the abstract designation of the priestly function and the Brahmanical order generally, in the same way as the term _kshatra_, "sway, rule," came to denote the aggregate of functions and individuals of the Kshatriyas or Rajanyas, the nobility or military class.

The universal belief in the efficacy of invocation as an indispensable adjunct to sacrifices and religious rites generally, could not fail to engender and maintain in the minds of the people feelings of profound esteem and reverence towards those who possessed the divine gift of inspired utterance, as well as for those who had acquired an intimate knowledge of the approved forms of ritual worship. A common designation of the priest is brahman (nom. _brahma_), originally denoting, it would seem, "one who prays, a worshipper," perhaps also "the composer of a hymn" (_brahman_, n.); and the same term came subsequently to be used not only for one of the sacerdotal order generally, but also, and more commonly, as the designation of a special class of priests who officiated as superintendents during sacrificial performances, the complicated nature of which required the co-operation of a whole staff of priests, and who accordingly were expected to possess a competent knowledge of the entire course of ritual procedure, including the correct form and mystic import of the sacred texts to be repeated or chanted by the several priests. The Brahman priest (_brahma_) being thus the recognized head of the sacerdotal order (_brahma_), which itself is the visible embodiment of sacred writ and the devotional spirit pervading it (_brahma_), the complete realization of theocratic aspirations required but a single step, which was indeed taken in the theosophic speculations of the later Vedic poets and the authors of the Brahmanas (q.v.), viz. the recognition of this abstract notion of the Brahma as the highest cosmic principle and its identification with the pantheistic conception of an all-pervading, self-existent spiritual substance, the primary source of the universe; and subsequently coupled therewith the personification of its creative energy in the form of Brahma, the divine representative of the earthly priest, who was made to take the place of the earlier conception of _Prajapati_, "the lord of creatures" (see BRAHMANISM). By this means the very name of this god expressed the essential oneness of his nature with that of the divine spirit as whose manifestation he was to be considered. In the later Vedic writings, especially the Brahmanas, however, Prajapati still maintains throughout his position as the paramount personal deity; and Brahma, in his divine capacity, is rather identified with Brihaspati, the priest of the gods. Moreover, the exact relationship between Prajapati and the Brahma (n.) is hardly as yet defined with sufficient precision; it is rather one of simple identification: in the beginning the Brahma was the All, and Prajapati is the Brahma. It is only in the institutes of Manu, where we find the system of castes propounded in its complete development, that Brahma has his definite place assigned to him in the cosmogony. According to this work, the universe, before undiscerned, was made discernible in the beginning by the sole, self-existent lord Brahma (n.). He, desirous of producing different beings from his own self, created the waters by his own thought, and placed in them a seed which developed into a golden egg; therein was born Brahma (m.), the parent of all the worlds; and thus "that which is the undiscrete Cause, eternal, which is and is not, from it issued that male who is called in the world Brahma." Having dwelt in that egg for a year, that lord spontaneously by his own thought split that egg in two; and from the two halves he fashioned the heaven and the earth, and in the middle, the sky, and the eight regions (the points of the compass), and the perpetual place of the waters. This theory of Brahma being born from a golden egg is, however, a mere adaptation of the Vedic conception of _Hiranya-garbha_ ("golden embryo"), who is represented as the supreme god in a hymn of the tenth (and last) book of the _Rigveda_. Another still later myth, which occurs in the epic poems, makes Brahma be born from a lotus which grew out of the navel of the god Vishnu whilst floating on the primordial waters. In artistic representations, Brahma usually appears as a bearded man of red colour with four heads crowned with a pointed, tiara-like head-dress, and four hands holding his sceptre, or a sacrificial spoon, a bundle of leaves representing the Veda, a bottle of water of the Ganges, and a string of beads or his bow Parivita. His vehicle (_vahana_) is a goose or swan (_hamsa_), whence he is also called _Hamsavhana_; and his consort is Sarasvati, the goddess of learning.

One could hardly expect that a colourless deity of this description, so completely the product of priestly speculation, could ever have found a place in the hearts of the people generally, And indeed, whilst in theoretic theology Brahma has retained his traditional place and function down to our own days, his practical cult has at all times remained extremely limited, the only temple dedicated to the worship of this god being found at Pushkar (Pokhar) near Ajmir in Rajputana. On the other hand, his divine substratum, the impersonal Brahma, the world-spirit, the one and only reality, remains to this day the ultimate element of the religious belief of intelligent India of whatever sect. Being devoid of all attributes, it can be the object only of meditation, not of practical devotional rites; and philosophy can only attempt to characterize it in general and vague terms, as in the favourite formula which makes it to be _sachchidananda_, i.e. being (_sat_), thinking (_chit_), and bliss (_ananda_). (J. E.)

BRAHMANA, the Sanskrit term applied to a body of prose writings appended to the collections (_samhita_) of Vedic texts, the meaning and ritual application of which they are intended to elucidate, and like them regarded as divinely revealed. From a linguistic point of view, these treatises with their appendages, the more mystic and recondite Aranyakas and the speculative Upanishads, have to be considered as forming the connecting link between the Vedic and the classical Sanskrit. The exact derivation and meaning of the name is somewhat uncertain. Whilst the masculine term _brahmana_ (nom. _brahmanas_), the ordinary Sanskrit designation of a man of the Brahmanical caste, is clearly a derivative of _brahman_ (nom. _brahma_), a common Vedic term for a priest (see BRAHMAN), thus meaning the son or descendant of a Brahman, the neuter word _brahman_ (nom. _brahmanam_) on the other hand, with which we are here concerned, admits of two derivations: either it is derived from the same word _brahman_, and would then seem to mean a _dictum_ or observation ascribed to, or intended for the use of, a Brahman, or superintendent priest; or it has rather to be referred to the neuter noun _brahman_ (nom. _brahma_), in the sense of "sacred utterance or rite," in which case it might mean a comment on a sacred text, or explanation of a devotional rite, calculated to bring out its spiritual or mystic significance and its bearing on the Brahma, the world-spirit embodied in the sacred writ and ritual. This latter definition seems on the whole the more probable one, and it certainly would fit exactly the character of the writings to which the term relates. It will thus be seen that the term _brahmanam_ applies not only to complete treatises of an exegetic nature, but also to single comments on particular texts or rites of which such a work would be made up.

The gradual elaboration of the sacrificial ceremonial, as the all-sufficient expression of religious devotion, and a constantly growing tendency towards theosophic and mystic speculation on the significance of every detail of the ritual, could not fail to create a demand for explanatory treatises of this kind, which, to enhance their practical utility, would naturally deal with the special texts and rites assigned in the ceremonial to the several classes of officiating priests. At a subsequent period the demand for instruction in the sacrificial science called into existence a still more practical set of manuals, the so-called _Kalpa-sutras_, or ceremonial rules, detailing, in succinct aphorisms, the approved course of sacrificial procedure, without reference to the supposed origin or import of the several rites. These manuals are also called _Srauta-sutras_, treating as they do, like the Brahmanas, of the Srauta rites--i.e. the rites based on the _sruti_ or revelation--requiring at least three sacrificial fires and a number of priests, as distinguished from the _grihya_ (domestic) or _smarta_ (traditional) rites, supposed to be based on the _smriti_ or tradition, which are performed on the house-fire and dealt with in the _Grihya-sutras_.

The ritual recognizes four principal priests (_ritvij_), each of whom is assisted by three subordinates: viz. the _Brahman_ or superintending priest; the _Hotri_ or reciter of hymns and verses; the _Udgatri_ or chanter; and the _Adhvaryu_ or offerer, who looks after the details of the ceremonial, including the preparation of the offering-ground, the construction of fire-places and altars, the making of oblations and muttering of the prescribed formulae. Whilst the two last priests have assigned to them special liturgical collections of the texts to be used by them, the _Samaveda-samhita_ and _Yajurveda-samhita_ respectively, the Hotri has to deal entirely with hymns and verses taken from the _Rigveda-samhita_, of which they would, however, form only a comparatively small portion. As regards the Brahman, he would doubtless be chosen from one of those other three classes, but would be expected to have made himself thoroughly conversant with the texts and ritual details appertaining to all the officiating priests. It is, then, to one or other of those three collections of sacred texts and the respective class of priests, that the existing Brahmanas attach themselves. At a later period, when the Atharvan gained admission to the Vedic canon, a special connexion with the Brahman priest was sometimes claimed, though with scant success, for this fourth collection of hymns and spells, and the comparatively late and unimportant Gopatha-brahmana attached to it.

The Udgatri's duties being mainly confined to the chanting of hymns made up of detached groups of verses of the _Rigveda_, as collected in the Samaveda-samhita, the more important Brahmanas of this sacerdotal class deal chiefly with the various modes of chanting, and the modifications which the verses have to undergo in their musical setting. Moreover, the performance of chants being almost entirely confined to the Soma-sacrifice, it is only a portion, though no doubt the most important portion, of the sacrificial ceremonial that enters into the subject matter of the Samaveda Brahmamas.

As regards the Brahmanas of the _Rigveda_, two of such works have been handed down, the _Aitareya_ and the _Kaushitaki_ (or _Sankhayana)-Brahmanas_, which have a large amount of their material in common. But while the former work (transl. into English by M. Haug) is mainly taken up with the Soma-sacrifice, the latter has in addition thereto chapters on the other forms of sacrifice. Being intended for the Hotri's use, both these works treat exclusively of the hymns and verses recited by that priest and his assistants, either in the form of connected litanies or in detached verses invoking the deities to whom oblations are made, or uttered in response to the solemn hymns chanted by the Udgatris.

It is, however, to the Brahmanas and Sutras of the _Yajurveda_, dealing with the ritual of the real offering-priest, the Adhvaryu, that we have to turn for a connected view of the sacrificial procedure in all its material details. Now, in considering the body of writings connected with this Veda, we are at once confronted by the fact that there are two different schools, an older and a younger one, in which the traditional body of ritualistic matter has been treated in a very different way. For while the younger school, the _Vajasaneyins_, have made a clear severance between the sacred texts or mantras and the exegetic discussions thereon--as collected in the _Vajasaneyi-samhita_ and the _Satapatha-Brahmana_ (trans. by J. Eggeling, in _Sacred Books of the East_) respectively--arranged systematically in accordance with the ritual divisions, the older school on the other hand present their materials in a hopelessly jumbled form; for not only is each type of sacrifice not dealt with continuously and in orderly fashion, but short textual sections of mantras are constantly followed immediately by their dogmatic exegesis; the term _brahmana_ thus applying in their case only to these detached comments and not to the connected series of them. Thus the most prominent subdivision of the older school, the _Taittiriyas_, in their _Samhita_, have treated the main portion of the ceremonial in this promiscuous fashion, and to add to the confusion they have, by way of supplement, put forth a so-called _Taittiriya-brahmana_, which, so far from being a real Brahmana, merely deals with some additional rites in the same confused mixture of sacrificial formulae and dogmatic explanations. It is not without reason, therefore, that those two schools, the older and the younger, are commonly called the Black (_krishna_) and the White (_sukla_) Yajus respectively.

Although the ritualistic discussions of the Brahmanas are for the most part of a dry and uninteresting nature to an even greater degree than is often the case with exegetic theological treatises, these works are nevertheless of considerable importance both as regards the history of Indian institutions and as "the oldest body of Indo-European prose, of a generally free, vigorous, simple form, affording valuable glimpses backwards at the primitive condition of unfettered Indo-European talk" (Whitney). Of especial interest in this respect are the numerous myths and legends scattered through these works. From the archaic style in which these mythological tales are usually composed, as well as from the fact that not a few of them are found in Brahmanas of different schools and Vedas, though often with considerable variations, it seems pretty evident that the groundwork of them must go back to times preceding the composition or final redaction of the existing Brahmanas. In the case of some of these legends--as those of Sunah-Sepha, and the fetching of Soma from heaven--we can even see how they have grown out of germs contained in some of the Vedic hymns. If the literary style in which the exegetic discussion of the texts and rites is carried on in the Brahmanas is, as a rule, of a very bald and uninviting nature, it must be borne in mind that these treatises are of a strictly professional and esoteric character, and in no way lay claim to being considered as literary compositions in any sense of the word. And yet, notwithstanding the general emptiness of their ritualistic discussions and mystic speculations, "there are passages in the Brahmanas full of genuine thought and feeling, and most valuable as pictures of life, and as records of early struggles, which have left no trace in the literature of other nations" (M. Muller).

The chief interest, however, attaching to the Brahmanas is doubtless their detailed description of the sacrificial system as practised in the later Vedic ages; and the information afforded by them in this respect should be all the more welcome to us, as the history of religious institutions knows of no other sacrificial ceremonial with the details of which we are acquainted to anything like the same extent. An even more complete and minutely detailed view of the sacrificial system is no doubt obtained from the ceremonial manuals, the Kalpa-sutras; but it is just by the speculative discussions of the Brahmanas--the mystic significance and symbolical colouring with which they invest single rites--that we gain a real insight into the nature and gradual development of this truly stupendous system of ritual worship.

The sacrificial ritual recognizes two kinds of _srauta_ sacrifices, viz. _haviryajnas_ (meat-offerings), consisting of oblations (_ishti_) of milk, butter, cereals or flesh, and _somayagas_ or oblations of the juice of the soma plant. The setting up, by a householder, of a set of three sacrificial fires of his own constitutes the first ceremony of the former class, the _Agny-adhana_ (or (?) _Agny-adheya_). The first of the three fires laid down is the _garhapatya_, or householder's fire, so called because, though not taken from his ordinary house-fire, but as a rule specially produced by friction, it serves for cooking the sacrificial food, and thus, as it were, represents the domestic fire. From it the other two fires, the _anavaniya_, or offering fire, and the _dakshinagni_, or southern fire, used for certain special purposes, are taken. The principal other ceremonies of this class are the new and full moon offerings, the oblations made at the commencement of the three seasons, the offering of first-fruits, the animal sacrifice, and the _Agnihotra_, or daily morning and evening oblation of milk, which, however, is also included amongst the _grihya_, or domestic rites, as having to be performed daily on the domestic fire by the householder who keeps no regular set of sacrificial fires.