Brahman

Lesson 6 introduced the Upaniṣads as a body of teaching that grew inside the Vedic texts. This lesson takes up their central word.

Before anything else, a distinction that trips up nearly every beginner, and is worse in Hindi and Sanskrit where the three look almost identical on the page.

brahman (ब्रह्मन्, neuter) — the ground of everything. Not a person, not worshipped in the ordinary sense. This lesson is about this word. Brahmā (ब्रह्मा, masculine) — a deity with a biography, who appears as creator in epic and Purāṇic narrative. You have already met him: he is the fish in the Mahābhārata's flood. brāhmaṇa (ब्राह्मण) — either a member of the priestly varṇa, or one of the prose ritual texts of the Vedic corpus.