Brahmana
ब्राह्मण brāhmaṇaThe prose layer of each Veda that explains the rituals and their meaning. (Distinct from Brahman, the absolute, and from a brahmin, a member of the priestly class.)
Where this term appears
- Shruti and Smriti: what counts as Hindu scripture? Scriptures
The word means "compilation." Wrapped around it came the Brahmanas , prose manuals that explain the rituals and the meaning of the hymns, addressed to the priests who had to perform them.
- What are the Puranas? Scriptures
In the earliest usage, back in the Brahmana literature attached to the Vedas, purana was not the title of a class of books at all.
- What are the Upanishads? Scriptures
There are the Brahmanas , the prose manuals that explain the rituals.
- What are the Vedas? Scriptures
Around it accreted the Brahmana ( BRAAH-ma-na ), prose manuals that explain the rituals, justify them, and tell the myths that anchor them.
- Devas and Asuras Deities
Then the Brahmanas, the great ritual prose texts of roughly the early first millennium BCE, become saturated with devasura combat myths: the gods and the asuras contend for this world and that, and the gods win…
- How many gods does Hinduism have? Deities
There is no single fixed number, and the widely repeated figure of 330 million gods rests on a mistranslation. The oldest texts speak of thirty-three gods, not…
- The Gayatri Mantra Worship
Manu 2.36 to 38 gives the age of initiation for brahmana, kshatriya and vaishya, and lists no fourth varna; 2.39 makes the man who misses it a vratya , fallen from the Savitri.
- The Navagraha: The Nine Planetary Powers Deities
The identification is clearest in the Brahmanas, the ritual texts, where it is said plainly that King Soma, the food of the gods, is the Moon.