The One and the Many: Radhakrishnan’s Concept of Religion

Abstract

An analysis of the one and the many might take as its starting point the distinction between monotheism and polytheism and any kind of evaluation of polytheistic systems might well begin with the question whether the term polytheism should be necessarily be given a pejorative connotation. It does seem to be the case that monotheism is on the whole regarded as superior to polytheism and the view is advanced by some scholars that in the history of the spiritual development of mankind it is possible to discern a movement from the many to the one. In the Vedic religion, for example, it is claimed, that the movement from the many to the one has taken the form of a movement from polytheism, the worship of many gods often associated with natural phenomena such as the storm, the wind, the dawn, fire, and the more sophisticated worship of purusa, hiranyagarbha, and the golden embryo, through what has been referred to as henotheism (the worship of one god though not to the exclusion of other gods), to a form of monotheism to be found in the worship of that One which was in the beginning and which was generated by the power of heat.