A History of Religious Ideas, Volume 1: From the Stone Age to the Eleusinian Mysteries

by Mircea Eliade

Let us single out the characteristic features: (1) the soul meets its dāenā, that is, its own Self,60 which preexists it (“lovable though I was”) but which is at the same time the result of its religious activity on earth (“thou didst make me more lovable”); (2) the dāenā presents itself under an archetypized female form, at the same time preserving a concrete appearance; (3) we certainly have here an Indo-Iranian conception, since it is found in the Kauṣītaki-Upaniṣad 1. 3–6: the soul of him who sets out on the “road of the gods” (devayāna) is welcomed, among other divinities, by Mānāsi (the “Intelligent” [fem.]) and Cākshushī (the “Clairvoyant” [fem.]); it then crosses a lake and a stream, enters a city, and arrives before Brahman, who asks it: “Who art thou?”61