Hymns XLII and XLIII are short hymns ‘in praise of Brahma, Prayer, or Devotion’. Note Griffith’s translation choice: Brahma here is the neuter Brahman (the sacred utterance, the power of the verse), not the masculine creator-god Brahmā who comes later. The conceptual line that goes from this stratum to the great Upanishadic Brahman is short — by the time of the Chāndogya and Bṛhad-Āraṇyaka, Brahman has become the impersonal absolute that grounds all that is. The hymns here catch the term at an earlier stage, where it still mostly means the holy speech-power of the priest, but is starting to be addressed as a divinity in its own right.