The Religions of India

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Title: The Religions of India

Author: Edward Washburn Hopkins

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Language: English

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE RELIGIONS OF INDIA ***

HANDBOOKS ON THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS

EDITED BY MORRIS JASTROW, JR., PH.D.

_Professor of Semitic Languages
in the University of Pennsylvania_

VOLUME I

HANDBOOKS ON THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS

THE

RELIGIONS OF INDIA

EDWARD WASHBURN HOPKINS

Ph.D. (LEIPSIC)

PROFESSOR OF SANSKRIT AND COMPARATIVE PHILOLOGY IN BRYN MAWR COLLEGE

_"This holy mystery I declare unto you:
There is nothing nobler than humanity."_

THE MAH[=A]BH[=A]RATA.

LONDON

EDWARD ARNOLD

37 BEDFORD STREET, STRAND

PUBLISHER TO THE INDIA OFFICE

1896

EDWARD WASHBURN HOPKINS

TO THE MEMORY OF

WILLIAM DWIGHT WHITNEY

THIS VOLUME

IS AFFECTIONATELY DEDICATED

BY THE AUTHOR

PREFATORY NOTE

BY THE EDITOR.

The growing interest both in this country and abroad in the historical
study of religions is one of the noticeable features in the
intellectual phases of the past decades. The more general indications
of this interest may be seen in such foundations as the Hibbert and
Gifford Lectureships in England, and the recent organization of an
American committee to arrange in various cities for lectures on the
history of religions, in the establishment of a special department for
the subject at the University of Paris, in the organization of the
Musée Guimet at Paris, in the publication of a journal--the _Revue de
l'Histoire des Religions_--under the auspices of this Museum, and in
the creation of chairs at the Collège de France, at the Universities
of Holland, and in this country at Cornell University and the
University of Chicago,[1] with the prospect of others to follow in the
near future. For the more special indications we must turn to the
splendid labors of a large array of scholars toiling in the various
departments of ancient culture--India, Babylonia, Assyria, Egypt,
Palestine, Arabia, Phoenicia, China, Greece, and Rome--with the result
of securing a firm basis for the study of the religions flourishing in
those countries--a result due mainly to the discovery of fresh sources
and to the increase of the latter brought about by exploration and
incessant research. The detailed study of the facts of religion
everywhere, both in primitive society and in advancing civilization,
and the emphasis laid upon gathering and understanding these facts
prior to making one's deductions, has succeeded in setting aside the
speculations and generalizations that until the beginning of this
century paraded under the name of "Philosophy of Religion."

Such has been the scholarly activity displayed and the fertility
resulting, that it seems both desirable and timely to focus, as it
were, the array of facts connected with the religions of the ancient
world in such a manner that the summary resulting may serve as the
point of departure for further investigations.

This has been the leading thought which has suggested the series of
Handbooks on the History of Religions. The treatment of the religions
included in the series differs from previous attempts in the aim to
bring together the ascertained results of scholarship rather than to
make an additional contribution, though the character of the scholars
whose coöperation has beep secured justifies the hope that their
productions will also mark an advance in the interpretation of the
subject assigned to each. In accord with this general aim, mere
discussion has been limited to a minimum, while the chief stress has
been laid upon the clear and full presentation of the data connected
with each religion.

A uniform plan has been drawn up by the editor for the order of
treatment in the various volumes, by following which it is hoped that
the continuous character of the series will be secured.

In this plan the needs of the general reader, as well as those of the
student, for whom, in the first place, the series is designed, have
been kept in view. After the introduction, which in the case of each
volume is to be devoted to a setting forth of the sources and the
method of study, a chapter follows on the land and the people,
presenting those ethnographical and geographical considerations,
together with a brief historical sketch of the people in question, so
essential to an understanding of intellectual and religious life
everywhere.

In the third section, which may be denominated the kernel of the book,
the subdivisions and order of presentation necessarily vary, the
division into periods being best adapted to one religion, the
geographical order for another, the grouping of themes in a logical
sequence for a third; but in every case, the range covered will be the
same, namely, the beliefs, including the pantheon, the relation to the
gods, views of life and death, the rites--both the official ones and
the popular customs--the religious literature and architecture. A
fourth section will furnish a general estimate of the religion, its
history, and the relation it bears to others. Each volume will
conclude with a full bibliography, index, and necessary maps, with
illustrations introduced into the text as called for. The Editor has
been fortunate in securing the services of distinguished specialists
whose past labors and thorough understanding of the plan and purpose
of the series furnish a guarantee for the successful execution of
their task.

It is the hope of the Editor to produce in this way a series of
manuals that may serve as text-books for the historical study of
religions in our universities and seminaries. In addition to supplying
this want, the arrangement of the manuals will, it is expected, meet
the requirements of reliable reference-books for ascertaining the
present status of our knowledge of the religions of antiquity, while
the popular manner of presentation, which it will be the aim of the
writers to carry out, justifies the hope that the general reader will
find the volumes no less attractive and interesting.

UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA.

* * * * *

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 1: In an article by the writer published in the
_Biblical World_ (University of Chicago Press) for January,
1893, there will be found an account of the present status
of the Historical Study of Religions in this country.]

* * * * *

CHAPTER I.--INTRODUCTION.

SOURCES.--DATES.--METHODS OF INTERPRETATION.--DIVISIONS OF SUBJECT.

SOURCES.

India always has been a land of religions. In the earliest Vedic
literature are found not only hymns in praise of the accepted gods,
but also doubts in regard to the worth of these gods; the beginnings
of a new religion incorporated into the earliest records of the old.
And later, when, about 300 B.C, Megasthenes was in India, the
descendants of those first theosophists are still discussing, albeit
in more modern fashion, the questions that lie at the root of all
religion. "Of the philosophers, those that are most estimable he terms
Brahmans ([Greek: _brachmanas_]). These discuss with many words
concerning death. For they regard death as being, for the wise, a
birth into real life--into the happy life. And in many things they
hold the same opinions with the Greeks: saying that the universe was
begotten and will be destroyed, and that the world is a sphere, which
the god who made and owns it pervades throughout; that there are
different beginnings of all things, but water is the beginning of
world-making, while, in addition to the four elements, there is, as
fifth, a kind of nature, whence came the sky and the stars.... And
concerning the seed of things and the soul they have much to say also,
whereby they weave in myths, just as does Plato, in regard to the
soul's immortality, judgment in hell, and such things."[1]

And as India conspicuously is a country of creeds, so is its
literature preëminently priestly and religious. From the first Veda to
the last Pur[=a]na, religion forms either the subject-matter of the
most important works, or, as in the case of the epics,[2] the basis of
didactic excursions and sectarian interpolations, which impart to
worldly themes a tone peculiarly theological. History and oratory are
unknown in Indian literature. The early poetry consists of hymns and
religious poems; the early prose, of liturgies, linguistics, "law,"
theology, sacred legends and other works, all of which are intended to
supplement the knowledge of the Veda, to explain ceremonies, or to
inculcate religious principles. At a later date, formal grammar and
systems of philosophy, fables and commentaries are added to the prose;
epics, secular lyric, drama, the Pur[=a]nas and such writings to the
poetry. But in all this great mass, till that time which Müller has
called the Renaissance--that is to say, till after the Hindus were
come into close contact with foreign nations, notably the Greek, from
which has been borrowed, perhaps, the classical Hindu drama,[3]--there
is no real literature that was not religious originally, or, at least,
so apt for priestly use as to become chiefly moral and theosophic;
while the most popular works of modern times are sectarian tracts,
Pur[=]nas, Tantras and remodelled worldly poetry. The sources, then,
from which is to be drawn the knowledge of Hindu religions are the
best possible--the original texts. The information furnished by
foreigners, from the times of Ktesias and Megasthenes to that of
Mandelslo, is considerable; but one is warranted in assuming that what
little in it is novel is inaccurate, since otherwise the information
would have been furnished by the Hindus themselves; and that,
conversely, an outsider's statements, although presumably correct,
often may give an inexact impression through lack of completeness; as
when--to take an example that one can control--Ktesias tells half the
truth in regard to ordeals. His account is true, but he gives no
notion of the number or elaborate character of these interesting
ceremonies.

The sources to which we shall have occasion to refer will be, then,
the two most important collections of Vedic hymns--the Rig Veda and
the Atharva Veda; the Brahmanic literature, with the supplementary
Upanishads, and the S[=u]tras or mnemonic abridgments of religious and
ceremonial rules; the legal texts, and the religious and theological
portions of the epic; and the later sectarian writings, called
Pur[=a]nas. The great heresies, again, have their own special
writings. Thus far we shall draw on the native literature. Only for
some of the modern sects, and for the religions of the wild tribes
which have no literature, shall we have to depend on the accounts of
European writers.

DATES.

For none of the native religious works has one a certain date. Nor is
there for any one of the earlier compositions the certainty that it
belongs, as a whole, to any one time. The Rig Veda was composed by
successive generations; the Atharvan represents different ages; each
Br[=a]hmana appears to belong in part to one era, in part to another;
the earliest S[=u]tras (manuals of law, etc.) have been interpolated;
the earliest metrical code is a composite; the great epic is the work
of centuries; and not only do the Upanishads and Pur[=a]nas represent
collectively many different periods, but exactly to which period each
individually is to be assigned remains always doubtful. Only in the
case of the Buddhistic writings is there a satisfactorily approximate
terminus a quo, and even here approximate means merely within the
limit of centuries.

Nevertheless, criteria fortunately are not lacking to enable one to
assign the general bulk of any one work to a certain period in the
literary development; and as these periods are, if not sharply, yet
plainly distinguishable, one is not in so desperate a case as he might
have expected to be, considering that it is impossible to date with
certainty any Hindu book or writer before the Christian era. For,
first, there exists a difference in language, demarcating the most
important periods; and, secondly, the development of the literature
has been upon such lines that it is easy to say, from content and
method of treatment, whether a given class of writings is a product of
the Vedic, early Brahmanic, or late Brahmanic epochs. Usually, indeed,
one is unable to tell whether a later Upanishad was made first in the
early or late Brahmanic period, but it is known that the Upanishads,
as a whole, _i.e._, the literary form and philosophical material which
characterize Upanishads, were earlier than the latest Brahmanic period
and subsequent to the early Brahmanic period; that they arose at the
close of the latter and before the rise of the former. So the
Br[=a]hmanas, as a whole, are subsequent to the Vedic age, although
some of the Vedic hymns appear to have been made up in the same period
with that of the early Br[=a]hmanas. Again, the Pur[=a]nas can be
placed with safety after the late Brahmanic age; and, consequently,
subsequent to the Upanishads, although it is probable that many
Upanishads were written after the first Pur[=a]nas. The general
compass of this enormous literature is from an indefinite antiquity to
about 1500 A.D. A liberal margin of possible error must be allowed in
the assumption of any specific dates. The received opinion is that
the Rig Veda goes back to about 2000 B.C., yet are some scholars
inclined rather to accept 3000 B.C. as the time that represents this
era. Weber, in his _Lectures on Sanskrit Literature_ (p. 7), rightly
says that to seek for an exact date is fruitless labor; while Whitney
compares Hindu dates to ninepins--set up only to be bowled down again.
Schroeder, in his _Indiens Literatur und Cultur_, suggests that the
prior limit may be "a few centuries earlier than 1500," agreeing with
Weber's preferred reckoning; but Whitney, Grassmann, and Benfey
provisionally assume 2000 B.C. as the starting point of Hindu
literature. The lowest possible limit for this event Müller now places
at about 1500, which is recognized as a very cautious view; most
scholars thinking that Müller's estimate gives too little time for the
development of the literary periods, which, in their opinion, require,
linguistically and otherwise, a greater number of years. Brunnhofer
more recently has suggested 2800 B.C. as the terminus; while the last
writers on the subject (Tilak and Jacobi) claim to have discovered
that the period from 3500 to 2500 represents the Vedic age. Their
conclusions, however, are not very convincing, and have been disputed
vigorously.[4] Without the hope of persuading such scholars as are
wedded to a terminus of three or four thousand years ago that we are
right, we add, in all deference to others, our own opinion on this
vexed question. Buddhism gives the first semblance of a date in Hindu
literature. Buddha lived in the sixth century, and died probably about
480, possibly (Westergaard's extreme opinion) as late as 368.[5]
Before this time arise the S[=u]tras, back of which lie the earliest
Upanishads, the bulk of the Br[=a]hmanas, and all the Vedic poems. Now
it is probable that the Brahmanic literature itself extends to the
time of Buddha and perhaps beyond it. For the rest of pre-Buddhistic
literature it seems to us incredible that it is necessary to require,
either from the point of view of linguistic or of social and religious
development, the enormous period of two thousand years. There are no
other grounds on which to base a reckoning except those of Jacobi and
his Hindu rival, who build on Vedic data results that hardly support
the superstructure they have erected. Jacobi's starting-point is from
a mock-serious hymn, which appears to be late and does not establish,
to whatever date it be assigned, the point of departure from which
proceeds his whole argument, as Whitney has shown very well. One is
driven back to the needs of a literature in respect of time sufficient
for it to mature. What changes take place in language, even with a
written literature, in the space of a few centuries, may be seen in
Persian, Greek, Latin, and German. No two thousand years are required
to bridge the linguistic extremes of the Vedic and classical Sanskrit
language.[6] But in content it will be seen that the flower of the
later literature is budding already in the Vedic age. We are unable to
admit that either in language or social development, or in literary or
religious growth, more than a few centuries are necessary to account
for the whole development of Hindu literature (meaning thereby
compositions, whether written or not) up to the time of Buddha.
Moreover, if one compare the period at which arise the earliest forms
of literature among other Aryan peoples, it will seem very strange
that, whereas in the case of the Romans, Greeks, and Persians, one
thousand years B.C. is the extreme limit of such literary activity as
has produced durable works, the Hindus two or three thousand years
B.C. were creating poetry so finished, so refined, and, from a
metaphysical point of view, so advanced as is that of the Rig Veda.
If, as is generally assumed, the (prospective) Hindus and Persians
were last to leave the common Aryan habitat, and came together to the
south-east, the difficulty is increased; especially in the light of
modern opinion in regard to the fictitious antiquity of Persian
(Iranian) literature. For if Darmesteter be correct in holding the
time of the latter to be at most a century before our era, the
incongruity between that oldest date of Persian literature and the
"two or three thousand years before Christ," which are claimed in the
case of the Rig Veda, becomes so great as to make the latter
assumption more dubious than ever.

We think in a word, without wishing to be dogmatic, that the date of
the Rig Veda is about on a par, historically, with that of 'Homer,'
that is to say, the Collection[7] represents a long period, which was
completed perhaps two hundred years after 1000 B.C, while again its
earliest beginnings precede that date possibly by five centuries; but
we would assign the bulk of the Rig Veda to about 1000 B.C. With
conscious imitation of older speech a good deal of archaic linguistic
effect doubtless was produced by the latest poets, who really belong
to the Brahmanic age. The Brahmanic age in turn ends, as we opine,
about 500 B.C., overlapping the S[=u]tra period as well as that of the
first Upanishads. The former class of writings (after 500 B.C. one may
talk of writings) is represented by dates that reach from circa
600-500 B.C. nearly to our era. Buddhism's _floruit_ is from 500 B.C.
to 500 A.D., and epic Hinduism covers nearly the same centuries. From
500 to 1000 Buddhism is in a state of decadence; and through this time
extend the dramatic and older Puranic writings; while other Pur[=a]nas
are as late as 1500, at which time arises the great modern reforming
sect of the Sikhs. In the matter of the earlier termini a century may
be added or subtracted here and there, but these convenient divisions
of five hundreds will be found on the whole to be sufficiently
accurate.[8]

METHODS OF INTERPRETATION.

At the outset of his undertaking a double problem presents itself to
one that would give, even in compact form, a view of Hindu religions.
This problem consists in explaining, and, in so far as is possible,
reconciling opposed opinions in regard not only to the nature of these
religions but also to the method of interpreting the Vedic hymns.

That the Vedic religion was naturalistic and mytho-poetic is doubted
by few. The Vedic hymns laud the powers of nature and natural
phenomena as personified gods, or even as impersonal phenomena. They
praise also as distinct powers the departed fathers. In the Rig Veda
I. 168, occur some verses in honor of the storm-gods called Maruts:
"Self-yoked are they come lightly from the sky. The immortals urge
themselves on with the goad. Dustless, born of power, with shining
spears the Maruts overthrow the strongholds. Who is it, O Maruts, ye
that have lightning-spears, that impels you within? ... The streams
roar from the tires, when they send out their cloud-voices," etc.
Nothing would seem more justifiable, in view of this hymn and of many
like it, than to assume with Müller and other Indologians, that the
Marut-gods are personifications of natural phenomena. As clearly do
Indra and the Dawn appear to be natural phenomena. But no less an
authority than Herbert Spencer has attacked this view: "Facts imply
that the conception of the dawn as a person results from the giving of
dawn as a birth-name."[9] And again: "If, then, Dawn [in New Zealand
and elsewhere] is an actual name for a person, if where there prevails
this mode of distinguishing children, it has probably often been given
to those born early in the morning; the traditions concerning one of
such who became noted, would, in the mind of the uncritical savage ...
lead to identification with the dawn."[10] In another passage: "The
primitive god is the superior man ... propitiated during his life and
still more after his death."[11] Summing up, Spencer thus concludes:
"Instead of seeing in the common character of so-called myths, that
they describe combats of beings using weapons, evidence that they
arose out of human transactions; mythologists assume that the order of
Nature presents itself to the undeveloped mind in terms of victories
and defeats."[12] Moreover (_a posteriori_), "It is not true that the
primitive man looks at the powers of Nature with awe. It is not true
that he speculates about their characters and causes."[13] If Spencer
had not included in his criticism the mythologists that have written
on Vedic religion, there would be no occasion to take his opinion into
consideration. But since he claims by the light of his comparative
studies to have shown that in the Rig Veda the "so-called nature
gods,"[14] were not the oldest, and explains Dawn here exactly as he
does in New Zealand, it becomes necessary to point out, that apart
from the question of the origin of religions in general, Spencer has
made a fatal error in assuming that he is dealing in the Rig Veda with
primitive religion, uncritical savages, and undeveloped minds. And
furthermore, as the poet of the Rig Veda is not primitive, or savage,
or undeveloped, so when he worships _Dyaus pitar_ [Greek: Zeùs patáer]
as the 'sky-father,' he not only makes it evident to every reader that
he really is worshipping the visible sky above; but in his
descriptions of gods such as Indra, the Dawn, and some other new gods
he invents from time to time, long after he has passed the savage,
primitive, and undeveloped state, he makes it no less clear that he
worships phenomena as they stand before him (rain, cloud, lightning,
etc.), so that by analogy with what is apparent in the case of later
divinities, one is led inevitably to predicate the same origin as
theirs in the case of the older gods.

But it is unnecessary to spend time on this point. It is impossible
for any sober scholar to read the Rig Veda and believe that the Vedic
poets are not worshipping natural phenomena; or that the phenomena so
worshipped were not the original forms of these gods. Whether at a
more remote time there was ever a period when the pre-historic Hindu,
or his pre-Indic ancestor, worshipped the Manes exclusively is another
question, and one with which at present we have nothing to do. The
history of Hindu religions begins with the Rig Veda, and in this
period the worship of Manes and that of natural phenomena were
distinct, nor are there any indications that the latter was ever
developed from the former. It is not denied that the Hindus made gods
of departed men. They did this long after the Vedic period. But there
is no proof that all the Vedic gods, as claims Spencer, were the
worshipped souls of the dead. No _argumentum a fero_ can show in a
Vedic dawn-hymn anything other than a hymn to personified Dawn, or
make it probable that this dawn was ever a mortal's name.

In respect of that which precedes all tradition we, whose task is not
to speculate in regard to primitive religious conceptions, but to give
the history of one people's religious progress, may be pardoned for
expressing no opinion. But without abandoning history (i.e.,
tradition) we would revert for a moment to the pre-Indian period and
point out that Zarathustra's rejection of the _daevas_ which must be
the same _devas_ that are worshipped in India, proves that
_deva_-worship is the immediate predecessor of the Hindu religion. As
far back as one can scrutinize the Aryan past he finds, as the
earliest known objects of reverence, 'sun' and 'sky,' besides and
beside the blessed Manes. A word here regarding the priority of
monotheism or of polytheism. The tradition is in favor of the latter,
while on _a priori_ grounds whoever thinks that the more primitive the
race the more apt it is for monotheism will postulate, with some of
the older scholars, an assumed monotheism as the pre-historic religion
of the Hindus; while whosoever opines that man has gradually risen
from a less intellectual stage will see in the early gods of the
Hindus only another illustration of one universal fact, and posit even
Aryan polytheism as an advance on the religion which it is probable
that the remoter ancestors of the Aryans once acknowledged.

A word perhaps should be said, also, in order to a better
understanding between the ethnologists as represented by Andrew Lang,
and the unfortunate philologists whom it delights him to pommel.
Lang's clever attacks on the myth-makers, whom he persistently
describes as the philologists--and they do indeed form part of that
camp--have had the effect of bringing 'philological theories' into sad
disrepute with sciolists and 'common-sense' people. But the sun-myths
and dawn-myths that the myth-makers discover in Cinderella and Red
Riding Hood, ought not to be fathered upon all philologists. On the
other hand, who will deny that in India certain mythological figures
are eoian or solar in origin? Can any one question that Vivasvant the
'wide gleaming' is sun or bright sky, as he is represented in the
Avesta and Rig Veda? Yet is a very anthropomorphic, nay, earthly
figure, made out of this god. Or is Mr. Lang ignorant that the god
Yima became Jemshid, and that Feridun is only the god Trita? It
undoubtedly is correct to illuminate the past with other light than
that of sun or dawn, yet that these lights have shone and have been
quenched in certain personalities may be granted without doing
violence to scientific principles. All purely etymological mythology
is precarious, but one may recognize sun-myths without building a
system on the basis of a Dawn-Helen, and without referring Ilium to
the Vedic _bila_. Again, myths about gods, heroes, and fairies are to
be segregated. Even in India, which teems with it, there is little, if
any, folklore that can be traced to solar or dawn-born myths. Mr. Lang
represents a healthy reaction against too much sun-myth, but we think
that there are sun-myths still, and that despite his protests all
religion is not grown from one seed.

There remains the consideration of the second part of the double
problem which was formulated above--the method of interpretation. The
native method is to believe the scholiasts' explanations, which often
are fanciful and, in all important points, totally unreliable; since
the Hindu commentators lived so long after the period of the
literature they expound that the tradition they follow is useful only
in petty details. From a modern point of view the question of
interpretation depends mainly on whether one regard the Rig Veda as
but an Indic growth, the product of the Hindu mind alone, or as a work
that still retains from an older age ideas which, having once been
common to Hindu and Iranian, should be compared with those in the
Persian Avesta and be illustrated by them. Again, if this latter
hypothesis be correct, how is one to interpret an apparent likeness,
here and there, between Indic and foreign notions,--is it possible
that the hymns were composed, in part, before the advent of the
authors into India, and is it for this reason that in the Rig Veda are
contained certain names, ideas, and legends, which do not seem to be
native to India? On the other hand, if one adopt the theory that the
Rig Veda is wholly a native work, in how far is he to suppose that it
is separable from Brahmanic formalism? Were the hymns made
independently of any ritual, as their own excuse for being, or were
they composed expressly for the sacrifice, as part of a formal cult?

Here are views diverse enough, but each has its advocate or advocates.
According to the earlier European writers the Vedic poets are
fountains of primitive thought, streams unsullied by any tributaries,
and in reading them one quaffs a fresh draught, the gush of
unsophisticated herdsmen, in whose religion there is to be seen a
childlike belief in natural phenomena as divine forces, over which
forces stands the Heaven-god as the highest power. So in 1869
Pfleiderer speaks of the "primeval childlike naïve prayer" of Rig Veda
vi. 51. 5 ("Father sky, mother earth," etc.);[15] while Pictet, in his
work _Les Origines Indo-Européennes_, maintains that the Aryans had a
primitive monotheism, although it was vague and rudimentary; for he
regards both Iranian dualism and Hindu polytheism as being
developments of one earlier monism (claiming that Iranian dualism is
really monotheistic). Pictet's argument is that the human mind must
have advanced from the simple to the complex! Even Roth believes in an
originally "supreme deity" of the Aryans.[16] Opposed to this, the
'naïve' school of such older scholars as Roth, Müller,[17] and
Grassmann, who see in the Rig Veda an ingenuous expression of
'primitive' ideas, stand the theories of Bergaigne, who interprets
everything allegorically; and of Pischel and Geldner, realists, whose
general opinions may thus be formulated: The poets of the Rig Veda are
not childlike and naïve; they represent a comparatively late period of
culture, a society not only civilized, but even sophisticated; a mode
of thought philosophical and sceptical a religion not only ceremonious
but absolutely stereotyped. In regard to the Aryanhood of the hymns,
the stand taken by these latter critics, who renounce even Bergaigne's
slight hold on mythology, is that the Rig Veda is thoroughly Indic. It
is to be explained by the light of the formal Hindu ritualism, and
even by epic worldliness, its fresh factors being lewd gods, harlots,
and race-horses. Bloomfield, who does not go so far as this, claims
that the 'Vedic' age really is a Brahmanic age; that Vedic religion is
saturated with Brahmanic ideas and Brahmanic formalism, so that the
Rig Veda ought to be looked upon as made for the ritual, not the
ritual regarded as ancillary to the Rig Veda[18]. This scholar
maintains that there is scarcely any chronological distinction between
the hymns of the Rig Veda and the Br[=a]hmana, both forms having
probably existed together "from earliest times"; and that not a single
Vedic hymn "was ever composed without reference to ritual
application"; nay, all the hymns were "liturgical from the very
start"[19]. This is a plain advance even on Bergaigne's opinion, who
finally regarded all the family-books of the Rig Veda as composed to
subserve the _soma_-cult.[20]

In the Rig Veda occur hymns of an entirely worldly character, the
lament of a gambler, a humorous description of frogs croaking like
priests, a funny picture of contemporary morals [describing how every
one lusts after wealth], and so forth. From these alone it becomes
evident that the ritualistic view must be regarded as one somewhat
exaggerated. But if the liturgical extremist appears to have stepped a
little beyond the boundary of probability, he yet in daring remains
far behind Bergaigne's disciple Regnaud, who has a mystical 'system,'
which is, indeed, the outcome of Bergaigne's great work, though it is
very improbable that the latter would have looked with favor upon his
follower's results. In _Le Rig Veda_ [Paris, 1892] Paul Regnaud,
emphasizing again the connection between the liturgy and the hymns,
refers every word of the Rig Veda to the sacrifice in its simplest
form, the oblation. According to this author the Hindus had forgotten
the meaning of their commonest words, or consistently employed them in
their hymns in a meaning different to that in ordinary use. The very
word for god, _deva_ [deus], no longer means the 'shining one' [the
god], but the 'burning oblation'; the common word for mountain,
_giri_ also means oblation, and so on. This is Bergaigne's allegorical
mysticism run mad.

At such perversion of reasonable criticism is the exegesis of the Veda
arrived in one direction. But in another it is gone astray no less, as
misdirected by its clever German leader. In three volumes[21]
Brunnhofer has endeavored to prove that far from being a Brahmanic
product, the Rig Veda is not even the work of Hindus; that it was
composed near the Caspian Sea long before the Aryans descended into
India. Brunnhofer's books are a mine of ingenious conjectures, as
suggestive in detail as on the whole they are unconvincing. His
fundamental error is the fancy that names and ideas which might be
Iranian or Turanian would prove, if such they really could be shown to
be, that the work in which they are contained must be Iranian or
Turanian. He relies in great measure on passages that always have been
thought to be late, either whole late hymns or tags added to old
hymns, and on the most daring changes in the text, changes which he
makes in order to prove his hypothesis, although there is no necessity
for making them. The truth that underlies Brunnhofer's extravagance is
that there are foreign names in the Rig Veda, and this is all that he
has proved thus far.

In regard to the relation between the Veda and the Avesta the
difference of views is too individual to have formed systems of
interpretation on that basis alone. Every competent scholar recognizes
a close affinity between the Iranian Yima and the Hindu Yama, between
the _soma_-cult and the _haoma_-cult, but in how far the thoughts and
forms that have clustered about one development are to be compared
with those of the other there is no general agreement and there can be
none. The usual practice, however, is to call the Iranian _Yima,
haoma_, etc., to one's aid if they subserve one's own view of _Yama,
soma,_ and other Hindu parallels, and to discard analogous features as
an independent growth if they do not. This procedure is based as well
on the conditions of the problem as on the conditions of human
judgment, and must not be criticized too severely; for in fact the two
religions here and there touch each other so nearly that to deny a
relation between them is impossible, while in detail they diverge so
widely that it is always questionable whether a coincidence of ritual
or belief be accidental or imply historical connection.

It is scarcely advisable in a concise review of several religions to
enter upon detailed criticism of the methods of interpretation that
affect for the most part only the earliest of them. But on one point,
the reciprocal relations between the Vedic and Brahmanic periods, it
is necessary to say a few words. Why is it that well-informed Vedic
scholars differ so widely in regard to the ritualistic share in the
making of the Veda? Because the extremists on either side in
formulating the principles of their system forget a fact that probably
no one of them if questioned would fail to acknowledge. The Rig Veda
is not a homogeneous whole. It is a work which successive generations
have produced, and in which are represented different views, of local
or sectarian origin; while the hymns from a literary point of view are
of varying value. The latter is a fact which has been ignored
frequently, but it is more important than any other. For one has
almost no criteria, with which to discover whether the hymns precede
or follow the ritual, other than the linguistic posteriority of the
ritualistic literature, and the knowledge that there were priests with
a ritual when some of the hymns were composed. The bare fact that
hymns are found rubricated in the later literature is surely no reason
for believing that such hymns were made for the ritual. Now while it
can be shown that a large number of hymns are formal, conventional,
and mechanical in expression, and while it may be argued with
plausibility that these were composed to serve the purpose of an
established cult, this is very far from being the case with many
which, on other grounds, may be supposed to belong severally to the
older and later part of the Rig Veda. Yet does the new school, in
estimating the hymns, never admit this. The poems always are spoken of
as 'sacerdotal', ritualistic, without the slightest attempt to see
whether this be true of all or of some alone. We claim that it is not
historical, it is not judicious from a literary point of view, to
fling indiscriminately together the hymns that are evidently
ritualistic and those of other value; for, finally, it is a sober
literary judgment that is the court of appeals in regard to whether
poetry be poetry or not. Now let one take a hymn containing, to make
it an unexceptionable example, nothing very profound or very
beautiful. It is this well-known

HYMN TO THE SUN (_Rig Veda_, I. 50).

Aloft this all-wise[22] shining god
His beams of light are bearing now,
That every one the sun may see.

Apart, as were they thieves, yon stars,
Together with the night[23], withdraw
Before the sun, who seeth all.

His beams of light have been beheld
Afar, among [all] creatures; rays
Splendid as were they [blazing] fires,

Impetuous-swift, beheld of all,
Of light the maker, thou, O Sun,
Thou all the gleaming [sky] illum'st.

Before the folk of shining gods
Thou risest up, and men before,
'Fore all--to be as light beheld;

[To be] thine eye, O pure bright Heaven,
Wherewith amid [all] creatures born
Thou gazest down on busy [man].

Thou goest across the sky's broad place,
Meting with rays, O Sun, the days,
And watching generations pass.

The steeds are seven that at thy car
Bear up the god whose hair is flame
O shining god, O Sun far-seen!

Yoked hath he now his seven fair steeds,
The daughters of the sun-god's car,
Yoked but by him[24]; with these he comes.

For some thousands of years these verses have been the daily prayer of
the Hindu. They have been incorporated into the ritual in this form.
They are rubricated, and the nine stanzas form part of a prescribed
service. But, surely, it were a literary hysteron-proteron to conclude
for this reason that they were made only to fill a part in an
established ceremony.

The praise is neither perfunctory nor lacking in a really religious
tone. It has a directness and a simplicity, without affectation, which
would incline one to believe that it was not made mechanically, but
composed with a devotional spirit that gave voice to genuine feeling.

We will now translate another poem (carefully preserving all the
tautological phraseology), a hymn

To DAWN _(Rig Veda_ VI. 64).

Aloft the lights of Dawn, for beauty gleaming,
Have risen resplendent, like to waves of water;
She makes fair paths, (makes) all accessible;
And good is she, munificent and kindly.

Thou lovely lookest, through wide spaces shin'st thou,
Up fly thy fiery shining beams to heaven;
Thy bosom thou reveals't, thyself adorning,
Aurora, goddess gleaming bright in greatness.

The ruddy kine (the clouds) resplendent bear her,
The blessed One, who far and wide extendeth.
As routs his foes a hero armed with arrows,
As driver swift, so she compels the darkness.

Thy ways are fair; thy paths, upon the mountains;
In calm, self-shining one, thou cross'st the waters.
O thou whose paths are wide, to us, thou lofty
Daughter of Heaven, bring wealth for our subsistence.

Bring (wealth), thou Dawn, who, with the kine, untroubled
Dost bring us good commensurate with pleasure,
Daughter of Heaven, who, though thou art a goddess,
Didst aye at morning-call come bright and early.

Aloft the birds fly ever from their dwelling,
And men, who seek for food, at thy clear dawning.
E'en though a mortal stay at home and serve thee,
Much joy to him, Dawn, goddess (bright), thou bringest.

The "morning call" might, indeed, suggest the ritual, but it proves
only a morning prayer or offering. Is this poem of a "singularly
refined character," or "preëminently sacerdotal" in appearance? One
other example (in still a different metre) may be examined, to see if
it bear on its face evidence of having been made with "reference to
ritual application," or of being "liturgical from the very start."

To INDRA _(Rig Veda_, I.11).

'Tis Indra all (our) songs extol,
Him huge as ocean in extent;
Of warriors chiefest warrior he,
Lord, truest lord for booty's gain.

In friendship, Indra, strong as thine
Naught will we fear, O lord of strength;
To thee we our laudations sing,
The conqueror unconquered.[25]

The gifts of Indra many are,
And inexhaustible his help
Whene'er to them that praise he gives
The gift of booty rich in kine.

A fortress-render, youthful, wise,
Immeasurably strong was born
Indra, the doer of every deed,
The lightning-holder, far renowned.

'Twas thou, Bolt-holder, rent'st the cave
Of Val, who held the (heavenly) kine;[26]
Thee helped the (shining) gods, when roused
(To courage) by the fearless one.[27]

Indra, who lords it by his strength,
Our praises now have loud proclaimed;
His generous gifts a thousand are,
Aye, even more than this are they.

This is poetry. Not great poetry perhaps, but certainly not ground out
to order, as some of the hymns appear to have been. Yet, it may be
said, why could not a poetic hymn have been written in a ritualistic
environment? But it is on the hymns themselves that one is forced to
depend for the belief in the existence of ritualism, and we claim that
such hymns as these, which we have translated as literally as
possible, show rather that they were composed without reference to
ritual application. It must not be forgotten that the ritual, as it is
known in the Br[=a]hmanas, without the slightest doubt, from the point
of view of language, social conditions, and theology, represents an
age that is very different to that illustrated by the mass of the
hymns. Such hymns, therefore, and only such as can be proved to have a
ritualistic setting can be referred to a ritualistic age. There is no
convincing reason why one should not take the fully justified view
that some of the hymns represent a freer and more natural (less
priest-bound) age, as they represent a spirit freer and less
mechanical than that of other hymns. As to the question which hymns,
early or late, be due to poetic feeling, and which to ritualistic
mechanism or servile imitation, this can indeed be decided by a
judgment based only on the literary quality, never on the accident of
subsequent rubrication.

We hold, therefore, in this regard, that the new school, valuable and
suggestive as its work has been, is gone already farther than is
judicious. The Rig Veda in part is synchronous with an advanced
ritualism, subjected to it, and in some cases derived from it; but in
part the hymns are "made for their own sake and not for the sake of
any sacrificial performance," as said Muller of the whole; going in
this too far, but not into greater error than are gone they that
confuse the natural with the artificial, the poetical with the
mechanical, gold with dross. It may be true that the books of the Rig
Veda are chiefly family-books for the _soma_-cult, but even were it
true it would in no wise impugn the poetic character of some of the
hymns contained in these books. The drag-net has scooped up old and
new, good and bad, together. The Rig Veda is not of one period or of
one sort. It is a 'Collection,' as says its name. It is essentially
impossible that any sweeping statement in regard to its character
should be true if that character be regarded as uniform. To say that
the Rig Veda represents an age of childlike thought, a period before
the priestly ritual began its spiritual blight, is incorrect. But no
less incorrect is it to assert that the Rig Veda represents a period
when hymns are made only for rubrication by priests that sing only for
baksheesh. Scholars are too prone to-day to speak of the Rig Veda in
the same way as the Greeks spoke of Homer. It is to be hoped that the
time may soon come when critics will no longer talk about the
Collection as if it were all made in the same circumstances and at the
same time; above all is it desirable that the literary quality of the
hymns may receive due attention, and that there may be less of those
universal asseverations which treat the productions of generations of
poets as if they were the work of a single author.

In respect of the method of reading into the Rig Veda what is found in
parallel passages in the Atharva Veda and Br[=a]hmanas, a practice
much favored by Ludwig and others, the results of its application have
been singularly futile in passages of importance. Often a varied
reading will make clearer a doubtful verse, but it by no means follows
that the better reading is the truer. There always remains the lurking
suspicion that the reason the variant is more intelligible is that its
inventor did not understand the original. As to real elucidation of
other sort by the later texts, in the minutiae of the outer world, in
details of priestcraft, one may trust early tradition tentatively,
just as one does late commentators, but in respect of ideas tradition
is as apt to mislead as to lead well. The cleft between the theology
of the Rig Veda and that of the Br[=a]hmanas, even from the point of
view of the mass of hymns that comprise the former, is too great to
allow us with any content to explain the conceptions of the one by
those of the other. A tradition always is useful when nothing else
offers itself, but traditional beliefs are so apt to take the color of
new eras that they should be employed only in the last emergency, and
then with the understanding that they are of very hypothetical value.

In conclusion a practical question remains to be answered. In the few
cases where the physical basis of a Rig Vedic deity is matter of
doubt, it is advisable to present such a deity in the form in which he
stands in the text or to endeavor historically to elucidate the figure
by searching for his physical prototype? We have chosen the former
alternative, partly because we think the latter method unsuitable to a
handbook, since it involves many critical discussions of theories of
doubtful value. But this is not the chief reason. Granted that the
object of study is simply to know the Rig Veda, rightly to grasp the
views held by the poets, and so to place oneself upon their plane of
thought, it becomes obvious that the farther the student gets from
their point of view the less he understands them. Nay, more, every bit
of information, real as well as fancied, which in regard to the poets'
own divinities furnishes one with more than the poets themselves knew
or imagined, is prejudicial to a true knowledge of Vedic beliefs. Here
if anywhere is applicable that test of desirable knowledge formulated
as _das Erkennen des Erkannten_. To set oneself in the mental sphere
of the Vedic seers, as far as possible to think their thoughts, to
love, fear, and admire with them--this is the necessary beginning of
intimacy, which precedes the appreciation that gives understanding.

DIVISIONS OF THE SUBJECT.

After the next chapter, which deals with the people and land, we shall
begin the examination of Hindu religions with the study of the beliefs
and religious notions to be found in the Rig Veda. Next to the Rig
Veda in time stands the Atharva Veda, which represents a growing
demonology in contrast with _soma_-worship and theology; sufficiently
so at least to deserve a special chapter. These two Vedic Collections
naturally form the first period of Hindu religion.

The Vedic period is followed by what is usually termed Brahmanism, the
religion that is inculcated in the rituals called Br[=a]hmana and its
later development in the Upanishads. These two classes of works,
together with the Yajur Veda, will make the next divisions of the
whole subject. The formal religion of Brahmanism, as laid down for
popular use and instruction in the law-books, is a side of Brahmanic
religion that scarcely has been noticed, but it seems to deserve all
the space allotted to it in the chapter on 'The Popular Brahmanic
Faith.' We shall then review Jainism and Buddhism, the two chief
heresies. Brahmanism penetrates the great epic poem which, however, in
its present form is sectarian in tendency, and should be separated as
a growth of Hinduism from the literature of pure Brahmanism.
Nevertheless, so intricate and perplexing would be the task of
unraveling the theologic threads that together make the yarn of the
epic, and in many cases it would be so doubtful whether any one thread
led to Brahmanism or to the wider and more catholic religion called
Hinduism, that we should have preferred to give up the latter name
altogether, as one that was for the most part idle, and in some degree
misleading. Feeling, however, that a mere manual should not take the
initiative in coining titles, we have admitted this unsatisfactory
word 'Hinduism' as the title of a chapter which undertakes to give a
comprehensive view of the religions endorsed by the many-centuried
epic, and to explain their mutual relations. As in the case of the
'Popular Faith,' we have had here no models to go upon, and the mass
of matter which it was necessary to handle--the great epic is about
eight times as long as the Iliad and Odyssey put together--must be our
excuse for many imperfections of treatment in this part of the work.
The reader will gain at least a view of the religious development as
it is exhibited in the literature, and therefore, as, far as possible,
in chronological order. The modern sects and the religions of the hill
tribes of India form almost a necessary supplement to these nobler
religions of the classical literature; the former because they are the
logical as well as historical continuation of the great Hindu
sectarian schisms, the latter because they give the solution of some
problems connected with Çivaism, and, on the other hand, offer useful
un-Aryan parallels to a few traits which have been preserved in the
earliest period of the Aryans.[28]

* * * * *

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 1: Megasthenes, Fr. XLI, ed. Schwanbeck.]

[Footnote 2: Epic literature springs from lower castes than
that of the priest, but it has been worked over by
sacerdotal revisers till there is more theology than epic
poetry in it.]

[Footnote 3: See Weber, _Sanskrit Literature_, p. 224;
Windisch, _Greek Influence on Indian Drama_; and Lévi, _Le
théâtre indien_. The date of the Renaissance is given as
"from the first century B.C. to at least the third century
A.D." (_India_, p. 281). Extant Hindu drama dates only from
the fifth century A.D. We exclude, of course, from "real
literature" all technical hand-books and commentaries.]

[Footnote 4: Jacobi, in Roth's _Festgruss_, pp. 72, 73
(1893); Whitney, _Proceed. A.O.S._, 1894, p. lxxii; Perry,
_P[=u]shan,_ in the _Drisler Memorial_; Weber, _Vedische
Beiträge._]

[Footnote 5: Westergaard, _Ueber Buddha's Todesjahr_. The
prevalent opinion is that Buddha died in 477 or 480 B.C.]

[Footnote 6: It must not be forgotten in estimating the
_broad_ mass of Br[=a]hmanas and S[=u]tras that each as a
school represents almost the whole length of its period, and
hence one school alone should measure the time from end to
end, which reduces to very moderate dimensions the
literature to be accounted for in time.]

[Footnote 7: _'Rig Veda Collection'_ is the native name for
that which in the Occident is called Rig Veda, the latter
term embracing, to the Hindu, all the works (Br[=a]hmanas,
S[=u]tras, etc.) that go to explain the 'Collection' (of
hymns).]

[Footnote 8: Schroeder, _Indiens Literatur und Cultur,_
p.291, gives: Rig-Veda, 2000-1000 B.C.; older Br[=a]hmanas,
1000-800; later Br[=a]hmanas and Upanishads, 800-600;
S[=u]tras, 600-400 or 300.]

[Footnote 9: _Principles of Sociology_, I. P.448 (Appleton,
1882).]

[Footnote 10: Ib. p. 398.]

[Footnote 11: Ib. p. 427.]

[Footnote 12: Ib. p. 824.]

[Footnote 13: Ib.]

[Footnote 14: Ib. p. 821.]

[Footnote 15: Compare Muir, _Original Sanskrit Texts_, V. p.
412 ff., where are given the opinions of Pfleiderer, Pictet,
Roth, Scherer, and others.]

[Footnote 16: ZDMG., vi. 77: "Ein alter gemeinsam arischer
[indo-iranic], ja vielleicht gemeinsam indo-germanischer
oberster Gott, Varuna-Ormuzd-Uranos."]

[Footnote 17: In his _Science of Language_, Müller speaks of
the early poets who "strove in their childish way to pierce
beyond the limits of this finite world." Approvingly cited,
SBE. xxxii. p. 243 (1891).]

[Footnote 18: The over view may be seen in Müller's _Lecture
on the Vedas_ (Chips, I. p. 9): "A collection made for its
own sake, and not for the sake of any sacrificial
performance." For Pischel's view compare _Vedische Studien_,
I. Preface.]

[Footnote 19: Bloomfield, JAOS xv. p. 144.]

[Footnote 20: Compare Barth (Preface): "A literature
preeminently sacerdotal.... The poetry ... of a singularly
refined character, ... full of ... pretensions to
mysticism," etc.]

[Footnote 21: _Iran und Turan_, 1889; _Vom Pontus bis zum
Indus_, 1890; _Vom Aral bis zur Gang[=a]_ 1892.]

[Footnote 22: Or "all-possessing" [Whitney]. The metre of
the translation retains the number of feet in the original.
Four [later added] stanzas are here omitted.]

[Footnote 23: So P.W. possibly "by reason of [the sun's]
rays"; _i.e._, the stars fear the sun as thieves fear light.
For 'Heaven,' here and below, see the third chapter.]

[Footnote 24: Yoked only by him; literally "self-yoked."
Seven is used in the Rig Veda in the general sense of
"many," as in Shakespeare's "a vile thief this seven
years."]

[Footnote 25: _jet[=a]ram [=a]par[=a]jitam_.]

[Footnote 26: The rain, see next note.]

[Footnote 27: After this stanza two interpolated stanzas are
here omitted. Grassman and Ludwig give the epithet
"fearless" to the gods and to Vala, respectively. But
compare I.6.7, where the same word is used of Indra. For the
oft-mentioned act of cleaving the cave, where the dragon Val
or Vritra (the restrainer or envelopper) had coralled the
kine(i.e. without metaphor, for the act of freeing the
clouds and letting loose the rain), compare I.32.2, where of
Indra it is said: "He slew the snake that lay upon the
mountains ... like bellowing kine the waters, swiftly
flowing, descended to the sea"; and verse 11: "Watched by
the snake the waters stood ... the waters' covered cave he
opened wide, what time he Vritra slew."]

[Footnote 28: Aryan, Sanskrit _aryà, árya_, Avestan _airya_,
appears to mean the loyal or the good, and may be the
original national designation, just as the Medes were long
called [Greek: _Arioi_]. In late Sanskrit _[=a]rya_ is
simply 'noble.' The word survives, perhaps, in [Greek:
_aristos_], and is found in proper names, Persian
Ariobarzanes, Teutonic Ariovistus; as well as in the names
of people and countries, Vedic [=A]ryas, [=I]ran, Iranian;
(doubtful) Airem, Erin, Ireland. Compare Zimmer, BB. iii. p.
137; Kaegi, _Der Rig Veda_, p. 144 (Arrowsmith's
translation, p. 109). In the Rig Veda there is a god
Aryaman, 'the true,' who forms with Mitra and Varuna a triad
(see below). Windisch questions the propriety of identifying
[=I]ran with Erin, and Schrader (p. 584^2) doubts whether
the Indo-Europeans as a body ever called themselves Aryans.
We employ the latter name because it is short.]

* * * * *

CHAPTER II.

PEOPLE AND LAND.

The Aryan Hindus, whose religions we describe in this volume[1],
formed one of the Aryan or so-called Indo-European peoples. To the
other peoples of this stock, Persians, Armenians, Greeks, Italians,
Kelts, Teutons, Slavs, the Hindus were related closely by language,
but very remotely from the point of view of their primitive religion.
Into India the Aryans brought little that was retained in their
religious systems. A few waning gods, the worship of ancestors, and
some simple rites are common to them and their western relations; but
with the exception of the Iranians (Persians), their religious
connection with cis-Indic peoples is of the slightest. With the
Iranians, the Hindus (that were to be) appear to have lived longest in
common after the other members of the Aryan host were dispersed to
west and south[2]. They stand in closer religious touch with these,
their nearest neighbors, and in the time of the Rig Veda (the Hindus'
earliest literature) there are traces of a connection comparatively
recent between the pantheons of the two nations.

According to their own, rather uncertain, testimony, the Aryans of the
Rig Veda appear to have consisted of five tribal groups[3]. These
groups, _janas_, Latin gens, are subdivided into _viças_, Latin vicus,
and these, again, into _gr[=a]mas_. The names, however, are not
employed with strictness, and _jana_, etymologically gens but
politically tribus, sometimes is used as a synonym of _gr[=a]ma_.[4]
Of the ten books of the Rig-Veda seven are ascribed to various
priestly families. In the main, these books are rituals of song as
inculcated for the same rites by different family priests and their
descendants. Besides these there are books which are ascribed to no
family, and consist, in part, of more general material. The
distinction of priestly family-books was one, possibly, coextensive
with political demarcation. Each of the family-books represents a
priestly family, but it may represent, also, a political family. In at
least one case it represents a political body.[5]

These great political groups, which, perhaps, are represented by
family rituals, were essentially alike in language, custom and
religion (although minor ritualistic differences probably obtained, as
well as tribal preference for particular cults); while in all these
respects, as well as in color and other racial peculiarities, the
Aryans were distinguished from the dark-skinned aborigines, with whom,
until the end of the Rig Vedic period, they were perpetually at war.
At the close of this period the immigrant Aryans had reduced to
slavery many of their unbelieving and barbarian enemies, and formally
incorporated them into the state organization, where, as captives,
slaves, or sons of slaves, the latter formed the "fourth caste." But
while admitting these slaves into the body politic, the priestly
Aryans debarred them from the religious congregation. Between the
Aryans themselves there is in this period a loosely defined
distinction of classes, but no system of caste is known before the
close of the first Vedic Collection. Nevertheless, the emphasis in
this statement lies strongly upon system, and it may not be quite idle
to say at the outset that the general caste-distinctions not only are
as old as the Indo-Iranian unity (among the Persians the same division
of priest, warrior and husbandman obtains), but, in all probability,
they are much older. For so long as there is a cult, even if it be of
spirits and devils, there are priests; and if there are chieftains
there is a nobility, such as one finds among the Teutons, nay, even
among the American Indians, where also is known the inevitable
division into priests, chiefs and commons, sometimes hereditary,
sometimes not. There must have been, then, from the beginning of
kingship and religious service, a division among the Aryans into
royalty, priests, and people, i.e., whoever were not acting as priests
or chieftains. When the people becomes agricultural, the difference
tends to become permanent, and a caste system begins. Now, the Vedic
Aryans appear in history at just the period when they are on the move
southwards into India; but they are no irrupting host. The battles led
the warriors on, but the folk, as a folk, moved slowly, not all
abandoning the country which they had gained, but settling there, and
sending onwards only a part of the people. There was no fixed line of
demarcation between the classes. The king or another might act as his
own priest--yet were there priestly families. The cow-boys might
fight--yet were there those of the people that were especially
'kingsmen,' _r[=a]janyas_, and these were, already, practically a
class, if not a caste[6]. These natural and necessary social
divisions, which in early times were anything but rigid, soon formed
inviolable groups, and then the caste system was complete. In the
perfected legal scheme what was usage becomes duty. The warrior may
not be a public priest; the priest may not serve as warrior or
husbandman. The farmer 'people' were the result of eliminating first
the priestly, and then the fighting factors from the whole body
politic. But these castes were all Aryans, and as such distinguished
most sharply, from a religious point of view, from the "fourth caste";
whereas among themselves they were, in religion, equals. But they were
practically divided by interests that strongly affected the
development of their original litanies. For both priest and warrior
looked down on the 'people,' but priest and warrior feared and
respected each other. To these the third estate was necessary as a
base of supplies, and together they guarded it from foes divine and
mortal. But to each other they were necessary for wealth and glory,
respectively. So it was that even in the earliest period the religious
litany, to a great extent, is the book of worship of a warrior-class
as prepared for it by the priest. Priest and king--these are the main
factors in the making of the hymns of the Rig Veda, and the gods
lauded are chiefly the gods patronized by these classes. The third
estate had its favorite gods, but these were little regarded, and were
in a state of decadence. The slaves, too, may have had their own gods,
but of these nothing is known, and one can only surmise that here and
there in certain traits, which seem to be un-Aryan, may lie an
unacknowledged loan from the aborigines.

Between the Rig Veda and the formation or completion of the next Veda,
called the Atharvan, the interval appears to have been considerable,
and the inherent value of the religion inculcated in the latter can be
estimated aright only when this is weighed together with the fact,
that, as is learned from the Atharvan's own statements, the Aryans
were now advanced further southwards and eastwards, had discovered a
new land, made new gods, and were now more permanently established,
the last a factor of some moment in the religious development.
Indications of the difference in time may be seen in the geographical
and physical limitations of the older period as compared with those of
the later Atharvan. When first the Aryans are found in India, at the
time of the Rig Veda, they are located, for the most part, near the
Upper Indus (Sindhu). The Ganges, mentioned but twice, is barely
known. On the west the Aryans lingered in East Kabulistan (possibly in
Kashmeer in the north); and even Kandahar appears, at least, to be
known as Aryan. That is to say, the 'Hindus' were still in
Afghanistan, although the greater mass of the people had already
crossed the Indus and were progressed some distance to the east of the
Punj[=a]b. That the race was still migrating may be seen from the
hymns of the Rig Veda itself.[7] Their journey was to the south-east,
and both before and after they reached the Indus they left
settlements, chiefly about the Indus and in the Punj[=a]b (a
post-Vedic group), not in the southern but in the northern part of
this district.[8]

The Vedic Aryans of this first period were acquainted with the Indus,
Sutlej (Çutudri), Beas (Vip[=a]ç, [Greek: Yphtsis]), Ravi (Parushni or
Ir[=a]vat[=i]); the pair of rivers that unite and flow into the Indus,
viz.: Jhelum (Vitast[=a], Behat), and Chin[=a]b (Asikni,[9] Akesines);
and knew the remoter Kubh[=a] ([Greek: Kôphhên], Kabul) and the
northern Suv[=a]stu (Swat); while they appear to have had a legendary
remembrance of the Ras[=a], Avestan Ra[.n]ha (Rangha), supposed by
some to be identical with the Araxes or Yaxartes, but probably (see
below) only a vague 'stream,' the old name travelling with them on
their wanderings; for one would err if he regarded similarity or even
identity of appellation as a proof of real identity.[10] West of the
Indus the Kurum and Gomal appear to be known also. Many rivers are
mentioned of which the names are given, but their location is not
established. It is from the district west of the Indus that the most
famous Sanskrit grammarian comes, and long after the Vedas an Indic
people are known in the Kandahar district, while Kashmeer was a late
home of culture. The Sarasvati river, the name of which is transferred
at least once in historical times, may have been originally one with
the Arghand[=a]b (on which is Kandahar), for the Persian name of this
river (_s_ becomes _h_) is Harahvati (Arachotos, Arachosia), and it is
possible that it was really this river, and not the Indus which was
first lauded as the Sarasvat[=i]. In that case there would be a
perfect parallel to what has probably happened in the case of the
Ras[=a], the name--in both cases meaning only 'the stream' (like
Rhine, Arno, etc.)--being transferred to a new river. But since the
Iranian Harahvati fixes the first river of this name, there is here a
stronger proof of Indo-Iranian community than is furnished by other
examples.[11]

These facts or suggestive parallels of names are of exceeding
importance. They indicate between the Vedic Aryans and the Iranians a
connection much closer than usually has been assumed. The bearings of
such a connection on the religious ideas of the two peoples are
self-evident, and will often have to be touched upon in the course of
this history. It is of less importance, from the present point of
view, to say how the Aryans entered India, but since this question is
also connected with that of the religious environment of the first
Hindu poets, it will be well to state that, although, as some scholars
maintain, and as we believe, the Hindus may have come with the
Iranians through the open pass of Herat (Haraiva, Haroyu), it is
possible that they parted from the latter south of the Hindukush[12]
(descending through the Kohistan passes from the north), and that the
two peoples thence diverged south-east and south-west respectively.
Neither assumption would prevent the country lying between the
Harahvati and Vitast[=a][13] from being, for generations, a common
camping-ground for both peoples, who were united still, but gradually
diverging. This seems, at least, to be the most reasonable explanation
of the fact that these two rivers are to each people their farthest
known western and eastern limits respectively. With the exception of
the vague and uncertain Ras[=a], the Vedic Hindu's geographical
knowledge is limited by Kandahar in the west, as is the Iranian's in
the east by the Vitast[=a].[14] North of the Vitast[=a] Mount Tricota
(Trikakud, 'three peaks') is venerated, and this together with a Mount
M[=u]javat, of which the situation is probably in the north, is the
extent of modern knowledge in respect of the natural boundaries of the
Vedic people. One hears, to be sure, at a later time, of 'northern
Kurus,' whose felicity is proverbial; and it is very tempting to find
in this name a connection with the Iranian Kur, but the Kurus, like
the Ras[=a] and Sarasvat[=i], are re-located once (near Delhi), and no
similarity of name can assure one of a true connection. If not
coincidences, such likenesses are too vague to be valuable
historically.[15]

Another much disputed point must be spoken of in connection with this
subject. In the Veda and in the Avesta there is mentioned the land of
the 'seven rivers.' Now seven rivers are often spoken of in the Rig
Veda, but only once does this term mean the country, while in the
'Hymn to the Rivers' no less than twenty-one streams are enumerated
(RV. X. 75). In order to make out the 'seven rivers' scholars have
made different combinations, that most in favor being Müller's, the
five rivers of the Punj[=a]b together with the Kabul and (Swat or)
Sarasvat[=i]. But in point of fact 'seven' quite as often means many,
as it does an exact number, and this, the older use, may well be
applied here. It is quite impossible to identify the seven, and it is
probable that no Vedic poet ever imagined them to be a group of this
precise number. It would be far easier to select a group of seven
conspicuous rivers, if anywhere, on the west of the Indus. A very
natural group from the Iranian side would be the Her[=i]r[=u]d,
Hilmund, Arghand[=a]b, Kurum, Kabul, Indus, and Vitast[=a]. Against
this, however, can be urged that the term 'seven rivers' may be
Bactrian, older than the Vedic period; and that, in particular, the
Avesta distinguishes Vaikerta, Urva, and other districts from the
'seven rivers.' It is best to remain uncertain in so doubtful a
matter, bearing in mind that even Kurukshetra, the 'holy land,' is
said to-day to be watered by 'seven streams,' although some say nine;
apropos of which fact Cunningham remarks, giving modern examples, that
"the Hindus invariably assign seven branches to all their rivers."[16]

Within the Punj[=a]b, the Vedic Aryans, now at last really 'Hindus,'
having extended themselves to the Çutudri (Çatadru, Sutlej), a
formidable barrier, and eventually having crossed even this, the last
tributary's of the Indus, descended to the jumna (Yamun[=a]), over the
little stream called 'the Rocky' (Drishadvat[=i]) and the lesser
Sarasvat[=i], southeast from Lahore and near Delhi, in the region
Kurukshetra, afterwards famed as the seat of the great epic war, and
always regarded as holy in the highest degree.

Not till the time of the Atharva Veda do the Aryans appear as far east
as Benares (V[=a]r[=a]nas[=i], on the 'Varan[=a]vat[=i]'), though the
Sarayu is mentioned in the Rik. But this scarcely is the tributary of
the Ganges, Gogra, for the name seems to refer to a more western
stream, since it is associated with the Gomat[=i] (Gomal). One may
surmise that in the time of the Rig Veda the Aryans knew only by name
the country east of Lucknow. It is in the Punj[=a]b and a little to
the west and east of it (how far it is impossible to state with
accuracy) where lies the real theatre of activity of the Rig Vedic
people.

Some scholars believe that this people had already heard of the two
oceans. This point again is doubtful in the extreme. No descriptions
imply a knowledge of ocean, and the word for ocean means merely a
'confluence' of waters, or in general a great oceanic body of water
like the air. As the Indus is too wide to be seen across, the name may
apply in most cases to this river. An allusion to 'eastern and western
floods,'[17] which is held by some to be conclusive evidence for a
knowledge of the two seas, is taken by others to apply to the
air-oceans. The expression may apply simply to rivers, for it is said
that the Vip[=a]ç and Çutudr[=i] empty into the 'ocean', i.e., the
Indus or the Çutudr[=i]'s continuation.[18] One late verse alone
speaks of the Sarasvat[=i] pouring into the ocean, and this would
indicate the Arabian Sea.[19] Whether the Bay of Bengal was known,
even by hearsay and in the latest time of this period, remains
uncertain. As a body the Aryans of the Rig Veda were certainly not
acquainted with either ocean. Some straggling adventurers probably
pushed down the Indus, but Zimmer doubtless is correct in asserting
that the popular emigration did not extend further south than the
junction of the Indus and the Pa[=n]canada (the united five
rivers).[20] The extreme south-eastern geographical limit of the Rig
Vedic people may be reckoned (not, however, in Oldenberg's opinion,
with any great certainty) as being in Northern Beh[=a]r (M[=a]gadha).
The great desert, Marusthala, formed an impassable southern obstacle
for the first immigrants.[21]

On the other hand, the two oceans are well known to the Atharva Veda,
while the geographical (and hence chronological) difference between
the Rik and the Atharvan is furthermore illustrated by the following
facts: in the Rig Veda wolf and lion are the most formidable beasts;
the tiger is unknown and the elephant seldom alluded to; while in the
Atharvan the tiger has taken the lion's place and the elephant is a
more familiar figure. Now the tiger has his domicile in the swampy
land about Benares, to which point is come the Atharvan Aryan, but not
the Rig Vedic people. Here too, in the Atharvan, the panther is first
mentioned, and for the first time silver and iron are certainly
referred to. In the Rig Veda the metals are bronze and gold, silver
and iron being unknown.[22] Not less significant are the trees. The
ficus religiosa, the tree later called the 'tree of the gods'
(_deva-sadana, açvattha_), under which are fabled to sit the
divinities in heaven, is scarcely known in the Rig Veda, but is well
known in the Atharvan; while India's grandest tree, the _nyagrodha_,
ficus indica, is known to the Atharvan and Brahmanic period, but is
utterly foreign to the Rig Veda. Zimmer deems it no less significant
that fishes are spoken of in the Atharvan and are mentioned only once
in the Rig Veda, but this may indicate a geographical difference less
than one of custom. In only one doubtful passage is the north-east
monsoon alluded to. The storm so vividly described in the Rig Veda is
the south-west monsoon which is felt in the northern Punj[=a]b. The
north-east monsoon is felt to the southeast of the Punj[=a]b, possibly
another indication of geographical extension, withal within the limits
of the Rig Veda itself.

The seat of culture shifts in the Brahmanic period, which follows that
of the Vedic poems, and is found partly in the 'holy land' of the
west, and partly in the east (Beh[=a]r, Tirhut).[23] The literature of
this period comes from Aryans that have passed out of the Punj[=a]b.
Probably, as we have said, settlements were left all along the line of
progress. Even before the wider knowledge of the post-Alexandrine
imperial age (at which time there was a north-western military
retrogression), and, from the Vedic point of view, as late as the end
of the Brahmanic period, in the time of the Upanishads, the northwest
seems still to have been familiarly known.[24]

* * * * *

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 1: We take this opportunity of stating that by the
religions of the Aryan Hindus we mean the religions of a
people who, undoubtedly, were full-blooded Aryans at first,
however much their blood may have been diluted later by
un-Aryan admixture. Till the time of Buddhism the religious
literature is fairly Aryan. In the period of "Hinduism"
neither people nor religion can claim to be quite Aryan.]

[Footnote 2: If, as thinks Schrader, the Aryans' original
seat was on the Volga, then one must imagine the
Indo-Iranians to have kept together in a south-eastern
emigration.]

[Footnote 3: That is to say, frequent reference is made to
'five tribes.' Some scholars deny that the tribes are Aryan
alone, and claim that 'five,' like seven, means 'many.']

[Footnote 4: RV. III. 33. 11; 53. 12. Zimmer, _Altindisches
Leben_, p. 160, incorrectly identifies _viç_ with tribus
(Leist, _Rechtsgeschichte_, p. 105).]

[Footnote 5: Viçv[=a]mitra. A few of the hymns are not
ascribed to priests at all (some were made by women; some by
'royal-seers,' _i.e._ kings, or, at least, not priests).]

[Footnote 6: Caste, at first, means 'pure,' and signifies
that there is a moral barrier between the caste and outcast.
The word now practically means class, even impure class. The
native word means 'color,' and the first formal distinction
was national, (white) Aryan and 'black-man.' The precedent
class-distinctions among the Aryans themselves became fixed
in course of time, and the lines between Aryans, in some
regards, were drawn almost as sharply as between Aryan and
slave.]

[Footnote 7: Compare RV. iii. 33, and in I. 131. 5, the
words: 'God Indra, thou didst help thy suppliants; one river
after another they gained who pursued glory.']

[Footnote 8: Thomas, _Rivers of the Vedas_ (JRAS. xv. 357
ff.; Zimmer, loc. cit. cap. 1).]

[Footnote 9: Later called the Candrabh[=a]ga. For the Jumna
and Sarayu see below.]

[Footnote 10: This is the error into which falls Brunnhofer,
whose theory that the Vedic Aryans were still settled near
the Caspian has been criticised above (p. 15).]

[Footnote 11: Compare Geiger, _Ostiranische Cultur_, p. 81.
See also Muir, OST. ii. p. 355.]

[Footnote 12: Lassen, I. p. 616, decided in favor of the
western passes of the Hindukush.]

[Footnote 13: From Kandahar in Afghanistan to a point a
little west of Lahore. In the former district, according to
the Avesta, the dead are buried (an early Indian custom, not
Iranian).]

[Footnote 14: Geiger identifies the Vita[=g]uhaiti or
Vitanghvati with the Oxus, but this is improbable. It lies
in the extreme east and forms the boundary between the true
believers and the 'demon-worshippers' (Yasht, 5, 77; Geiger,
_loc. cit._ p. 131, note 5). The Persian name is the same
with Vitast[=a], which is located in the Punj[=a]b.]

[Footnote 15: On the Kurus compare Zimmer (loc. cit.), who
thinks Kashmeer is meant, and Geiger, loc. cit. p. 39. Other
geographical reminiscences may lie in Vedic and Brahmanic
allusions to Bactria, Balkh (AV.); to the Derbiker (around
Meru? RV.), and to Manu's mountain, whence he descended
after the flood (Naubandhana): _Çatapatha Br[=a]hmana_, I.
8. 1, 6, 'Manu's descent'.]

[Footnote 16: _Arch. Survey_, xiv. p. 89; Thomas, loc. cit.
p. 363.]

[Footnote 17: RV. x. 136. 5.]

[Footnote 18: RV. iii. 33. 2.]

[Footnote 19: RV. vii. 95. 2. Here the Sarasvat[=i] can be
only the Indus.]

[Footnote 20: Pa[=n]ca-nada, Punjnud, Persian 'Punj[=a]b,'
the five streams, Vitas[=a], Asikn[=i], Ir[=a]vat[=i],
Vip[=a]ç, Çutudr[=i]. The Punjnud point is slowly moving up
stream; Vyse, JRAS. x. 323. The Sarayu may be the
Her[=i]r[=u]d, Geiger, loc. cit. p. 72.]

[Footnote 21: Muir, OST. ii. 351; Zimmer, loc. cit. p. 51
identifies the _K[=i]katas_ of RV. iii. 53. 14 with the
inhabitants of Northern Beh[=a]r. Marusthala is called
simply 'the desert.']

[Footnote 22: The earlier _áyas_, Latin _aes_, means bronze
not iron, as Zimmer has shown, loc. cit. p. 51. Pischel,
_Vedische Studien_, I, shows that elephants are mentioned
more often than was supposed (but rarely in family-books).]

[Footnote 23: Weber, _Indische Studien,_ I. p. 228;
Oldenberg, _Buddha_, pp. 399 ff., 410.]

[Footnote 24: Very lately (1893) Franke has sought to show
that the P[=a]li dialect of India is in part referable to
the western districts (Kandahar), and has made out an
interesting case for his novel theory (ZDMG. xlvii. p.
595).]

* * * * *

CHAPTER III.

THE RIG VEDA. THE UPPER GODS.

The hymns of the Rig Veda may be divided into three classes, those in
which are especially lauded the older divinities, those in which
appear as most prominent the sacrificial gods, and those in which a
long-weakened polytheism is giving place to the light of a clearer
pantheism. In each category there are hymns of different age and
quality, for neither did the more ancient with the growth of new
divinities cease to be revered, nor did pantheism inhibit the formal
acknowledgment of the primitive pantheon. The cult once established
persisted, and even when, at a later time, all the gods had been
reduced to nominal fractions of the All-god, their ritualistic
individuality still was preserved. The chief reason for this lies in
the nature of these gods and in the attitude of the worshipper. No
matter how much the cult of later gods might prevail, the other gods,
who represented the daily phenomena of nature, were still visible,
awe-inspiring, divine. The firmest pantheist questioned not the
advisability of propitiating the sun-god, however much he might regard
this god as but a part of one that was greater. Belief in India was
never so philosophical that the believer did not dread the lightning,
and seek to avert it by praying to the special god that wielded it.
But active veneration in later times was extended in fact only to the
strong Powers, while the more passive divinities, although they were
kept as a matter of form in the ceremonial, yet had in reality only
tongue-worshippers.

With some few exceptions, however, it will be found impossible to say
whether any one deity belonged to the first pantheon.

The best one can do is to separate the mass of gods from those that
become the popular gods, and endeavor to learn what was the character
of each, and what were the conceptions of the poets in regard both to
his nature, and to his relations with man. A different grouping of the
gods (that indicated below) will be followed, therefore, in our
exposition.

After what has been said in the introductory chapter concerning the
necessity of distinguishing between good and bad poetry, it may be
regarded as incumbent upon us to seek to make such a division of the
hymns as shall illustrate our words. But we shall not attempt to do
this here, because the distinction between late mechanical and poetic
hymns is either very evident, and it would be superfluous to burden
the pages with the trash contained in the former,[1] or the
distinction is one liable to reversion at the hands of those critics
whose judgment differs from ours, for there are of course some hymns
that to one may seem poetical and to another, artificial. Moreover, we
admit that hymns of true feeling may be composed late as well as
early, while as to beauty of style the chances are that the best
literary production will be found among the latest rather than among
the earliest hymns.

It would, indeed, be admissible, if one had any certainty in regard to
the age of the different parts of the Rig Veda, simply to divide the
hymns into early, middle, and late, as they are sometimes divided in
philological works, but here one rests on the weakest of all supports
for historical judgment, a linguistic and metrical basis, when one is
ignorant alike of what may have been accomplished by imitation, and of
the work of those later priests who remade the poems of their
ancestors.

Best then, because least hazardous, appears to be the method which we
have followed, namely, to take up group by group the most important
deities arranged in the order of their relative importance, and by
studying each to arrive at a fair understanding of the pantheon as a
whole. The Hindus themselves divided their gods into highest, middle,
and lowest, or those of the upper sky, the atmosphere, and the earth.
This division, from the point of view of one who would enter into the
spirit of the seers and at the same time keep in mind the changes to
which that spirit gradually was subjected, is an excellent one. For,
as will be seen, although the earlier order of regard may have been
from below upwards, this order does not apply to the literary
monuments. These show on the contrary a worship which steadily tends
from above earthwards; and the three periods into which may be divided
all Vedic theology are first that of the special worship of sky-gods,
when less attention is paid to others; then that of the atmospheric
and meteorological divinities; and finally that of terrestrial powers,
each later group absorbing, so to speak, the earlier, and therewith
preparing the developing Hindu intelligence for the reception of the
universal god with whom closes the series.

Other factors than those of an inward development undoubtedly were at
work in the formation of this growth. Especially prominent is the
amalgamation of the gods of the lower classes with those of the
priest-hood. Climatic environment, too, conditioned theological
evolution, if not spiritual advance. The cult of the mid-sphere god,
Indra, was partly the result of the changing atmospheric surroundings
of the Hindus as they advanced into India. The storms and the sun were
not those of old. The tempests were more terrific, the display of
divine power was more concentrated in the rage of the elements; while
appreciation of the goodness of the sun became tinged with
apprehension of evil, and he became a deadly power as well as one
beneficent. Then the relief of rain after drought gave to Indra the
character of a benign god as well as of a fearful one. Nor were
lacking in the social condition certain alterations which worked
together with climatic changes. The segregated mass of the original
people, the braves that hung about the king, a warrior-class rapidly
becoming a caste, and politically the most important caste, took the
god of thunder and lightning for their god of battle. The fighting
race naturally exalted to the highest the fighting god. Then came into
prominence the priestly caste, which gradually taught the warrior that
mind was stronger than muscle. But this caste was one of thinkers.
Their divinity was the product of reflection. Indra remained, but
yielded to a higher power, and the god thought out by the priests
became God. Yet it must not be supposed that the cogitative energy of
the Brahman descended upon the people's gods and suddenly produced a
religious revolution. In India no intellectual advance is made
suddenly. The older divinities show one by one the transformation that
they suffered at the hands of theosophic thinkers. Before the
establishment of a general Father-god, and long before that of the
pantheistic All-god, the philosophical leaven was actively at work. It
will be seen operative at once in the case of the sun-god, and,
indeed, there were few of the older divinities that were untouched by
it. It worked silently and at first esoterically. One reads of the
gods' 'secret names,' of secrets in theology, which 'are not to be
revealed,' till at last the disguise is withdrawn, and it is
discovered that all the mystery of former generations has been leading
up to the declaration now made public: 'all these gods are but names
of the One.'

THE SUN-GOD.

The hymn which was translated in the first chapter gives an epitome of
the simpler conceptions voiced in the few whole hymns to the sun. But
there is a lower and a higher view of this god. He is the shining god
_par excellence_, the _deva, s[=u]rya_,[2] the red ball in the sky.
But he is also an active force, the power that wakens, rouses,
enlivens, and as such it is he that gives all good things to mortals
and to gods. As the god that gives life he (with others)[3] is the
author of birth, and is prayed to for children. From above he looks
down upon earth, and as with his one or many steeds he drives over the
firmament he observes all that is passing below. He has these, the
physical side and the spiritual side, under two names, the glowing
one, S[=u]rya, and the enlivener, Savitar;[4] but he is also the good
god who bestows benefits, and as such he was known, probably locally,
by the name of Bhaga. Again, as a herdsman's god, possibly at first
also a local deity, he is P[=u]shan (the meaning is almost the same
with that of Savitar). As the 'mighty one' he is Vishnu, who measures
heaven in three strides. In general, the conception of the sun as a
physical phenomenon will be found voiced chiefly in the family-books:
"The sightly form rises on the slope of the sky as the swift-going
steed carries him ... seven sister steeds carry him."[5] This is the
prevailing utterance. Sometimes the sun is depicted under a medley of
metaphors: "A bull, a flood, a red bird, he has entered his father's
place; a variegated stone he is set in the midst of the sky; he has
advanced and guards the two ends of space."[6] One after the other the
god appears to the poets as a bull, a bird,[7] a steed, a stone, a
jewel, a flood, a torch-holder,[8] or as a gleaming car set in heaven.
Nor is the sun independent. As in the last image of a chariot,[9] so,
without symbolism, the poet speaks of the sun as made to rise by
Varuna and Mitra: "On their wonted path go Varuna and Mitra when in
the sky they cause to rise Surya, whom they made to avert darkness";
where, also, the sun, under another image, is the "support of the
sky."[10] Nay, in this simpler view, the sun is no more than the "eye
of Mitra Varuna,"[11] a conception formally retained even when the sun
in the same breath is spoken of as pursuing Dawn like a lover, and as
being the 'soul of the universe' (I. 115. 1-2). In the older passages
the later moral element is almost lacking, nor is there maintained the
same physical relation between Sun and Dawn. In the earlier hymns the
Dawn is the Sun's mother, from whom he proceeds.[12] It is the "Dawns
produced the Sun," in still more natural language;[13] whereas, the
idea of the lover-Sun following the Dawn scarcely occurs in the
family-books.[14] Distinctly late, also, is the identification of the
sun with the all-spirit _([=a]tm[=a],_ I. 115. 1), and the following
prayer: "Remove, O sun, all weakness, illness, and bad dreams." In
this hymn, X. 37. 14, S[=u]rya is the son of the sky, but he is
evidently one with Savitar, who in V. 82. 4, removes bad dreams, as in
X. 100. 8, he removes sickness. Men are rendered 'sinless' by the sun
(IV. 54. 3; X. 37. 9) exactly as they are by the other gods, Indra,
Varuna, etc. In a passage that refers to the important triad of sun,
wind and fire, X. 158. I ff., the sun is invoked to 'save from the
sky,' _i.e._ from all evils that may come from the upper regions;
while in the same book the sun, like Indra, is represented as the
slayer of demons _(asuras)_ and dragons; as the slayer, also, of the
poet's rivals; as giving long life to the worshipper, and as himself
drinking sweet _soma_. This is one of the poems that seem to be at
once late and of a forced and artificial character (X. 170).

Although S[=u]rya is differentiated explicitly from Savitar (V. 81. 4,
"Savitar, thou joyest in S[=u]a's rays"), yet do many of the hymns
make no distinction between them. The Enlivener is naturally extolled
in fitting phrase, to tally with his title: "The shining-god, the
Enlivener, is ascended to enliven the world"; "He gives protection,
wealth and children" (II. 38.1; IV. 53. 6-7). The later hymns seem, as
one might expect, to show greater confusion between the attributes of
the physical and spiritual sun. But what higher power under either
name is ascribed to the sun in the later hymns is not due to a higher
or more developed homage of the sun as such. On the contrary, as with
many other deities, the more the praise the less the individual
worship. It is as something more than the sun that the god later
receives more fulsome devotion. And, in fact, paradoxical as it seems,
it is a decline in sun-worship proper that is here registered. The
altar-fire becomes more important, and is revered in the sun, whose
hymns, at most, are few, and in part mechanical.

Bergaigne in his great work, _La Religion Védique_, has laid much
stress on sexual antithesis as an element in Vedic worship. It seems
to us that this has been much exaggerated. The sun is masculine; the
dawn, feminine. But there is no indication of a primitive antithesis
of male and female in their relations. What occurs appears to be of
adventitious character. For though sun and dawn are often connected,
the latter is represented first as his mother and afterwards as his
'wife' or mistress. Even in the later hymns, where the marital
relation is recognized, it is not insisted upon. But Bergaigne[15] is
right in saying that in the Rig Veda the sun does not play the part of
an evil power, and it is a good illustration of the difference between
Rik and Atharvan, when Ehni cites, to prove that the sun is like
death, only passages from the Atharvan and the later Brahmanic
literature.[16]

When, later, the Hindus got into a region where the sun was deadly,
they said, "Yon burning sun-god is death," but in the Rig Veda' they
said, "Yon sun is the source of life,"[17] and no other conception of
the sun is to be found in the Rig Veda.

There are about a dozen hymns to S[=u]rya, and as many to Savitar, in
the Rig Veda.[18] It is noteworthy that in the family-books the hymns
to Savitar largely prevail, while those to S[=u]rya are chiefly late
in position or content. Thus, in the family-books, where are found
eight or nine of the dozen hymns to Savitar, there are to S[=u]rya but
three or four, and of these the first is really to Savitar and the
Açvins; the second is an imitation of the first; the third appears to
be late; and the fourth is a fragment of somewhat doubtful antiquity.
The first runs as follows: "The altar-fire has seen well-pleased the
dawns' beginning and the offering to the gleaming ones; come, O ye
horsemen (Açvins), to the house of the pious man; the sun (S[=u]rya),
the shining-god, rises with light. The shining-god Savitar has
elevated his beams, swinging his banner like a good (hero) raiding for
cattle. According to rule go Varuna and Mitra when they make rise in
the sky the sun (S[=u]rya) whom they have created to dissipate
darkness, being (gods) sure of their habitation and unswerving in
intent. Seven yellow swift-steeds bear this S[=u]rya, the seer of all
that moves. Thou comest with swiftest steeds unspinning the web,
separating, O shining-god, the black robe. The rays of S[=u]rya
swinging (his banner) have laid darkness like a skin in the waters.
Unconnected, unsupported, downward extending, why does not this (god)
fall down? With what nature goes he, who knows (literally, 'who has
seen')? As a support he touches and guards the vault of the sky" (IV.
13).

There is here, no more than in the early hymn from the first book,
translated in the first chapter, any worship of material phenomena.
S[=u]rya is worshipped as Savitar, either expressly so called, or with
all the attributes of the spiritual. The hymn that follows this[19] is
a bald imitation. In V. 47 there are more or less certain signs of
lateness, _e.g.,_ in the fourth stanza ("four carry him, ... and ten
give the child to drink that he may go," etc.) there is the juggling
with unexplained numbers, which is the delight of the later
priesthood. Moreover, this hymn is addressed formally to Mitra-Varuna
and Agni, and not to the sun-god, who is mentioned only in metaphor;
while the final words _námo divé_, 'obeisance to heaven,' show that
the sun is only indirectly addressed. One cannot regard hymns
addressed to Mitra-Varuna and S[=u]rya (with other gods) as primarily
intended for S[=u]rya, who in these hymns is looked upon as the
subject of Mitra and Varuna, as in VII. 62; or as the "eye" of the two
other gods, and 'like Savitar' in VII. 63. So in VII. 66. 14-16, a
mere fragment of a hymn is devoted exclusively to S[=u]rya as "lord of
all that stands and goes." But in these hymns there are some very
interesting touches. Thus in VII. 60. 1, the sun does not make
sinless, but he announces to Mitra and Varuna that the mortal is
sinless. There are no other hymns than these addressed to S[=u]rya,
save those in the first and tenth books, of which nine stanzas of I.
50 (see above) may be reckoned early, while I. 115, where the sun is
the soul of the universe, and at the same time the eye of
Mitra-Varuna, is probably late; and I. 163 is certainly so, wherein
the sun is identified with Yama, Trita, etc.; is 'like Varuna'; and is
himself a steed, described as having three connections in the sky,
three in the waters, three in the sea. In one of the hymns in the
tenth book, also a mystical song, the sun is the 'bird' of the sky, a
metaphor which soon gives another figure to the pantheon in the form
of Garutman, the sun-bird, of whose exploits are told strange tales in
the epic, where he survives as Garuda. In other hymns S[=u]rya averts
carelessness at the sacrifice, guards the worshipper, and slays
demons. A mechanical little hymn describes him as measuring the
'thirty stations.' Not one of these hymns has literary freshness or
beauty of any kind. They all belong to the class of stereotyped
productions, which differ in origin and content from the hymns first
mentioned.[20]

SAVITAR.

Turning to Savitar one finds, of course, many of the same descriptive
traits as in the praise of S[=u]rya, his more material self. But with
the increased spirituality come new features. Savitar is not alone the
sun that rises; he is also the sun that sets; and is extolled as such.
There are other indications that most of the hymns composed for him
are to accompany the sacrifice, either of the morning or of the
evening. In II. 38, an evening song to Savitar, there are inner signs
that the hymn was made for rubrication, but here some fine verses
occur: "The god extends his vast hand, his arms above there--and all
here obeys him; to his command the waters move, and even the winds'
blowing ceases on all sides." Again: "Neither Indra, Varuna, Mitra,
Aryaman, Rudra, nor the demons, impair his law" We call attention here
to the fact that the Rig Veda contains a strong(stong in the original)
current of demonology, much stronger than has been pointed out by
scholars intent on proving the primitive loftiness of the Vedic
religion.

In III. 62. 7-9 there are some verses to P[=u]shan, following which is
the most holy couplet of the Rig Veda, to repeat which is essentially
to repeat the Veda. It is the famous G[=a]yatr[=i] or S[=a]vitr[=i]
hymnlet (10-12):

Of Savitar, the heavenly, that longed-for glory may we win,
And may himself inspire our prayers.[21]

Whitney (loc. cit.) says of this hymn that it is not remarkable in any
way and that no good reason has ever been given for its fame. The good
reason for this fame, in our opinion, is that the longed-for glory was
interpreted later as a revealed indication of primitive pantheism, and
the verses were understood to express the desire of absorption into
the sun, which, as will be seen, was one of the first divine bodies to
be accepted as the type of the All-god. This is also the intent of the
stanzas added to I. 50 (above, p. 17), where S[=u]rya is "the highest
light, the god among gods," mystic words, taken by later philosophers,
and quite rightly, to be an expression of pantheism. The esoteric
meaning of the G[=a]yatr[=i] presumably made it popular among the
enlightened. Exoterically the sun was only the goal of the soul, or,
in pure pantheism, of the sight. In the following[22] the
sin-forgiving side of Savitar is developed, whereby he comes into
connection with Varuna:

God Savitar deserveth now a song from us;
To-day, with guiding word, let men direct him here.
He who distributes gifts unto the sons of men,
Shall here on us bestow whatever thing is best;
For thou, O Savitar, dost first upon the gods
Who sacrifice deserve, lay immortality,
The highest gift, and then to mortals dost extend
As their apportionment a long enduring life.
Whatever thoughtless thing against the
race of gods We do in foolishness and human insolence,
Do thou from that, O Savitar, mid gods and men
Make us here sinless, etc.

But if this song smacks of the sacrifice, still more so does V. 81,
where Savitar is the 'priest's priest,' the 'arranger of sacrifice,'
and is one with P[=u]shan. He is here the swift horse (see above) and
more famous as the divider of time than anything else. In fact this
was the first ritualistic glory of Savitar, that he divides the time
for sacrifice. But he receives more in the light of being the type of
other luminous divinities. In the next hymn, another late effort (V.
82; see the dream in vs. 4), there may be an imitation of the
G[=a]yatr[=i]. Savitar is here the All-god and true lord, and frees
from sin. There is nothing new or striking in the hymns VI. 71; VII.
38 and 45. The same golden hands, and references to the sacrifice
occur here. Allusions to the Dragon of the Deep, who is called upon
with Savitar (VII. 38. 5), and the identification of Savitar with
Bhaga (ib. 6) are the most important items to be gleaned from these
rather stupid hymns. In other hymns not in the family-books
(II.-VIII.), there is a fragment, X. 139. 1-3, and another, I. 22.
5-8. In the latter, Agni's (Fire's) title, 'son of waters,' is given
to Savitar, who is virtually identified with Agni in the last part of
the Rig Veda; and in the former hymn there is an interesting
discrimination made between Savitar and P[=u]shan, who obeys him. The
last hymn in the collection to Savitar, X. 149, although late and
plainly intended for the sacrifice (vs. 5), is interesting as showing
how the philosophical speculation worked about Savitar as a centre.
'He alone, he the son of the waters, knows the origin of water, whence
arose the world.' This is one of the early speculations which recur so
frequently in the Brahmanic period, wherein the origin of 'all this'
(the universe) is referred to water. A hymn to Savitar in the first
book contains as excellent a song as is given to the sun under this
name. It is neither a morning nor an evening song in its original
state, but mentions all the god's functions, without the later moral
traits so prominent elsewhere, and with the old threefold division
instead of thrice-three heavens.

TO SAVITAR (I. 35).

I call on Agni first (the god of fire) for weal;
I call on Mitra-Varuna to aid me here;
I call upon the Night, who quiets all that moves;
On Savitar, the shining god, I call for help.

After this introductory invocation begins the real song in a different
metre.

Through space of darkness wending comes he hither,
Who puts to rest th' immortal and the mortal,
On golden car existent things beholding,
The god that rouses, Savitar, the shining;
Comes he, the shining one, comes forward, upward,
Comes with two yellow steeds, the god revered,
Comes shining Savitar from out the distance,
All difficulties far away compelling.
His pearl-adorned, high, variegated chariot,
Of which the pole is golden, he, revered,
Hath mounted, Savitar, whose beams are brilliant,
Against the darksome spaces strength assuming.
Among the people gaze the brown white-footed
(Steeds) that the chariot drag whose pole is golden.
All peoples stand, and all things made, forever,
Within the lap of Savitar, the heavenly.

[There are three heavens of Savitar, two low ones,[23]
One, men-restraining, in the realm of Yama.
As on (his) chariot-pole[24] stand all immortals,
Let him declare it who has understood it!]

Across air-spaces gazes he, the eagle,
Who moves in secret, th' Asura,[25] well-guiding,
Where is (bright) S[=u]rya now? who understands it?
And through which sky is now his ray extending?

He looks across the earth's eight elevations,[26]
The desert stations three, and the seven rivers,
The gold-eyed shining god is come, th' Arouser,
To him that worships giving wealth and blessings.

The golden-handed Savitar, the active one,
Goes earth and heaven between, compels demoniac powers,
To S[=u]rya gives assistance, and through darksome space
Extends to heaven, etc.[27]

P[=U]SHAN AND BHAGA AS SUN-GODS.

With P[=u]shan, the 'bestower of prosperity,' appears an ancient side
of sun-worship. While under his other names the sun has lost, to a
great extent, the attributes of a bucolic solar deity, in the case of
P[=u]shan he appears still as a god whose characteristics are bucolic,
war-like, and priestly, that is to say, even as he is venerated by the
three masses of the folk. It will not do, of course, to distinguish
too sharply between the first two divisions, but one can very well
compare P[=u]shan in these rôles with Helios guiding his herds, and
Apollo swaying armed hosts. It is customary to regard P[=u]shan as too
bucolic a deity, but this is only one side of him. He apparently is
the sun, as herdsmen look upon him, and in this figure is the object
of ridicule with the warrior-class who, especially in one family or
tribe, take a more exalted view of him. Consequently, as in the case
of Varuna, one need not read into the hymns more than they offer to
see that, not to speak of the priestly view, there are at least two
P[=u]shans, in the Rig Veda itself.[28]

As the god 'with braided hair,' and as the 'guardian of cattle,'
P[=u]shan offers, perhaps, in these particulars, the original of
Rudra's characteristics, who, in the Vedic period, and later as
Rudra-Çiva, is also a 'guardian of cattle' and has the 'braided hair.'

Bergaigne identifies P[=u]shan with Soma, with whom the poets were apt
to identify many other deities, but there seems to be little
similarity originally.[29] It is only in the wider circles of each
god's activity that the two approach each other. Both gods, it is
true, wed S[=u]rya (the female sun-power), and Soma, like P[=u]shan,
finds lost cattle. But it must be recognized once for all that
identical attributes are not enough to identify Vedic gods. Who gives
wealth? Indra, Soma, Agni, Heaven and Earth, Wind, Sun, the Maruts,
etc. Who forgives sins? Agni, Varuna, Indra, the Sun, etc. Who helps
in war? Agni, P[=u]shan, Indra, Soma, etc. Who sends rain? Indra,
Parjanya, Soma, the Maruts, P[=u]shan, etc. Who weds Dawn? The Açvins,
the Sun, etc. The attributes must be functional or the identification
is left incomplete.

The great disparity in descriptions of P[=u]shan may be illustrated by
setting VI. 48. 19 beside X. 92. 13. The former passage merely
declares that P[=u]shan is a war-leader "over mortals, and like the
gods in glory"; the latter, that he is "distinguished by all divine
attributes"; that is to say, what has happened in the case of Savitar
has happened here also. The individuality of P[=u]shan dies out, but
the vaguer he becomes the more grandiloquently is he praised and
associated with other powers; while for lack of definite laudation
general glory is ascribed to him. The true position of P[=u]shan in
the eyes of the warrior is given unintentionally by one who says,[30]
"I do not scorn thee, O P[=u]shan," _i.e.,_ as do most people, on
account of thy ridiculous attributes. For P[=u]shan does not drink
_soma_ like Indra, but eats mush. So another devout believer says:
"P[=u]shan is not described by them that call him an eater of
mush."[31] The fact that he was so called speaks louder than the pious
protest. Again, P[=u]shan is simply bucolic. He uses the goad, which,
however, according to Bergaigne, is the thunderbolt! So, too, the cows
that P[=u]shan is described as guiding have been interpreted as clouds
or 'dawns.' But they may be taken without 'interpretation' as
real cows.[32] P[=u]shan drives the cows, he is armed with a goad, and
eats mush; bucolic throughout, yet a sun-god. It is on these lines
that his finding-qualities are to be interpreted. He finds lost
cattle,[33] a proper business for such a god; but Bergaigne will see
in this a transfer from P[=u]shan's finding of rain and of _soma_.[34]
P[=u]shan, too, directs the furrow[35]

Together with Vishnu and Bhaga this god is invoked at sacrifices, (a
fact that says little against or for his original sun-ship),[36] and
he is intimately connected with Indra. His sister is his mistress, and
his mother is his wife (Dawn and Night?) according to the meagre
accounts given in VI. 55. 4-5.[37] As a god of increase he is invoked
in the marriage-rite, X. 85. 37.

As Savitar and all sun-gods are at once luminous and dark, so
P[=u]shan has a clear and again a revered (terrible) appearance; he is
like day and night, like Dyaus (the sky); at one time bright, at
another, plunged in darkness, VI. 58. 1. Quite like Savitar he is the
shining god who "looks upon all beings and sees them all together"; he
is the "lord of the path," the god of travellers; he is invoked to
drive away evil spirits, thieves, footpads, and all workers of evil;
he makes paths for the winning of wealth; he herds the stars and
directs all with _soma_. He carries a golden axe or sword, and is
borne through air and water on golden ships; and it is he that lets
down the sun's golden wheel. These simpler attributes appear for the
most part in the early hymns. In what seem to be later hymns, he is
the mighty one who "carries the thoughts of all"; he is
like _soma_ (the drink), and attends to the filter; he is "lord of the
pure"; the "one born of old," and is especially called upon to help
the poets' hymns.[38] It is here, in the last part of the Rig Veda,
that he appears as [Greek: psuchopompós], who "goes and returns,"
escorting the souls of the dead to heaven. He is the sun's messenger,
and is differentiated from Savitar in X. 139. 1.[39] Apparently he was
a god affected most by the Bharadv[=a]ja family (to which is ascribed
the sixth book of the Rig Veda) where his worship was extended more
broadly. He seems to have become the special war-god of this family,
and is consequently invoked with Indra and the Maruts (though this may
have been merely in his rôte as sun). The goats, his steeds, are also
an attribute of the Scandinavian war-god Thor (Kaegi, _Rig Veda_, note
210), so that his bucolic character rests more in his goad, food, and
plough.

Bhaga is recognized as an [=A]ditya (luminous deity) and was perhaps a
sun-god of some class, possibly of all, as the name in Slavic is still
kept in the meaning 'god,' literally 'giver.' In the Rig Veda the word
means, also, simply god, as in _bhágabhakta_, 'given by gods'; but as
a name it is well known, and when thus called Bhaga is still the
giver, 'the bestower' _(vidhart[=á])_. As _bhaga_ is also an epithet
of Savitar, the name may not stand for an originally distinct
personality. Bhaga has but one hymn.[40] There is in fact no reason
why Bhaga should be regarded as a sun-god, except for the formal
identification of him as an [=A]dityà, that is as the son of Aditi
(Boundlessness, see below); but neither S[=u]rya nor Savitar is
originally an [=A]dityà, and in Iranic _bagha_ is only an epithet of
Ormuzd.

HYMNS TO P[=U]SHAN AND BHAGA.

To P[=U]SHAN (vi. 56).

The man who P[=u]shan designates
With words like these, 'mush-eater he,'
By him the god is not described.

With P[=u]shan joined in unison
That best of warriors, truest lord,
Indra, the evil demons slays.

'T is he, the best of warriors, drives
The golden chariot of the sun
Among the speckled kine (the clouds).

Whate'er we ask of thee to-day,
O wonder-worker, praised and wise,
Accomplish thou for us that prayer.

And this our band, which hunts for kine,[41]
Successful make for booty's gain;
Afar, O P[=u]shan, art thou praised.

We seek of thee success, which far
From ill, and near to wealth shall be;
For full prosperity to-day;
And full prosperity the morn.[42]

To BHAGA (vii. 41).

Early on Agni call we, early Indra call;
Early call Mitra, Varuna, the Horsemen twain;
Early, too, Bhaga, P[=u]shan, and the Lord of Strength;
And early Soma will we call, and Rudra too.

This stanza has been prefixed to the hymn by virtue of the catch-word
'early' (in the morning), with which really begins this prosaic poem
(in different metre):

The early-conquering mighty Bhaga call we,
The son of Boundlessness, the gift-bestower,[43]
Whom weak and strong, and e'en the king, regarding,
Cry _bhágam bhakshi_, 'give to me the giver.'[44]

O Bhaga, leader Bhaga, true bestower,
O Bhaga, help this prayer, to us give (riches),
O Bhaga, make us grow in kine and horses,
O Bhaga, eke in men, men-wealthy be we!

And now may we be rich, be _bhaga_-holders,[45]
Both at the (day's) approach, and eke at midday,
And at the sun's departure, generous giver.
The favor of the gods may we abide in.

O gods, (to us) be Bhaga really _bhaga_,[46]
By means of him may we be _bhaga_-holders.
As such an one do all, O Bhaga, call thee,
As such, O Bhaga, be to-day our leader.

May dawns approach the sacrifice, the holy
Place, like to Dadhikr[=a],[47] like horses active,
Which bring a chariot near; so, leading Bhaga,
Who finds good things, may they approach, and bring him.

As this is the only hymn addressed to Bhaga, and as it proves itself
to have been made for altar service (in style as well as in special
mention of the ceremony), it is evident that Bhaga, although called
Aditi's son, is but a god of wealth and (like Ança, the Apportioner)
very remotely connected with physical functions. But the hymn appears
to be so late that it cannot throw much light on the original
conception of the deity. We rather incline to doubt whether Bhaga was
ever, strictly speaking, a sun-god, and think that he was made so
merely because the sun (Savitar) was called _bhaga_. A (Greek: Zehys)
Bagaios was worshipped by the Phrygians, while in the Avesta and as a
Slavic god Bhaga has no especial connection with the sun. It must be
acknowledged, however, that every form of the sun-god is especially
lauded for generosity.

VISHNU.

In the person of Vishnu the sun is extolled under another name, which
in the period of the Rig Veda was still in the dawn of its glory. The
hymns to Vishnu are few; his fame rests chiefly on the three strides
with which he crosses heaven, on his making fast the earth, and on his
munificence.[48] He, too, leads in battle and is revered under the
title Çipivishta,[49] of unknown significance, but meaning literally
'bald.' Like Savitar he has three spaces, two called earthly, and one,
the highest, known only to himself. His greatness is inconceivable,
and he is especially praised with Indra, the two being looked upon as
masters of the world.[50] His highest place is the realm of the
departed spirits.[51] The hymns to him appear to be late (thus I. 155.
6, where, as the year, he has four seasons of ninety days each). Like
P[=u]shan (his neighbor in many lauds) he is associated in a late hymn
with the Maruts (V. 87). His later popularity lies in the importance
of his 'highest place' (or step) being the home of the departed
spirits, where he himself dwells, inscrutable. This led to the
spirit's union with the sun, which, as we have said, is one of the
first phases of the pantheistic doctrine. In the family-books Vishnu
gets but two hymns, both in the same collection, and shares one more
with Indra (VII. 99-100; VI. 69). In some of the family-collections,
notably in that of the Visvamitras, he is, if not unknown, almost
ignored. As Indra's friend he is most popular with the Kanva family,
but even here he has no special hymn.

None born, God Vishnu, and none born hereafter
E'er reaches to the limit of thy greatness;
Twas thou establish'st yon high vault of heaven,
Thou madest fast the earth's extremest mountain. (VII. 99. 2.)

Three steps he made, the herdsman sure,
Vishnu, and stepped across (the world). (I. 22. i8.)

The mighty deeds will I proclaim of Vishnu,
Who measured out the earth's extremest spaces,
And fastened firm the highest habitation,
Thrice stepping out with step all-powerful.

O would that I might reach his path beloved,
Where joy the men who hold the gods in honor. (I. 154. 1, 5.)

Under all these names and images the sun is worshipped. And it is
necessary to review them all to see how deeply the worship is
ingrained. The sun is one of the most venerable as he is the most
enduring of India's nature-gods.[52] In no early passage is the sun a
malignant god. He comes "as kine to the village, as a hero to his
steed, as a calf to the cow, as a husband to his wife."[53] He is the
'giver,' the 'generous one,' and as such he is Mitra, 'the friend,'
who with Varuna, the encompassing heaven, is, indeed, in the Rig Veda,
a personality subordinated to his greater comrade; yet is this,
perhaps, the sun's oldest name of those that are not descriptive of
purely physical characteristics. For Mithra in Persian keeps the
proof that this title was given to the Indo-Iranic god before the
separation of the two peoples. It is therefore (perhaps with Bhaga?)
one of the most ancient personal designations of the sun,--one,
perhaps, developed from a mere name into a separate deity.

HEAVEN AND EARTH.

Not only as identical with the chief god of the Greeks, but also from
a native Indic point of view, it might have been expected that Dyaus
(Zeus), the 'shining sky,' would play an important rôle in the Hindu
pantheon. But such is not the case. There is not a single hymn
addressed independently to Dyaus, nor is there any hint of especial
preeminence of Dyaus in the half-dozen hymns that are sung to Heaven
and Earth together. The word _dyaus_ is used hundreds of times, but
generally in the meaning sky (without personification). There is, to
be sure, a formal acknowledgment of the fatherhood of Dyaus (among
gods he is father particularly of Dawn, the Açvins, and Indra), as
there is of the motherhood of Earth, but there is no further
exaltation. No exaggeration--the sign of Hindu enthusiasm--is
displayed in the laudation, and the epithet 'father' is given to half
a dozen Vedic gods, as in Rome Ma(r)spiter stands beside Jup(p)iter.
Certain functions are ascribed to Heaven and Earth, but they are of
secondary origin. Thus they bring to the god he sacrifice,[54] as does
Agni, and one whole hymn may thus be epitomized: 'By the ordinance of
Varuna made firm, O Heaven and Earth, give us blessings. Blest with
children and wealth is he that adores you twain. Give us sweet food,
glory and strength of heroes, ye who are our father and mother.'[55]

The praise is vague and the benevolence is the usual 'bestowal of
blessings' expected of all the gods in return for praise. Other hymns
add to this something, from which one sees that these deities are not
regarded as self-created; for the seers of old, or, according to one
poet some wonderful divine artisan, "most wondrous worker of the
wonder-working gods," created them. Their chief office is to exercise
benign protection and bestow wealth. Once they are invited to come to
the sacrifice "with the gods," but this, of course, is not meant to
exclude them from the list of gods[56].

The antithesis of male and female, to Bergaigne's insistence on which
reference was made above (p. 43), even here in this most obvious of
forms, common to so many religions, shows itself so faintly that it
fails utterly to support that basis of sexual dualism on which the
French scholar lays so much stress. Dyaus does, indeed, occasionally
take the place of Indra, and as a bellowing bull impregnate earth, but
this is wholly incidental and not found at all in the hymns directly
lauding Heaven and Earth. Moreover, instead of "father and mother"
Heaven and Earth often are spoken of as "the two mothers," the
significance of which cannot be nullified by the explanation that to
the Hindu 'two mothers' meant two parents, and of two parents one must
be male,--Bergaigne's explanation. For not only is Dyaus one of the
'two mothers,' but when independently used the word Dyaus is male or
female indifferently. Thus in X. 93. I: "O Heaven and Earth be wide
outstretched for us, (be) like two young women." The position of
Heaven and Earth in relation to other divinities varies with the fancy
of the poet that extols them. They are either created, or they create
gods, as well as create men. In accordance with the physical reach of
these deities they are exhorted to give strength whereby the
worshipper shall "over-reach all peoples"; and, as parents, to be the
"nearest of the gods," to be "like father and mother in kindness." (I.
159; 160. 2, 5.)

One more attribute remains to be noticed, which connects Dyaus morally
as well as physically with Savitar and Varuna. The verse in which this
attribute is spoken of is also not without interest from a
sociological point of view: "Whatsoever sin we have committed against
the gods, or against a friend, or against the chief of the clan
(family)[57] may this hymn to Heaven and Earth avert it." It was shown
above that Savitar removes sin. Here, as in later times, it is the
hymn that does this. The mystery of these gods' origin puzzles the
seer: "Which was first and which came later, how were they begotten,
who knows, O ye wise seers? Whatever exists, that they carry."[58] But
all that they do they do under the command of Mitra.[59]

The most significant fact in connection with the hymns to Heaven and
Earth is that most of them are expressly for sacrificial intent. "With
sacrifices I praise Heaven and Earth" (I. 159. 1); "For the sake of
the sacrifice are ye come down (to us)" (IV. 56. 7). In VI. 70 they
are addressed in sacrificial metaphors; in VII. 53. 1 the poet says:
"I invoke Heaven and Earth with sacrifices," etc. The passivity of the
two gods makes them yield in importance to their son, the active
Savitar, who goes between the two parents. None of these hymns bears
the impress of active religious feeling or has poetic value. They all
seem to be reflective, studied, more or less mechanical, and to belong
to a period of theological philosophy. To Earth alone without Heaven
are addressed one uninspired hymn and a fragment of the same
character: "O Earth be kindly to us, full of dwellings and painless,
and give us protection."[60] In the burial service the dead are
exhorted to "go into kindly mother earth" who will be "wool-soft, like
a maiden."[61] The one hymn to Earth should perhaps be placed
parallel with similar meditative and perfunctory laudations in the
Homeric hymns:

To EARTH (V. 84).

In truth, O broad extended earth,
Thou bear'st the render of the hills,[62]
Thou who, O mighty mountainous one,
Quickenest created things with might.
Thee praise, O thou that wander'st far,
The hymns which light accompany,
Thee who, O shining one, dost send
Like eager steeds the gushing rain.
Thou mighty art, who holdest up
With strength on earth the forest trees,
When rain the rains that from thy clouds
And Dyaus' far-gleaming lightning come.[62]

On the bearing of these facts, especially in regard to the secondary
greatness of Dyaus, we shall touch below. He is a god exalted more by
modern writers than by the Hindus!

VARUNA.

Varuna has been referred already in connection with the sun-god and
with Heaven and Earth. It is by Varuna's power that they stand firm.
He has established the sun 'like a tree,' i.e., like a support, and
'made a path for it.'[63] He has a thousand remedies for ills; to his
realm not even the birds can ascend, nor wind or swift waters attain.
It is in accordance with the changeless order[64] of Varuna that the
stars and the moon go their regular course; he gives long life and
releases from harm, from wrong, and from sin.[65]

Varuna is the most exalted of those gods whose origin is physical. His
realm is all above us; the sun and stars are his eyes; he sits above
upon his golden throne and sees all that passes below, even the
thoughts of men. He is, above all, the moral controller of the
universe.

To VARUNA (i. 25).

Howe'er we, who thy people are,
O Varuna, thou shining god,
Thy order injure, day by day,
Yet give us over nor to death,
Nor to the blow of angry (foe),
Nor to the wrath of (foe) incensed.[66]
Thy mind for mercy we release--
As charioteer, a fast-bound steed--
By means of song, O Varuna.

* * * * *

('Tis Varuna) who knows the track
Of birds that fly within the air,
And knows the ships upon the flood;[67]
Knows, too, the (god) of order firm,
The twelve months with their progeny,
And e'en which month is later born;[68]
Knows, too, the pathway of the wind,
The wide, the high, the mighty (wind),
And knows who sit above (the wind).

(God) of firm order, Varuna
His place hath ta'en within (his) home
For lordship, he, the very strong.[69]
Thence all the things that are concealed
He looks upon, considering
Whate'er is done and to be done.
May he, the Son of Boundlessness,
The very strong, through every day
Make good our paths, prolong our life.

Bearing a garment all of gold,
In jewels clothed, is Varuna,
And round about him sit his spies;
A god whom injurers injure not,
Nor cheaters cheat among the folk,
Nor any plotters plot against;
Who for himself 'mid (other) men
Glory unequalled gained, and gains
(Such glory) also 'mid ourselves.

Far go my thoughts (to him), as go
The eager cows that meadows seek,
Desiring (him), the wide-eyed (god).
Together let us talk again,
Since now the offering sweet I bring,
By thee beloved, and like a priest
Thou eat'st.

I see the wide-eyed (god):
I see his chariot on the earth,
My song with joy hath he received.

Hear this my call, O Varuna,
Be merciful to me today,
For thee, desiring help, I yearn.

Thou, wise one, art of everything,
The sky and earth alike, the king;
As such upon thy way give ear,
And loose from us the (threefold) bond;
The upper bond, the middle, break,
The lower, too, that we may live.

In the portrait of such a god as this one comes very near to
monotheism. The conception of an almost solitary deity, recognized as
watcher of wrong, guardian of right, and primitive creator, approaches
more closely to unitarianism than does the idea of any physical power
in the Rig Veda.

To the poet of the Rig Veda Varuna is the enveloping heaven;[70] that
is, in distinction from Dyaus, from whom he
differs _toto caelo_, so to speak, the invisible world, which embraces
the visible sky. His home is there where lives the Unborn, whose place
is unique, above the highest heaven.[71]

But it is exactly this loftiness of character that should make one shy
of interpreting Varuna as being originally the god that is presented
here. Can this god, 'most august of Vedic deities,' as Bergaigne and
others have called him, have belonged as such to the earliest stratum
of Aryan belief?

There are some twelve hymns in the Rig Veda in Varuna's honor. Of
these, one in the tenth book celebrates Indra as opposed to Varuna,
and generally it is considered late, in virtue of its content. Of the
hymns in the eighth book the second appears to be a later imitation of
the first, and the first appears, from several indications, to be of
comparatively recent origin.[72] In the seventh book (vii. 86-89) the
short final hymn contains a distinctly late trait in invoking Varuna
to cure dropsy; the one preceding this is _in majorem gloriam_ of the
poet Vasistha, fitly following the one that appears to be as new,
where not only the mysticism but the juggling with "thrice-seven,"
shows the character of the hymn to be recent.[73] In the first hymn of
this book the late doctrine of inherited sin stands prominently forth
(vii. 86. 5) as an indication of the time in which it was composed.
The fourth and sixth books have no separate hymns to Varuna. In the
fifth book the position of the one hymn to Varuna is one favorable to
spurious additions, but the hymn is not otherwise obnoxious to the
criticism of lateness. Of the two hymns in the second book, the first
is addressed only indirectly to Varuna, nor is he here very prominent;
the second (ii. 28) is the only song which stands on a par with the
hymn already translated. There remain the hymns cited above from the
first, not a family-book. It is, moreover, noteworthy that in ii. 28,
apart from the ascription of general greatness, almost all that is
said of Varuna is that he is a priest, that he causes rivers to flow,
and loosens the bond of sin.[74] The finest hymn to Varuna, from a
literary point of view, is the one translated above, and it is mainly
on the basis of this hymn that the lofty character of Varuna has been
interpreted by occidental writers. To our mind this hymn belongs to
the close of the first epoch of the three which the hymns represent.
That it cannot be very early is evident from the mention of the
intercalated month, not to speak of the image of Varuna eating the
sweet oblation 'like a priest.' Its elevated language is in sharp
contrast to that of almost all the other Varuna hymns. As these are
all the hymns where Varuna is praised alone by himself, it becomes of
chief importance to study him here, and not where, as in iii. 62, iv.
41, vi. 51, 67, 68, and elsewhere, he is lauded as part of a
combination of gods (Mitra or Indra united with Varuna). In the last
book of the Rig Veda there is no hymn to Varuna,[75] a time when
pantheistic monotheism was changing into pantheism, so that, in the
last stage of the Rig Veda, Varuna is descended from the height.
Thereafter he is god and husband of waters, and punisher of secret sin
(as in ii. 28). Important in contrast to the hymn translated above is
v. 85.

TO VARUNA.

"I will sing forth unto the universal king a high deep prayer, dear to
renowned Varuna, who, as a butcher a hide, has struck earth apart
(from the sky) for the sun. Varuna has extended air in trees, strength
in horses, milk in cows, and has laid wisdom in hearts; fire in water;
the sun in the sky; _soma_ in the stone. Varuna has inverted his
water-barrel and let the two worlds with the space between flow (with
rain). With this (heavenly water-barrel) he, the king of every created
thing, wets the whole world, as a rain does a meadow. He wets the
world, both earth and heaven, when he, Varuna, chooses to milk out
(rain)--and then do the mountains clothe themselves with cloud, and
even the strongest men grow weak. Yet another great and marvellous
power of the renowned spirit (Asura) will I proclaim, this, that
standing in mid-air he has measured earth with the sun, as if with a
measuring rod. (It is due to) the marvellous power of the wisest god,
which none ever resisted, that into the one confluence run the rivers,
and pour into it, and fill it not. O Varuna, loosen whatever sin we
have committed to bosom-friend, comrade, or brother; to our own house,
or to the stranger; what (we) have sinned like gamblers at play, real
(sin), or what we have not known. Make loose, as it were, all these
things, O god Varuna, and may we be dear to thee hereafter."

In this hymn Varuna is a water-god, who stands in mid-air and directs
the rain; who, after the rain, reinstates the sun; who releases from
sin (as water does from dirt?). According to this conception it would
seem that Varuna were the 'coverer' rather than the 'encompasser.' It
might seem probable even that Varuna first stood to Dyaus as cloud and
rain and night to shining day, and that his counterpart, (Greek:
Hohyranhos), stood in the same relation to (Greek: Zehys); that were
connecte(Greek: Hohyranhos)d with (Greek: hyrheô) and Varuna with
_vari_, river, _v[=a]ri_, water.[76]

It is possible, but it is not provable. But no interpretation of
Varuna that ignores his rainy side can be correct. And this is fully
recognized by Hillebrandt. On account of his "thousand spies," _i.e.,_
eyes, he has been looked upon by some as exclusively a night-god. But
this is too one-sided an interpretation, and passes over the
all-important, fact that it is only in conjunction with the sun
(Mitra), where there is a strong antithesis, that the night-side of
the god is exclusively displayed. Wholly a day-god he cannot be,
because he rules night and rain. He is _par excellence_ the Asura,
and, like Ahura Mazdao, has the sun for an eye, _i.e.,_ he is heaven.
But there is no Varuna in Iranian worship and Ahura is a sectarian
specialization. Without this name may one ascribe to India what is
found in Iran?[77] It has been suggested by Bergaigne that Varuna and
Vritra, the rain-holding demon, were developments from the same idea,
one revered as a god, the other, a demon; and that the word means
'restrainer,' rather than 'encompasser.'

From all this it will be evident that to claim an original monotheism
as still surviving in the person of Varuna, is impossible; and this is
the one point we would make. Every one must admire the fine hymn in
which he is praised, but what there is in it does not make it seem
very old, and the intercalated month is decisive evidence, for here
alone in the Rig Veda is mentioned this month, which implies the
five-year cyclus, but this belongs to the Brahmanic period (Weber,
_Vedische Beiträge_, p. 38). Every explanation of the original nature
of Varuna must take into consideration that he is a rain-god, a
day-god, and a night-god in turn, and that where he is praised in the
most elevated language the rain-side disappears, although it was
fundamental, as may be seen by comparing many passages, where Varuna
is exhorted to give rain, where his title is 'lord of streams,' his
position that of 'lord of waters.' The decrease of Varuna worship in
favor of Indra results partly from the more peaceful god of rain
appearing less admirable than the monsoon-god, who overpowers with
storm and lightning, as well as 'wets the earth.'

The most valuable contribution to the study of Varuna is Hillebrandt's
'Varuna and Mitra.' This author has succeeded in completely
overthrowing the old error that Varuna is exclusively a night-god.[78]
Quite as definitively he proves that Varuna is not exclusively a
day-god.

Bergaigne, on the other hand, claims an especially tenebrous character
for Varuna.[79] Much has been written on luminous deities by scholars
that fail to recognize the fact that the Hindus regard the night both
as light and as dark. But to the Vedic poet the night, star-illumined,
was bright. Even Hillebrandt speaks of "the bright heaven" of day as
"opposed to the dark night-heaven in which Varuna also shows
himself."[80]

In the Rig Veda, as it stands, with all the different views of Varuna
side by side, Varuna is a universal encompasser, moral as well as
physical. As such his physical side is almost gone. But the conception
of him as a moral watcher and sole lord of the universe is in so sharp
contrast to the figure of the rain-god, who, like Parjanya, stands in
mid-air and upsets a water-barrel, that one must discriminate even
between the Vedic views in regard to him.[81]

It is Varuna who lets rivers flow; with Indra he is besought not to
let his weapons fall on the sinner; wind is his breath.[82]

On the other hand he is practically identified with the sun.[83] How
ill this last agrees with the image of a god who 'lives by the spring
of rivers,' 'covers earth as with a garment,' and 'rises like a secret
sea (in fog) to heaven'![84] Even when invoked with the sun, Mitra,
Varuna still gives rain: "To whomsoever ye two are kindly disposed
comes sweet rain from heaven; we beseech you for rain ... you, the
thunderers who go through earth and heaven" (v. 63),--a strange prayer
to be addressed to a monotheistic god of light: "Ye make the lightning
flash, ye send the rain; ye hide the sky in cloud and rain" (_ib_.).
In the hymn preceding we read: "Ye make firm heaven and earth, ye give
growth to plants, milk to cows; O ye that give rain, pour down rain!"
In the same group another short hymn declares: "They are universal
kings, who have _ghee_ (rain) in their laps; they are lords of the
rain" (v. 68). In the next hymn: "Your clouds (cows) give nourishment,
your streams are sweet." Thus the twain keep the order of the seasons
(i. 2. 7-8) and protect men by the regular return of the rainy season.
Their weapons are always lightning (above, i. 152. 2, and elsewhere).
A short invocation in a family-book gives this prayer: "O
Mitra-Varuna, wet our meadows with _ghee_; wet all places with the
sweet drink" (iii. 62. 16).

The interpretation given above of the office of Varuna as regards the
sun's path, is supported by a verse where is made an allusion to the
time "when they release the sun's horses," _i.e_., when after two or
three months of rain the sun shines again (v. 62. 1). In another verse
one reads: "Ye direct the waters, sustenance of earth and heaven,
richly let come your rains" (viii. 25. 6).

Now there is nothing startling in this view. In opposition to the
unsatisfactory attempts of modern scholars, it is the traditional
interpretation of Mitra and Varuna that Mitra was god of day (_i.e.,_
the sun), and Varuna the god of night (_i.e.,_ covering),[85] while
native belief regularly attributes to him the lordship of water[86].
The 'thousand eyes' of Varuna are the result of this view. The other
light-side of Varuna as special lord of day (excluding the all-heaven
idea with the sun as his 'eye') is elsewhere scarcely referred to,
save in late hymns and VIII. 41.[87] In conjunction with the
storm-god, Indra, the wrath-side of Varuna is further developed. The
prayer for release is from 'long darkness,' _i.e._, from death; in
other words, may the light of life be restored (II. 27. 14-15; II. 28.
7). Grassmann, who believes that in Varuna there is an early
monotheistic deity, enumerates all his offices and omits the giving of
rain from the list;[88] while Ludwig derives his name from _var_ (=
velle) and defines him as the lofty god who wills!

Varuna's highest development ushers in the middle period of the Rig
Veda; before the rise of the later All-father, and even before the
great elevation of Indra. But when S[=u]rya and Dawn were chief, then
Varuna was chiefest. There is no monotheism in the worship of a god
who is regularly associated as one of a pair with another god. Nor is
there in Varuna any religious grandeur which, so far as it exceeds
that of other divinities, is not evolved from his old physical side.
One cannot personify heaven and write a descriptive poem about him
without becoming elevated in style, as compared with the tone of one
that praises a rain-cloud or even the more confined personality of the
sun. There is a stylistic but not a metaphysical descent from this
earlier period in the 'lords of the atmosphere,' for, as we shall
show, the elevation of Indra and Agni denotes a philosophical
conception yet more advanced than the almost monotheistic greatness
attained by Varuna. But one must find the background to this earlier
period; and in it Varuna is not monotheistic. He is the covering sky
united with the sun, or he whose covering is rain and dew. Indra
treats Varuna as Savitar treats Mitra, supplants him; and for the same
reason, because each represents the same priestly philosophy.

In the one extant hymn to Mitra (who is Indo-Iranian) it is Mitra that
'watches men,' and 'bears earth and heaven.' He is here (iii. 59) the
kindly sun, his name (Mitra, 'friend') being frequently punned upon.

The point of view taken by Barth deserves comment. He says:[89] "It
has sometimes been maintained that the Varuna of the hymns is a god in
a state of decadence. In this view we can by no means concur; ... an
appeal to these few hymns is enough to prove that in the consciousness
of their authors the divinity of Varuna stood still intact." If,
instead of 'still intact,' the author had said, 'on the increase, till
undermined by still later philosophical speculation,' the true
position, in our opinion, would have been given. But a distinction
must be made between decadence of greatness and decadence of
popularity. It has happened in the case of some of the Vedic inherited
gods that exactly in proportion as their popularity decreased their
greatness increased; that is to say, as they became more vague and
less individual to the folk they were expanded into wider circles of
relationship by the theosophist, and absorbed other gods' majesty.[89]
Varuna is no longer a popular god in the Rig Veda. He is already a god
of speculation, only the speculation did not go far enough to suit the
later seers of Indra-Savitar-hood. Most certainly his worship, when
compared in popularity with that of Agni and Indra, is unequal. But
this is because he is too remote to be popular.

What made the popular gods was a union of near physical force to
please the vulgar, with philosophical mysticism to please the priest,
and Indra and Agni fulfilled the conditions, while awful, but distant,
Varuna did not.

In stating that the great hymn to Varuna is not typical of the
earliest stage of religious belief among the Vedic Aryans, we should
add one word in explanation. Varuna's traits, as shown in other parts
of the Rig Veda, are so persistent that they must be characteristic of
his original function. It does not follow, however, that any one hymn
in which he is lauded is necessarily older than the hymn cited from
the first book. The earliest stage of religious development precedes
the entrance into the Punj[=a]b. It may even be admitted that at the
time when the Vedic Aryans became Hindus, that is, when they settled
about the Indus, Varuna was the great god we see him in the great hymn
to his honor. But while the relation of the [=A]dityas to the spirits
of Ahura in Zoroaster's system points to this, yet it is absurd to
assume this epoch as the starting point of Vedic belief. Back of this
period lies one in which Varuna was by no means a monotheistic deity,
nor even the greatest divinity among the gods. The fact, noticed by
Hillebrandt, that the Vasishtha family are the chief praisers of
Varuna, may also indicate that his special elevation was due to the
theological conceptions of one clan, rather than of the whole people,
since in the other family books he is worshipped more as one of a
pair, Varuna and Mitra, heaven and sun.

ADITI.

The mother of Varuna and the luminous gods is the 'mother of kings,'
Boundlessness (_aditi_)[90] a product of priestly theosophy. Aditi
makes, perhaps, the first approach to formal pantheism in India, for
all gods, men, and things are identified with her (i. 89. 10). Seven
children of Aditi are mentioned, to whom is added an eighth (in one
hymn).[91] The chief of these, who is, _par excellence_ the [=A]ditya
(son of Aditi), is Varuna. Most of the others are divinities of the
sun (x. 72). With Varuna stands Mitra, and besides this pair are found
'the true friend' Aryaman, Savitar, Bhaga, and, later, Indra, as sun
(?). Daksha and Ança are also reckoned as [=A]dityas, and S[=u]rya is
enumerated among them as a divinity distinct from Savitar. But the
word _aditi,_ 'unbound,' is often a mere epithet, of Fire, Sky, etc.
Moreover, in one passage, at least, _aditi_ simply means 'freedom' (i.
24. 1), less boundlessness than 'un-bondage'; so, probably, in i. 185.
3, 'the gift of freedom.' Ança seems to have much the same meaning
with Bhaga, _viz.,_ the sharer, giver. Daksha may, perhaps, be the
'clever,' 'strong' one ([Greek: dexios]), abstract Strength; as
another name of the sun (?). Aditi herself (according to Müller,
Infinity; according to Hillebrandt, Eternity) is an abstraction that
is born later than her chief sons, Sun and Varuna.[92] Zarathustra
(Zoroaster, not earlier than the close of the first Vedic period) took
the seven [=A]dityas and reformed them into one monotheistic
(dualistic) Spirit (Ahura), with a circle of six moral attendants,
thereby dynamically destroying every physical conception of them.

DAWN.

We have devoted considerable space to Varuna because of the
theological importance with which is invested his personality. If one
admit that a monotheistic Varuna is the _ur_-Varuna, if one see in him
a sign that the Hindus originally worshipped one universally great
superior god, whose image effaced that of all the others,[93] then the
attempt to trace any orderly development in Hindu theology may as well
be renounced; and one must imagine that this peculiar people, starting
with monotheism descended to polytheism, and then leapt again into the
conception of that Father-god whose form, in the end of the Rig Vedic
period, out-varunas Varuna as encompasser and lord of all. If, on the
other hand, one see in Varuna a god who, from the 'covering,' heaven
and cloud and rain, from earliest time has been associated with the
sun as a pair, and recognize in Varuna's loftier form the product of
that gradual elevation to which were liable all the gods at the hands
of the Hindu priests; if one see in him at this stage the highest god
which a theology, based on the worship of natural phenomena, was able
to evolve; then, for the reception of those gods who overthrew him
from his supremacy, because of their greater freedom from physical
restraints, there is opened a logical and historical path--until that
god comes who in turn follows these half-embodied ones, and stands as
the first immaterial author of the universe--and so one may walk
straight from the physical beginning of the Rig Vedic religion to its
spiritual Brahmanic end.

We turn now to one or two phenomena-deities that were never much
tampered with by priestly speculation; their forms being still as
bright and clear as when the first Vedic worshipper, waiting to salute
the rising sun, beheld in all her beauty, and thus praised

THE DAWN.[94]

As comes a bride hath she approached us, gleaming;
All things that live she rouses now to action.
A fire is born that shines for human beings;
Light hath she made, and driven away the darkness.

Wide-reaching hath she risen, to all approaching,
And shone forth clothed in garments white and glistening,
Of gold her color, fair to see her look is,
Mother of kine,[95] leader of days she gleameth.

Bearing the gods' eye, she, the gracious maiden,
--Leading along the white and sightly charger[96]
--Aurora, now is seen, revealed in glory,
With shining guerdons unto all appearing.

O near and dear one, light far off our foes, and
Make safe to us our kines' wide pasture-places.
Keep from us hatred; what is good, that bring us,
And send the singer wealth, O generous maiden.

With thy best beams for us do thou beam widely,
Aurora, goddess bright, our life extending;
And food bestow, O thou all goods possessing,
Wealth, too, bestowing, kine and steeds and war-cars

Thou whom Vasistha's[97] sons extol with praises,
Fair-born Aurora, daughter of Dyaus, the bright one,
On us bestow thou riches high and mighty,
--O all ye gods with weal forever guard us.

In the laudation of Varuna the fancy of the poet exhausts itself in
lofty imagery, and reaches the topmost height of Vedic religious
lyric. In the praise of Dawn it descends not lower than to interweave
beauty with dignity of utterance. Nothing in religious poetry more
graceful or delicate than the Vedic Dawn-hymns has ever been written.
In the daily vision of Dawn following her sister Night the poet sees
his fairest goddess, and in his worship of her there is love and
admiration, such as is evoked by the sight of no other deity. "She
comes like a fair young maiden, awakening all to labor, with an
hundred chariots comes she, and brings the shining light; gleam forth,
O Dawn, and give us thy blessing this day; for in thee is the life of
every living creature. Even as thou hast rewarded the singers of old,
so now reward our song" (I. 48).

The kine of Dawn are the bright clouds that, like red cattle, wander
in droves upon the horizon. Sometimes the rays of light, which stretch
across the heaven, are intended by this image, for the cattle-herding
poets employed their flocks as figures for various ends.

The inevitable selfish pessimism of unripe reflection is also woven
into the later Dawn-hymns: "How long will it be ere this Dawn, too,
shall join the Dawns departed? Vanished are now the men that saw the
Dawns of old; we here see her now; there will follow others who will
see her hereafter; but, O Dawn, beam here thy fairest; rich in
blessings, true art thou to friend and right. Bring hither (to the
morning sacrifice) the gods" (I. 113).

Since the metre (here ignored) of the following hymn is not all of one
model, it is probable that after the fourth verse a new hymn began,
which was distinct from the first; but the argument from metre is
unconvincing, and in any event both songs are worth citing, since they
show how varied were the images and fancies of the poets: "The Dawns
are like heroes with golden weapons; like red kine of the morning on
the field of heaven; shining they weave their webs of light, like
women active at work; food they bring to the pious worshipper. Like a
dancing girl is the Dawn adorned, and opens freely her bosom; as a cow
gives milk, as a cow comes forth from its stall, so opens she her
breast, so comes she out of the darkness (verses 1-4) ...She is the
ever new, born again and again, adorned always with the same color. As
a player conceals the dice, so keeps she concealed the days of a man;
daughter of Heaven she wakes and drives away her sister (Night). Like
kine, like the waves of a flood, with sunbeams she appears. O rich
Dawn, bring us wealth; harness thy red horses, and bring to us
success" (I. 92). The homage to Dawn is naturally divided at times
with that to the sun: "Fair shines the light of morning; the sun
awakens us to toil; along the path of order goes Dawn arrayed in
light. She extendeth herself in the east, and gleameth till she fills
the sky and earth"; and again: "Dawn is the great work of Varuna and
Mitra; through the sun is she awakened" (I. 124; III. 61. 6-7). In the
ritualistic period Dawn is still mechanically lauded, and her beams
"rise in the east like pillars of sacrifice" (IV. 51. 2); but
otherwise the imagery of the selections given above is that which is
usually employed. The 'three dawns' occasionally referred to are, as
we have shown elsewhere,[98] the three dawn-lights, white, red, and
yellow, as they are seen by both the Vedic poet and the Florentine.

Dawn becomes common and trite after awhile, as do all the gods, and is
invoked more to give than to please. 'Wake us,' cries a later poet,
'Wake us to wealth, O Dawn; give to us, give to us; wake up, lest the
sun burn thee with his light'--a passage (V. 79) which has caused much
learned nonsense to be written on the inimical relations of Sun and
Dawn as portrayed here. The dull idea is that Dawn is lazy, and had
better get up before S[=u]rya catches her asleep. The poet is not in
the least worried because his image does not express a suitable
relationship between the dawn and the sun, nor need others be
disturbed at it. The hymn is late, and only important in showing the
new carelessness as regards the old gods.[99] Some other traits appear
in VII. 75. 1 ff., where Dawn is 'queen of the world,' and banishes
the _druhs_, or evil spirit. She here is daughter of Heaven, and wife
of the sun (4, 5); _ib_. 76. 1, she is the eye of the world; and _ib_
81. 4, she is invoked as 'mother.'

There is, at times, so close a resemblance between Dawn-hymns and
Sun-hymns that the imagery employed in one is used in the other. Thus
the hymn VI. 64 begins: "The beams of Dawn have arisen, shining as
shine the waters' gleaming waves. She makes good paths, ... she
banishes darkness as a warrior drives away a foe (so of the sun, IV.
13. 2; X. 37. 4; 170. 2). Beautiful are thy paths upon the mountains,
and across the waters thou shinest, self-gleaming" (also of the sun).
With the last expression may be compared that in VI. 65. 5: "Dawn,
whose seat is upon the hills."

Dawn is intimately connected not only with Agni but with the Twin
Horsemen, the Açvins (equites)--if not so intimately connected as is
Helen with the Dioskouroi, who, _pace_ Pischel, are the Açvins of
Hellas. This relationship is more emphasized in the hymns to the
latter gods, but occasionally occurs in Dawn-hymns, of which another
is here translated in full.

TO DAWN (IV. 52).

The Daughter of Heaven, this beauteous maid,
Resplendent leaves her sister (Night),
And now before (our sight) appears.

Red glows she like a shining mare,
Mother of kine, who timely comes--
The Horsemen's friend Aurora is.

Both friend art thou of the Horsemen twain,
And mother art thou of the kine,
And thou, Aurora, rulest wealth.

We wake thee with our praise as one
Who foes removes; such thought is ours,
O thou that art possesst of joy.

Thy radiant beams beneficent
Like herds of cattle now appear;
Aurora fills the wide expanse.

With light hast thou the dark removed,
Filling (the world), O brilliant one.
Aurora, help us as thou us'st.

With rays thou stretchest through the heaven
And through the fair wide space between,
O Dawn, with thy refulgent light.

It was seen that Savitar (P[=u]shan) is the rising and setting sun.
So, antithetic to Dawn, stands the Abendroth with her sister, Night.
This last, generally, as in the hymn just translated, is lauded only
in connection with Dawn, and for herself alone gets but one hymn, and
that is not in a family-book. She is to be regarded, therefore, less
as a goddess of the pantheon than as a quasi-goddess, the result of a
poet's meditative imagination, rather than one of the folk's primitive
objects of adoration; somewhat as the English poets personify "Ye
clouds, that far above me float and pause, ye ocean-waves ... ye
woods, that listen to the night-bird's singing, O ye loud waves, and O
ye forests high, and O ye clouds that far above me soared; thou rising
sun, thou blue rejoicing sky!"--and as in Greek poetry, that which
before has been conceived of vaguely as divine suddenly is invested
with a divine personality. The later poet exalts these aspects of
nature, and endows those that were before only half recognized with a
little special praise. So, whereas Night was divine at first merely as
the sister of divine Dawn, in the tenth book one poet thus gives her
praise:

HYMN TO NIGHT (X. 127).

Night, shining goddess, comes, who now
Looks out afar with many eyes,
And putteth all her beauties on.

Immortal shining goddess, she
The depths and heights alike hath filled,
And drives with light the dark away.

To me she comes, adorned well,
A darkness black now sightly made;
Pay then thy debt, O Dawn, and go.[100]

The bright one coming put aside
Her sister Dawn (the sunset light),
And lo! the darkness hastes away.

So (kind art thou) to us; at whose
Appearing we retire to rest,
As birds fly homeward to the tree.

To rest are come the throngs of men;
To rest, the beasts; to rest, the birds;
And e'en the greedy eagles rest.

Keep off the she-wolf and the wolf,
Keep off the thief, O billowy Night,
Be thou to us a saviour now.

To thee, O Night, as 'twere an herd,
To a conqueror (brought), bring I an hymn
Daughter of Heaven, accept (the gift).[101]

THE AÇVINS.

The Açvins who are, as was said above, the 'Horsemen,' parallel to the
Greek Dioskouroi, are twins, sons of Dyaus, husbands, perhaps brothers
of the Dawn. They have been variously 'interpreted,' yet in point of
fact one knows no more now what was the original conception of the
twain than was known before Occidental scholars began to study
them.[102] Even the ancients made mere guesses: the Açvins came before
the Dawn, and are so-called because they ride on horses _(açva,
equos)_ they represent either Heaven and Earth, or Day and Night, or
Sun and Moon, or two earthly kings--such is the unsatisfactory
information given by the Hindus themselves.[103]

Much the same language with that in the Dawn-hymns is naturally
employed in praising the Twin Brothers. They, like the Dioskouroi, are
said to have been incorporated gradually into the pantheon, on an
equality with the other gods,[104] not because they were at first
human beings, but because they, like Night, were adjuncts of Dawn, and
got their divinity through her as leader.[105] In the last book of the
Rig Veda they are the sons of Sarany[=u] and Vivasvant, but it is not
certain whether Sarany[=u] means dawn or not; in the first book they
are born of the flood (in the sky).[106] They are sons of Dyaus, but
this, too, only in the last and first books, while in the latter they
are separated once, so that only one is called the Son of the
Sky.[107] They follow Dawn 'like men' (VIII. 5. 2) and are in
Brahmanic literature the 'youngest of the gods.'[108]

The twin gods are the physicians of heaven, while to men they bring
all medicines and help in times of danger. They were apparently at
first only 'wonder-workers,' for the original legends seem to have
been few. Yet the striking similarity in these aspects with the
brothers of Helen must offset the fact that so much in connection with
them seems to have been added in books one and ten. They restore the
blind and decrepit, impart strength and speed, and give the power and
seed of life; even causing waters to flow, fire to burn, and trees to
grow. As such they assist lovers and aid in producing offspring.

The Açvins are brilliantly described, Their bird-drawn chariot and all
its appurtenances are of gold; they are swift as thought, agile,
young, and beautiful. Thrice they come to the sacrifice, morning,
noon, and eve; at the yoking of their car, the dawn is born. When the
'banner before dawn' appears, the invocation to the Açvins begins;
they 'accompany dawn.' Some variation of fancy is naturally to be
looked for. Thus, though, as said above, Dawn is born at the Açvins
yoking, yet Dawn is herself invoked to wake the Açvins; while again
the sun starts their chariot before Dawn; and as sons of Zeus they are
invoked "when darkness still stands among the shining clouds
(cows)."[109]

Husbands or brothers or children of Dawn, the Horsemen are also
S[=u]ry[=a]'s husbands, and she is the sun's daughter (Dawn?) or the
sun as female. But this myth is not without contradictions, for
S[=u]ry[=a] elsewhere weds Soma, and the Açvins are the bridegroom's
friends; whom P[=u]shan chose on this occasion as his parents; he who
(unless one with Soma) was the prior bridegroom of the same
much-married damsel.[110]

The current explanation of the Açvins is that they represent two
periods between darkness and dawn, the darker period being nearer
night, the other nearer day. But they probably, as inseparable twins,
are the twinlights or twilight, before dawn, half dark and half
bright. In this light it may well be said of them that one alone is
the son of bright Dyaus, that both wed Dawn, or are her brothers. They
always come together. Their duality represents, then, not successive
stages but one stage in day's approach, when light is dark and dark is
light. In comparing the Açvins to other pairs[111] this dual nature is
frequently referred to; but no less is there a triality in connection
with them which often in describing them has been ignored. This is
that threefold light which opens day; and, as in many cases they join
with Dawn, so their color is inseparable. Strictly speaking, the break
of red is the dawn and the white and yellow lights precede this[112].
Thus in V. 73. 5: "Red birds flew round you as S[=u]ry[=a] stepped
upon your chariot"; so that it is quite impossible, in accordance with
the poets themselves, to limit the Açvins to the twilight. They are a
variegated growth from a black and white seed. The chief function of
the Açvins, as originally conceived, was the finding and restoring of
vanished light. Hence they are invoked as finders and aid-gods in
general (the myths are given in Myriantheus).

Some very amusing and some silly legends have been collected and told
by the Vedic poets in regard to the preservation and resuscitating
power of the Açvins--how an old man was rejuvenated by them (this is
also done by the three Ribhus, master-workmen of the gods); how brides
are provided by them; how they rescued Bhujyu and others from the
dangers of the deep (as in the classical legends); how they replaced a
woman's leg with an iron one; restored a saint's eye-sight; drew a
seer out of a well, etc, etc. Many scholars follow Bergaigne in
imagining all these miracles to be anthropomorphized forms of solar
phenomena, the healing of the blind representing the bringing out of
the sun from darkness, etc. To us such interpretation often seems
fatuous. No less unconvincing is the claim that one of the Açvins
represents the fire of heaven and the other the fire of the altar. The
Twins are called _n[=a]saty[=a],_ the 'savers' (or 'not untrue
ones[113]'); explained by some as meaning 'gods with good noses[114].'

HYMN TO THE HORSEMEN.

Whether ye rest on far-extended earth, or on the sea in house upon it
made, 'come hither thence, O ye that ride the steeds. If ever for man
ye mix the sacrifice, then notice now the Kanva [poet who sings]. I
call upon the gods [Indra, Vishnu[115]] and the swift-going
Horsemen[116]. These Horsemen I call now that they work wonders, to
seize the works (of sacrifice), whose friendship is preëminently ours,
and relationship among all the gods; in reference to whom arise
sacrifices ... If, to-day, O Horsemen, West or East ye stand, ye of
good steeds, whether at Druhyu's, Anu's, Turvaça's, or Yadu's, I call
ye; come to me. If ye fly in the air, O givers of great joy; or if
through the two worlds; or if, according to your pleasure, ye mount
the car,--thence come hither, O Horsemen.

From the hymn preceding this, the following verses[117]:

Whatever manliness is in the aether, in the sky, and among
the five peoples, grant us that, O Horsemen ... this hot
_soma_-drink of yours with laudation is poured out; this
_soma_ sweet through which ye discovered Vritra ... Ascend
the swift-rolling chariot, O Horsemen; hither let these my
praises bring ye, like a cloud ... Come as guardians of
homes; guardians of our bodies. Come to the house for (to
give) children and offspring. Whether ye ride on the same
car with Indra, or be in the same house with the Wind;
whether united with the Sons of Boundlessness or the Ribhus,
or stand on Vishnu's wide steps (come to us). This is the
best help of the horsemen, if to-day I should entice them to
get booty, or call them as my strength to conquer in
battle.... Whatever medicine (ye have) far or near, with
this now, O wise ones, grant protection.... Awake, O Dawn,
the Horsemen, goddess, kind and great.... When, O Dawn, thou
goest in light and shinest with the Sun, then hither comes
the Horsemen's chariot, to the house men have to protect.
When the swollen _soma_-stalks are milked like cows with
udders, and when the choric songs are sung, then they that
adore the Horsemen are preëminent....

Here the Açvins are associated with Indra, and even find the evil
demon; but, probably, at this stage Indra is more than god of storms.

Some of the expanded myths and legends of the Açvins may be found in
i. 118, 119, 158; x. 40. Here follows one with legends in moderate
number (vii. 71):

Before the Dawn her sister, Night, withdraweth;
The black one leaves the ruddy one a pathway.
Ye that have kine and horses, you invoke we;
By day, at night, keep far from us your arrow.

Come hither, now, and meet the pious mortal,
And on your car, O Horsemen, bring him good things;
Keep off from us the dry destroying sickness,
By day, at night, O sweetest pair, protect us.

Your chariot may the joy-desiring chargers,
The virile stallions, bring at Dawn's first coming;
That car whose reins are rays, and wealth upon it;
Come with the steeds that keep the season's order.

Upon the car, three-seated, full of riches,
The helping car, that has a path all golden,
On this approach, O lords of heroes, true ones,
Let this food-bringing car of yours approach us.

Ye freed from his old age the man Cyav[=a]na;
Ye brought and gave the charger swift to Pedu;
Ye two from darkness' anguish rescued Atri;
Ye set J[a=]husha down, released from fetters.[118]

This prayer, O Horsemen, and this song is uttered;
Accept the skilful[sic] poem, manly heroes.
These prayers, to you belonging, have ascended,
O all ye gods protect us aye with blessings![119]

The sweets which the Açvins bring are either on their chariot, or, as
is often related, in a bag; or they burst forth from the hoof of their
steed. Pegasus' spring in Helicon has been compared with this. Their
vehicles are variously pictured as birds, horses, ships, etc. It is to
be noticed that in no one of their attributes are the Açvins unique.
Other gods bring sweets, help, protect, give offspring, give healing
medicines, and, in short, do all that the Açvins do. But, as Bergaigne
points out, they do all this pacifically, while Indra, who performs
some of their wonders, does so by storm. He protects by not injuring,
and helps by destroying foes. Yet is this again true only in general,
and the lines between warlike, peaceful, and 'sovereign' gods are
often crossed.

* * * * *

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 1: Such for instance as the hymn to the Açvins,
RV. ii. 39. Compare verses 3-4: 'Come (ye pair of Açvins)
like two horns; like two hoofs; like two geese; like two
wheels; like two ships; like two spans'; etc. This is the
content of the whole hymn.]

[Footnote 2: _Deva_ is 'shining' (deus), and _S[=u]rya_
(sol, [Greek: áelios]) means the same.]

[Footnote 3: Let the reader note at the outset that there is
scarcely an activity considered as divine which does not
belong to several gods (see below).]

[Footnote 4: From _su, sav_, enliven, beget, etc. In RV. iv.
53.6 and vii, 63.2, _pra-savitar_.]

[Footnote 5: RV. VII. 66. 14-15; compare X. 178. 1. In the
notes immediately following the numbers all refer to the Rig
Veda.]

[Footnote 6: V. 47, 3; compare vs. 7, and X. 189. 1-2.]

[Footnote 7: Compare X. 177. 1.]

[Footnote 8: X. 37. 9.]

[Footnote 9: V. 63. 7. Varuna and Mitra set the sun's car in
heaven.]

[Footnote 10: 1 IV. 13. 2-5; X. 37, 4; 85, 1. But _ib_. 149.
1. Savitar holds the sky 'without support.']

[Footnote 11: VII 63.1; I. 115.11; X. 37. 1.]

[Footnote 12: III. 61.4; VII. 63. 3.]

[Footnote 13: VII 78.3.]

[Footnote 14: I. 56,4; IX. 84. 2; Compare I. 92. 11; 115, 2;
123. 10-12. V. 44. 7, and perhaps 47.6, are late. VII. 75.
5, is an exception (or late).]

[Footnote 15: _La Religion Védique_, I.6; II. 2.]

[Footnote 16: Ehni, _Yama,_ p. 134.]

[Footnote 17: RV., IV. 54. 2. Here the sun gives life even
to the gods.]

[Footnote 18: Ten hundred and twenty-eight hymns are
contained in the 'Rig Veda Collection.']

[Footnote 19: IV. 14.]

[Footnote 20: X. 37; 158; 170; 177; 189. Each has its own
mark of lateness. In 37, the dream; in 158, the triad; in
170, the sun as _asurah[=a]_; in 177, the mystic tone and
the bird-sun (compare Garutman, I. 164; X. 149); in 189, the
thirty stations.]

[Footnote 21: See Whitney in _Colebrooke's Essays_, revised
edition, ii. p. 111.]

[Footnote 22: iv. 54]

[Footnote 23: Two 'laps' below, besides that above, the word
meaning 'middle' but also 'under-place.' The explanation of
this much-disputed passage will be found by comparing I.
154. 5 and VII. 99. 1. The sun's three places are where he
appears on both horizons and in the zenith. The last is the
abode of the dead where Yama reigns. Compare IV. 53. The
bracketed verses are probably a late puzzle attached to the
word 'lap' of the preceding verse.]

[Footnote 24: Doubtful.]

[Footnote 25: The Spirit, later of evil spirits, demons (as
above, the _asurah[=á]_). Compare Ahura.]

[Footnote 26: A numerical conception not paralleled in the
Rig Veda, though mountains are called protuberances
('elevations') in other places.]

[Footnote 27: The last stanza is in the metre of the first;
two more follow without significant additions.]

[Footnote 28: The texts are translated by Muir, OST, V. p.
171 ff.]

[Footnote 29: _La Religion Védique_, II. p. 428. Compare
Hillebrandt, _Soma_ p. 456.]

[Footnote 30: I. 138. 4.]

[Footnote 31: VI. 56. 1.]

[Footnote 32: In I. 23. 13-15 P[=u]shan is said to bring
king _(soma),_ "whom he found like a lost herd of cattle."
The fragment is late if, as is probable, the 'six' of vs. 15
are the six seasons. Compare VI. 54. 5, "may P[=u]shan go
after our kine."]

[Footnote 33: Compare VI. 54.]

[Footnote 34: He is the 'son of freeing,' from darkness? VI.
55. 1.]

[Footnote 35: IV. 57. 7.]

[Footnote 36: VI. 17. 11; 48. 11 ff.; IV. 30. 24 ff. He is
called like a war-god with the Maruts in VI. 48.]

[Footnote 37: So, too, Bhaga is Dawn's brother, I. 123. 5.
P[=u]shan is Indra's brother in VI. 55. 5. Gubernatis
interprets P[=u]shan as 'the setting sun.']

[Footnote 38: Contrast I. 42, and X. 26 (with 1. 138. 1). In
the first hymn P[=u]shan leads the way and drives away
danger, wolves, thieves, and helps to booty and pasturage.
In the last he is a war-god, who helps in battle, a
'far-ruler,' embracing the thoughts of all (as in III. 62.
9).]

[Footnote 39: For the traits just cited compare IV. 57. 7;
VI. 17. 11; 48. 15; 53; 55; 56. I-3; 57. 3-4; 58. 2-4; II.
40; X. 17. 3 ff.; 26. 3-8; I. 23. 14; all of I. 42, and 138;
VIII. 4. 15-18; III. 57. 2. In X. 17. 4, Savitar, too,
guides the souls of the dead.]

[Footnote 40: That is to say, one hymn is addressed to Bhaga
with various other gods, VII. 41. Here he seems to be
personified good-luck ("of whom even the king says,' I would
have thee,'" vs. 2). In Ihe Br[=a]hmanas 'Bhaga is blind,'
which applies better to Fortune than to the Sun.]

[Footnote 41: The hymn is sung before setting out on a
forray for cattle. Let one observe how unsupported is
the assumption of the ritualists as applied to this hymn,
that it must have been "composed for rubrication."]

[Footnote 42: After Muir, V. p. 178. The clouds and cattle
are both called _gàs_ 'wanderers,' which helped in the
poetic identification of the two.]

[Footnote 43: Compare IX. 97. 55, "Thou art Bhaga, giver of
gifts."]

[Footnote 44: _Bhágam bhakshi_! Compare baksheesh. The word
as 'god' is both Avestan, _bagha_, and Slavic, _bogu_ (also
meaning 'rich'). It may be an epithet of other gods also,
and here it means only luck.]

[Footnote 45: Literally 'possessed of _bhaga,' i.e_.,
wealth.]

[Footnote 46: May Bhaga be _bhágav[=a]n, i.e_., a true
_bhaga_-holder. Here and below a pun on the name (as
above).]

[Footnote 47: Mythical being, possibly the sun-horse.
According to Pischel a real earthly racer.]

[Footnote 48: I.22.17, etc; 154 ff.; VII. too.]

[Footnote 49: VII. 100. 5-6. Vishnu (may be the epithet of
Indra in I.61.7) means winner (?),]

[Footnote 50: VI. 69; VII. 99. But Vishnu is ordered about
by Indra (IV. 18. 11; VIII. 89. 12).]

[Footnote 51: I.154. 5. In II. 1. 3, Vishnu is one with Fire
(Agni).]

[Footnote 52: Thus, for example, Vishnu in the Hindu
trinity, the separate worship of the sun in modern sects,
and in the cult of the hill-men.]

[Footnote 53: X. 149.]

[Footnote 54: II.41.20.]

[Footnote 55: vi.70.]

[Footnote 56: I.160.4; IV. 56.1-3; VII. 53. 2.]

[Footnote 57: I. 185. 8. _(J[=a]spati)._ The expiatory power
of the hymn occurs again in I. 159.]

[Footnote 58: I. 185. 1.]

[Footnote 59: IV. 56. 7.]

[Footnote 60: I. 22. 15.]

[Footnote 61: X. 18. 10 (or: "like a wool-soft maiden").]

[Footnote 62: The lightning. In I. 31. 4, 10 "(Father) Fire
makes Dyaus bellow" like "a bull" (v. 36. 5). Dyaus "roars"
in vi. 72. 3. Nowhere else is he a thunderer.]

[Footnote 63: 1. 24. 7-8. The change in metaphor is not
unusual.]

[Footnote 64: This word means either order or orders (law);
literally the 'way' or 'course.']

[Footnote 65: 1. 24 (epitomized).]

[Footnote 66: Perhaps better with Ludwig "of (thee) in
anger, of (thee) incensed."]

[Footnote 67: Or: "Being (himself) in the (heavenly) flood
he knows the ships." (Ludwig.)]

[Footnote 68: An intercalated month is meant (not the
primitive 'twelve days').]

[Footnote 69: Or 'very wise,' of mental strength.]

[Footnote 70: VIII. 41. 7; VII. 82. 6 (Bergaigne); X. 132.
4.]

[Footnote 71: Compare Bergaigne, _La Religion Védique_, iii.
pp. 116-118.]

[Footnote 72: The insistence on the holy seven, the 'secret
names' of dawn, the confusion of Varuna with Trita. Compare,
also, the refrain, viii. 39-42. For X. 124, see below.]

[Footnote 73: Compare Hillebrandt's Varuna and Mitra, p. 5;
and see our essay on the Holy Numbers of the Rig Veda (in
the _Oriental Studies_).]

[Footnote 74: Varuna's forgiving of sins may be explained as
a washing out of sin, just as fire burns it out, and so
loosens therewith the imagined bond, V. 2. 7. Thus, quite
apart from Varuna in a hymn addressed to the 'Waters,' is
found the prayer, "O waters, carry off whatever sin is in me
... and untruth," I. 23. 22.]

[Footnote 75: But as in iv. 42, so in x. 124 he shares glory
with Indra.]

[Footnote 76: Later, Varuna's water-office is his only
physical side. Compare [=A]it. [=A]r. II. I. 7. 7, 'water
and Varuna, children of mind.' Compare with _v[=a]ri, oùrá_
= _v[=a]ra_, and _var[=i]_, an old word for rivers,
_var[s.]_ (= _var_ + _s_), 'rain.' The etymology is very
doubtful on account of the number of _var_-roots. Perhaps
dew _(ersa)_ and rain first as 'coverer.' Even _var = vas_
'shine,' has been suggested (ZDMG. XXII. 603).]

[Footnote 77: The old comparison of _Varena cathrugaosha_
turns out to be "the town of Varna with four gates"!]

[Footnote 78: In _India: What Can it Teach us_, pp. 197,
200, Müller tacitly recognizes in the physical Varuna only
the 'starry' night-side.]

[Footnote 79: _Loc. cit._, III. 119. Bergaigne admits Varuna
as god of waters, but sees in him identity with Vritra a
'restrainer of waters.' He thinks the 'luminous side' of
Varuna to be antique also (III. 117-119). Varuna's cord,
according to Bergaigne, comes from 'tying up' the waters;
'night's fetters,' according to Hillebrandt.]

[Footnote 80: _Loc. cit._, p. 13.]

[Footnote 81: One of the chief objections to Bergaigne's
conception of Varuna as restrainer is that it does not
explain the antique union with Mitra.]

[Footnote 82: II. 28. 4, 7; VII. 82. 1, 2; 87.2]

[Footnote 83: vii. 87. 6; 88. 2.]

[Footnote 84: viii. 41. 2, 7, 8. So Varuna gives _soma_,
rain. As a rain-god he surpasses Dyaus, who, ultimately, is
also a rain-god (above), as in Greece.]

[Footnote 85: Compare Çat. Br. V. 2.5.17, "whatever is dark
is Varuna's."]

[Footnote 86: In II. 38. 8 _varuna_ means 'fish,' and 'water
in I.184. 3.]

[Footnote 87: V. 62. I, 8; 64.7; 61. 5; 65. 2; 67. 2; 69.1;
VI. 51.1; 67. 5. In VIII. 47.11 the [=A]dityas are
themselves spies.]

[Footnote 88: Introduction to Grassmann, II. 27; VI. 42.
Lex. s. v.]

[Footnote 89: _Religions of India,_ p. 17.]

[Footnote 90: The Rik knows, also, a Diti, but merely as
antithesls to Aditi--the 'confined and unconfined.' Aditi is
prayed to (for protection and to remove sin) in sporadic
verses of several hymns addressed to other gods, but she has
no hymn.]

[Footnote 91: Müller (_loc. cit._, below) thinks that the
'sons of Aditi' were first eight and were then reduced to
seven, in which opinion as in his whole interpretation of
Aditi as a primitive dawn-infinity we regret that we cannot
agree with him.]

[Footnote 92: See Hillebrandt, _Die Göttin Aditi_; and
Müller, SBE, xxxii., p. 241, 252.]

[Footnote 93: That is to say, if one believe that the
'primitive Aryans' were inoculated with Zoroaster's
teaching. This is the sort of Varuna that Koth believes to
have existed among the aboriginal Aryan tribes (above, p.
13, note 2).]

[Footnote 94: VII. 77.]

[Footnote 95: Clouds.]

[Footnote 96: The sun.]

[Footnote 97: The priest to whom, and to whose family, is
ascribed the seventh book.]

[Footnote 98: JAOS., XV. 270.]

[Footnote 99: Much theosophy, and even history (!), has been
read into II. 15, and IV. 30, where poets speak of Indra
slaying Dawn; but there is nothing remarkable in these
passages. Poetry is not creed. The monsoon (here Indra) does
away with dawns for a time, and that is what the poet says
in his own way.]

[Footnote 100: Transferred by Roth from the penultimate
position where it stands in the original. Dawn here pays
Night for the latter's malutinal withdrawing by withdrawing
herself. Strictly speaking, the Dawn is, of course, the
sunset light conceived of as identical with that preceding
the sunrise ([Greek: usas, hêôs], 'east' as 'glow').]

[Footnote 101: Late as seems this hymn to be, it is
interesting in revealing the fact that wolves (not tigers or
panthers) are the poet's most dreaded foes of night. It
must, therefore have been composed in the northlands, where
wolves are the herdsman's worst enemies.]

[Footnote 102: Myriantheus, _Die Açvins_; Muir, OST. v.
p.234; Bergaigne, _Religion Védique,_ II. p. 431; Müller,
_Lectures_, 2d series, p. 508; Weber, _Ind. St_. v. p. 234.
S[=a]yana on I. 180. 2, interprets the 'sister of the
Açvins' as Dawn.]

[Footnote 103: Muir, _loc. cit_. Weber regards them as the
(stars) Gemini.]

[Footnote 104: Weber, however, thinks that Dawn and Açvins
are equally old divinities, the oldest Hindu divinities in
his estimation.]

[Footnote 105: In the Epic (see below) they are called the
lowest caste of gods (Ç[=u]dras).]

[Footnote 106: X. 17. 2; I. 46. 2.]

[Footnote 107: I. 181. 4 (Roth, ZDMG. IV. 425).]

[Footnote 108: T[=a]itt. S. VII. 2. 7. 2; Muir, _loc. cit_.
p. 235.]

[Footnote 109: vii. 67. 2; viii. 5. 2; x. 39. 12; viii. 9.
17; i. 34. 10; x. 61. 4. Muir, _loc. cit._ 238-9. Compare
_ib_. 234, 256.]

[Footnote 110: Muir, _loc. cit_. p. 237. RV. vi. 58. 4; x.
85. 9ff.]

[Footnote 111: They are compared to two ships, two birds,
etc.]

[Footnote 112: In _Çat. Br_. V. 5. 4. it to the Açvins a
red-white goat is sacrificed, because 'Açvins are
red-white.']

[Footnote 113: Perhaps best with Brannhofer, 'the savers'
from _nas_ as in _nasjan_ (AG. p. 99).]

[Footnote 114: _La Religion Védique_, II. p. 434. That
_n[=a]snya_ means 'with good noses' is an epic notion,
_n[=a]satyadasr[=a]u sunas[=a]u,_ Mbh[=a]. I. 3. 58, and for
this reason, if for no other (though idea is older), the
etymology is probably false! The epithet is also Iranian.
Twinned and especially paired gods are characteristic of the
Rig Veda. Thus Yama and Yam[=i] are twins; and of pairs
Indra-Agni, Indra-V[=a]yu, besides the older Mitra-Varuna,
Heaven-Earth, are common.]

[Footnote 115: Perhaps to be omitted.]

[Footnote 116: _Pischel_, Ved. St. I. p. 48. As swift-going
gods they are called 'Indra-like.']

[Footnote 117: VIII. 9 and 10.]

[Footnote 118: Doubtful]

[Footnote 119: The last verse is not peculiar to this hymn,
but is the sign of the book (family) in which it was
composed.]

* * * * *

CHAPTER IV.

THE RIG VEDA (CONTINUED).--THE MIDDLE GODS.

Only one of the great atmospheric deities, the gods that preëminently
govern the middle sphere between sky and earth, can claim an Aryan
lineage. One of the minor gods of the same sphere, the ancient
rain-god, also has this antique dignity, but in his case the dignity
already is impaired by the strength of a new and greater rival. In the
case of the wind-god, on the other hand, there is preserved a deity
who was one of the primitive pantheon, belonging, perhaps, not only to
the Iranians, but to the Teutons, for V[=a]ta, Wind, may be the
Scandinavian Woden. The later mythologists on Indian soil make a
distinction between V[=a]ta, wind, and V[=a]yu (from the same root; as
in German _wehen_) and in this distinction one discovers that the old
V[=a]ta, who must have been once _the_ wind-god, is now reduced to
physical (though sentient) wind, while the newer name represents the
higher side of wind as a power lying back of phenomena; and it is this
latter conception alone that is utilized in the formation of the Vedic
triad of wind, fire, and sun. In short, in the use and application of
the two names, there is an exact parallel to the double terminology
employed to designate the sun as S[=u]rya and Savitar. Just as
S[=u]rya is the older [Greek: hêlios] and sol (acknowledged as a god,
yet palpably the physical red body in the sky) contrasted with the
interpretation which, by a newer name (Savitar), seeks to
differentiate the (sentient) physical from the spiritual, so is
V[=a]ta, Woden, replaced and lowered by the loftier conception of
V[=a]yu. But, again, just as, when the conception of Savitar is
formed, the spiritualizing tendency reverts to S[=u]rya, and makes of
him, too, a figure reclothed in the more modern garb of speech, which
is invented for Savitar alone; so the retroactive theosophic fancy,
after creating V[=a]yu as a divine power underlying phenomenal
V[=a]ta, reinvests V[=a]ta also with the garments of V[=a]yu. Thus,
finally, the two, who are the result of intellectual differentiation,
are again united from a new point of view, and S[=u]rya or Savitar,
V[=a]yu or V[=a]ta, are indifferently used to express respectively the
whole completed interpretation of the divinity, which is now visible
and invisible, sun and sun-god, wind and wind-god. In these pairs
there is, as it were, a perspective of Hindu theosophy, and one can
trace the god, as a spiritual entity including the physical, back to
the physical prototype that once was worshipped as such alone.

In the Rig Veda there are three complete hymns to Wind, none of these
being in the family books. In x. 186, the poet calls on Wind to bring
health to the worshipper, and to prolong his life. He addresses Wind
as 'father and brother and friend,' asking the power that blows to
bring him ambrosia, of which Wind has a store. These are rather pretty
verses without special theological intent, addressed more to Wind as
such than to a spiritual power. The other hymn from the same book is
directed to V[=a]ta also, not to V[=a]yu, and though it is loftier in
tone and even speaks of V[=a]ta as the soul of the gods, yet is it
evident that no consistent mythology has worked upon the purely poetic
phraseology, which is occupied merely with describing the rushing of a
mighty wind (x. 168). Nevertheless, V[=a]ta is worshipped, as is
V[=a]yu, with oblations.

HYMN TO WIND (V[=a]ta).

Now V[=a]ta's chariot's greatness! Breaking goes it,
And thundering is its noise; to heaven it touches,
Goes o'er the earth, cloud[1] making, dust up-rearing;
Then rush together all the forms of V[=a]ta;
To him they come as women to a meeting.
With them conjoint, on the same chariot going,
Is born the god, the king of all creation.
Ne'er sleepeth he when, on his pathway wandering,
He goes through air. The friend is he of waters;
First-born and holy,--where was he created,
And whence arose he? Spirit of gods is V[=a]ta,
Source of creation, goeth where he listeth;
Whose sound is heard, but not his form. This V[=a]ta
Let us with our oblations duly honor.

In times later than the Rig Veda, V[=a]yu interchanges with Indra as
representative of the middle sphere; and in the Rig Veda all the hymns
of the family books associate him with Indra (vii. 90-92; iv. 47-48).
In the first book he is associated thus in the second hymn; while, ib.
134, he has the only remaining complete hymn, though fragments of
songs occasionally are found. All of these hymns except the first two
simply invite V[=a]yu to come with Indra to the sacrifice, It is
V[=a]yu who with Indra obtains the first drink of soma (i. 134. 6). He
is spoken of as the artificer's, Tvashtar's, son-in-law, but the
allusion is unexplained (viii. 26. 22); he in turn begets the
storm-gods (i. 134. 4).

With V[=a]yu is joined Indra, one of the popular gods. These
divinities, which are partly of the middle and partly of the lower
sphere, may be called the popular gods, yet were the title 'new gods'
neither wholly amiss nor quite correct. For, though the popular
deities in general, when compared with many for whom a greater
antiquity may be claimed, such as the Sun, Varuna, Dyaus, etc., are of
more recent growth in dignity, yet there remains a considerable number
of divinities, the hymns in whose honor, dating from the latest
period, seem to show that the power they celebrate had been but lately
admitted into the category of those gods that deserved special
worship. Consequently new gods would be a misleading term,
as it should be applied to the plainer products of theological
speculation and abstraction rather than to Indra and his peers, not to
speak of those newest pantheistic gods, as yet unknown. The
designation popular must be understood, then, to apply to the gods
most frequently, most enthusiastically revered (for in a stricter
sense the sun was also a popular god); and reference is had in using
this word to the greater power and influence of these gods, which is
indicated by the fact that the hymns to Agni and Indra precede all
others in the family books, while the Soma-hymns are collected for the
most part into one whole book by themselves.

But there is another factor that necessitates a division between the
divinities of sun and heaven and the atmospheric and earthly gods
which are honored so greatly; and this factor is explanatory of the
popularity of these gods. In the case of the older divinities it is
the spiritualization of a sole material appearance that is revered; in
the case of the popular gods, the material phenomenon is reduced to a
minimum, the spirituality behind the phenomenon is exalted, and that
spirituality stands not in and for itself, but as a part of a union of
spiritualities. Applying this test to the earlier gods the union will
be found to be lacking. The sun's spiritual power is united with
Indra's, but the sun is as much a physical phenomenon as a
spirituality, and always remains so. On the other hand, the equation
of Varunic power with Indraic never amalgamated the two; and these are
the best instances that can be chosen of the older gods. For in the
case of others it is self-evident. Dyaus and Dawn are but material
phenomena, slightly spiritualized, but not joined with the
spirit-power of others.

Many have been the vain attempts to go behind the returns of Vedic
hymnology and reduce Indra, Agni, and Soma to terms of a purely
naturalistic religion. It cannot be done. Indra is neither sun,
lightning, nor storm; Agni is neither hearth-fire nor celestial fire;
Soma is neither planet nor moon.

Each is the transient manifestation of a spirituality lying behind and
extending beyond this manifestation. Here alone is the latch-key of
the newer, more popular religion. Not merely because Indra was a
'warrior god,' but because Indra and Fire were one; because of the
mystery, not because of the appearance, was he made great at the hands
of the priests. It is true, as has been said above, that the idol of
the warriors was magnified because he was such; but the true cause of
the greatness ascribed to him in the hymns lay in the secret of his
nature, as it was lauded by the priest, not in his form, as it was
seen by the multitude. Neither came first, both worked together; but
had it not been for the esoteric wisdom held by the priests in
connection with his nature, Indra would have gone the way of other
meteorological gods; whereas he became chiefest of the gods, and, as
lord of strength, for a time came nearest to the supreme power.

INDRA.

Indra has been identified with 'storm,' with the 'sky,' with the
'year'; also with 'sun' and with 'fire' in general.[2] But if he be
taken as he is found in the hymns, it will be noticed at once that he
is too stormy to be the sun; too luminous to be the storm; too near to
the phenomena of the monsoon to be the year or the sky; too rainy to
be fire; too alien from every one thing to be any one thing. He is too
celestial to be wholly atmospheric; too atmospheric to be celestial;
too earthly to be either. A most tempting solution is that offered by
Bergaigne, who sees in Indra sun or lightning. Yet does this
explanation not explain all, and it is more satisfactory than others
only because it is broader; while it is not yet broad enough. Indra,
in Bergaigne's opinion, stands, however, nearer to fire than to
sun.[3] But the savant does not rest content with his own explanation:
"Indra est peut-être, de tous les dieux védiques, celui qui résiste le
plus longtemps à un genre d'analyse qui, appliqué à la plupart des
autres, les résout plus ou moins vite en des personnifications des
éléments, soit des phénomènes naturels, soit du culte" (ibid. p. 167).

Dyaus' son, Indra, who rides upon the storm and hurls the lightnings
with his hands; who 'crashes down from heaven' and 'destroys the
strongholds' of heaven and earth; whose greatness 'fills heaven and
earth'; whose 'steeds are of red and gold'; who 'speaks in thunder,'
and 'is born of waters and cloud'; behind whom ride the storm-gods;
with whom Agni (fire) is inseparably connected; who 'frees the waters
of heaven from the demon,' and 'gives rain-blessings and wealth' to
man--such a god, granted the necessity of a naturalistic
interpretation, may well be thought to have been lightning itself
originally, which the hymns now represent the god as carrying. But in
identifying Indra with the sun there is more difficulty. In none of
the early hymns is this suggested, and the texts on which Bergaigne
relies besides being late are not always conclusive. "Indra clothes
himself with the glory of the sun"; he "sees with the eye of the
sun"--such texts prove little when one remembers that the sun is the
eye of all the gods, and that to clothe ones' self with solar glory is
far from being one with the sun. In one other, albeit a late verse,
the expression 'Indra, a sun,' is used; and, relying on such texts,
Bergaigne claims that Indra is the sun. But it is evident that this is
but one of many passages where Indra by implication is compared to the
sun; and comparisons do not indicate allotropy. So, in ii. II. 20,
which Bergaigne gives as a parallel, the words say expressly "Indra
[did so and so] _like a sun_."[4] To rest a building so important on a
basis so frail is fortunately rare with Bergaigne. It happens here
because he is arguing from the assumption that Indra primitively was a
general luminary. Hence, instead of building up Indra from early
texts, he claims a few late phrases as precious confirmation of his
theory.[5] What was Indra may be seen by comparing a few citations
such as might easily be amplified from every book in the Rig Veda.

According to the varying fancies of the poets, Indra is armed with
stones, clubs, arrows, or the thunderbolt (made for him by the
artificer, Tvashtar), of brass or of gold, with many edges and points.
Upon a golden chariot he rides to battle, driving two or many red or
yellow steeds; he is like the sun in brilliancy, and like the dawn in
beauty; he is multiform, and cannot really be described; his divine
name is secret; in appearance he is vigorous, huge; he is wise and
true and kind; all treasures are his, and he is a wealth-holder, vast
as four seas; neither his greatness nor his generosity can be
comprehended; mightiest of gods is he, filling the universe; the
heavens rest upon his head; earth cannot hold him; earth and heaven
tremble at his breath; he is king of all; the mountains are to him as
valleys; he goes forth a bull, raging, and rushes through the air,
whirling up the dust; he breaks open the rain-containing clouds, and
lets the rain pour down; as the Açvins restore the light, so he
restores the rain; he is (like) fire born in three places; as the
giver of rain which feeds, he creates the plants; he restores or
begets Sun and Dawn (after the storm has passed);[6] he creates (in
the same way) all things, even heaven and earth; he is associated with
Vishnu and P[=u]shan (the sun-gods), with the Açvins, with the Maruts
(storm-gods) as his especial followers, and with the artisan Ribhus.
With Varuna he is an Adityá, but he is also associated with another
group of gods, the Vasus (x. 66. 3), as Vasupati, or 'lord of the
Vasus.' He goes with many forms (vi. 47. 18).[7]

The luminous character[8] of Indra, which has caused him to be
identified with light-gods, can be understood only when one remembers
that in India the rainy season is ushered in by such displays of
lightning that the heavens are often illuminated in every direction at
once; and not with a succession of flashes, but with contemporaneous
ubiquitous sheets of light, so that it appears as if on all sides of
the sky there was one lining of united dazzling flame. When it is said
that Indra 'placed light in light,' one is not to understand, with
Bergaigne, that Indra is identical with the sun, but that in day
(light) Indra puts lightning (x. 54. 6; Bergaigne ii. p. 187).

Since Indra's lightning[9] is a form of fire, there is found in this
union the first mystic dualism of two distinct gods as one. This comes
out more in Agni-worship than in Indra-worship, and will be treated
below. The snake or dragon killed by Indra is Vritra, the restrainer,
who catches and keeps in the clouds the rain that is falling to earth.
He often is called simply the snake, and as the Budhnya Snake, or
snake of the cloud-depths, is possibly the Python (=Budh-nya).[10]
There is here a touch of primitive belief in an old enemy of man--the
serpent! But the Budhnya Snake has been developed in opposite ways,
and has contradictory functions.[11]

Indra, however, is no more the lightning than he is the sun. One poet
says that he is like the sun;[12] another, that he is like the
lightning (viii. 93. 9), which he carries in his arms (viii. 12. 7);
another, that he is like the light of dawn (x. 89. 12). So various are
the activities, so many the phenomena, that with him first the seer is
obliged to look back of all these phenomena and find in them one
person; and thus he is the most anthropomorphized of the Vedic gods.
He is born of heaven or born of clouds (iv. 18), but that his mother
is Aditi is not certain. As the most powerful god Indra is again
regarded as the All-god (viii. 98. 1-2). With this final supremacy,
that distinction between battle-gods and gods sovereign, which
Bergaigne insists upon--the sovereign gods belonging to _une
conception unitaire de l'ordre du monde_ (iii. p. 3; ii. p.
167)--fades away. As Varuna became gradually greatest, so did Indra in
turn. But Varuna was a philosopher's god, not a warrior's; and Varuna
was not double and mystical. So even the priest (Agni) leaves Varuna,
and with the warrior takes more pleasure in his twin Indra; of him
making an All-god, a greatest god. Varuna is passive; Indra is
energetic; but Indra does not struggle for his lordship. Inspired by
_soma_, he smites, triumphs, punishes. Victor already, he descends
upon his enemies and with a blow destroys them. It is rarely that he
feels the effect of battle; he never doubts its issue.

There is evidence that this supremacy was not gained without
contradiction, and the novelty of the last extravagant Indra-worship
may be deduced, perhaps, from such passages as viii. 96. 15; and 100.
3, where are expressed doubts in regard to the existence of a real
Indra. How late is the worship of the popular Indra, and that it is
not originality that causes his hymns to be placed early in each
collection, may be judged from the fact that only of Indra (and Agni?)
are there idols: viii. 1. 5; iv. 24. 10: "Who gives ten cows for my
Indra? When he has slain his foe let (the purchaser) give him to me
again."[13] Thus it happens that one rarely finds such poems to Indra
as to Dawn and to other earlier deities, but almost always stereotyped
descriptions of prowess, and mechanical invitations to come to the
altar and reward the hymn-maker. There are few of Indra's many hymns
that do not smack of _soma_ and sacrifice. He is a warrior's god
exploited by priests; as popularly conceived, a sensual giant, friend,
brother, helper of man. One example of poetry, instead of ritualistic
verse-making to Indra, has been translated in the introductory
chapter. Another, which, if not very inspiring, is at least free from
obvious _soma_-worship--which results in Indra being invoked chiefly
to come and drink--is as follows (vi. 30):

Great hath he grown, Indra, for deeds heroic;
Ageless is he alone, alone gives riches;
Beyond the heaven and earth hath Indra stretched him,
The half of him against both worlds together!
So high and great I deem his godly nature;
What he hath stablished there is none impairs it.
Day after day a sun is he conspicuous,
And, wisely strong, divides the wide dominions.
To-day and now (thou makest) the work of rivers,
In that, O Indra, thou hast hewn them pathway.
The hills have bowed them down as

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