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Ex Libris
THE CANADIAN
Courtesy of The Estate of G.J.L. Bates
FROM-THE-LIBRARYOF TRINITYCOLLEGETORDNTO
THE AMERICAN LECTURES ON THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS.
I.
The History and Literature By T. W. RHYS-DAVIDS, LL.D., Ph.D.
Buddhism.
dhism. II.
of
Bud
Primitive Religions. The Religions of Primitive By D. G. BRINTON, A.M., M.D., LL.D., Sc.D.
Peoples. III.
Israel.
Jewish Religions.
Life after the Exile.
By Rev. T. K. CHEYNE, M.A., D.D. IV. Israel.
Religion of Israel to the Exile.
By KARL
BUDDF,, D.I). V. Ancient Egyptians. The Religion of the Ancient By G. STEINDORFF, Ph.D.
Egyptians.
The Development of Re By GEORGE W. KNOX, D.D. VII. The Veda. The Religion of the Veda. By MAURICE BLOOMFIELD, Ph.D., LL.D. VI. Religion in Japan.
ligion in Japan.
In active preparation VIII.
Islam.
The
:
Religion of Islam.
GOLDZIHER, Ph.D., Litt.D.
G.
P.
PUTNAM S SONS
NEW YORK AND LONDON
By IGUAZ
AMERICAN LECTURES ON THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS SEVENTH SERIES
1906-1907
THE RELIGION OFTHE VEDA THE ANCIENT RELIGION OF INDIA (FROM RIG- VEDA TO UPANISHADS)
BY
MAURICE BLOOMFIELD, Professor of Sanskrit and
Ph.D., LL.D.
Comparative Philology in Johns Hopkins
University,
Baltimore
PUTNAM S SONS NEW YORK AND LONDON
G. P.
Cbe
Ifcnicfcerbocfcer 1908
press
COPYRIGHT, igo8
BY G. P.
PUTNAM S SONS
TTbe ftnfcfcerbocfcer
123139 JAN
2
1987
TDrs, flew
JPort
PREFACE. volume reproduces with some little ampli six lectures on the Religion of the
THISfication Veda
given before various learned institutions of America during the fall and winter of 1906-07.
The
period of time and the
embraced
amount
the term Vedic are large
in
;
of literature
moreover any
name
discussion of this religion that deserves the
must
also include a glance at the prehistoric periods
which preceded the religion of the Veda. sequently my treatment must be selective. not
difficult it
to
make the
selection.
of priestly
me
was
have not
necessary to include a complete account
thought of Vedic mythology and legend to
I
Con It
ritual
and
;
nor did the details
religious folk-practices
seem
to call for elaborate exposition at this time
and under the circumstances of a popular treatment Vedic religion. On the other hand, it seemed
of
both interesting and
markedly ligious
bring out as development of the re
important to
as possible the
thought of the Veda
in
distinction
from
Preface
iv
myth and ceremony. will, I
reader of these pages
how
the religion
prehistoric
foundation
hope, learn to his satisfaction
of the
which
The
Veda
rests
upon a
largely nature
is
how
continues in
myth hymns as hieratic ritual worship of gods how this religion grew more and ;
it
the Rig- Veda polytheistic
;
more formal and mechanical
in the
Yajur-Vedas and
Brahmanas, until it was practically abandoned how and when arose the germs of higher religious thought and, finally, how the motives and prin ;
;
ciples that
underlie this entire chain
of
mental
events landed Hindu thought, at a comparatively early period, in the pantheistic ligion of the Upanishads which
and pessimistic it
abandoned.
MAURICE BLOOMFIELD. JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY, BALTIMORE, April, 1907.
re
has never again
ANNOUNCEMENT.
THE
American
Lectures on
the
History of
Religions are delivered under the auspices of
the American Committee for Lectures on the History of Religions.
This Committee was organised
purpose of instituting
for the
the History of Religions,
"
in 1892,
popular courses in
somewhat
after the style of
the Hibbert Lectures in England, to be delivered
annually by the best scholars of Europe and this country, in various cities, such as Baltimore, Boston,
Brooklyn, Chicago,
New
York, Philadelphia, and
others."
The terms
of association under
tee exist are as follows 1.
The object
which the Commit
:
of this Association shall be to provide
courses of lectures on the history of religions, to
be delivered in various 2.
The
cities.
Association shall be composed of delegates
from Institutions agreeing to co-operate, or from Local Boards organised where such co-operation is
3.
not possible.
These delegates
one from each Institution or
Preface
iv
The
myth and ceremony. will, I
of the
which
reader of these pages
how
the religion
prehistoric
foundation
hope, learn to his satisfaction
Veda
rests
upon a
largely nature
is
the Rig- Veda
hymns how
polytheistic gods
;
myth
;
how
it
continues in
as hieratic ritual worship of
grew more and Yajur-Vedas and
this religion
more formal and mechanical
in the
Brahmanas, until it was practically abandoned how and when arose the germs of higher religious thought and, finally, how the motives and prin ;
;
ciples that
underlie this entire chain
of
mental
events landed Hindu thought, at a comparatively early period, in the pantheistic ligion of the
Upanishads which
and pessimistic it
abandoned.
MAURICE BLOOMFIELD. JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY, BALTIMORE, April, 1907.
re
has never again
ANNOUNCEMENT.
THE
American
Lectures on
the
History of
Religions are delivered under the auspices of
the American Committee for Lectures on the History of Religions.
This Committee was organised
purpose of instituting
for the
"
in 1892,
popular courses in
the History of Religions, somewhat after the style of the Hibbert Lectures in England, to be delivered
annually by the best scholars of Europe and this country, in various cities, such as Baltimore, Boston,
Brooklyn, Chicago,
New
York, Philadelphia, and
others."
The terms
of association under
tee exist are as follows 1.
The object
which the Commit
:
of this Association shall be to provide
courses of lectures on the history of religions, to
be delivered in various 2.
The
cities.
Association shall be composed of delegates
from Institutions agreeing to co-operate, or from Local Boards organised where such co-operation is
3.
not possible.
These delegates
one from each Institution or
Announcement
vi
Board
Local
shall
Council under the
constitute themselves
name
of the
"
American
a
Com
mittee for Lectures on the History of Religions." 4.
The Council
5.
number a Chair
shall elect out of its
man, a Secretary,
and a Treasurer.
All matters of local detail shall be stitutions or
left
to the In
Local Boards, under whose auspices
the lectures are to be delivered. 6.
A course of lectures on some religion, or phase of from an historical point of view, or on
religion,
a subject germane to the study of religions, shall
be delivered annually, or at such intervals as may be found practicable, in the different cities repre sented by this Association. 7.
The
Council (a) shall be charged with the selec
tion of the lecturers, (b) shall have charge of the
funds,
each
(c)
city,
may be 8.
and perform such other functions as
necessary.
Polemical subjects, as well as polemics in the treat
ment 9.
shall assign the time for the lectures in
The
of subjects, shall be positively excluded.
lecturer shall be chosen
least ten
by the Council
at
months before the date fixed for the
course of lectures. 10.
The lectures shall be delivered
11.
between the months of September and June. The copyright of the lectures shall be the prop erty of the Association.
in
the various
cities
Announcement 12.
One-half of the lecturer
s
vii
compensation
shall
be paid at the completion of the entire course and the second half upon the publication of the lectures. 13.
The compensation
to the lecturer shall be fixed
in each case by the Council. 14.
The
not to deliver elsewhere any of the lectures for which he is engaged by the lecturer
is
Committee, except with the sanction of the Committee.
The Committee
as
now
constituted
is
as follows
:
Crawford H. Toy, Chairman, 7 Lowell St., Cambridge, Mass. Rev. Dr. John P. Peters, Treas Prof.
;
urer,
225 West QQth
Jastrow, phia, Pa.
Jr., ;
St.,
New York; South 23d
Secretary, 248
Prof. Francis
St.,
Philadel
Brown, Union Theological
New York Prof. Richard umbia University, New York Prof. Seminary,
Prof. Morris
Gottheil, Col
;
;
R. F. Harper, Prof. Paul
University of
Chicago, Chicago,
Haupt, 2511
Madison Avenue, Baltimore, Md.
111.
;
;
W. Hooper, Brooklyn Institute, Brooklyn, Prof. E. W. Hopkins, New Haven, Conn. Edward Knox Mitchell, Hartford Theologi
Prof. F.
N. Y. Prof.
;
;
Prof. George F. Seminary, Hartford, Conn. Rev. F. K. Sanders, Moore, Cambridge, Mass.
cal
;
;
Boston, Mass.
;
Pres.
F. C. Southworth, Meadville
Theological Seminary, Meadville, Pa. The lecturers in the course of American Lectures
Announcement
viii
on the History of Religions and the volumes are as follows
titles
of their
:
Prof.
1894-1895
T.
W.
Ph. D.
Rhys-Davids,
Buddhism. Prof. Daniel G. Brinton,
1896-1897
M.D., LL.D.
Religion of Primitive Peoples.
Rev. Prof. T. K. Cheyne, D.D.
1897-1898
Jewish
Religious Life after the Exile. Prof.
1898-1899
Karl Budde, D.D.
Religion of
Israel to the Exile.
Prof.
1904-1905
Georg
Steindorff, Ph.D.
The
Religion of the Ancient Egyptians. 1905-1906 Prof George William Knox, D. D., LL. D. .
The Development
The
of Religion in Japan.
present course of lectures, the seventh in the
series, was delivered by Professor Maurice Bloomfield, Ph.D., LL.D., Professor of Sanskrit and Comparative
Philology at the Johns Hopkins University, and one
on Vedic Literature.
of the leading authorities latest
work, a Concordance of the Vedic
prayer formulae, covering of a
life s
1
His
hymns and
100 pages, theembodiment
study, published as Vol. 10 of the Harvard
Oriental Series, will ensure Professor Bloomfield a per
manent place
the history of Vedic studies. Besides this he has edited from the manuscripts the Vedic ritual
book,
in
known
a translation of the
cluded
in
as the Kaucjka-Sutra of the
Hymns Professor Max Muller
;
published
Atharva-Veda, in s Sacred Books of
Announcement
ix
the East (Oxford, 1897); written a volume on the Lit erature and History of the Atharva-Veda, entitled
:
"
Atharva-Veda and the Gopatha-Brahmana (Strassburg, 1889) and edited, in collaboration with "The
;
Professor Richard Garbe of Tubingen, a chromophoto-
manu
graphic reproduction of the unique birch-bark
the Kashmirian Atharva-Veda (3 vols., He has also contributed to the Baltimore, 1901).
script of
and Europe num mythological, and ethno
technical journals of this country
erous papers on linguistic,
logical topics in general, in addition to a large
num
ber of contributions on the interpretation, textual restoration,
The
and
religion of the
Veda
in particular.
lectures in this course were delivered before
the Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore
;
Union
Theological Seminary, New York; Brooklyn Institute of Arts
and Sciences, Brooklyn
;
Drexel Institute,
Philadelphia; Meadville Theological Seminary, ville
;
University of Chicago, Chicago
;
Mead-
and Hartford
Theological Seminary, Hartford.
JOHN C.
P.
PETERS,
Committee
)
Publication.
H. TOY,
MORRIS JASTROW, January, 1908.
\
on
CONTENTS. LECTURE THE
FIRST.
INDIA THE LAND OF RELIGIONS.
THE VEDA.
Brahmanism Bud Multiplicity religions dhism Profound hold of religion upon the Hindu mind Hindu life dominated by religious institu tions The four stages of life The institution of caste Caste then and now Symptoms of revulsion of
Hindu
against caste Other pernicious religious institu tions Continuity of India s religious history Date of the conception of rta, or
"cosmic order"
relationship of the religions of India
Close
and Persia
Slight connection between India and Persia in sec ular history The Parsis in India Close relation
between Veda and Avesta The Veda and the IndoEuropean period The Veda as a whole The date of the Veda Its great uncertainty Nature of Vedic tradition
The
rotriyas, or
"Oral
Traditionalists"-
Uncertain character of Vedic life and institutions Origin of the Veda Contents of Vedic literature as a whole The four Vedas The Rig- Veda The books of the Rig- Veda Theme and character of the Rig- Veda A hymn to Goddess Dawn The YajurVeda Character of the ^a/^5-formulas The SamaVeda Origin and purpose of the Sama-Veda The
Atharva-Veda Religious
Contents of
Quality
of
the
the Atharva-Veda Atharva-Veda Two
The Brahmana Texts Some Brahmanas The Aranyakas, or For Treatises" The Upanishads Literary history
Atharvan hymns legends of the est
"
Contents
xii
of the
Upanishads
The Upanishads
Critical estimate of the
in
the West
Upanishads
J
-59
LECTURE THE SECOND.
THE HIERATIC RELIGION. THE PANTHEON OF THE VEDA. Fundamental
traits of early Vedic religion False view of the nature of Vedic poetry The Rig-Veda as sacrificial poetry Difficulty of understanding the
ritual character of the Rig- Veda
Poetry addressed
Dawn A hymn to the sacrifice The Goddess Dawn as the symbol of liberality
to the Goddess
post at the sacrifice Some erroneous estimates of God dess Dawn Agni the son of "Baksheesh" Prac tical
purposes of Vedic poetry
The Rig- Veda con The ritual of
tains the religion of the upper classes
the Rig- Veda The apri-hymns Nature- worship the keynote of the Rig-Veda India s climate and nature- worship Vedic and Hellenic mythology
Arrested anthropomorphism Defini word Pantheon as applied to the Veda Faulty classifications of the Vedic gods Chrono
compared
tion of the
logy of the gods Different degrees of certainty about the origin of the gods Classification of the gods in these lectures 60-98
LECTURE THE THIRD.
THE PREHISTORIC GODS. Two
prehistoric periods bearing upon Hindu religion Scepticism about Comparative Mythology Diffi culties in the way of Comparative Mythology Com
parative Mythology and Ethnology The myth of Cerberus The Indo-European period Prehistoric
words for god Father Sky and Mother Earth The Thunderer The Vedic Agvins, or "Horsemen," the two Sons of Heaven The Dioscuri in Greek
Contents
The
mythology God"
Lettish
myth
xiii
of the
two
"Sons
Common kernel of the myth of the two
of
"Sons
The Aryan, or Indo-Iranian period Important religious ideas common to the two peoples The dual gods Varuna and Mitra Ahura of
Heaven
"
The conception of rta, or Mazda and Varuna The Adityas Aditi, the mother "cosmic order" of the Adityas Mitra, a sun god The sun, the moon, and the planets The Adityas and Amesha Spentas Early ethical concepts among the IndoEuropeans Varuna and Greek Ouranos (Uranus) The origin of man Sundry parents of man "Father Manu"
Yama and YamI,
the
Interlacing of the myths of the first human character of Manu and Yama
god
of the
"Twins"
man Yama,
The the
dead
Soma, the sacrificial drink of the The myth of Soma and the Heavenly Eagle
gods Value of the preceding reconstructions
99-149
LECTURE THE FOURTH.
THE TRANSPARENT, TRANSLUCENT, AND OPAQUE GODS RELIGIOUS CONCEPTIONS AND RELIGIOUS FEELING IN THE VEDA. The transparent gods: their importance for the study of Father Sky and Daughter Dawn Surya, religion a god of the sun Vata and Vayu, gods of wind The most transparent god: Agni, Fire Agni as the sacrifice fire Prehistoric gods of fire Birth and youth of Agni Agni as god of the morning New births of Agni Agni on the altar, the agent of the gods Priesthood and divinity of Agni A hymn to Agni Other myths of the Fire God The trans lucent gods: definition of the term God Vishnu God Pushan God Indra, as an example of an opaque god Traditional explanation of the myth of Indra and Vritra Professor Hillebrandt s inter-
Contents
xiv
PAGES
pretation of the same myth the religion of the Rig-Veda
Renewed Renewed
definition of
definition of
Vedic practicalities Conflicting prayers and sac The conception of faith Faith related to rifices Truth and Wisdom Faith personified Faith and works The reward for faith postponed to heaven Contrast between early faith (jraddha) and later devotion (bhakti) "Gift praises," another sop to the sacrificer The religious feeling of the Rig- Veda. "
"
"
"
The
utilitarian sense
Absence of
real sentiment
The glory
of the gods Poetic
towards the gods
the true religious feeling The com placent master-singers The poets own estimate of The divine quality of devotion. their work 150-207
inspiration
.
.
.
LECTURE THE FIFTH.
THE BEGINNINGS OF HINDU THEOSOPHY. Statement of the problem Time when theosophy origin ated Metempsychosis and pessimism unknown in the earlier Vedic records Place where the higher religion originated
Priest philosophy at the sacrifice
The theosophic charade Specimens of the theosophic charade The riddle hymn of Dirghatamas Interrelation between the sacrifice and theosophy
On
the supposed origin of theosophy with the royal Criticism of this view Transition from rit ualistic polytheism to theosophy Early scepticism Failure of God Varuna Gotterdammerung Monism, or the idea of unity The creation hymn Translation and analysis of the creation hymn At tempts at Monotheism Prajapati, the Lord of Creatures Vicvakarman, creator of the universe, and kindred conceptions Purusha, the world man Brihaspati, the Lord of Devotion Transcendental monotheistic conceptions: "Time," "Love," etc. Defects of the earlier monotheistic and monistic
caste "
attempts
"
208-248
xv
Contents
PAGES
LECTURE THE SIXTH.
THE FINAL PHILOSOPHY OF THE VEDA. Death and future
life
in
paradise
Early notions of
The idea of retribution Limit of reward for good deeds The notion of "death-anew," or How comes the belief in transmigration death Hindu doctrine of transmigration The method of transmigration The doctrine of karma, or spiritual evolution How transmigration and karma appear to Western minds The pessimist theory of life Cause of Hindu pessimism Pessimism and the per Hell
"re-
"
fect
principle
(Brahma)
Dualistic
pessimism
Salvation through realisation of one s own Brahmahood The conception of the alman, "breath," as life principle Atman, the soul of the Universe Brahma, the spiritual essence of the Universe
Atman and Brahma
Maya, or the world unknowableness of Brahma Emerson s poem on the Brahma The fulness of Brahma: a story of Yajnavalkya and his wife MaiTransition from philosophy to piety Hindu treyl Fusion of
an
The
illusion
asceticism
Professor
Huxley
s
critique of
progress under the religion of
asceti-
Brahma
ism
s
householder
and disciplehood The life of the The life of the forest-dweller and
Pilgrim Investiture
wandering ascetic
INDEX
Ultima Thule
249-289 291
LECTURE THE Land
India the Multiplicity of
Hindu
FIRST.
of Religions religions
The Veda.
Brahmanism
Buddhism
Profound hold of religion upon the Hindu mind Hindu The four stages life dominated by religious institutions of life The institution of caste Caste then and now Symptoms of revulsion against caste Other pernicious religious
history order"
Persia
institutions
Continuity
of
Date of the conception of
India rta,
s
religious
or
"cosmic
Close relationship of the religions of India and Slight connection between India and Persia
in secular history
The
Parsis in India
Close relation
The Veda and the IndoThe Veda as a whole The date of
between Veda and Avesta
European period Veda Its great uncertainty Nature of Vedic tra The Qrotriyas or "Oral Traditionalists" Un dition certain character of Vedic life and institutions Origin of the Veda Contents of Vedic literature as a whole The four Vedas The Rig-Veda The books of the Rig- Veda Theme and character of the Rig- Veda A hymn to Goddess Dawn The Yajur-Veda Character The Sama-Veda Origin and of the ya jus-formulas purpose of the Sama-Veda The Atharva-Veda Con tents of the Atharva-Veda Religious quality of the Atharva-Veda Two Atharvan hymns The Brahmana Texts Some legends of the Brahmanas The AranyaThe Upanishads Literary kas, or "Forest Treatises" history of the Upanishads The Upanishads in the West Critical estimate of the Upanishads. the
The
2
It
number
which,
Veda
the land of religions in more than one
is
INDIA sense. a
Religion of the
has produced out of
its
of distinctive systems and
at
least,
are
world-wide
of
own
resources
two
sects,
interest
of
and
importance.
manifold aspects, is to this day the religion of about 200 millions of people in India
Brahmanism,
herself, a
in its
matter of interest on the face of
it.
But
universal importance lies with the Brahmanical
its
systems of religious philosophy, especially the two respectively as Vedanta and Sankhya. These
known
|M V
/
are two religio-philosophical, or theosophical systems which essay to probe the twin riddle of the universe and human life. They do this in so penetrating a way as to place them by the side of the most
profound philosophic endeavors of other nations. The beginnings of this philosophy are found in the Upanishads, a set of treatises which are The Upanishads contain the part of the Veda. higher religion of the Veda. The essence of higher so-called
Brahmanical religion religion of the
is
Upanishad
Upanishads
is
The theme of
religion.
part of the
these lectures.
Buddhism Its
started in the
bosom
radical reforms, concerning
practical
manism.
life,
are directed in
Yet Buddhism
of
Brahmanism.
both doctrine and
good part against Brah is
a religion genuinely
India the
Hindu
Land
in its texture.
dominant
of Religions
It shares
with Brahmanism
its
Transmigration of souls, pessimism, and the all-absorbing desire to be re leased from an endless chain of existences, linked religious ideas.
these are the axioms
together by successive deaths,
Brahmanism and Buddhism.
of both
After spread
ing over the continent of India
Buddhism crossed
over into Ceylon, Farther India,
and the islands of
To
the Asiatic Archipelago.
the north
it
passed
and across the great Himalaya Mountains to Nepaul, Thibet, Turkestan, China, Korea, and Japan.
into
In
various forms
its
world
s
to this day one of the There are no absolutely re-
is
it
great religions.
number
liable statistics as to the
of Buddhists
|
upon
300 millions^ may be re estimate of the number of as a conservative garded the surface of the earth
people
who
;
either are Buddhists, or
whose
has been shaped by Buddhist ideas,
religion
Brahmanism
and Buddhism, both Hindu products, together supply the religious needs of 500 millions of the earth s inhabitants.
In another sense India
Nowhere
else
is
is
the land of religions.
the texture of
life
so
much
im-
pregnated with religious convictions and practices. At a very early time belief in the transmigration of souls (metempsychosis),
India
is
still
something
whose
precise origin in
of a problem, planted itself
A-
The down
Hindu mind
in the
mental axiom future
life.
Religion of the
Veda
as the basis
and funda
of all speculations about the soul
This of
itself is
and
The
merely a theory.
importance of this theory is, that it is almost from the start with a pessimistic view coupled of life. According to this the everlasting round practical
of
existences
is
a nuisance, and release from It
imperative necessity.
would be
it
an
difficult to find
else a purely speculative notion which has taken so firm a hold upon practical life. It pervades the Hindu consciousness in a far more real and
anywhere f
intimate
way than
eternal future
life,
its
great rival, the belief in an
pervades the religious thought
Western world.
of the
From
the beginning of India s history religious institutions control the character and the develop ment of its people to an extent unknown elsewhere.
Hindu
life
from birth to death, and even after death
the fancied
in
heaven,
is
of the
Fathers, or
Manes
in
religious, or sacramental throughout.
surrounded
is
life
by
institutions
and
practices,
It
and
clouded by superstitions which are discarded only by them that have worked their way to the highest philosophical aspects of religion.
The
religious
life
of
the Brahmanical
Hindu
1
is
divided into the four stages of religious disciple god;
1
Called dframa, literally,
"hermitages."
Land
India the
fearing
and
this
Such
contemplative
and wandering, world -abandoning
at least
Even though
law.
householder;
sacrificing
forest -dweller; ascetic.
of Religions
is
the theory of their religious
practice at
all
times
fell
short of
mechanical and exacting arrangement, yet the is allowed that life is an essentially solitary
claim
religious pilgrimage, the goal being personal salva
There
tion.
the interests of the race.
no provision
is
the State
they are corresponding blank this
such a scheme for
and the developmentUnintentionally, but none the less
of
effectively,
Over
in
hovers,
out of account, leaving a in India s national character. left
a
like
black
cloud,
another?
institution, the system, or rather the chaos, of caste.
grotesque inconsistencies and bitter tyranny have gone far to make the Hindu what he is. The corro Its
sive properties of this single institution,
more than
have checked the develop anything ment of India into a nation. They have made else whatsoever,
possible the spectacle of a country of nearly 300 millions of
inhabitants,
governed by the
skill
of
60,000 military and 60,000 civilian foreigners. In olden times there were four castes: the Brah
man, or
the Kshatriya, or warrior priestly caste the Vai$ya, or merchant and farmer caste and the C^udra, or servitor caste. Then came many caste
;
;
cross-castes, the
;
result
of
intermarriages between
|
The members are now
Religion of the
Veda
of the four original castes. strictly taboo.
Such marriages
Gradually, differences of
occupation, trade, and profession, and, to a consider able extent also, difference of geography, established
themselves as the basis of caste distinction, until the
number
At the present time there are nearly 2000 Brahman castes alone. According to an intelligent Hindu observer of our own day the Sarasvata Brahmins of the Panjab alone number 469 tribes the Kshatriyas are split of castes
became
legion.
1
;
up
the Vaigyas and There is a Hindustani
into 590
more.
udras into even
;
Brahmins, nine
kitchens."
proverb,
"eight
In the matter of food
and intermarriage all castes are now completely shut off one from the other. A tailor may not, as is the custom with
other peoples, invite his neighbor, an honest shoemaker, to share his humble fare. The all
son of the shoemaker
blooming daughter
may
not
woo and wed
of the barber.
Even
the
a minor
some new trick of trade, will at once breed new caste. In certain parts of India fisher-folk who knit the meshes of their nets from right to left may not intermarry with them that knit from left to deviation,
a
right.
In Cuttack, the most southerly district of
Rai Bahadur Lala Baij Nath, B.A., of the North-western Province Judicial Service, and Fellow of the University of Allahabad, in his 1
very interesting 1889), p. 9.
little
book, Hinduism, Ancient and Modern (Meerut,
India the
of Religions
no intercourse between potters who wheels a-sitting and make small pots, and
Bengal, there turn their
Land
is
them that stand up
A certain
for the
manufacture of large
dairymen who make butter from unboiled milk have been excluded from the
pots.
class of
and cannot marry the daughters of milkmen who churn upon more orthodox principles. Even caste,
as late a census as that of 1901 reports,
gives
and
in a
way
sanction to the Cimmerian notion that the
its
man
touch of the lower caste
defiles the
higher
:
While a Nayar can pollute a man of a higher cast only by touching him, people of the Kammalan group, includ ing masons, blacksmiths, carpenters, and workers in leather, pollute at a distance of twenty-four feet,
drawers vators
at
at
forty-eight
Paraiyan (Pariahs) is
Palayan or Cheruman
thirty-six feet,
stated to be
no
Thus Hindu
;
than sixty-four
society
is
in
making
plete as possible. rise into
;
to such progress only as fines of his caste. 1
Quoted from
New
its
Members
a higher caste
To
feet.
split into infinitely small!
divisions, each holding itself aloof
each engaged
culti
while in the case of the; eat beef, the range of pollution
feet
who
less
toddy
from the other,
exclusiveness as
of a lower caste cannot
the individual is
com
is
restricted
possible within the con
the Pariah the door of hope
Ideas in India,
Morrison (Edinburgh, 1906), p. 33.
by the
Rev.
Dr. John
1
;
The
8
;
is
shut forever.
Veda
Religion of the
There
is little
chance for national or
/patriotic combination.
Moreover the laws, or rather the vagaries of caste have taken largely the place of practical religion in the
mind
Hindu who has not eman
of the average
cipated himself through higher philosophy.
supreme law which life is,
really concerns
to eat correctly
The
correctly.
;
him
in his daily
to drink correctly
broader,
more
The
;
to marry
usual, dictates
religion, such as worship of the gods
and
of
ethical
conduct, are not ignored, but they take a distinctly secondary place. India has at all times put the
stamp of
upon much that Europe counts as or social institution. There is not, and
religion
social habit,
there seems never to have been, fixed creed in India.
Hinduism has always been inarian
in
matters of
tolerant, liberal, latitud-
abstract belief;
tyrannous,
illiberal, narrow-minded as regards such social prac tices as can be in any way connected with religion.
Fluidity of doctrine, rigidity of practice
regarded as the
unspoken motto of Hindu
may
be
religion
at all times.
Fortunately there are not wanting signs of a revul sion of feeling which bids fair to sweep the entire
system of caste with
all its
the face of the earth.
Raja
Rammohun Roy
incredible foolishness off
The
great
Hindu reformer
declared as early as the year
India the
1
824 that
"caste
Land
of Religions
divisions are as destructiveof national
union as of social
The late SvamI Vive-
enjoyment."
kanancla, the brilliant representative of
the
"Parliament
of
Religions,"
Hinduism
at
held in Chicago in con
nection with the Universal Exposition in 1893, passed
the last years of his too short in a
life
(he died in 1902)
suburb of Calcutta, doing philanthropic work,
denouncing caste and the outcasting of those who had crossed the ocean, and recommending the Hindus
The
to take to the eating of meat.
reformers are
lifting.
voices of other
Especially the two great native
religious reform associations,
the_Brahma Samaj, or
Theistic Association of Bengal, and the
Arya Samaj,
or Vedic Association of the United Provinces and
the Panjab, different as are their aims in other re
on the side of opposition to as an anachronism, anomaly, and bar to social
spects, are marshalled caste,
and national progress.
The
dreadful institution of Suttee, or widow-burn- \
ing abolished in 1829, under the administration of
Lord William Bentinck, by decree
of
government
j
;
the car of Juggernaut; the sect of the Thugs; and
the practice of self-hypnosis to the point of prolonged trance or apparent death, are evidences of the frenzy-
Hindu
and the way it has of overshadowing individual sanity and public in There has been, and there still is, too much terest. ing quality of
1
;
religion,
;
The
io
Religion of the
so-called religion in India
:
Veda
Brahmanical hierarchy,
sacerdotalism, asceticism, caste
;
infinitely diversified
polytheism and idolatry cruel religious practices and bottomless superstition. All this the higher ;
Hindu
;
or rather religious philosophies,
religions,
blow away as the wind does chaff. In their view such religiosity is mere illusion or ignorance, to save from which
is
their profession.
the illumined of mind.
On
But they can save only the real
life
of India the
great philosophies are merely a thin film.
Anyhow
they have not as yet penetrated down to the Hindu people, and we may question whether India s salva
come
tion will
growth of
that way, rather than through the
social
and
political intelligence
which so
gifted a people is sure, in the long run, to obtain. The student of the History of Religions has good reason to think of India as the land of religions in
yet another sense.
out of
its
religions
Not only has India produced
own mental
resources
many important
and theosophic systems, but
it
has carried
on these processes continuously, uninterrupted by The Moghul con distracting outside influences.
Mohammedan and Mohammedanism fused
quests in Northern India introduced
ism to a limited extent,
with Hinduism in the hybrid religion of the Sikhs. small number of Zoroastrian Parsis, driven from
A
Persia during the
Mohammedan
conquest,
found
India the
Land
u
of Religions
a friendly refuge for themselves and the religion of Zarathushtra (Zoroaster) in the West of India.
Aside from that there
is
no record
of
permanent
outside influence on a larger scale, until, in the last
Brahma Samaj,
century, the above-mentioned
a kind
of religious Volapiik, or Esperanto, undertakes, in
the most praiseworthy tic
upon a universal
spirit,
theis-
platform, to blend and harmonise the best in
Hindu
religious thought, with the best that
found
in is
ligion
In this
other religions.
more
strictly native
may be
way Hindu
re
than any of the great
no doubt due mainly to India s geographical isolation, and to her insular It has had the merit of keeping secular history. religions of
This
mankind.
is
her religious development continuous and organic. Every important idea has a traceable past history
;
every important idea future.
of
is
certain to develop in the
We may
organic
open before
say that a body of 3500 years or less religious growth lies more the eyes
religions, to dissect,
of
the
student of
India
s
to study, and to philosophise
upon. This great period of time has of late become definite in a rather important sense.
Within recent
years there were discovered at Tel-el-Amarna, in
Upper Egypt, numerous cuneiform ing
letters
from
tributary
kings
tablets contain of
Babylonia,
1
The
2
Religion of the
Veda
Assyria, Mitani, Phoenicia, and Canaan, addressed to
Egyptian Pharaohs, their liege lords. These tablets have thrown much new light upon the history certain
Western Asia.
of
written
name.
There
is
among them a
of his brother Artashuvara
and his grandfather Arta-
These names are obviously Iranian
tama.
letter
by a king of Mitani in Syria, Dushratta by In this letter figure among others the names (Persian),
"
with the tablets themselves they date back to at least 1600 B. c. The names Artashuvara or
"
Iranoid
;
1
and
Artatama open out with the syllables artOr, Western students of history as part of
familiar to
the numberless Persian names like Artaxerxes, Artaphernes, etc.
This stem arta
identical with arta-
is
Western Iranian, Achemenidan inscriptions, with asha of the Avesta, and with rta of the Veda, of the
i
The word means universe."
of the
We
"
cosmic
shall find
order,"
it
or
"
order of the
later on, figuring as
one
most important religious conceptions of the We have here at any rate a definite
Rig- Veda.
lower date for the idea
;
it is
likely to
a long time before 1600 B.C.
From
have existed the point of
view of the history of religious ideas we may,
we must, begin 1
the history of
Hindu
in fact
religion at
See the author, American Journal of Philology\ xxv., p. 8 in Sitzungsberichte der Koniglich Bohmischen Gesell;
F.
Hommel
schaft der Wissenschaften, 1898,
Number
vi.
India the
Land
of Religions
13
least with the history of this conception. Broad as the ocean, and as uninterrupted in its sweep there lies before us a period of thousands of years of the
thought and practice of the most religious
religious
people
Now
in the history of the world.
this brings us face to face with the tried
and
true fact that the religious history of India does not really begin at the literature,
time when the Veda, the earliest
was composed, but that
earlier.
In the
common
life
in a prehistoric time, 1
Aryan
mon
period.
The
the so-called Indo-Iranian or
is
all
prehistoric studies
counts fairly with the best that
relationship
It
purely prehistoric.
not definite, but more or less hazy.
way.
com
reconstruction of these
religious properties
in this
much
begins
it
partakes of the fate of
is, it
it
shares a fairly clear place, with the ancient religion of Iran (Persia) first
;
it
Yet, such as
may
is it
be achieved
based upon the plainly evident between the Hindu Veda and the It is
Persian Avesta, the most ancient sacred books of
the two peoples.
No
student of either religion questions that they drew largely from a common
source, I
am
ment
and therefore mutually illumine each sure that the
full
meaning
other.
of this last state
appear clearer after a word of explanation. Students of profane history are accustomed to see 1
will
See below page 119.
The
14
Veda
Religion of the
ancient Persia with her face turned westward.
them the Persia that conquers, or
to
is
It
controls
through her satrapies, Assyria and Babylonia, Pales It is to them tine, Egypt, or parts of Asia Minor. the Persia that
falls
down
before Greece.
of her greatest glory Darius
day
into the Behistan rock, 300 feet
In the
Hystaspes carved, above the ground,
I.
the hugh trilingual cuneiform inscription, in which he claims suzerainty over twenty-three countries.
To
all
his
own.
intents and purposes he claims the earth for
Among
the countries mentioned are parts
adjacent to the extreme north-west of India: Dran-
Between 500-330 the Achemenidan Persian dynasty
giana, Arachosia, Gandhara, etc. B.C.,
the rule of
had without doubt sent out
loosely attached
its
satrapies to the land of the Indus River.
But
this
did not result in the permanent attachment of one
country to the other. Again, the so-called GraecoParthian rulers, successors of Alexander the Great in
the Persian countries of Parthia and Baktria, from
about 200 B.C. to 200 in
the north-west of India, notably the Indo-Parthian
kingdoms
of Taxila
cal relation, again,
A 1
of
A.D., established principalities
small
number
and Arachosia.
1
But
proved unstable and transient. of Parsis, after the
Mohammedan
See Vincent Smith, The Indo-Parthian Dynasties, German Oriental Society, vol. Ix. p. 49 ff.
the
this politi
,
in
Journal
Land
India the
conquest of Persia,
of Religions
fled to India
15
with their priests,
fire, and the manuscripts of the Avesta, their holy scriptures. Their descendants, about 80,000 in
sacred
number, still adhere to their ancient religion They form one of the most esteemed, wealthy, and philan thropic communities on the west shores of India, notably in the city of Bombay.
It is
not of record
that they had even the faintest idea that they were fleeing into the hospitable
bosom
of a people related
by blood and language, or that the Hindus who gave them shelter knew that they were receiving their
own
very
Hindus
at
kin.
As
any
rate,
far
as
we know,
the
Aryan
throughout their history, are
unconscious of the important fact that, across the mountains to the north-west of their entirely
country, dwelt at
stock
all
times a branch of their
own
the other half of the so-called Indo-Iranians
or Aryans.
And the
yet, the languages of the
Hindu Veda and
Persian Avesta, the respective
two peoples, are mere
bibles
dialects of the
of
the
same speech.
Students regularly enter upon the study of the Avestan language through the door of the Veda. Entire passages of the Avesta
may be
turned into
good Vedic merely by applying certain regular sound It is said sometimes that there is less dif changes. ference between the
Veda and
the Avesta than be-
j
"I
;
1
The
6
Religion of the
tween the Veda and the Mahabharata.
This
is,
later
my
in
Veda Hindu
Epic, the
opinion, an
exag
geration, but it is significant that the statement could be made at all. The early religions and the religious institutions of the
Hindus and Persians
far greater independence from one another than their languages, but they are, never So it has come theless, at the root much the same.
show, to be sure,
to pass that a not at
mean
all
part of the Vedic
Pantheon and Vedic
religious ideas begin before the
Veda.
even more paradoxically, Indian
Or, to put
it
religion begins before its arrival in India.
Yet
further,
beyond the common period
Hindus and the period which It
is
Persians, there
a
still
remoter
not entirely closed to our view. the common Indo-European time, the time is
when the Hindus and language bers
is
of the
of
Persians
and home with the the same
stock,
still
shared their
remaining
mem
the Hellenes, Italians,
In this altogether pre Celts, Teutons, and Slavs. historic time there also existed certain germs of religion,
and some of these germs grew into import
ant features of the later religions of these peoples.
The
religion of the
Veda
time to an extent that
is
indebted to this early
We
shall not negligible. the two layers of prehis
what way religious matter have contributed
see later on in toric
is
to
and affected
The Veda
1
7
For the present be advantageous to turn to the Vedic
the shaping of Vedic thought. it
will
religion of
some
historic
times, so
and what
new.
is
And
as
may be
there
that
between what
basis for discriminating
old
is
would not be gra
it
much knowledge of. so remote Veda, we must first describe briefly
cious to presume too
a theme as the
the documents of which consists the Veda, the most ancient literary
monument
literary document of the
foundation for
all
of India, the
most ancient the
Indo-European peoples
time of India
s
religious thought.
THE VEDA The word veda means is,
"sacred
know,"
It is
knowledge."
knowledge,"
derived from viJ,
"to
and connected with Greek (F)oida, Gothic
wait, German weiss, English wtt, term Veda is used in two ways :
lective
that
"
literally
designation
literature
of
India,
the
of
or
as
"
to
The
either as the col
entire
the
know."
oldest
specific
sacred
name
of
So books belonging to that literature. of the Veda as the on one we the then, hand, speak bible of ancient India or, on the other hand, we single
;
speak of
Rig-Veda, Atharva-Veda,
etc., as
individual
books of that great collection. The number of books which, in one sense or another, are counted as
Veda 2
is
a hundred
or
more.
The Hindus
|
[
;
l
The
i8
Religion of the
Veda
themselves were never very keen about canonicity; quasi-Vedic books, or, as we should say, Pseudo-
Vedic books were composed at a very late date, when the various and peculiar sources of early in had dried up they kept pouring new, mostly sour wine into the old skins. The huge Concordance
spiration
;
of the Vedas, which
it
has been
this year (1906), absorbs
my
fate to publish
about 120 texts more or
less Vedic. It is truly
humiliating to students of ancient India
have to answer the inevitable question as to the age of the Veda with a meek, We don t know." As "
!to
regards their texture, the books of the
great antiquity with no uncertain voice.
Veda claim One should
like to see this intrinsically archaic quality held
by
actual dates
;
up
those same, almost fabulous, yet per
fectly authentic dates that are being bandied about in
the ancient history of Assyria, Babylonia, and
Egypt. The late Professor William D. Whitney left behind the witty saying that Hindu dates are merely
up to be bowled down again. This is not altogether so. Buddha died 477 B.C. Alexander
ten-pins set
invaded
India in 326 B.C.
In the year 315
B.C.
Candragupta, or Sandrakottos, "Alexander-Killer," as Greek writers ominously mouthed over his name, led a successful revolt against
Alexander
and established the Maurya dynasty
s
prefects
in Pataliputra,
The Veda
19
the Palibothra of the Greeks, the Patna of to-day. The most important date in Hindu secular history
grandson, the famous Buddhist Emperor A^oka or Piyadassi, who ruled India from north to south around about 250 B.C. His
is
that
of
s
Candragupta
carved into rock
over his great empire, show us the singular spectacle of a great ruler who edicts,
all
used his power to propagate his religion peacefully. His inscriptions upon pillars and rocks boast not of victory or heroic deed virtue,
warn against
love of humanity.
they exhort his people to
;
and plead for tolerance and This is an important date in the sin,
history of India, but an even
more important date
good manners. Unquestionably a century or two must have passed between the conclusion of the Vedic period and the in the history of
beginnings of Buddhism.
Buddhist literature pre
supposes Brahmanical literature and religion in a stage of considerable advancement beyond the Vedas.
We
are, therefore,
We
are further
reasonably safe in saying that the real Vedic period was concluded about 700 B.C.
on
safe
ground
much
ber of centuries for the literature,
and religion
in
of the
demanding a num
stratified
Veda.
language,
But how many?
It is as
easy to imagine three as thirteen or twenty-
three.
Only one thing
very
old.
I
is
have noted the
certain.
Vedic ideas are
fact that the
concept
rat,
The
20
"
cosmic or universal
names
Iranian I
Religion of the
my
am, for
order,"
is
found
Western Asia
in
part,
now much more
and
I
think
Veda
I
in cut
and dried
as early as 1600 B.C.
voice
many
scholars,
inclined to listen to an early date,
the beginnings of Vedic literary production, and to a much earlier date for the
say 2000
B.C., for
beginnings of the institutions and religious concepts which the Veda has derived from those prehistoric times which cast their shadows forward into the records that are in our hands.
Anyhow, we must
not be beguiled by that kind of conservatism which merely salves the conscience into thinking that there is better proof for any later date, such as 1500,
1
200,
1000
or
B.C.,
rather than
Once more,
date of 2000 B.C.
frankly,
the earlier
we do
not
know. Vedic tradition
is in
some
respects the most re
From the entire recorded history. one Vedic period we have not single piece of anti not one bit of real or material, archaeological quarian markable
property
in
;
not a building, nor a
coin, jewel, or utensil
;
Even the manuscripts
monument
;
not a
nothing but winged words. of
these
precious
texts,
we know their authority to be on inner evidence are of comparatively recent date. do not know when the Vedas were first committed to splendid as
We
writing.
Even
if
they were written
down during
the
The Veda Vedic period
21
as I think altogether likely, the
itself,
early manuscripts were certain to perish
Indian climate.
They must,
in
the furious
in that case,
have been
The saved by diligent copying and recopying. majority of the manuscripts upon which are based our editions of Vedic texts date from recent cen Manuscripts that date back to the fourteenth (I century of our era are rare only a very few go back turies.
;
ij
to the twelfth.
Here, however, enters one of the curiosities of
Hindu
religious
The adherents
life.
of a certain
Veda
or Vedic school, no matter whether the text of that
school was reduced to writing or not, must, in theory,
know
their texts
(^rotriyas or
"
by
Oral
this day, being, as
These are the
Traditionalists."
it
Veda how he used
Bombay
time
still
tells
scholar, the
us in the pre
edition of the Atharva-
three of these oral reciters of the
Atharva-Veda out of a at that
live to
were, living manuscripts of their
Shankar Pandurang Pandit,
face to his great
so-called
They
The eminent Hindu
respective Vedas. late
heart.
total of only four that
alive in the
their oral authority
Dekkhan
proved to be
;
were
and how
quite as
as the written authority of his manuscripts.
weighty
These
were respectively, Messrs. Bapujl Kegava Bhat bin Dajl Bhat and Ven-
living manuscripts
Jlvanram kan BhatjT, the ;
;
last
"
the most celebrated Atharva
1
The
22
Vaidika
in
the
Religion of the
manner
respectively, as Bp,
now
all
We
Mr. Pandit
Dekkhan."
sigla, quite in the
Veda cites
them by
of inanimate manuscripts,
K, and V.
They
are, I believe,
dead.
are waiting
now
for the
time when the India
Exploration Society shall step out from its existence of the shovel and the spade.
on paper, and take hold
With bated breath we
shall
whether great good fortune
then be watching to see will
make
it
possible to
dig through the thick crust of centuries that are piled upon the Vedic period. If so, it will be some
thing like the revelation of the
was found
that time Vedic
by word
life
of mouth,
The hymns
tity.
Mycenean age that
at the root of Hellenic civilisation.
and
Until
institutions, reported only
must remain an uncertain quan
of the
Veda
are to a considerable
degree cloudy, turgid, and mystic taken by them selves they will never yield a clear picture of human life that fits any time or place. We have from the ;
Vedic period no annals except priestly annals, It or such at least as have been edited by priests. entire
is
as
though we
relied
upon
cloister chronicles alone
our knowledge of the politics and institutions of a certain time. Or, to use an even homelier compari for
son, as
though we had to reconstruct the more modern time from an
conditions of a
cepted boarding-school correspondence.
The
social
inter
poets,
The Veda or priestly writers of the
pied with their
own
Veda
are entirely preoccu
we want anything we must look to a later
interests
like secular records of India
23
;
if
time.
We
do not even know exactly what a term as fam meant in those early days. as raja (rex) King," "
iliar
Was
a Raja a great potentate, or merely a tribal
chieftain
We
?
know
that the early Vedic period
The lowing of kine was ear the Vedic poet. the of to music But lovely there were also workers in metals, chariots, navi was a
cattle-raising age.
some
gation of
This
and to some extent introduces
too vague,
all
is
kind, gold, jewels, and trade.
uncertain quantities into our estimation of Vedic religion.
At an unknown date confess reluctantly,
Aryan
then, as
we have had
tribes or clans (vi$
to
1
}
began
to migrate from the Iranian highlands to the north
Hindu-Kush Mountains
of the
into the north-west
of India, the plains of the river Indus
From
8
word is derived vaicya, the and merchant caste.
this
agricultural
Professor E.
Society,
tribu
W.
later
name
of the third, or
Hopkins, Journal of the American Oriental argues that the majority of the Vedic
vol. xix., pp. 19-28.
hymns were composed of the
its
the Panjab, or the land of the five streams. 8
taries, 1
and
modern
Ghuggar.
city of
farther east than the Panjab, in the region Amballa, between the rivers Sarasouti and
The
24
The
Religion of the
Veda
river Ganges, so essential to a picture of India
and even more bound up with all Western poetic fancies about India, is scarcely mentioned in the Rig- Veda. This same text is full in historical times,
the struggles of the fair-skinned Aryas with the dark-skinned aborigines, the Dasyus. to
allusions
of
The
is
struggle
likely
to have
been
bitter.
The
spread of Aryan civilisation was gradual, and re sulted finally in the up-building of a people whose
was foreign and superior, but whose race quality was determined a good deal by the over civilisation
whelmingly
large,
At
native, dark-skinned,
non-Aryan
the beginning of our knowledge of
population. India we are face to face with an extensive poet] tical literature,
the
This
crude on
is
when compared with
even
whole,
metres.
set
in
Sanskrit literature
later times.
of
Yet,
classical it
shows,
along with uncouth nai vet6 and semi-barbarous turgidity, a good deal of beauty and elevation of thought, and
a degree of
skill
bordering on the
professional, in the handling of language
and metre.
product was not created out of nothing on Indian soil follows from the previously mentioned
That
this
close connection with the earliest product of Persian literature, the Avesta.
Veda and Avesta 1
See above,
p.
13.
1
Even the metric types
are closely related.
of
The Veda Vedic
25
literature, in its first intention, is through-;/
out religjous, or
deals with institutions that haven
it
come under the
control
of
religion.
It
includes
hymns, prayers, and sacred formulas, offered priests to the
charms
gods
by
in behalf of rich lay sacrificers
;
and other homely practices, manipulated by magicians and medicine men, in the main for the plainer people. From a for witchcraft, medicine,
time come expositions of the sacrifice, illus by legends, in the manner of the Jewish
later
trated
Then
Talmud.
the higher sort,
speculations of
philosophic, cosmic, psycho-physical, and theosophic,
gradually growing up in connection with and out of the simpler beliefs.
body life,
of
at
home and abroad,
customs and laws. TheJV"_eda
ably
Finally there
is
a considerable
of set rules for conduct in every-day secular
that
This
consists, as
is
is,
a distinct literature
the
we have
Veda
as a whole.
seen, of consider
more than a hundred books, written in a variety and styles. Some
of slightly differentiated dialects
of the
Vedic books are not yet published, or even
unearthed.
may
so call
At it,
some
^e_bas.e.jQi-.this.-eatke canon,
lie
.if
we
four varieties of metrical composi
solemn prose. These are known as the Four Vedas in the narrower
tion, or in
sense
:
cases, prayers in sacred,
the Rig- Veda, the Yajur-Veda, the Sama-
Veda, and the Atharva-Veda.
These four names
26
The
come from
a
Religion of the
somewhat
Veda
they do not coincide exactly with the earlier names, nor do
Vedic time
later
;
they fully correspond to the contents of the texts
The
themselves.
names
earlier
refer rather to the
different styles of composition, than to canonical col lections. "
shi,
They
are rcah,
"
stanzas of
and formulas
liturgical stanzas
";
praise";
yajun-
sdindni,
"mel
and atharvdngirasah, blessings and curses." The book which goes by the name of Rig- Veda con odies
"
";
tains not only
stanzas of
"
praise,"
but
in its later
parts blessings and curses," as well as most of the stanzas which form the text to the sdman-meloalso
dies of the "
rcah,
"
Sama-Veda. The Atharva-Veda contains
stanzas of
stanzas, "mostly
well as
its
very
praise,"
and yajunshi,
worked over
own
"
liturgical
own purposes, as and curses." The Ya-
for its
"
blessings
jur-Veda also contains materials of the other types in addition to
Sama-Veda of rcah, or
some
"
is
its
main
Vedic
topic, the liturgy.
The
merely a collection of a certain kind
stanzas of
which are derived with
praise,"
variants and additions from the Rig- Veda, and
are here set to music which
is
indicated
by musical
notations.
The as the
Rig- Veda
on the whole, the oldest as well
most important
language speech.
is,
is
of the four collections.
a priestly, very high,
This we
may
call
by
or very
Its
literary
distinction the hieratic
The Veda
27
language of the Veda. It is based upon a very old popular dialect, into which the poets, to serve their
own
needs, have introduced
speech-forms.
many new words and
So, for instance, the great liking of the
from nouns, the so-called denominative or denominal verbs, surrounds hieratic language for verbs derived
the style of the Rig- Veda with an air of turgidity
and stiltedness which
is
far
hieratic poet prefers to say
prtanyati), rather gods"
give battle \prtandyati,
little
"
the
cultivate
"
"fight";
be pious
"
";
show
(sumanasyate), rather than
disposition"
friendly,"
A
from being archaic.
(devayati\ rather than
a kind
A
than
"
"be
etc.
over 1000 hymns, containing about 10,000
stanzas, equal in bulk to
into ten mandalas,
Homer s poems, are divided
"
circles,"
according to a regular
we should
or, as
books. Inside of these books the
scheme:
hymns first,
say,
are arranged
in the order of
number
of hymns addressed to a particular god, the largest number and continuing in with beginning a descending scale. Next, each god s hymns are
the
arranged according to the length of each single hymn, again in a descending scale. Six of these ten books (ii
vii),
the so-called
of the collection.
"family-books,"
Each
of these
form the nucleus is
supposed to
have been composed by a different Rishi, poet or seer, or rather by some family of poets who would
The
28
Veda
Religion of the
The
fondly derive their descent from such a Rishi.
state this repeatedly such and such a poet has seen such and such a hymn the exact value of this claim is not easily estimated.
hymns themselves
1
:
The names
of these traditional Rishis
ring in India at
Books
all
times.
They
have a good
are in the order of
Grtsamada,Vicvamitra,Vamadeva, Atri, and Vasishtha. The eighth book and Bharadvaja, the first fifty hymns of the first book are ascribed ii
vii,
to the family of
Kanva
superficially from the
they are marked off even rest, because they are arranged
strophically in groups of
;
two or three
stanzas.
form the bulk of those stanzas which, reappear in the Sama-Veda.
The
These
set to music,
ninth book, a kind
of Bacchic collection or text-book,
is
addressed to
the deified plant soma, and the liquor pressed from 2 it. This soma drink furnishes by far the most pre cious libation to the gods.
are supposed to
unto great deeds of The remainder of the first book and the
intoxicate themselves with valor.
They
entire tenth
book
are
it
more miscellaneous
acter and problematic as to intention
in char
and arrange
ment. To some extent, though by no means en tirely, they are of later origin and from a different sphere, in part of distinctly popular character, very 1
That
2
See below, p. 145.
is,
has had revealed to him.
The Veda much
29
and often identical with the hymns of the Atharva-Veda.
On
like
the whole and in the main, as
Rig- Veda
is
hymns
is
hymns addressed Vedic Pantheon. The chanting
ghee (ghrtd).
The enduring
the Rig- Veda as literature
lies in
poets* vision of the beauty,
power
by libations soma, and of melted
regularly accompanied
of the intoxicating drink called butter, or
shall see, the
a collection of priestly
to the gods of the of these
we
of the gods,
more
and
in the
interest of
those old priestly
the majesty, and the
myths and legends
told
tion with them.
often, merely alluded to in connec But the paramount importance of
the Rig- Veda
after all not as literature, but as
of them, or,
philosophy.
even
is
Its
mythology represents a
clearer,
not always chronologically earlier stage of thought and religious development than is to be found in any parallel literature. On one side at least
if
it
is
primitive in conception, and constructive
under our very eyes
how
a personal
god develops out of a visible fact in nature b^_rjersonification (anthropomorphosis) no literary document in the :
world teaches as well as the Rig- Veda. The original nature of theVedic gods, however, is not always clear, not as clear as was once fondly thought. The analy sis
of these barely translucent, or altogether
characters
makes up a chapter
of
opaque Vedic science as
30 difficult as
known
The
Religion of the
it is
important.
Veda
In any case enough
is
to justify the statement that thekey-note and
engrossing theme of Rig-Vedic thought the personified powers of nature.
is
worship of
make good this last statement, and at the same time by way of fore-taste of the Rig- Veda, I present here some stanzas of one of its finest hymns. In order to
1
It
fied,
Dawn
person-
the Vedic poets sing with special
warmth
addressed to the goddess Ushas,
is
whom
and liking; the metre imitates the original
:
I
This light hath come, of
The
brilliant brightness
all
the lights the fairest,
hath been born, far-shining,
Urged on to prompt the sun-god s shining power. Night now hath yielded up her place to morning.
The
sisters
pathway
is
the
same unending,
Taught by the gods, alternately they tread it. Fair-shaped, of different forms, and yet one-minded, Night and Morning clash not, nor yet do linger. Bright bringer of delights, Dawn shines effulgent, she hath thrown for us her portals.
Wide open Arousing
Dawn
all
the world, she shows us riches,
hath awakened every living creature.
T is Heaven s Daughter hath appeared before us, The maiden dazzling in her brilliant garments. Thou sovereign mistress of all earthly treasure, Auspicious Dawn, flash thou to-day upon us
!
Rig-Veda 1.113 i n Professor A. A. MacdonelPs translation, in of Sanskrit Literature, p. 83. I have taken the liberty of making a few slight alterations. 1
his History
The Veda On heaven
frame she hath shone forth
s
The goddess hath
her well-yoked chariot
Showering upon She spreads her
it
in
splendor
;
cast off the robe of darkness.
Awakening the world, with ruddy
Upon
31
horses,
Dawn
approacheth.
many bounteous
brilliant lustre
blessings, may see her.
all
Last of the chain of mornings that have passed by, morns to come Dawn hath arisen.
First of bright
Arise
!
the breath of
Dread darkness
I
life
again hath reached us
!
away and light is coming (She hath blazed a pathway for the sun to travel, We have found the place where men prolong existence.
The
slinks
!
Rig- Veda presupposes a tolerably elaborate
and^jnojL uninteresting ritual, or
scheme
practices, in connection with the
How
to the gods.
this
lines of the Rig- Veda s
poetry
hymns addressed
be read between the I
hope to show quite
The Yajur-Veda
on.
clearly later
may
of priestly
represents the
of this ritualism, or sacerdotalism,
exceeding growth as time went by.
Gradually the main object, devotion to the namely, gods, is lost sight of sol emn, pompous performance, garnished with lip
1
:
service, occupies the centre of the stage.
formance of its
is
supposed to have magic or mystic power
own, so that
It regulates
This per-
every detail is all-important. mechanically the relation of man to the
divine powers
by
its
its
own
intrinsic
power, but yet a
*
The
32
Religion of the
Veda
power controlled and guided by the wonderful tech nique of the priests, and their still more wonderful insight into the
meaning
A crowd of priests
of
all
seventeen
is
the technical acts. the largest
conduct an interminable ceremonial bolic
meaning down
its
number of
smallest minutiae.
themselves on the
seat,
priests
to
full
sacrificial
sym The
ground
strewn with blades of sacred dfor^tf -grass, and mark out the altars on which the sacred
fires
are built.
They handle and arrange the utensils and sacrificial substances. And then they proceed to give to the gods of the act has
its
each his proper oblation and
sacrifice,
Even the
his proper share.
least
and most
trivial
stanza or formula, and every utensil
blessed with
its
own
particular blessing.
is
These
stanzas and formulas, to which a description of the rites is
more or
less directly attached,
numerous redactions
The Yajur-Veda though
it
contains
of this
the
a later collection in the main,
is
much
substance that
enough, indeed, to be prehistoric.
Vedic
make up
Veda.
collections, its
But
redaction, at
is
old, old
like all other
any
rate,
pre
A
good many verses of supposes the Rig-Veda. the Rig- Veda reappear in the Yajur-Veda, usually not in the exact form of the Rig-Veda, but taken out of their connection, and altered and adapted to new ends which were foreign to the mind of the
The Veda There are
original composers. in
33
also
many new
verses
the Yajur-Veda which are in the main ritualistic
rather than hymnal, concerned with technical details of the sacrifice rather than with the praise of the gods.
But the
To
rhythmic prose.
They
are,
Veda more or
characteristic element of this
the yajus, or formulas in prose, often these this
Veda owes
its
by the way, unquestionably the
prose on record
in
the literatures of the
are less
name. oldest ||
Indo-
European peoples. These formulas are often brief and concise, mere dedications or swift prayers, ac
companying an
action,
and sometimes hardly ad
dressed to any one in particular. "
Thee
Agni
(agnaye tva), or
agneJi), indicate that
(idam to the
So, for instance,
"
for
"
god Agni.
Or,
"
This to Agni
an object
Thee
is
"
dedicated
for strength
"
is
the
briefest prayer, or rather magically compelling wish,
that the use of a certain article to the sacrificer. ity to
may
give strength
But they swell out from
this brev
long solemn litanies that betray at times such may at best be expected
a measure of good sense as
in these doings. Often, however, they are sunk in the deepest depths of imbecility, mere verbiage in
puns on the names of the things used the sacrifice. When an animal victim is tied to
tent at
upon
silly
the post the priest addresses the rope with the
words,
"
Do
not turn serpent, do not turn
viper!"
\\
The
34
Veda
Religion of the
The Hindus have always had
reason to fear ser
they must have at times been stung by serpents whom they mistook for ropes, because the pents
;
two things are often correlated in their literature. A Hindu figure of speech (or kenning) for serpent "
is
of
1
toothed
As
a rope which is not clearly seen mistaken for a serpent, so the un mistake the character of their own "
:
is
enlightened
That
is
to say, they
divine nature of their
there
self.
do not comprehend the This is sensible, and
sense also in the following: Kings are con
is
ceived
instance, a theosophic text
character establishes the following
Upanishad
comparison in the dark
self."
For
rope."
as
ceremony
rulers
of the earth.
Therefore, at the
of consecration the king looks
the earth, and prays
"
:
O
down upon
mother Earth, do not
But often injure me, nor let me injure thee prayer passes over into litany, here as in other "
!
secondary stages of religious literature. The fol May life prosper lowing is an all too typical case "
:
through the
sacrifice!
through the sacrifice the sacrifice sacrifice 1
!
!
May
See the author in
May
!
May life s breath May the eye prosper
prosper
through
the ear prosper through
the
the back prosper through the sac-
Hymns of the Atharva- Veda
(Sacred Books of
the East, vol. xlii.), pp. 147, 368. 2
Mandukya-Karika,
colubra restem non parit,
2. "
17.
Cf. the
adage in Petronius, 45
a serpent does not beget a
rope."
The Veda And
"
rifice
!
O
finally
35
deepest bathos "
the
!
occur in the Yajur-Veda and are
"May
1
prosper through the sacrifice many thousand formulas of this sort which
sacrifice
The
!
now
for the first
Concordance.
am
I
its
accessory literature
time collected
pression which they leave their partial foolishness,
in
my
Vedic
the enduring im
sure that
upon the mind,
aside from
that of a formalism and
is
mental decay upon the very brink of dissolution. The practices which accompany these formulas,
though they contain much that ous, are also covered
so that
it is
meaning.
up by
is
natural and vigor
silly details of
formalism,
human new life
often difficult to discover their real It
is
remarkable, however, that
springs up on this arid waste.
It is as though this had religion prepared itself by phase its very excesses for a salutary and complacent in the its last In hajra-tciri. outcome, very same
of
Hindu
Brahmanical schools where
all
this folly runs riot,
spring up the Upanishads, those early theosophic treatises of India which pave the way for her endur ing philosophies.
The Upanishads in
reality,
though
not professedly, sweep aside the ritual like cobwebs, and show the Hindu mind, not yet perfectly trained,
but far from choked 1
P-
;
and quite capable of carrying
C/. Winternitz, Geschichte der Indischen Litteratur, Part First,
The
36
on the development of Hindu great results
Veda
Religion of the
religions to the really
which they eventually reach.
The Sama-Veda
is
of
all
the Vedas the least clear
As a literary pro origin and purpose. almost entirely secondary and negative. Sama-Veda is interesting chiefly, because it is the
as regards
its
duction
it is
The Veda of
music.
In addition
it
contains
some original
practices to which tradition has attached a
of legends
unknown
in
the other Vedic
number schools.
There are no connected hymns in this Veda, only more or less detached verses, borrowed in the main from the Rig- Veda. Even the sense of these verses subordinated to the music to which they are set.
is
The
verses are grouped
accompanied by "
melodies."
in strophes
their music, are
which,
known
The saman-stanzas
when
as sdmani,
are preserved
in
First, in the Rig-Veda, as ordinary in the usual way, and not accompan accented poetry ied by melodies. They are contained mostly in the
three forms.
first fifty
hymns
and
Most
ix.
of the
first
book, and
of these stanzas are
in
Books
composed
viii
in the
metre gdyatrl, or in strophes known as pragdtha, which are compounded of gdyatrl &nd jagati verse-
Both the words gdyatrl and pragdtha are and show derived from the verb gai, sing," lines.
"
that the stanzas
and strophes composed
in
these
metres were from the start intended to be sung.
The Veda
37
Secondly, they occur in the Sama-Veda itself in a form called drcika, that is, "collection of stanzas."
This
is
kind of
a
ing the stanzas "
making
which are to be memorised
upon
them,"
sdma7t-melodies.
Here
of
accents,
or text-book contain
libretto,
in
peculiar
Hindus
the
as
also its
for
say, the
a system notation, but appar there
is
with reference to the unsung sdmans. In ently the third sdman-version, the Ganas or song-books, we still
1
find the real
not
sdmans
only the
are given.
as they are to
text but
Still this is
also
the
be sung.
Here
musical
notes
not a complete sdman yet.
In the middle of the sung stanzas certain phantastic
exclamatory syllables are introduced, the so-called stobhaS) such as oin, hau, hai, hoyi, or him ; and at the end of the stanzas certain concluding exclama tions, the so-called nidheQna^
such as
atJia, d,
im, and
They remind us in a way of the Swiss and Tyrolese "yodels" which are introduced into the
sat?
songs of these countries as a sort of intended to heighten the musical effect.
The Sama-Veda
is
cadenzas,
devoted a good deal to the
worship of Indra, a blustering, braggart god, 1
2
who
The word gana, again, is derived from the root^m, sing." The Pancavin9a Brahmana relates that the poet Kanva was for a "
good while puzzled to find a nidhana for his sdman, until he heard a cat sneeze ash I Then he took ash for the nidhana of his
The
38
Veda
Religion of the
has to befuddle himself with soma, in -order to get the necessary courage to slay demons. He, and he alone, has in the is,
"he
the
for
rks"
seems
Rig-Veda the epithet rclshama, that whom the sdmans are composed upon the
or, as
we should
likely that the
"
say,
out of the
Sama-Veda
is
l
rks"
It
built
up out_of remnants of savage Shamanism the resemblance between the words Saman and Shamanism, however, accidental.
is
Shamanism,
as
is
well
known^jattempts to influence the natural order of events by shouts, beating of tam-tams, and frantic exhortation
The Brahmans were in the habit of blending their own priestly practices and concep of the gods.
good deal of rough material which they found current among the people. The sdman melo
tions with a
dies, too,
seem
betray their popular origin in that they
to have
been sung originally
festivals, especially
the
clamations interspersed
at certain
solstitial festivals.
among
2
popular
The ex
the words of the text
are likely to be substitutes for the excited shouts of
the
Shaman
priests of an earlier time.
worth while to note that
in later
It is
perhaps
Vedic times the
my articles, On Rclshama, an Epithet of Indra^ vs\Journal of American Oriental Society, vol. xxi., p. 50 ff. and, The God Indra and the Sdma- Veda, in Vienna Oriental Joiirnal, vol. xvii., p. 1
See
the
156 /-. 2 See A.
\
Hillebrandt, Die Sonnenwendfeste in Alt-Indien, Fest
schrift ftir Konr ad of the reprint.
Hoffmann, (Erlangen
1889), pp. 22.
ff and 34 ff.
The Veda Sama-Veda
is
39
The Brahman-
held in small regard.
law-books prescribe that the recitation of RigVeda and Yajur-Veda must stop whenever the ical
shout of sdmans
is
heard.
One
of these law-books,
counts the barking of dogs, the bray of asses, the howling of wolves, and the sound of the for instance,
sdman
when
noises
as
so
obnoxious
heard, the study
of
or
defiling
that,
the other Vedas must
1
stop.
The interest of the Sama-Veda for the Hindu religion and literature amounts
of
little.
It represents
in
employment
secondary
fact in
little
history to very
more than the
the service of religion
popular music and other quasi-musical noises. These were developed and refined in the course of of
civilisation,
and worked into the formal
Brahmanism
in
and emotion.
ritual
of
order to add an element of beauty In more modern times the sdman-
chants at the sacrifice are said to be quite impressive. 2
The oldest name
of the
Atharva-Veda
is
atharvdn-
compound formed of the names of two semi-mythic families of priests, the Atharvans and
girasah, a
At
Angirases.
was regarded 1
as
a very early time the former term
synonymous with
"
holy
charms,"
or
Compare on this point Professor Ludwig s remark in Der RigVeda, vol. v. p. 8. 2 See the author in the Vienna Oriental Journal, vol. xvii., p. 162. ,
The
4O
the latter with
"
"
blessings
;
Veda
Religion of the "
witchcraft charms/ or
In addition to this name, and the later
"
curses."
more conventional name Atharva-Veda, there are two other names, used only in the ritual texts of One is bhrgvangirasah, that is, Bhrigus this Veda. In this the Bhrigus, another ancient
and Angirases.
family of fire priests, take the place of the Atharvans. of the
The
other
Brahman,"
is
Brahma-Veda, probably
that
is
the
Veda
"
fourth priest at the Vedic ($rauta) sacrifices. latter
Veda
of the supervising
name may, however, be due
to
1
The
some extent
to
the fact that the Atharva-Veda contains a surprising number of theosophic hymns which deal with the
brahma,
the
thought and see later on,
2
pantheistic its
personification
This, as
pious utterance.
becomes
in
of
holy
we
shall
time the ultimate religious
conception of the Veda. The Atharvan is a collection of 730 hymns, con taining some 6000 stanzas. Aside from its theo sophic materials, which look not a collection of
little
strange in a
charms and exorcisms, and some
hieratic
stanzas which were employed by the Brahman or 3 fourth priest, the collection is almost entirely of a
popular character. 1
2
3
It consists of
Cf. Caland, Vienna Oriental Journal, See below, p. 273. See Caland in the article just cited.
hymns and vol. xiv., p.
stanzas
The Veda for the cure of diseases life
charms
;
and
;
41
prayers for health and long
for the prosperity of
home and
children,
expiatory formulas designed to free from sin and guilt; charms to produce harmony in the
cattle
life
fields;
assembly
;
and
the deliberations of the village charms concerned with love and marriage,
of families
in
and, indirectly, with the rivalries and jealousies of
men and women in love; conjurations sorcerers,
war
;
and enemies
;
charms
against demons,
for kings in peace
and charms calculated to promote the
and
interests
of the Brahmans, especially to secure for them the abundant baksheesh for which they clamor with the
most refreshing directness.
The_Atharva-Veda
is
of unrivalled importance for
and popular
the history of superstition, of folk-lore, practices. "
Related
House-books
in
character are
"
(
Grhya-Sutras).
the so-called
These were com
posed as formal treatises at a comparatively late Vedic period, yet they report practices and prayers of great antiquity.
The Hindus, then
tensely religious view of their course, as well as in
its
as
now, took an
in
even daily crucial moments, such as birth, lives.
investiture, disciplehood, marriage,
Hindu was both
In
its
and death, the
and enlivened by a continuous chain of religious formalities, acts, and These were codified in the House-books" festivals.
life
of the
sanctified
"
with nice minuteness.
The Atharva-Veda and
the
The
42 "
House-books"
Religion of the
Veda
togetherlay bare with unrivalled preci
sion of detail the religion of the obscure and the
hum
For many a Hindu, through many centuries, these fond time-honored customs of the fathers, ble.
the schone
was the true
sitte,
religion,
which turned
inward, irradiating and sustaining the spirit of a peo ple
whose masses
live the
life
and do
of dark toil
not see the light revealed to their
own
To
elect.
the
development of the higher and ultimate religion of the Veda these homely practices and superstitions contribute very
little.
Charm
against Jaundice.
1. Up to the sun shall go thy heart-ache and thy jaundice: in the colour of the red bull do we envelop thee!
2.
We
envelop thee in red
tints,
unto long
life.
May
person go unscathed, and be free of yellow colour 3. The cows whose divinity is RohinI, they who, more in their every form over, are themselves red[rMnfs] and every strength we do envelop thee. this
4.
!
Into the parrots, into the ropandkas (thrush) do we into the hdridravas (yellow wagtail)
put thy jaundice
;
do we put thy yellowness. {Atharva-Veda,
i.
22.)
the Atharva-Veda (Sacred Books of For the very interesting symbolic practices that accompany the recital of this charm against jaundice, see p. 263^. of the same work. 1
See the author,
Hymns of
the East, vol. xlii.) p. 7.
The Veda
A Woman I
1.
sit
2.
O
Incantation against her Rival\
have taken unto myself her fortune and her glory, As a broad-based mountain may off a tree.
wreath
as a
she
s
43
a long time with her parents
This
woman
shall
King Yama (Pluto)
:
!
be subjected to thee as thy bride, till then let her be fixed to the
house of her mother, or her brother, or her father be the keeper of thy house, O 3. This woman shall May she King Yama her do we deliver over to thee long sit with her parents, until her hair drops from her !
!
:
head 4.
!
With the incantation
Gaya do within
I
of Asita, of Kacyapa,
cover up thy fortune, as
women
and of
cover things
a chest. 1
(Atharua-Veda,)
The
poetic stanzas of
prose formulas of the
all
sorts,
Veda
and the
collectively
i.
14.)
ritualistic
go by the
name of mantra, pious utterance or hymn." In the texts of one group of Yajur-Vedas, the so-called 2 Black Yajur-Vedas, these stanzas and prose formulas "
"
"
alternate with descriptive prose chapters which tell
how
these mantras are to be used at the sacrifice,
given way. The In the case passages are designated as braJimana. of the so-called White Yajur-Vedas and also all the
and why they are to be used
in a
other Vedas the Brahmanas are compiled into sepSee the same work, pp. 107 and 252 .ff For the distinction between Black and White Yajur-Veda see Mac. donell, History of Sanskrit Literature, p. 177. 1
2
The
44
Religion of the
Veda
works whose object, again, is to expound the combination of prayer and ritual at the sacrifice. arate
The meaning clear.
of the
Either
word brdhmana
means
is
not altogether
holy practice," or religious in distinction from mantra, holy
it
"
"
"
"
performance utterance,"
or
means the
it
"
religious
text."
Or, perhaps rather
theological explanation
by Brahman
priests of the religious ritual as a whole, including
both prayer and performance.
As regards both
contents and literary quality, the Brahmanas are In the closely analogous to the Hebrew Talmud.
main they are bulky prose statements of the details of the great Vedic sacrifices, and their theological Both the performances and their explana tion are treated in such a way, and spun out to such meaning.
length, as to render these
ments of tediousness and
works on the whole monu intrinsic stupidity.
And
yet the Brahmanas compel the student of Hinduism that
comes to
scoff to stay to pray.
In the
first
place they are important because they are written in
connected prose entire field of
the earliest narrative prose in the
Indo-European speech, only
little less
archaic than the prose formulas of the Yajur-Veda.
They
are especially important for syntax
respect they represent the old
:
*
in this
Hindu speech
far
better than the Rig- Veda, whose syntax and style 1
See above, p. 33.
The Veda by the
are distracted
licenses
45
and
restrictions that
go
with poetic form. Secondly, the Brahmanas almost inexhaustible mine for the history of the are an
sacrifice, religious practices,
These
priesthood.
and the
institutions of
institutions in time
systematic and formidable as to
Brahman and Brahmanism
became
so
make the names
typical everywhere for
and priesthood. Thirdly, the Brahmana texts not only describe and expound the sacrifice, but
priest
they
and enliven
illustrate
it
While engaged
and legends.
of
technicalities
the
ritual,
by numerous in
stories
expounding the
they
at
the
same
time unconsciously supplement the poetic Vedas. The Hebrew Talmud interrupts the hair-splitting, expositions of
logic-chopping
its
ritual
Hallacha,
by picking from time to time rare flowers the
of
garden
its
The Brahmanas no
Haggada, less
make
or
from
legendary lore. upon the past
drafts
and present of the great storehouse of myths and stories that India has cherished from the beginning of
her time.
The
poetic value of
many
of these
may judged from the fact that they remain stock themes for the Hindu poets of later stories
be
times.
Here we
find, first
of
all,
the story of the flood,
wonderfully analogous to the flood legends of all Western Asia, and especially the account of the
The
A.6 ~
book
of the Religion o
of Genesis.
1
Many
Veda
echoes are called up by
the story of Cyavana the Bhargava who, old and decrepit as a ghost, is pelted with clods by the
Then he punishes
children of the neighborhood.
by creating discord, so that father with son, and brother with brother." Cyavana fought "
their families
finally,
through the help of the divine physicians,
the Agvins, enters the fountain of youth (queckbronri) 2 Like an oasis in and marries the lovely Sukanya.
the desert comes the ancient tale of Pururavas and
much dis Rig- Veda
UrvacJ, whose mythic meaning has been 3
puted or altogether denied. Already the knows the story, and the Hindu master-poet Kalidasa, perhaps a thousand years later, derives from
one of his loveliest dramas.
same motif
tains the
stories.
Lohengrin
as the
A
It is a story
it
which con
Undine, Melusine, and
heavenly
nymph
(Apsaras),
UrvacJ by name, loves and marries King Pururavas, but she abandons him again because he violates one of 1
the conditions of See Eggeling
s
this
ill-assorted
intrinsically
translation of the version of this legend in the
Val apatha Brahmana, Sacred Books of the East, vol. xii., p. 2i6_y. For the story of the flood in general see Usener, Die Sintflutsagen
(M 1899) (Bonn, ;
Winternitz Hwi
ur Wien, 2
3
;
Andree,
Die
Flutsagen
(Brunswick,
in Mittheilungen der Anthropologischen
1891)
;
and
Gesettschaft in
vol. xxxi (iqoi), p. 305.
(^atapatha Brahmana 4. I. 5. I ff. See, last, the author in Journal of the
vol. xx., p. 1 80.
American Oriental
Society,
The Veda
47
Not, however, through his own
union.
fault,
but on
account of a trick played him by the Gandharvas, a kind of heavenly sports," the natural mates of the "
He must
heavenly nymphs, the Apsarases.
not be
seen in a state of nudity by his wife. But on a certain occasion the Gandharvas
cause lightning
she sees him and vanishes. wailing through the land
to play:
Then Pururavas roams of
the Kurus, until he
which nymphs in the form of swans disport themselves. One of them is UrvacJ. They engage in a poetic dialogue which is preserved
comes to a
lotus
without the
pond
in
rest of the story as
the Rig- Veda (10. 95). intolerable situation. "
Then
This
one of the hymns of finally
The Brahmana
relieves
story
tells
she was sorry for him in her heart.
And
the :
she
A year from to-day thou shalt come then spake thou mayest tarry with me one night. Till then thy son :
whom
;
I
am
bearing shall have been born.
And
that
Behold there was a golden night a year he returned. palace. Then they said to him, Enter here. Then they sent Urvaci to him. And she spake To-morrow the He Gandharvas will grant thee a wish choose one. him She advises Choose thou for me. to said, say, I desire to become one of you. The next morning the Gandharvas grant him a wish. And he says, I :
;
4
*
wish to become one of you.
"
Then the Gandharvas teach him a particular fireoffering, by means of which a mortal may become a Gandharva
;
thus he
becomes a
fitting
mate
for
The
48
Now the
UrvacJ. |
i
that the
is
Religion of the reason
why
Brahmana text
this very fire-offering
which
this sacrifice
;
is,
is
Veda
this story
engaged
is
preserved
in describing
the story proves the magic of aye, powerful enough to turn
a mortal into a demi-god.
Here area couple
of short legends, crisp
They show that,
cut as cameos.
and
clear-
just as the early
gods
of India are nature-gods, so the early legends are.
grossed with problems of nature and the world. first of these snatches may be entitled
en The
1
A "
Yama and
Legend of the First Pair.
Yarn!
(*
the twins
)
are the
first
man and
Yama died. The gods sought to console woman. When they asked her she YamI for the death of Yama. *
said,
To-day he hath died/
They
said
:
In
this
Let us create night way she will never forget him. Day only at that time existed, not night. The gods Then created night. Then morrow came into being. !
she forgot him.
make men
Hence, they
forget sorrow.
say,
Days and nights
"
2
The second legend may be
entitled
The Mountains as Winged Birds. "The
,
mountains are the eldest children of Prajapati
(the Creator). They were winged (birds). They kept At that forth and flying settling wherever they liked. 1
2
174
Maitrayani Sanhita Maitrayani Sanhita ff.
i. i.
5.
12.
10. 13.
cf.
Pischel, Vedische Studien,
i.,
The Veda time this earth was unstable.
49
(God) Indra cut
earth.
clouds ever hover about the mountains. place of
At
off their
By means of the mountains he made firm the Therefore these The wings became clouds.
wings.
For
this is their
origin."
the end of the Brahmanas appears a class of
known
Aranyakas, or "Forest Treatises." The meaning of this name is not altogether clear. It seems probable that these works were recited by texts
as
hermits living in the forest, or, more precisely, those who went to the forest to live, at the time when they entered the third stage of to final emancipation. likely,
Hindu
life,
preparatory
1
According to another, less view they are texts which were taught by
teacher to pupil in the solitude of the forest, rather
than village
profaner surroundings of the town or this because the quiet of the forest
in the :
harmonised better with the sanctity of their con In either view it is difficult to see why so tents.
much ado should have been made about them. The this Aranyakas are later than the Brahmanas follows from the position they occupy at the end ;
of these texts,
and from their contents.
descriptions of sacrificial ceremonies
On
top of here
we have
symbolism of the sacrifice and priestly philosophy of the most fantastic order. The real ritual perform. 1
See below,
p. 288.
(
The
50
Religion of the
Veda
ance seems for the most part to be supplanted by But the themes of the allegorical disquisition.
Aranyakas are by no means
;
on the
heterogeneous and haphazard.
are
contrary they
Thus the
of one sort only
Aranyaka deals in its first book with the Arunaketuka Agni, a particular method of Taittirlya
building the fire-altar;
its
second book makes the
rather astounding leap over to Brahmanical educa
and Veda study its third, fourth, and fifth books deal with parts of the Vedic sacrificial cere tion
monial
;
;
and
its
sixth
book describes the old Vedic
funeral ceremonies (pitrmedha).
Still
more
varie
gated are the contents of the Aitareya Aranyaka.
What
forest themes governs the choice of these In any case escapes our notice almost altogether. "
"
these books are of lesser importance from the point of
view of Vedic literature and
which
is
religion,
except for the
of
paramount importance The Aranyakas are symptomatic and transitional.
following fact,
:
important symptom, if we understand the matter aright, is the subordination of the mere act
The
as we might say, This suppression of the material spiritual meaning. side of the ritual bridges over to the last class of of the sacrifice to
texts which the evolution.
its allegorical, or,
Veda
They
has to offer along this line of famous Upanishads, the
are the
early philosophical or theosophical texts of
India,
The Veda which have become
51
fateful for all
subsequent higher In these the ritual together with
Hindu thought.
every other manifestation of the religion of works is negated, sometimes by cautious and delicate innu endo, always by the inherent antagonism of the Upanishad themes. The older Upanishads are for the
most part either imbedded in the Aranyakas or, more frequently, attached to the end of these texts.
From very early times, therefore, they have the name Vedanta, End of the Veda." End of the Veda they are, as regards their position in the re 1
"
dactions of the long line of the so-called revealed ($rauta) texts, position.
and
as regards the time of their
But they are the end of the Veda
higher sense as well.
Veda
s
They
are the
highest religion and philosophy.
com in a
texts of the
In particu
Brahmanical philosophy which system controls at the present time nearly all the higher
lar that
of
thought of Brahmanical India bears the name Vedanta. And there is no important form of Hindu thought, heterodox Buddhism included, which is not rooted in the Upanishads.
The
philosophic and
Upanishads
will
when we come the 1
fifth
religious
quality
of
the
occupy a good deal of our attention
to the higher religion of the
and sixth lectures of
vet9vatara Upanishad
6.
22
;
this course.
Mundaka Upanishad
Veda
in
For the 3. 2. 6.
The
52
Religion of the
Veda
present we may content ourselves with some facts in the literary history of these extraordinary composi
As
we can say at least this the older Upanishads antedate Buddha much, that
tions.
regards their date
and Buddhism. The production of after-born Upan : flt*.~i-
:
-
ishads
continued,
Buddhism,
centuries
many
however,
into very
modern
times.
Next
after
to the
Rig-Veda the Upanishads are decidedly the most For important literary document of early India. the history of religion they are even more important. In the year 1656 the
Mogul (Mussalman) Prince invited several Hindu
Mohammed Dara Shukoh
Pandits from Benares to Delhi, and induced them to I
translate the Upanishads into Persian. Dara Shukoh was the oldest son of that Mogul Emperor Shah
Jehan,
who
built at
Agra, as a mausoleum for his
favourite Sultana, the Taj Mahal, perhaps the most
beautiful edifice on earth.
He was
afterwards de
posed from the throne by another son of his, the Dara bloody and powerful Emperor Aurengzeb. Shukoh was a man of another sort. He was the spiritual
follower of
the
famous
liberal
Emperor
Akbar, and wrote a book intended to reconcile the religious doctrines of the Hindus and Mohammedans.
Hence
his extraordinary desire to spread the
ledge of
infidel
writings.
Three years
accomplishment of the Upanishad
know
after
the
translation he
was
The Veda
53
put to dccith (1659) by his brother Aurcngzeb, on the ground that he was an infidel, dangerous to the established religion of the empire
;
as a
matter of
fact, because he was the legitimate successor to the throne of Shah Jehan. India, in more than one 1
respect the land of origins,
which came the study
also the country
is
suggestions of a comparative]
first
The Buddhist Emperor Agoka,
of religions.
250 years before Christ, had the religious
Rammohun Roy
1824 a
book
divisions
are
entitled
Idolatry of all Religions; told the "
of perfect
another
The last-named enlightened
trifolium of this sort. in
spirit
Emperor Akbar, Prince Dara
freedom.
Shukoh, and Raja prince wrote
from
Against the
Hindus that caste
are as destructive of national union as of
expressed belief in the divine authority of Christ and yet confidently did regard the Upanishads as the true source of the higher social
enjoyment";
;
religious life of the
study gentile religions and fairness. I
my
would ask you
1
to
in
men are who
modern
scholars
a
of
sympathy
in this
connection
spirit
remember
friend, the late Professor
translators of the
This class of
Hindus.
the advance guard of the
Max
Upanishads
Miiller,
one of the
Mokshamulara,
as
See Elphinstcne, History of India (edited by Cowell), p. 610 Miiller, Sacred Books of the East, vol. i., p. cvii.
Max
The
54
Hindus
the
Religion of the
called
him during
Veda
his latter days.
It
happens that moksha is the Sanskrit word for sal To the Hindus his root." vation," and milla means "
"
name means
Root-of-salvation," or, as
"
with a different turn,
"
Salvation
we might
Miiller."
I
say,
do not
imagine that Miiller believed in the Hindu salvation, which is release from the chain of lives and deaths in
But
the course of transmigration.
mind partakes "
of the flavor of salvation,
Max
he was.
Miiller
and writer
is
well
more than
Muller
known
understood, perhaps, his thought,
if
is
to
s
freedom of "
Salvation
eminence as a scholar
you
;
less generally well
the liberalising quality of
which he exercised untiringly during Among Europeans he
half a century.
was pre-eminent for the spirit of sympathy and fairness which he brought to the study and criticism of
Hindu
The shad
is
religious thought.
Persian
pronunciation It
Oupnekhat.
man Anquetil du
of the
word Upani-
happened that the French
Perron, the famous pioneer in the
study of the Zoroastrian religion of the Parsis, was There he became interested living in India in 1/75. in
the Persian Oupnekhat, and later on
Latin translation of Dara Shukho
was published in 1801
;
vol.
in Strassburg in ii.
in
s
made
version.
two volumes
a
This (vol.
i.
1802).
This translation proved
At
that comparatively recent
eventful in the West.
The Veda
55
time the Upanishads were yet unknown Notwithstanding its double disguise,
in
Europe. the
first
and next the Latin, Anquetil s Latin ren dering proved to be the medium through which Persian,
Schopenhauer became acquainted with the thought of the
hauer,
As
Upanishads.
who
is
well
is
known, Schopen
the father of Western pessimism, was
powerfully impregnated with their pantheistic, or,
more tem
His own sys
precisely, monistic philosophy.
based upon conceptions that coincide in one way or another with the more detached Schopenhauer used teachings of the Upanishads. is
really
to have the
was
his devotions
from
its
open upon
lie
Oupnekhat
in the habit, before
his table,
and
going to bed, of performing
His own estimate of
pages.
the character of the Oupnekhat
preserved to us Next to the original it is
in
the following statement
is
the most rewardful reading possible in the world.
It
"
:
has been the solace of
solace of
my
death."
my
life
;
it
will
Schopenhauer himself
be the tells
the reason for his faith in the Upanishads.
us
The
fundamental thought of the Upanishads, he says, is what has at all times called forth the scoffing of fools
and the unceasing meditation of the wise,
namely, the doctrine of unity plurality this
is
world,
only apparent in whatsoever ;
;
the doctrine that
that in
all
endless
all
individuals of
number they
;
||
The
56
Veda
Religion of the
present themselves, one after another, and one be side another, there is manifested one and the same
Therefore the Upanishads are in his eyes the fruit of the profoundest insight that the world has ever seen almost superhuman thought,
true being.
;
whose authors can scarcely be imagined to have been mere men. Schopenhauer unquestionably caught with lynxlike perspicacity,
through the murky medium of the
Oupnekhat, the spirit of the Upanishads, which are now before us in many editions of their Sanskrit It is
originals.
monism
the
monism
what
is
.most
known
philosophy as
in
uncompromising,
perfervid
Nor
that the world has ever seen.
his
is
estimate of the religious or philosophical quality of
Pro
the Upanishads to be brushed aside lightly. fessor
Deussen,
one
of
the
profoundest
students of
Hindu philosophy, himself a
philosopher,
does not
when
hauer
he
thinkers
the
came,
most
in
else if
behind
far
most
intimate and immediate of s
of
the
;
the
not
behind Schopenhauer
Schopen
the thought
equal in India nor per the world that to these
its
the ultimate mystery
reflect
that
says
Upanishads has not haps anywhere
fall
living
trained
yet
insight
into
This
being.
estimate
scientific,
;
both
is
not
far
estimates
pretty nearly the position of the
Hindus
The Veda who
themselves,
57
regard the Upanishads as divine
revelation.
With
due respect
all
for these great thinkers,
I
believe that Sanskrit scholars in general incline to a
soberer
estimate of
Hindu view
the
of revelation
With the
Upanishads.
we need not
quarrel.
As. t
to the question whether the
we may
Upanishads are inspired, !.
safely intrust its decision to the
broadening
spirit of the conception of inspiration, which at the
present time
More fact
is
everywhere
to the point
no system
is,
of
in
evidence in the world.
that the Upanishads contain in
thought, though they did un
later Hindu systematic phi questionably inspire We are often vexed with their unstable, losophy.
contradictory, and partly foolish statements.
commanding
thought of the
or the doctrine of
the Rig- Veda
in
how many
;
Upanishads
The
monism,
unity precedes the Upanishads
we do not know by Above all, we cannot
unfortunately
years or centuries.
and should not forget that underneath Upanishad thought, as underneath all advanced Hindu thought, found the belief
in transmigration of souls, a notion which to the very end retains picturesque the quality of folk-i-jre, rather than the q .mjity of is
1
philosophy. this belief is 1
But to the Hindus an axiom.
See below, p 254.
After
of the
all,
Upanishads
the prime interest
The
58 of the
Religion of the
historical,
We
by the quality of the endeavor
more
is literary
Upanishads
are captivated
Veda
and
than by the quality of the thing accomplished. From the literary side the Upanishads captivate not because they are finished products
they are
but because they show great originality as a kind of rhapsodic philo
anything but that
power and
From
sophic prose poems. history of
human
enduring respect
mind engaged after truth
carried
on
is
thought, what entitles them to that they show us the human
in the
and
the point of view of the
let
most plucky and earnest search me add that this search is
in the sweetest of spirit,
offending established
interests,
without fear of
and
entirely
free
from the zealotism that goes with a new intellectual era.
But the Upanishads do not contain consummation.
On the contrary, it is the dear, familiar, earnest human fight,
doomed
rather to disappointment, which very
early Hindus here carry on, to find the secret of the world and the secret of self-conscious man in the
hiddenmost folds of their own heart
that
is
what
always holds attention, and that is the endearing quality of these texts. Therefore it is true that,
wherever the spirit of the Upanishads has been carried there has sprung up genuine human sympathy, if not final intellectual
consent.
How this is so
I
shall
hope
The Veda to
show
later, at
59
the proper point in the development
Veda. But for a good while we be occupied with more primitive religious forms, though even through these sounds from time to time, of the religion of the
shall
j
almost in the manner of a Wagnerian leitmotif, the] clarion note of the leading Hindu idea.
LECTURE THE SECOND. The
Hieratic Religion. The of the Veda.
Fundamental
Pantheon
False view of
Vedic religion
traits of early
the nature of Vedic poetry
The Rig- Veda
as sacrificial
understanding the ritual char acter of the Rig-Veda Poetry addressed to the Goddess Dawn A hymn to the sacrifice post The goddess Dawn as the symbol of liberality at the sacrifice Some erroneous estimates of Goddess Dawn Agni the son of Practical purposes of Vedic poetry The "Baksheesh
poetry
Difficulty
of
"
Rig- Veda contains the religion of the upper The ritual of the Rig- Veda The aprl-hymns
classes
Natureworship the keynote of the Rig-Veda India s climate and nature-worship Vedic and Hellenic mythology compared Arrested anthropomorphism Definition of the word Pantheon as applied to the Veda Faulty classifications of the Vedic gods Chronology of the gods Different degrees of certainty about the origin of the gods
Classification of the gods in these lectures.
religion
THEthe
ture, that
which
is
contained "
so-called is
in
"
revealed
the main body
in
the bulk of
Vedic
litera
(^rauta) of the hymns of the
Rig-Veda, the Yajur-Veda, the Sama-Veda, and the
Brahmanas, gards
its
is
a hieratic or priestly religion.
mechanism, or
unmistakably
its
liturgic or ritualistic. 60
As_e-
external practices,
As
ijs
regards^its
The
immediate mirncise, or thoroughly
61
Hieratic Religion
utilitarian
economic aspect,
its
and
it
is
Its purpose, is
practical.
and long life while for man, notably the rich man, living upon the earth to secure to a very talented and thrifty class to secure happiness and success, health
;
of priest-poets abundant rewards in return for their services in procuring for
and so on
;
men
this happiness, success,
to satisfy the divine powers, visible
and
invisible, beneficent and noxious, gods and demons,
that
is,
to establish livable relations
and men
;
between gods
and, finally, to secure after death the right
to share the paradise of the gods in the
company
have gone there before. For a generation or two since the real beginnings of the study of the Veda, say fifty years ago, and endur
of the pious fathers that
ing
more
faintly to the present day, the imagination
of scholars thought
Veda
it
saw
in
the
hymns
of the Rig-
the earliest spontaneous outbursts of the prim
mind, face to face with the phenomena of nature. The poets of the Rig-Veda were supposed to be itive
Awe-struck and reverent, they were supposed to be pondering, without ulterior motive of any kind, the meaning of day and night simple sons of nature.
;
of dawn, sun,
and moon
;
of sky, thunder,
and
light
atmosphere and wind of earth and fire. The Rig-Veda was the Aryan Bible," containing the ning
;
of
;
"
earliest flashes of the religious
thought of awakening
The
62
Veda
Religion of the
humanity. This stately gathering of more than a thousand hymns was viewed as a historical collection.
hymns were composed by poets, so the of the Rig- Veda was sup
Just as the
and redaction
collection
posed to have been undertaken by persons of literary taste and redactorial diligence, apparently in order to save these precious
monuments
for the aesthetic
delight of posterity.
One cannot now
help wondering to what station in life might have belonged these early poets. I can only think of rhapsodists from out of the people, seized on occasion
some
village
ary in the
by the divine frenzy, perchance barber old and semi-religious function
Hindu village
or
some village Hans Sachs, shoe
maker and
we may
as
translate the
German
doggerel.
Vedic
poetry
was the
still
less likely,
the
muse
to
"
a poet too
infinite
some Raja
of
tobacco,"
under
one
enough
to hold a
of
poet
eager,
those
huge
village, to
ject for the delectation of
Delightful as
s
1
as
Unless, child
laureate,
he took
of
"given
the
banyan-trees
air
large
bag some good sub
the court of his patron.
might be some such romantic a view to
the student of a literature that requires the devotion 1
"
Hans Sachs war ein SchuhMacher und Poet dazu,"
The of a lifetime,
it
is
Hieratic Religion
63
My own
not the correct view.
fancy in the earlier days moved along these lines. I am not sure but what some such conception of
Vedic
literature, faulty as I
now
believe
it
to be,
drew me into these studies more enticingly than could have the soberer view of ripening years. on to attach the right value to the poetry of the Vedic hymns in the abstract. I shall also show the way in which these poems ex I shall
endeavor
later
press a high quality of religious feeling on the part of their composers
Rishis, as they are called in the
texts themselves.
My
endeavor
shall
not be to
minimise the quality of these compositions, but rather to show that they contain the rudiments of a far higher species of thought than these early poets could have dreamt of; thought which in its way, and along its particular avenue, has become final for all
time
present
in
we
ter of the
The
are
Rig-Veda
At
epidermis, as
we might
say.
purely utilitarian
prayer-book whose explana not undertaken without reference to to be ought
body 1
its
collection served
It is in fact a
definite occasions
ily
and even outside of India.
engaged with the more external charac
Rig- Veda
purposes. tion
India,
of the
books,
1
and
definite practices.
The main
books of the Rig-Veda, the so-called fam represents in
See above, p. 27.
all
probability the prayers
The
64
Veda
Religion of the
on the same or similar
of different priestly families
occasions, or in connection with the sacrifices.
even a
if
little
we
The Vedic hymns designate them as
more than
than by saying, course
poems
is
are not quite described sacrificial
In other words these
are incidental to the sacrifice. in
It is
poetry.
I
:
treated poetically.
poet rises
similar
cannot express it better the sacrifice to the gods of
that
it
same or
the early morning to a
The Vedic
sacrificial
day.
The very first natural phenomenon he sees with his own eyes, the glorious maiden Dawn, is at once She trumpets
pressed into service.
going to be a day of which shall result in wealth and comforts.
to the world that this fice
forth, so to say, sacri
is
The
day goes on, being a mere scaffolding, or ladder
upon whose rungs are placed offerings to the gods. Morn ing, noon, and evening, tolerably definite gods get their regular allowance of offerings,
rable kind of
hymnal
Rig-Veda.
As
praise,
the gods
and a very admi
namely the hymns of the on, one after another,
come
or in pairs, or in groups, they enter
The
stage
is
the
sacrificial
day.
upon a
They
stage.
are figures in
a drama, more important collectively than singly. Take them singly, and I venture to say that even the
Rig-Veda, as does the later ritual, begins to show most of them in the state of a sort of supernumera ries
on the stage
of the sacrifice.
India
is
nothing
if
The not singular. the earliest
Hieratic Religion
We must not shrink
Hindu poetry
ordinary sense, not
65
from realising that
not epic, nor lyric in the nor didactic, but that it is
is
idyllic,
almost throughout dominated by a single idea, name ly, the praise of the gods in connection with the sacrifice.
The sacrifice is
as far as
life,
The
it is
the dominant note of Vedic
revealed in these ancient documents.
chief acts of the people living this
far as
revealed by the literature are
it is
in so
sacrificial;
thought the praise and conciliation of their
their chief
at the sacrifice.
gods
life,
The
soma, the sacred drink,
intoxicates the gods into heroism, or the rich melted butter, or fire,
ghee (ghrtd), that is poured into the willing them into contentment. Especially the
fattens
ever present, in express statement or by im So much so that in a technical sense at plication.
soma
is
least the Rig- Veda religion
may be
designated as a
religion of ^^^-practices.
But the hymns are dithyrambic, often turgid and intentionally mystic.
sharp sight to see,
It
requires at times pretty
and a clear head to remember,
that this poetry hugs the sacrifice closely
;
that at
the bottom of the golden liquid of inspiration there are always the residual dregs of a supposedly useful
formalism.
In fact the poets, as their fancy
flies
away from their immediate purpose, succeed un commonly well in withdrawing the eye from the 5
The
66
Religion of the
trivial real properties of
gods
whom
Veda
the sacrifice to the luminous
they praise so well.
The most
beautiful
of the Rig- Veda are
hymns
addressed to Ushas or Aurora, the maiden Dawn, the Goddess
Dawn, the daughter of Dyaush Pitar (Zevz 7rarrfp\ Father Heaven Homer s Rose-finger
A
Eos.
poet sings her ecstatically have crossed to the other side of darkness, Gleaming Aurora hath prepared the way. Delightful as the rhythm of poem, she smiles and shines, To happiness her beauteous face aroused :
"We
1
us."
(Rig-Veda
We
feel that
we
i.
92. 6.)
-^e going to be held willing cap
tives of a primitive Shelley or Keats, until
sobered
by
another
stanza of
the same
we
are
hymn
(stanza 5): "
Her
bright sheen hath
snown
itself to us;
She spreads, and strikes the black dire gloom. As one paints the sacrificial post at the sacrifice, So hath Heaven s daughter put on her brilliance."
What (svaru),
a comparison
destined
to
!
The
hold
gaudily ornamented with paint nically as having a knob for
sundry other
barbaric
petty
sacrificial
post
an animal victim, it is described tech
fast
a
beauties
head, along with brings
us
down
with a thud from heaven to the mockeries of the 1
The
so, or
expression chdndo nd here and at 8. 7. 36 is to be rendered like a poem." There is no occasion for an adjectival simply "
stem chdnda in the sense of
and
"singer,"
translators generally assume.
or the like, as the lexicons
The
Hieratic Religion
Our good
sacrifice.
friend the poet
in technical rites
monger
moment Lest we nodded
who
after all a
cannot, even in the
think that just this particular poet has
moment, another hymn repeats
for a
The
is
of his inspiration, quite forget his trade.
to us, offensive comparison "
67
bright
Dawns have
the,
:
risen in the East,
Like sacrifice posts uplifted at the sacrifice. Luminous, pure, and clear, they have unbarred
The
portals of the stable of
darkness."
(Rig- Veda
We may
turn this about the other
the example.
Just as
it
is
4.
51. 2.)
way and prove
possible for a brilliant
poet of the Rig- Veda to institute comparisons be Dawn and the tawdry sacrifice post,
tween glorious so
is
it
possible for another poet to consider the
sacrifice post as a subject
We
ment.
symbolism ritual, but
fit
for high poetic treat
are accustomed to in I
make allowance
for
connection with articles belonging to question whether the poets of any
other land have ever turned their talents to such curious use
:
Rig -Veda 3. "
i.
God-serving men,
O
With heavenly mead 1
That
is,
8.
sovereign of the forest! at sacrifice anoint thee.
the tree from which the sacrifice post
is
made.
The
68
Religion of the
Veda
Grant wealth to us when thou art standing upright, reposing on this Mother s bosom
And when "
2.
"
!
Set up in front of the enkindled fire, Accepting tireless prayer, that brings strong sons, Driving far from us away all noisome sickness, Lift thyself
4.
1
up
to bring us great
Well-robed, enveloped, he
Springing to
life his
is
good fortune!
come, the youthful
;
glory waxeth greater.
in mind and god-adoring, Sages of wise intellect upraise him.
Contemplative
"
9.
Like swans that
Have come
fly in
ordered line
the pillars gay in brilliant colors.
lifted up on high by sages, eastward, forth as gods to the gods dwelling-places.
They,
Go "
10.
These posts upon the
Seem
earth, with ornate knobs,
to the eye like horns of horned cattle.
Upraised by priests with rival invocations, Let them assist us in the rush of battle !
"
11.
Lord of the world, rise with a hundred branches With thousand branches may we rise to greatness an edge well whetted For great felicity hath brought before us
Thou whom
this hatchet with
"
!
am reminded
I
here of the tense struggle
friend the late Professor
my
i
sight.
The same
Mother Earth.
which
Max Miiller was engaged
with an epithet of Ushas, quite startling, first
in
beautiful
I
admit, at
Daughter of Heaven^
The another hymn,
in
means
daksJiimi it is
Hieratic Religion is
fee,"
or, in
s
poetic
a poet might degrade so charming a
a comparison "
plainer words,
the baksheesh of the priests at the sacrifice. But
did not seem tolerable to Miiller
it
Now the word
called Dakshina.
".sacrificial
69
mind that
theme by such
:
the shining strands of Dawn have risen, Like unto glittering waves of water All paths prepareth she that they be easily traversed Liberal goddess, kind, she hath become baksheesh."
Up
!
(Rig- Veda 64.
The word which "
;
6. i.)
liberal have just rendered by magkoni) is the very one that is used con "
I
goddess ( stantly and technically for the patron of the sacrifice (maghavan), the immediate source from which flow all
the fees of the
(maghoni) it Dawn. Here
Ushas
is
is it
sacrifice.
In
its
feminine form
used almost solely as an epithet of cheek by jowl with dakshind. is,
the patroness of the sacrifice
the sacrifice
fee, because 1
;
she
is
herself
she heralds or ushers in the
when day and stingy are asleep. If I could get myself to suspect one of these ancient Rishis of hu mor, I should say that there was a touch of
sacrificial
both
liberal
humor i
after the darkness of the night,
anyhow
See Rig-Veda
Sun, the
sacrifice,
it
is
7. 78. 3,
and Agni
unconscious humor
where the Dawns are said :
ajljanan suryam
in the
to beget the
yajnam agnim.
The
70
Religion of the
following appeal to Ushas
goddess, them that give
unawakened
"
That
!
Veda
"
Arouse,
:
Ushas, liberal
the niggards shall sleep what is the use of
;
is
O
to say,
waking the stingy man, he is not going to give us any thing anyhow. Another stanza states this even more
O
"
liberal
Dawns, ye
god do ye to-day suggest to the rich that they shall Let the stingy, unawakened, sleep in give bounty emphatically
:
shining
desses,
!
the depths of obscure darkness
2 !
The very first hymn in the Rig-Veda that is ad dressed to Ushas presents in its opening strain the economic goddess, in an inextricable with the Almost do we feel poetic divinity. tangle ritual, serving,
that economic advantage and aesthetic delight
much "
the
same thing
to the soul of such a poet
are :
With pleasant things for us, O Ushas, Shine forth, O Daughter of Heaven, With great and brilliant wealth, of which, luminous goddess, thou
art the giver
"
!
(Rig-Veda
And
immediately
significant words,
our
patrons!"
after,
"Arouse
And
in
i.
68.
I.)
the next stanza, the
thou the benevolence of
so another time,
3
"To
these
nobles give thou glory and fine sons, O patroness Dawn, to them that have given us gifts that are not 1
Rig- Veda
I.
2
Rig- Veda
4. 51. 3.
3
Rig- Veda
5.
124. 10.
79. 6.
The
Hieratic Religion
71
And once again, God after god urge shabby thou on to favor us make all pleasant things come our way and, as thou shinest forth, create in us the "
*
"
1
;
;
leads to
inspiration that
make our poetry
gain!"
so clever that
it
That shall
to say,
is
not
fail
to
stimulate the liberality of the patron of the sacrifice
We
can
poet-priest
above
all
!
now understand the tour de force of the who, when he sings of Dawn, is anxious
that the
main
be neglected.
issue shall not
Therefore he blurts out his crassest thought first, afflicts the goddess with the doubtfully honorable baksheesh, and then settles
title
down
appreciation of his poetic opportunity
to a very nice :
Baksheesh s roomy chariot hath been harnessed, And the immortal gods have mounted on it, The friendly Dawn, wide-spread, from out of darkness Has risen up to care for the abode of mortals.
"
The mighty goddess
!<
arose before
all
the creatures,
She wins the booty and always conquers riches; The Dawn looks forth, young and reviving ever, She came the first here to our morning offering." (Rig-Veda I
think
my
i.
123.
hearers will understand that
i,
it
2.) is
not
necessary to regard the word daksliind, with Professor
Max
Miiller, as a
the sense of
in 1
2
Rig-Veda
"
vague honorific adjective of Dawn, 3 Nor need we clever," or the like.
7. 79. 5.
See his Auld
Lang
Syne, Second Series, p.
223^".
1
i
The
72
Religion of the
Veda
go to the school of the late great French interpreter of the Rig- Veda, Abel Bergaigne, in this instance to
own, transports too many the earthly life of the Vedic Hindu
in a fashion quite his
who,
of the events in
He
to heaven.
means that
"
enough that dakshind
and nothing
but opines called dakshind because she is the gift
sacrifice
Dawn
sees clearly
is
fee,"
else,
heaven bestowed upon pious men as a recompense This is all too roundabout, and for their piety.
of
1
unnecessary, and un-Vedic.
Still less
can
we
assent
to the statement of another very sane and enlight
ened
critic of
declares that
"
the Vedas, Professor Oldenberg, who the hymns to Dawn waft to us the
poetry of the early morn the mystic sophistries of that they have a rificial
hymns
;
that they steer clear of
and technique in the sac wanting
sacrifice
charm that
is
;
Professor Oldenberg takes
proper."
the usual view of this interesting goddess.
I
would
advocate precisely the opposite view, namely, that the hymns to Dawn, their many intrinsic beauties to the contrary notwithstanding, represent the
first,
the keenest, so to speak, the least tired sacrificial mood of these poet-priests as they enter upon the
absorbing business of the day and that never _has_ the battledoor and shuttlecock of really fine poetic ;
1
9
La
Religion Vedique, vol.
Die Religion des Veda,
i.,
p.
p. 237.
127 ff
The
Hieratic Religion
73
and plain self-engrossed human neediness been played so frankly and undisguisedly by poet inspiration
who must first live and afterwards compose poetry. Once more I must tax your patience and return to
Dawn
s
Rig- Veda shina
epithet dakshind, or 3.
God What is
the
i
of Fire, really
We
Dawn.
58.
called the
is
becomes
economy
Dawn, under the name of DakDaughter of Heaven, and Agni, is
meant
is,
that
Agni
of
the son of
is
ritual
Dakshina.
touch which
through deep sympathy with the Why should Agni, Fire,"
of the sacrifice.
be the son of
Dawn?
and
fire?
light
Son
called the
have here a double
clear only
is
poetic derivation;
In
baksheesh."
Is
it
"
that
Dawn means
"
light,"
That would be the far-fetched I
wish to accuse no scholar of
having made it. Poetically we think of fire espe cially as an evening phenomenon, not as a phenome non of the sober morning. I doubt whether the farmer, as he splits kindling for the breakfast
a cold
winter morning, cheers himself with
poetic thought that the breakfast
Dawn. Our farmers that way. rificer
fire
But
who must
it
fire is
of
the
the son of
are not temperamentally inclined is
another matter with the sac-
beautify and beatify
all
his acts,
and
throw into them a dash of cajolery. The fact is that the god Agni is also a prized and much extolled divinity of the morning, because the
first
act of the
The
74 sacral
is
day
Religion of the
to kindle the
fire
that shall convey the
This
oblations to the other gods.
truly significant thing
is,
that
the poetic treatment of the
in
so familiar a
is
Vedic religion as to require no
fact of
The
Veda
is
the son of
Agni Goddess Dawn a beautiful
it
illustration.
creates a
sacrifice,
theme
namely
:
Dawn, because immediately after beheld God Fire is kindled. In
is
hymn
to
God
Savitar, the
motive or
promotive power behind the sun, the doings of the early "
morn
:
Weaving Night hath folded up her woof, In the midst of her performance wise Savitar suspends her work.
He
riseth
With ;
are described in real poetry
from
fitting
his
plan
couch and
God
sets the seasons,
Savitar hath
come
hither."
The scattered homes and all life The mighty flame of household fire pervadeth. The largest share the Mother has decreed unto her Son; To do his own desire god Savitar hath sped hither." (Rig- Veda
2.
38. 4, 5.)
Let us not, by any means, imagine that the is the unselfish human mother who sees
Mother here to
it
may
that her
boy Devadatta, or whatever
be, has a substantial breakfast.
Mother Dawn whose Son Agni would fact get the largest share
tions are
poured
into the
No,
his it
name is
the
as a matter of
anyway, because
all
obla
We
I
think,
fire.
must,
The
Hieratic Religion
75
never has _sagrifj eg had su ch genuine poetry to serve it. But the reverse of the coin is, that never has poetic endowment strayed so that
acknowledge
far
from wholesome theme as to
:
,
fritter itself
away upon the ancient hocus-pocus of the fire-priest and medicine-man. Of course, what finally saves this poetry from banality
is
the presence in
same luminous gods whose
brilliance
it
of those
obscured
is
but not extinguished by such childish treatment. We are now better prepared to bear up under the statement that Vedic religion
moment
practical
and
is
utilitarian,
from the very first and that the Vedic [v
people, to
begin with, practise their religion for what there is in it. The Rig-Veda with its worship of the great nature-gods represents
from the
start a
form of worship very similar, though apparently neither as extensive nor as formal and rigid as the later technical
of the Yajur-Vedas
The poetry
Brahmanas.
main
ritual
also really dull
is
its
eyes shut
tions.
We
the
it is
leavened by true beauty and all the
fineness of observation,
circumstances of literary composition which
modern times
in
and mechanical, but we have
seen that, in good part, of conception,
of the Rig- Veda
and the
are accustomed to see at
or half shut
we
of
work with
to practical considera
must not be misled by these mental
defects of the Vedic poets into
an exaggeratedly
The
76
Religion of the
Veda
A
pessimistic view of their entire activity.
great
whom
depends the destiny of his be shrewd, unscrupulous, Machiavel country, may lian, velvet as to glove, iron as to hand, and yet be diplomatist,
upon
Even
a real patriot. trivial as
these works
so a priestly religion of works,
may appear
to our eyes, does
Nor does
not shut out spiritual elevation.
practical
poetry shut out entirely the more silent workings of literary taste
and poetic
poets themselves insist upon "
"well-hewn,"
many pare down .;
[I
if
it,
their
poems
are
well-fashioned as a war-chariot from
the hands of a skilled cases:
The Vedic
inspiration.
we
And
artisan."
so they are in
cut out the foolish sacrifice, and
a pretty thick crust of conventionalism,
is left in the Vedic hymns enough of beauty and character to secure them a place in the world s literature. Forget but the string that ties the
there
thought of the Vedic Rishis to the sacrificial post, and you shall see that thought flit far away to great heights, where birds do not fly. For the time being, 1
at least,
how,
it
it
becomes what we
many The 1
inspired, and,
any
breeds the germs that shall flower out to
great things in future days, finally
call
when Hindu thought
emancipates itself from other trivialities of life. religion of the
Rig- Veda,
I.
155.
5.
Rig-Veda,
sacrifice
much
along with
like the later
The
Hieratic Religion
hieratic religion of
manas, this
is
day
77
the Yajur-Veda and the Brah-
Even
the religion of the upper classes.
only rich
Brahmanical Hindus are
So
position to perform Vedic sacrifices.
was
it
to
in the in
The popular
religion, the religion of the poor, or of the modest householder, with its humble rites, and its even more childish reliance
olden times.
upon sorcery and the medicine-man, runs from the start side
by
side with the hieratic religion.
It is
the religion of the Atharva-Veda and the so-called "
House-books.
"
J
It
happens to
scope of these lectures, though
been drawn on by
its
I
lie
outside of the
have
for
my
part
simple yet tense humanity to
the publication of several volumes.
3
The
religion
Rig-Veda presupposes an established house hold of considerable extent a wealthy and liberal of the
;
householder
and many
;
elaborate
priests not at
and expensive materials all shamefaced about their ;
fees.
In fact the body of the Rig- Veda presupposes the
ordinary form of the soma sacrifice which extends
through an entire day,
in
the
manner
of the so-called
Or, rather, it jyotishtoma of the later ceremonial. is largely a collection of the hymns composed by vari1
2
See above p. 41. For general information
The Atharva- Veda
on
(Strassburg, 1899
this ).
literature
see
my
book
The
78
Religion of the
Veda
ous priest families for this important sacrifice. The soma drink is pressed three times daily morning, :
The gods
noon, and evening. are
all
them.
each has a
;
who
Indra, the god
more frequently than any
other, has part in
but the mid-day pressing belongs Ushas, the Maiden Dawn, and exclusively.
all
three pressings
to
him
God
Agni,
Vedic Pantheon
interested in these ceremonies
fairly definite share in
figures
of the
;
Fire,
part in
play,
as
we have seen, a very The Adityas and 1
the morning.
important Ribhus, the latter a sort of clever-handed elves,
A
host of appear upon the scene injthe evening. to are addressed of whose divinities hymns pairs
coupling
not always based
upon any special between them, but upon purely association Indra and Agni, Indra and is
natural affinity liturgic
:
Varuna, Agni and Soma, and so on.
One important hymns, that
class of "
is,
hymns, the so-called
songs of
invitation,"
dprl-
consist of
individual stanzas which invoke certain divinities
and personifications of acts and
utensils, prelimin
ary to the sacrifice of cattle at the Fire (Agni) 1
See below,
8
See
463 ff\
is
p.
soma
3
rites.
especially called upon under
God
different,
129.
Max
Miiller, History of Ancient Sanskrit Literature, p. Roth, Yaska s Nirukta, p. xxxvi ff\ Weber, Indische
Studien, x. 89 ff\ Grassmann, Translation of the Rig-Veda, vol. p. 6
;
Bergaigne, Journal Asiatique^ 1879, p. 17.
i.,
The partly
Hieratic Religion
mystic designations
of
;
79
sacrificial
articles,
the sacred straw upon which the priests are seated,
the doors of the enclosure within which the offering and the sacrificial post to which the
takes place,
animal ten
is
have a stanza each
tied
These
tf/r-hymns.
in
of
sets
every one of the invocations
are
each set belongs to a different purely liturgical In general, each of the family of Rishis or seers." ;
"
so-called
"
family books
A
aflri-hymn.
of the Rig- Veda has its
"
peculiar odor of sancity, solemnity,
and family pride must have attached In later times,
formulas.
itself to
when the hymns
these
of the
Rig-Veda are taken in lump, and employed at the great sacrifices with but very slight reference to the particular priest family from
which they are sup
posed to have been derived, the choice of the dprl-
hymns
is still
made according
books at that time
to family.
The
ritual
order that the sacrificer must
which was composed in the the Rishi from whom he would fain derive
choose that family of
still
his descent.
<2/rz-hymn
1
seems
It
likely,
therefore and
for
other reasons, that each family book of the RigVeda was intended for essentially the same class of
on according to different family
practices, carried traditions, 1
and
See (^ankhayana
to
the accompaniment of different
rautasutra
Latyayana (^rautasutra
6. 7.
5.
16
;
A9valayana (^rautasutra
3. 2
;
The
8o
Religion of the
hymns, somewhat
manner
in the
Veda of the later
one and the
schools or branches (qdkha] of
dic
Ve-
same Veda. Large numbers of technical, ritualistic words and Its expressions crowd the pages of the Rig- Veda. metres are finished and conventional to a very high degree
among
they are
;
some
also, to
extent, distributed
the gods, so that a given metre
is
associated
For instance, the especially with a certain god. gayatrl is the metre of the god Agni the trishtubh the metre of the god Indra. They are also distributed ;
to
some extent according to the time
of the
day
:
the gayatrl in the morning, the trishtubh at noon,
Above all, the advanced the Rig- Veda s ritual manifests itself number of different designations for
the jagatl at evening. character of
the large
in
These occur not only singly, but in series the names of these priests are largely, though not
priests.
:
entirely,
the
ceremonial.
And
names
of
yet the poetry of the Rig- Veda
sense, original.
the last source of
1
of
its
the
later
is,
in a
deeper
its
poetry, if uninterrupted contact with
inspiration.
character, after
all,
The
final
depends not so
See Hillebrandt, Rituallitteratur, p. on p. 17 of the same work.
cited
of
It is primitive religious
by primitive we mean
ment
the priests
1
n
ff,
and the
judg
much
literature
The
81
Hieratic Religion
upon the economic motives, or the all-around per character of
sonal
its
authors as upon the extent
and quality of their mental vision. To treat sacri ficial themes in the high poetic way seems to most of us hollow mockery. But we must not forget that such performances, to some extent, continue the pious ways of the fathers that the acts in part sym ;
bolise real religious feeling;
and that most
religions
have a trick of throwing a poetic and sentimental glamor around practices that are trivial intrinsically.
Then the
difference
of standards
in
a
semi-bar
barous time, such as the time of the Rig- Veda, must count for something. After all that I have said to forefend what
may be
padded or swollen estimate of Rig-Veda poetry and religion, both the poetry and the religion are of singular interest and importance.
In
its
called
a
essence the Rig- Veda
is
not
lit
urgy but mythology. Its^rjriest-poets L in their heart of hearts, are not mere technicians, but tense ob servers of the great facts
and
acts of nature,
worshippers of the powers
whom
they fancy at
and
work
In fact they are both poets and philoso There is in this matter some real cause for
in nature.
phers.
surprise.
definite shall
ure
We
must not forget the long, almost past of Hindu mythology and religion.
endeavor to make this clear
when we come 6
in the
next
in I
lect
to deal with the reconstructions
The
82
Religion of the
Veda
of comparative mythology. There was plenty of time for all nature-worship to have stiffened into
mere admiration,
fear,
and adulation
gods, accompanied inevitably
of
by a more or
personal less
plete forgetfulness of the forces in nature from
com
which
sprang the gods. That this was not so is due, in my opinion, to the vast impressiveness of India s nature.
Its fiercely
glowing sun, its terrible yet lifegiving monsoons, the snow-mountain giants of the north, and its bewilderingly profuse vegetation could hardly
fail
to keep obtruding themselves as a reve
lation of the
What
powers of the already existing gods.
more important, it could hardly fail to stimulate the creation of new nature-gods to a de gree
is still
unknown
elsewhere.
It
is
this
unforgetting
adherence to nature that has made the Vedic hymns the training-school of the Science of Mythology, and to a large extent also of the Science of Religion.
Deprived of the hymns of the Rig- Veda, we should hardly know to this day that mythology is the first and fundamental adjustment of the individual hu
man
to the outer active, interfering, dynamic which surrounds and influences man from the world, moment when he opens his eyes upon the wonders In this sense Vedic of its unexplained phenomena. life
mythology our day.
is
in its
day what empirical science
is in
The
Hieratic Religion
83
We
can realise this to some extent by calling up another mythology, that of the Greeks. This is also
based upon nature, but nature is soon forgotten, or, if not entirely forgotten, much obscured by M..
-JJ...KM-*
*
after-born
movements.
Owing
a curious
to
slip,
fortunate from the artistic side, unfortunate from
the religious and mythical side, Greek mythology fell
too completely into the hands of the people.
Poets, artists, in their
and even philosophers handle it, each But there is a notable absence
own way.
of those Rishis of the
human
Veda who, with all their too all their Hindu fancifulness
sordidness and
see the great realities of the world with their eyes
wide open, and work their way slowly but with secure touch from the single and separate manifesta tions of nature in the Rig- Veda to the absolute
Being which
is
nature as a whole, that
finest
flower of
Hesiod
all,"
The
Greek mythology, great Zeus, of
or of
"
navra
idoov
ocpOaXpoz uai The eye of Zeus which sees all and
says,
Ttdvra vorjaaz,
knows
One
the idea of
the Upanishads.
unity as finally settled in
whom
is
whom
the old Orphic
hymn
sings,
navra 11
Zeus
all
is
the beginning, Zeus is the middle, on Zeus founded," is at the same time the flippant, is
breezy Jove to
whom
the
and vices barely excusable
poets
in a
ascribe
foibles
modern bon-vivant
The
84
Religion of the
Too
and man about town.
Veda
finished personification
causes the break-down of Greek mythology even
from the
artistic side.
praise above
all
The same poets
in
whom we
aversion to everything excessive or
monstrous, those Greek poets who in general fancy just enough, but not too much, run a close
and say
race with the
most extravagant
fancies of semi-civil
ised peoples in the description
gods.
Uranos was maimed by
of
his
their
own
son,
primeval
Kronos
;
Kronos, the unnatural son, is also an unnatural father. For he swallows his own children, and, after years of tentative but unsuccessful digestion, vomits
whole brood. Fair Phoebus Apollo hangs on a tree and flays him alive. Homicide Marsyas without end, parricide and murder of children are forth the
the stock events of their mythology. that Plato banished even the
No wonder
Homeric poems from
And
The Epicurus had to say as gods are indeed, but they are not many believe them to be. Not he is an infidel who denies the his ideal republic.
"
:
gods of the many, but he that fastens upon the gods the opinions of the
many."
the complete humanisation
paved the way religion,
for the rapid spread of that Shemitic
deeply ethical
Christianity,
Nothing so much as of Greek mythology
among
in
its
teachings,
Judaeo-
the Indo-European peoples.
You may remember how skilfully Kingsley
s
novel,
The
Hieratic Religion
85
Hypatia pictures Greek religion when in final struggle, already in
growing theology with
that
is,
occasional
The
things.
confronts
the throes of death, the
belief of the future, as ;
it
still
the Homeric
crude anthropomorphism, dashed but troubled visions of better
real rivals of Christianity in
turies after Christ
the cen-/?
were Persian forms of religion Of Mithraism Ernest
:>
Mithraism and Manicheism.
Renan once
said that
if
the world had not been;
would have been Mithraised
and
Christianised
it
Manicheism,
dualistic, exhaustively Gnostic, with
;
superb colouring and its appealing asceticism, proved for a time an even more dangerous rival of
\
its
I
Christianity.
We
know from
the history of the later classical Sanskrit literature that India s climate and physio
graphy have kept her poets a degree
unknown
in
touch with nature to
elsewhere, until
we come
to the.
modern nature poets. Evenjso, the _transarency of the Vedic Pantheon as a whole remains surprising. This results
in
what we may
call
arrested personifi
cation, or arrested anthropomorphism, and this
very genius of
Vedic
religion,
is
the
and more especially
Nothing so much Hindu thinkers to think
of the religion of the Rig- Veda. as this has enabled the early
out anew, a second and a third time, what had been
apparently settled to everybody
s final
satisfaction,
The
86
Religion of the
Veda
and was beginning to enter upon a career of rigma
Thus the Rig- Veda
role.
God
of
says
the sun conceived as the promoter of
life
Savitar, "
:
God
Savitar, approaching on the dark blue sky, sustaining mortals and immortals, comes on his golden chariot, 1
It is the fiery ball that beholding all the worlds." rises from the sea or over the hills, nothing more
the
in
first
The
place.
would be to make
ordinary
way
of
mythology
of this Savitar a wonderful chari
oteer, given over, say, to racing or to warlike deeds. this process
Instead,
as
is,
say, arrested.
I
The
phenomenon remains the repository of re
natural
Even in the Rigthe conception of the sun makes great
newed and deepening thought.
Veda
itself
onward
strides as the
the ultimate force at
most prominent symbol of work in the universe. An
other stanza, speaking of Surya, another sun-god,
The sun
"
says,
moves or
is "
stands."
Self or Soul of all
the
And
ous so-called Savitrl, or sacro-sanct at
now by Savitar
1
all
times,
that
yet another, the fam GayatrT, which remains
and
is
recited daily
every orthodox Hindu,
3
again
even
turns to
:
Rig- Veda
I.
35. 2.
8
Rig- Veda i. 115. i. 3 See Monier Williams, Transactions of the Fifth International
Congress of Orientalists, vol.
ii.,
p.
The "
,
I
Hieratic Religion
That lovely glory
87
of Savitar,
The heavenly god, we contemplate Our pious thoughts he shall promote."
/
:
I
Here
almost the
is
ble combination
first
the
of
1
touch of that inimita
Upanishads, the Atman,
Breath/ and the Brahma,
"
holy thought/ that
is
the combination of physical and spiritual force into
one pantheistic *
Savitri
is
"It
:
As
all.
modern Hindu says of the what the
a
of course impossible to say
author of the Savitri had in view, but his Indian
commentators, both ancient and modern, are as one in believing that he rose from nature up to nature
s
which
is
God, and adored that sublime luminary only to the eye of reason, and not
visible
we daily see in its course." Katyayana Index to the Rig- Veda, the so-called Anu-
the planet in his
kramanl, after stating the familiar classification of all the gods of the Veda into three types Agni (fire
and
light
sphere),
on
earth),
Vayu
and Surya (sun
(air or
wind
in the sky)
atmo
in the
proceeds
still
only one deity, namely, the Great Self/ (mahdndtma), and somej say that he is the sun (surya] or that the sun farther
to
assert
that
there
is
"
"
is
he."
4 6
tha,
This
Rig-Veda
is,
of
course, later thought,
Upan-
3. 62. 10.
Rajendralalamitra in the Introduction to his Edition of the Gopa-
Brdhtnana,
p. 24.
The
88
ishad thought,
Religion of the as
it
appears, for instance, "
Upanishad
Taittirlya in
(8.
man and he who
and the
same."
But
Veda
8)
dwells
:
this later
He who
the
in
sun
thought
is
in
the
dwells are
one
founded
on the repeated revision, so to say, of the concep tions of the
engrossing
sun,
nature
fed
anew by the
sight of this
which
not obscured
force,
is
made trivial by personification into an Olympian, human god. But we shall return to this all-important matter when we come to the highest outcome of Vedic reli It is now time to take a look at the individual gion. of the Veda, or what we may call the Vedic gods and
not
Pantheon.
THE PANTHEON OF THE VEDA. At
the outset
we may observe
that this
word ap
Vedic gods only in an analogical sense. no Pantheon in the Veda, if by Pantheon
plies to the
There
is
we mean an Olympus patterned
after a
more or
less
snobbish conception of a royal household, in which every god holds his position and exacts sensitive respect from
all
the others as the price of his
own
observance of court proprieties. The Vedic gods have no acknowledged head. They group them selves to
some extent according
to their characters
for instance, as sun-gods, or storm-gods.
;
As such
The Pantheon
of the
Veda
89
In the they have more or less definite habitations. time of the great Epic, the Mahabharata, no one
knows how many hundreds of years later, they really do manage to foregather in the heaven of one of them, namely, Indra s heaven.
take rank: Indra
first,
They begin to Agni second, and so on. With
that
comes
and
plastic possibilities
a
little,
very
little,
of those roseate poetic
which the poets and
artists
ages have read into the finishedly human Greek Olympus. We have seen enough of our
of all
theme
to
scarcely
know
that
more than
many gods
Veda
of the
half persons, their
are
other half
being an active force of nature. Such material is not yet ripe even for a Hindu Olympus. The mind of the
Vedic poet
is
the rationalistic
mind
of the
ruminating philosopher, rather than the artistic
mind
which reproduces the finished product. It is en gaged too much in reasoning about and constantly altering the
wavering shapes of the gods, so that these remain to the end of Vedic time too uncertain too fluid in substance for the modelling hand of the artist. On a pinch we could imagine a in outline,
statue of the
but
it
Varuna.
is
most material
hard to
As
of the
imagine
a
Vedic gods, Indra
statue
a matter of fact there
Vedic ikons, or Vedic temples. there is no Vedic Pantheon.
In
is
all
of
;
the god
no record of these senses
The
90 It
would seem possible
Veda
to present the
Vedic gods
order of their importance, but
the
in
Religion of the
equally,
or nearly
many
are
We
find
important.
equally,
nearly a dozen of them engaged in creating the world, and rather
more than a dozen engaged
in
pro
ducing the sun, placing it on the sky, or preparing a path for it under these circumstances it is not easy ;
to rank them. into
The gods have
1
existence
at
not
same
the
all
time.
of them come Some belong
others to Indo-Iranian Indo-European times times. Of the rest some come from an earlier,
to
;
some from a all
the dates
later period of the
we might
ment pure and
Veda.
If
we had
try a chronological arrange
simple, but
we do not have
all
the
dates.
A
ancient
celebrated
etymologer
of the
name
Hindu glossographer and Yaska reports three lists,
of
respectively of 32, 36, and 31 gods, or semi-divine 2
The
beings.
last of
these seems to begin to
tell
us
what succession the Vedic gods appear on the
in
stage day
by day,
especially in the morning.
gins well with the Agvins, or 4
Dioscuri), 1
"
Horsemen
z
See Macdonell, Vedic Mythology, p.
Nighantu 5. 4-6. Cf. Nirukta 12. See below,
3
He be
(the Vedic
Ushas, the Goddess Dawn, and Surya, 15.
1
4
"
i.
p. 112.
Brhaddevata
2.
"]
ff.
The Pantheon
of the
Veda
91
1
Soon, however, he grows prob lematic, or dunder-headed, with Vrishakapayl, Sarthe
"
Sun-Maiden."
anyu, Tvashtar, and so on. Many years occupation with the writings of this worthy, whose sense and
much by
erudition are valued
by Western
the Hindus, as well as have not increased my belief scholars,
decreased
in his authority, or
my
faith in the infi
nite possibilities of his ineptitude.
Still this
sion of the gods along the hours of the interest for the
Vedic
ritual
themselves, as
hymns
and the explanation of
Touches
the gods themselves.
when
proces has day great
of
it
appear
the Rig-Veda
very neatly the gods of the morning
in the
2
groups
:
awoke upon the earth, and Surya riseth; Broad gleaming Dawn hath shone in brilliance.
"Agni
The God
Atpvins twain have yoked their car to travel. Savitar hath roused the world in every place."
There
Hindu
is
more permanent traditional the gods which arranges them in
another,
division of
three classes, mostly
of eleven each, according to
their place or habitat in nature or the cosmos, that in
is,
sky, mid-air,
and
Rig- Veda remains good ever after. first
made
in
earth. I.
139.
The
n
:
to
classification is
some extent it
This topography of nature has a strong hold on the early religion times without :
1
See below, p. 112. i.
157-
The
92 end the
later
belongs
to, or is typical of
"Wind, "of
So
Veda
Religion of the
Vedic texts
"
insist that
Agni,
the earth
Vata or Vayu
the mid-air, and Surya,
"
;
"
Sun,
"of
Fire
;
the sky.
1
the philosophy of the obvious. They continue cleverly along that line in the following I state only the more arrangement. important far
it is
members
of each class
Celestial^gods
:
Father Sky
:
Dyaus
or
Dyaush
Pitar
"
("Sky
Varuna, Mitra, Surya and the Adityas, Savitar, Pushan, Vishnu, Ushas, and the or
"
"),
2
Agvins.
Atmospheric gods Vata or Vayu Parjanya, Rudra, and the Maruts. :
Terrestrial gods:
Prithivl
("
("
Wind")
Earth"),
Indra,
Agni, and
Soma. This threefold division, in order to be consistent, would have to be carried on to the end, so as to in clude in
all
many
As
the gods. places,
a matter of fact
even when carried no
are not so certain as are the is
uncertain
farther.
Hindus that Indra, 3
instance,
it is
a god of the mid-air, even though
must admire
this,
on the whole
We for
we
successful, apprecia
tion of the place in nature that belongs to a goodly
proportion of the chief gods. 1
Cf. Brihaddevata
2
See the index at the end of this book for these and most of the
i.
following gods. 3
See below,
p.
173.
t,
ff.
The Pantheon There are yet other
possibilities
be mentioned, because we
Our own will
be
Veda
of the
shall
93
which need not
not follow their lead.
open to some objection, call up the more important
course, doubtless
eclectic.
We shall
Vedic gods under such various points of view as will bring out some one salient quality which does not not have other qualities of great Thus the chronological element must re
say that they interest.
may
main immensely important. The chronology of the gods must influence to some extent our judgment of this ancient religion of the
Veda. The^pld prehistoric
gods that have been imported India,
by the Aryas into no matter how much they have been Hindu-
ised, will necessarily
have characteristics of their own.
Next_come the gods which have been coined in hot haste out of the phenomena of nature in a glow ing subtropical climate, or have been imbued anew
:
with the vitality of India s imposing nature. These have not had time to forget their own origin they are, as I have called them, the gods of arrested per sonification or arrested
They Compara
anthropomorphism.
are the beacon lights of Vedic religion, of
Mythology, and of the Science of Religion. They are the rare guides and philosophers on this tive
labyrinthine and rocky road
Veda
;
they have
made
the
the training-school of the study of religion.
Since they show
in a
given
number
of cases just
what
94
The Religion
of the
has taken place, they point the
Veda
way when
the light
becomes hazy. Again, it is still as true as ever that a large number of the gods, whether early or late, are nature-gods
whose
origin,
we
regret to say, has been
obscured by later processes. for the student of the Veda a
They class,
tant as well as the most difficult tion.
again
make up
the most impor
theme
of investiga
mythology must contain gods They bring with them problems that
Every nation
of this class.
somewhat
s
never be dismissed until they are finally answered and that, paradoxically, may never be. I have in
will
mind gods like Varuna, Indra, and the Acvins. To some Vedic scholars it seems without doubt begging the question to speak of nature-gods in cases
we do not know
for certain
object that was personified.
when
what was the natural
No
one can say
at this
time that the origin of either Varuna, Indra, or the Agvins has been definitely settled. Yet, for my part I
confess to that faith, because
I
remember that such
uncertainty represents in truth the
normal
result of
mythologic development. As a rule, a nature-god does not remain transparent for ever: the opposite
happens far more frequently, as may be seen, again and again, in Hellenic or Teutonic mythology. Really durable myths
/and, therefore, more or
are, as a rule, less
mixed myths,
obscure myths.
A
cei:-
The Pantheon
of the
Veda
95
and entanglements of human life must be imported into mythology be Otherwise it remains fore it becomes mythology.
tain
amount
of the complications
philosophy, primitive cosmic philosophy, or primitive empirical natural science.
Let ago
me
paraphrase a statement
in a learned journal.
made some
years
1
Mythological investigation
between the primary attri butes of a mythic personage which are the cause of the personification, and the attributes and events
must draw a sharp
line
which are assigned to him or to
happen
after
and are supposed the personification had been com
we
her,
know, originally meant and Zeus pater was the personified Father Sky," Mother Earth." But it would be contrasted with
pleted.
Zeus, as
all
"sky,"
"
"
foolish to search for these primary qualities of
or the other Greek gods
in a play of Euripides,
the gods are afflicted with
the passions and
all
Zeus
where
weak
Yet he who refuses to myththe basis of on Euripides treatment need not ologise therefore be sceptical about the naturalistic origin of nesses of mortal men.
most of the Greek gods he may be willing at the right time, and in the right stage of the history of any ;
myth, to point out the physical factors or the phys But to be pres ical events which gave it a start. ent at the right time, that 1
Journal of
the
is
not always so easy.
American Oriental
Society, vol. xv., pp. 185, 186.
The
96
Religion of the
Further, _ there
too
many
in
are
number
Veda
gods in the Veda not about whose origin we
can determine nothing that is either definite or Either these gods have been obscured helpful. totally by later events in their natural history, or
they are derived from aboriginal tribes or other foreign sources about which we know nothing at
all.
Keeping the
divide
translucent,
in
mind
this idea of genesis,
into
three
classes
gods and opaque gods.
And
:
we might
transparent,
being by nature
and occupation philosophically inclined, plagued by an incontinent desire to find last causes, I shall fol low the lead of
my
these
suggestions,
and de
gods from the point of view of their origin and the rationale of their being under five heads scribe the
:
1.
Prehistoric gods, whether their origin be clear
or obscure.
Transparent, half-personified gods, who are at the same time nature objects and mythic persons. 2.
Translucent gods, who impose upon the vestigator the theory of their origin in nature. 3.
4.
Opaque
5.
To
gods,
these
who
may
in
refuse to reveal their origins.
be added, as a
abstract or symbolic gods
fifth
who embody an
wish, or a fear in the shape of a
good or
class,
the
action, a
evil divinity,
The Pantheon Of
god, or demon. furnish
abundant
Fortunately
it
of the
this class
illustration.
does not
Veda
our
97
fifth lecture will
1
fall
within the province of
these lectures to exhaust the long-drawn and
mo
notonous theme of Vedic mythology, or to establish definitely the precise origin of all the gods.
object
is
to sketch the motives
My
and principles that
underlie the remarkable chain of religious ideas that
ieads~from the ritual worship of the great naturegods of the Rig-Veda to the high theosophy of thej
Mythology pervades
Upanishads.
ment
to
a
understand
very great its
principles.
develop
we must But a mythic figure more change the picture, when
extent,
or less cannot materially
this
so
that
how mythic figures in general are and then overlaid with religious feeling fabricated, and advancing religious thought. The particular once we know
character of the individual god soon becomes un
important.
One
of the
the religion of the
imate conclusion,
most remarkable
Veda, when carried to
is,
facts in its legit
that these multiple gods really
vanish in the end, after they have contributed their *
.
individual attributes to the great idea of unity, of oneness at the root of the universe. This is the
very negation of
mythology and
Pantheons;
of
i See also my essay, The Symbolic Gods, in Studies in Honor of B. L. Gilder sleeve, p. 37 ff.
7
The
98
Religion of the
Veda
hocus-pocus and poetic fable. And when the twilight has engulfed these gods, then, and not sacrificial
until then,
and
real
in
India as elsewhere, do real religion
philosophy begin.
LECTURE THE THIRD. The Two
prehistoric
Prehistoric Gods.
periods
bearing
upon Hindu
religion
Scepticism about Comparative Mythology Difficulties in the way of Comparative Mythology Comparative Mythology and Ethnology The myth of Cerberus
The
Indo-European period Prehistoric words for Father Sky and Mother Earth The Thunderer The Vedic Acvins, or "Horsemen," the two Sons of Heaven The Dioscuri in Greek mythology The
god
the two "Sons of God" Common of the two "Sons of Heaven" The Aryan, or Indo-Iranian period Important re The dual ligious ideas common to the two peoples gods Varuna and Mitra Ahura Mazda and Varuna Lettish
myth
kernel of
the
of
myth
The conception of rta, or "cosmic order" The Adityas Mitra, a sun god Aditi, the mother of the Adityas The sun, the moon, and the planets The Adityas and Amesha Spents Early ethical concepts among the Indo-Europeans Varuna and Greek Ouranos (Uranus) The origin of man Sundry parents of man "Father Manu" Yama and Yaml, the "Twins" Interlacing The human character of of the myths of the first man Manu and Yama Yama, the god of the dead Soma, the sacrificial drink of the gods The myth of Soma and the Heavenly Eagle Value of the preceding reconstructions. 99
The
ioo
THEon
Religion of the
treatment of India
Veda
prehistoric gods takes
s
Com
of itself the outer form of a chapter of
parative Mythology.
We
have seen
in
the past that
the events which preceded the migration of the Aryas into India belong to two very different pre historic periods.
the Hindu and called Aryas,
One
1
Iranian
were
still
does not
the periodjwhen (Persian) peoples, the so-
of these
is
one people, a period which behind the Veda itself, just
lie so very far behind the curtain which separates the earliest his torical records of both India and Iran from the very
long past which preceded both of them. This is the Indo-Iranian, or Aryan period. The second is the
remoter period of Indo-European unity
still
languages, institutions,
and
religions
of peoples permit us to
;
the
of this great
assume that there was
group once upon a time one Indo-European people, and that this people possessed religious ideas which were
not altogether obliterated from the minds of their descendants, the Indo-Europeans of historical times
(Hindus, Persians, Greeks, Romans, Celts, Teutons, Slavs, etc.). It
is
my
painful duty to report that there has
been of recent years a great this subject. licists 1
In fact,
some
"
"
slump
in the stock of
scholars, critics,
and pub
have formally declared bankruptcy against the
See above,
p. 13.
The methods and
Prehistoric
results
of
Gods
101
Comparative Mythology.
In the long run prehistoric
reconstructions,
infer
and guesses do not find favor with Of course, it is safer to re certain types of mind. to analyse and describe the history strict one s self ences, analogies,
;
Indo-European people by itself; and to refrain from speculating about their connection in a remote
of each
past.
Is
not better to stay at home, each trained own philology, rather than to ride out
it
scholar in his
towards points on the broad and dim horizon which
bounds the more or community,
less
hypothetical Indo-European
to chase after something that
may
turn
out to be a mirage ? So it has transpired that what bid fair once upon a time to grow into an important branch of historical science is now by some ignored, not pooh-poohed. The writings of many great scholars during the last fifty years or more are now if
declared slate.
who
by some
It is
but
to be ready to be
fair to
are sceptical
wiped
note that the same
off
the
critics
about Comparative Mythology doubt the explanations
are, as a rule, inclined also to
of
myths that
are restricted to a single people.
seems to be a matter of temperament,
It
this dislike to
search after origins, after final explanations, after resolving chords, as to treat a
myth
it
were.
Here
also they prefer
at its face value, as story, fancy,
poem, and nothing more.
Now
all this
sounds very
The
102
Religion of the
virtuous and abstemious of
research
;
Veda
does not the true
mathematic certainty is The difficulties which have beset
Mythology
spirit
the point where rigid at an end ?
a halt at
call
are of various sorts
First,
:
Comparative the unques
tionable delicacy, clear to the point of fragility, of
Next, the imagination of scholars who incline to such studies is prone, by the materials.
prehistoric
very terms of
The
first
its
were so striking and development went on too fast,
results of the science
fascinating that its
existence, to be a little excessive.
conclusions
its
became too
hasty.
May
the shades
Theodor Benfey, Adalbert Kuhn, and Max Muller pardon me if I say that their almost poetic genius did at times take flight from the firm earth of
into sheer cloudland
"
where birds can no longer
Unquestionably they did compare some myth ological names because of the faintest and shakiest
fly."
phonetic resemblances. tions of the
Intuitive fanciful explana
most complicated myths do to some
extent masquerade as scientific results in their writ ings, and in the writings of the school that grew up
A science based upon of both things and and resemblances vague general words could not be otherwise than faulty both as to mushroom-like about them.
its
details
brief,
and
its
philosophic generalizations.
Comparative Mythology
suffered
from
In
the
The
Prehistoric
Gods
103
pardonably excessive zeal of its early friends. Since then the pruning knife has kept busy. At the pres ent time this
is
a subject that should be handled
very gingerly by all those who do not know how to winnow the chaff from the grain. But there still is
Comparative Mythology, and it is here to stay. There is yet another difficulty which should be
rated at
its
right value, not too
The primary
tle.
much and
not too
lit
object of the comparative mythol
Indo-European peoples is to collect, com the religious beliefs of these peoples, so and sift pare, as to determine what they owned as common property
ogy
of the
before their separation.
What now, we
hear
it
fre
quently asked, about the strange peoples, not IndoEuropean, nor Aryan, who share these beliefs with the Indo-Europeans or have similar beliefs ? Without question, in the earlier stages of the science, similari
which were independent products in different quarters, due to the similar endowment of the human
ties
mind, were confused with genetic similarities. By genetic similarities I mean such similarities as trans mitted mythological conceptions which were already in vogue among the prehistoric Indo-Europeans, so that they were continued, with later modifications,
by the separate branches
of the
Indo-European peo Should not, therefore, this entire subject be handed over to those broader students of Ethnology
ples.
I
iO4
The
who
investigate
liefs all
Religion of the
human
over the world
of the origin
Veda
customs, institutions, and be
Does not the
?
entire subject
and development of religions belong to
Ethnology rather than Philology ? For instance, the Indo-Europeans make much of the worship of the sun as a supreme being. But so do the Iroquois Indians, and many other savage or
semi-barbarous peoples. It an important truth, that the it is
essentially alike,
time to incorporate
and
is
is
indeed true, and
human
race,
it is
endowed
as
anywhere and at any most imposing
liable
in its beliefs this
deifiable visible object in all nature, the sun, the
source of light and heat, seasons and vegetation.
This
is
the simple ethnological fact.
The
Indo-European Comparative Mythology ent one of each
:
it is
a historical
fact.
fact
in
a differ
is
In the early period
Indo-European people heaven,
its
agents and
powers, including of course the sun, were, as
on excellent authority, worshipped or
we know
deified.
We are
therefore to-day, as formerly, securely intrenched in
the conviction that the worship of heaven and the
heavenly phenomena, more or less personal did in fact form the common kernel of Indo-
visible ised,
European
religion.
Now
do
beliefs of other peoples, not
the same case,
line,
except to
have to
I fail
to see
what the
Indo-European, along
do with
this
particular
show that the Indo-Europeans were
The
Gods
Prehistoric
105
and that all the rest of the peoples the sun are, from their primitive point
rational beings,
who worship
of view, also rational beings.
have devoted of recent years considerable effort to the statement and explanation of the myth of I
Cerberus, the dog of Hades.
who
Cerberi,
Yama was
the
tice of dying.
are
said
first
royal
He
man might
There he
belong to King Yama.
man who started the prac then went aloft to heaven, and
found there, once for sons of
to
The Veda has two
all,
a choice place where the
disport themselves after death.
Yama, the King The Vedic texts look upon this rules as
variety of ways.
past
them
in
of Paradise.
pair of dogs in a
First, the soul of
man
order to get to heaven.
has to get This is the
Secondly, the two dogs of Yama pick out daily candidates for death. Thirdly, the dogs are entrusted with the care of the souls familiar Cerberus idea.
of the
dead on their way to join
Now we it?"
I
Yama
in
might almost ask with the riddle
wonder whether there
is
"
:
not present
heaven.
What
is
in this
audience some ingenious man or woman who can guess what real pair in nature on the way to heaven, coursing like dogs across the heaven, can harmonise these discrepant points of view. But we are not left to guess.
The Vedic
that they are the sun
texts tell us in plain language
and the moon, or
as they are
The
io6
Religion of the
Veda
with a very ancient poetic touch, the speckled and the dark. Now the word for speckled is Cabalas; it fits in well enough with Greek Kepfispoz, con called,
sidering the susceptibility of mythic proper
names
to the kind of modulation, or sophistication, which
we
But we may disregard the verbal etymology altogether. Other Indo-Eu ropean peoples have more or less definite notions call
popular etymology.
about one or two dogs.
It is
more than probable
that the early notions of future visible heaven with
life
turned to the
sun and moon, rather than
its
the topographically unstable and elusive caves and gullies that lead, in the unquestionably late Greek fancy, to a wide-gated Hades.
I
cannot here afford
the time that would be required to the sition of
this
myth, and would
book, Cerberus, the
of an
Idea, published in 1905,
thology.
Now,
in the
which
we
Obviously, the conception :
History
regard as
my
My
find that other peoples,
not Indo-European, here and there, gets in the way of the soul on its
way
I
study of Comparative
to be sure,
dently in the same
expo you to my
Dog of Hades : The
little
program of method
refer
full
may have
own way
a dog
who
to heaven.
arisen indepen
the dead journeying upward
to heaven, but interfered with
by
a coursing heavenly
body, the sun or the moon, or both. But grant that somewhere or other a dog, pure and simple, has
The
Prehistoric
Gods
107
strayed into this sphere of conceptions without any organic mythological meaning, simply as a baying, hostile,
watchdog
in
heaven or
hell.
We
cannot
therefore ignore the wonderful yet simple Indo-Eu
ropean myth which is begotten of high reason and keen appreciation of myth-making opportunity. Plainly, this myth requires no further explanation from the usually vague and half-understood analo gies that may befound on the broad ground of univer Far be it from me to sal Ethnology and Folk-lore. suggest that mythological evidence, whencesoever obtainable, should be excluded from these delibera tions
:
all I
want
one people,
own
let
is the importation of bad Since the Indo-Europeans are
to prevent
coal into Newcastle.
us
first
study their
own minds
in their
literature or archeological remains, before turn
ing to the Iroquois, the Papuas, or the inhabitants of
the Aleutian Islands for sporadic reports that,
more
often than not, reach our ear out of their proper
connection, or with their point bent.
smoke certain
shall
have cleared there
will
be
When
the
of this I
am
on ethnological quantities Indo-European mathematics. But there
less airy reliance
irrational in
be
left a goodly stock of Indo-European divini and ties simple myths, profoundly interesting, not with the interest of hoary antiquity, but even only
will
more so because they determine and explain the main
The
io8
I
Religion of the
move
along which
lines
European
Veda
the mythologies of the Indo-
peoples of historical times.
The main sub
though by no means the entire substance, of the mythologies and religions of these peoples this stance,
is
days of Benfey, Kuhn the nature myth. If we count Brah-
as true to-day as
and
Miiller
is
it
was
in the
manical theosophy and Buddhism as the two great yields of the study of Hinduism,
we may
safely
add
Comparative Mythology as the third great field of re ligious history that has been opened out by the study of India. *#*. *** *..,...
v
-
-
***-+
Had we but
fuller records of ancient
Indo-
European history and literature, these fuller records would reveal more common myths and religious
The added
ideas.
facts
sketchy picture, but
would
fill
would
it
in
still
the necessarily
be
the same
picture.
We
are
by the
limits of our plan restricted here to
those religious ideas which concern the early religion of India, and even of these we shall select only the
more important. We begin with the remoter of the two periods, the Indo-European period. The universal Indo-European word for "god^jvvas deivos,
gone over into archaic Latin as deivos
Celtic devos in the Gallic proper
Old Scandinavian
"
tivar,
and Sanskrit devas. which connects
this
The
gods,"
(deus),
name Devognata, Lithuanian devas,
irreproachable etymology word with the verb div, dyu,
The
Prehistoric
Gods
109
shows that the_word came from the lumin-v ous manifestations of nature by day and night,
"shine,"
and
determines
authoritatively the
source
from;
which the Indo-Europeans derived their first and most pervasive conception of divine power. On
more
limited
Indo-European territory appears another general term, Slavic bogu, Old Persian baga
Avestan bagha god," Sanskrit bhaga god of for tune." The word is again of clear origin it means "
"
:
"
spender of goods,
or
blessings."
abstract conception of a eternal
the
good god, embodying an
and never slumbering wish of mankind. The
same eastern region has in
It contains
common
attribute
of
of the
Indo-European
territory
another sacred word, used as an
divinity,
namely, Avestan
(Persian)
pure spenta, Lithuanian szventas. Old Slavic svqtti, or "holy." This secures for prehistoric religion an
"
"
important spiritual concept. Two important con ceptions expressing sentiment towards the gods, that of reverence (Sanskrit yaj, Avestan yaz, Greek
ay
in aCo//az,*
revere"),
and that of
belief (Sanskrit
come graddhd, Latin credo, Celtic cretim, believe from old times, though they need not necessarily "
")
have been The
in
vogue
in
every part of the territory
"
Phrygian Zeus Bagaios reported by the Greek glossographer Hesychios is nothing but the Persian Baga see the author in Transactions of the American Philological Association, vol. xxxv., 1
"
;
p. xxxi.
1
The
10
Religion of the
Veda
occupied by the Indo-Europeans prior to historic times.
All Indo-Europeans revered the shining sky of
daytime as a mighty being. The Hindus, Greeks, and Romans call him respectively Dyaush pitar,
The meaning
Zeus pater, and Diespiter or Jupiter. of the
name
dyaus
is
quite transparent in the Veda, where
is
still
both
common and
proper noun. It Latin expression sub Jove
always means sky. The under a cold sky/ frigido, "
"
in a cold
preserves the sense of the word as a slender
myth
that
contained here
is
marital relation between the visible
The
the cosmos.
was
affair "
terra
ren,
1
mater").
known
The
that of a
is
two halves of "
lady, or "correspondent
Mother Earth
"
climate,"
fossil.
in
the
"
(Vedic prithim mdtar, This union was blessed with child
frequently in the Veda, and occasionally
elsewhere, as the children of the Sky.
In the
Veda
Ushas, Dawn," and especially the Fire," Agni, The dual Horsemen," the Agvins, are so named. "
"
"
"
Horsemen,"
as
we
shall
see later, correspond to
the Greek Dioscuri (dioffxovpoi), Heaven,"
God 1
"
"
Sons
of Zeus, or
Castor and Pollux, and to the
in Lettish
Herodotus
iv.
mythology. 59
testifies
In
forthright
"
Sons of
this instance that
the
at
Scythians,
worshipped Earth as the wife of Zeus: Aia. TE Kairf/v, VOILII,OYT$ TTJY Trjv rov AioS eivociyvvcciKa.
closely allied to the Persians,
The least
the
Gods
Prehistoric
"
concept
children
1 1 1
"
Father
of
Sky
prehistoric, and genuinely mythic. The sky has another irrepressible quality
In this aspect also
thunders.
god with
a definite
name
it
became
is
:
it
a personal
in prehistoric times,
who
tends at times, as one might naturally suppose, to encroach on the domain of Father Sky, or to blend
with him. The chief heathen god of the Lithuanians was Perkunas, "Thunderer," from which is derived the word perkunyja, thunder-storm." The identity "
of this
name with
derer,"
the god
the parents of the Norse
"
Thun
Thor (Donar), namely, the male
Fjorgynn and the female Fjorgyn, has never been Here also belongs Parjanya, that most questioned. transparent divinity of the rain-storm in the Vedic hymns, who roars like a lion and thunderous strikes "
the
There
evil-doers."
culty here,
I
would
is
some
modulated euphemistically, so of
"guarding 1
"folk").
the
slight phonetic diffi
suggest that the
folk"
Homer s Zeus
word has been
as to suggest the idea
(pari,
"about,"
and jana,
has absorbed the"Thun;
and therefore appears in a double aspect. \ the one hand he is "far-eyed Sky
derer,"
On
"
on the other he 1
The
" "
is
cloud-gatherer is doubtful see Hirt, Indogermanische Kretschmer, Einleitung in die Geschichte der
original etymology
Forschungen,
i.,
436
;
Griechischen Sprache, p. 81.
;
1 1
The
2
and
in
"rejoices
ning"
or,
lightning,"
paw o$).
(repains
Veda
Religion of the
absorbed the functions
Veda
the light
"twists
The Lithuanian Perkunas has of Zeus and has become chief 1
Parjanya is called Father him for the moment the double of Asura," making Father Sky, the Asura. In another passage he is In the
god.
also
"
even more directly identified with Dyaus. 2
The Veda has a the
"two
called
"
Vedic
Horsemen
pair of twin (aqviii).
Sons of Heaven
divinities
gods,
known
as
"
They
are frequently
"
(divo
napdta).
Of
all
they have the most pronounced
mythical and legendary
character.
They put
in
regularly in the morning, along
their appearance
A
with other divinities of morning light. maiden is of that the name or by Surya, "Sun-Maiden,
daughter of Surya, that
"
is
Daughter of the
Sun,"
is captivated by the youthful beauty of the Agvins, chooses them for her husbands, and ascends their
chariot that
is
lated touch
is
some
drawn by birds. A different yet re added to their character in a riddle-
brief story
3
which furnishes them with an
other female relation, namely, a mother by the 1
2
18, 8
Rig-Veda
5.
name
83. 6.
Divah parjanydd antarikshat prthivyah.
Vajasaneyi Sanhita,
55^
Told
in Rig- Veda 10. 17.
American Oriental
I, 2
;
see the author in
Society, vol. xv., p. \T2. ff.
Journal of the
The of
Prehistoric
Gods
113
And, once more, with considerable
Saranyu.
they figure in a heavenly marriage in which they themselves are not the principals. They deviation,
are the wooers in a marriage which their
own
bride
Surya, according to a later view, enters into with
Soma, the Moon.
The
specific use of the
Agvins
that they are the most reliable helpers in need.
is
The hymns harp persistently upon the fact that all sorts of men and women have in the past appealed them
and have not been disappointed. Even animals are helped or cured by them. In one
to
1
for aid,
make modern
instance they perform a cure calculated to
green with envy even the most skilled of veterinary surgeons, if by any chance he should hear of
it.
When
the racing mare Vicpala breaks a
leg they put an iron one 2 handily wins the race.
Even the most not found of
tion
it
in
in its place
:
with that she
stalwart sceptics in this field have their hearts to
these divinities and
with the Dioscuri, the
"
deny the connec
their female relative
Sons of
Zeus,"
Castor and
Pollux (Poludeukes), and their sister Helena.
name
of the
to a suggestion of Professor E.
two 1
2
The
Acvins mother SaranyQ may, according
syllables contain the
sound
W.
for
Fay, in
its first
sound equivalent
See Macdonell, Vedic Mythology, p. 51 ff. See Pischel, Vedische Studien, vol. i., p. 171
ff.
j
1
The
14
of the
two
first
Religion of the Vecla
The connection name of the Agvins
syllables of Helena.
with horses, expressed in the comes out more strongly with the horse (a$va, Dioscuri, who are celebrated tamers of horses, riders "
"),
of horses,
and
The
charioteers.
Dioscuri also were
revered as helpers in need, and therefore were called
Anaktes,
"
protecting lords." In another quarter, with the Lettish or Baltic
peoples, a strikingly similar
myth
notable addition that the two
mentioned individually
"
appears, with the
Sons of God
"
are
as the
morning or evening This calls up a feature of the Greek myth: star. Zeus rewards the affection of the Dioscuri for one another by placing them
morning and evening 1
j
in the
star, or
heavens either as
the twin stars Gemini.
So, to this day, the gigantic statues of
opposite the Quirinal palace in
U taming Dioscuri
.Rome
A
the horse-
carry stars
on their heads.
Lithuanian folk-song (daina) runs as follows: "
The Moon did wed
the
Maiden Sun,
In an early day of spring-tide. The Maiden Sun arose betimes,
The Moon "
just then did slink away.
He wandered by himself afar, Coquetted with the morning-star. Perkunas hence was greatly wroth He cleft him with his sword in twain ;
:
The "
Prehistoric
Gods
115
*
Why didst thou thus desert the And wander in the night afar ?
Sun,
didst thou flirt with the morning-star? 1 His heart was filled with grief and pain."
Why
In the mythol the god of thunder. ogy of these peoples he has absorbed the character istics of the old god of heaven and become the chief
Perkunas
is
god, just as Zeus, conversely, has taken upon him Thunderer." This folkself the functions of the "
materials of the
story presents the
legend in a new arrangement, not at
Hindu Agvin all
applicable
Hindu myth. But the materials, SunMaiden, Moon, and "Sons of God," are there. In
to
the
another
this
folk-song,
time a Lettish one,
the
morning-star is represented as pursuing amorously SunSaule, the equivalent of Vedic Surya, the "
Maiden
With
"
2
all
the rich
tions of this myth,
and often perplexing modula
we have
the
common
kernel of a
heavenly dual pair of divinities in intimate relation The quality with a female divinity of the heavens. of helpers in need
and saviours
in trouble is
almost
unquestionably begotten of the universal notion that 1
This version of the daina, with slight alterations, is that of Pro Chase in Transactions of the American Philological Associa
fessor
tion , vol. xxxi., p. 191. 2
See Oldenberg, Die Religion des Veda,
p.
212^".
n6 V|the
The divinities of
Religion of the
morning
^powers of darkness. are
some
We
light
Veda
overcome the
hostile
are not quite so certain as
excellent scholars that the heavenly pair
were originally the morning and evening star, nor has any other naturalistic explanation been pro posed which
is finally
In any case, one
1
satisfactory.
of the pair, at least, to which the other has been
subordinated, belongs to the events of nature in the
morning, and the marriage or the
is
with the
Sun Maiden
"
Sun-Maiden
"
"
imagined to be their sister (Helena), or even their mother (Sar2 The myth of which I have given here the anyu).
(Surya, Saule)
;
"
is
about considerably among super It is overlaid with many ficially discrepant notions. of the fancies poet and story-teller. No secondary
merest outline
flits
sane scholar will now, as was once the habit, try to
make each
hymns
"
of the silly
"
stunts
which the Vedic
ascribe to the Agvins part of
the organic
in the myth. They are mostly after even later fancy. deducting the crudities of past interpreters we must not quarrel with certain
matter contained
And
detail.
But
the last outcome no rational historian or
anti-
mental reservations as to this and that j.
in
1 All criticism by explanations have been subjected to searching Professor Hillebrandt in the third volume of his great work on
Vedic Mythology, p.
379^".
In Greek mythology also the Dioscuri are placed in the relation of sons to a mother, namely, Antiope of Bceotia. 2
The quarian will
such
ignore
two
story of the
"
Sons
of
for the
1
1
7
shows the
parallels
as
Heaven
with the Hin
"
1
and the Letts, or be so abstemious from looking for reasonable motives
dus, the Greeks, as to refrain
Gods
Prehistoric
creation of a
that has so
myth
marked a
physiognomy. In brief, once more, there are two luminous sons of heaven, conceived as horsemen, and as helpers of
men
in all
kinds of sore
relation with another,
conceived as a Sun."
Sun-Maiden,"
"
is
Sun-Maiden
They
feminine,
"
This relation
tween the
straits.
or
are in loving
heavenly divinity of the
"
Daughter
crossed by another affair be "
and the Moon. To concep
tions of this sort the Indo-Europeans, before their
separation into the peoples of historical times, had
advanced.
The changes and
are not surprising
;
surprising
additions to the
is,
that the
myth
myth
should
have retained
its
ods of time,
very various surroundings, and under
in
chief features during great peri
the constant pressure of a flood of remodelling ideas poured out upon it by the fertile mind of man, and
tending constantly to obliterate the more primitive
and simple fancies. I have dwelt before upon the almost romantic in terest which attaches itself to the relationship of the i
la
For possible traces of the same myth among the Teutons see De The Religion of the Teutons, pp. 68 and 140 JT.
Saussaye,
t
1 1
The
8
Religion of the
two peoples, the Hindus and the
Veda
Iranians.
1
Separated only by a chain of mountains, they are entirely un conscious of the close relationship of their languages,
and
literatures,
religions.
Nowhere
the Avesta conscious that there
is
is
Veda
in the
there the slightest knowledge of the Avesta
;
is
nowhere
going on across
the Himalaya Mountains in India an intense and char
development which started with a good many of the same primitive beliefs as were ab sorbed by the religion of Zoroaster, As time went by acteristic religious
the religions of the two peoples became about as differ ent as
it is
On
be.
possible for religions of civilised peoples to
the one side, Parsism or Zoroastrianism, mold
ed by the mind of a single prophet, Zarathushtra, or Zoroaster a dualistic religion, believing in God and :
Satan
;
an
ethical, optimistic,
unphilsophical religion
;
but at the bottom really
modern
yet sufficient, as the
Parsis show, to guide a people into a very superior
form of
On
life.
the other side, higher Hinduism,
monistic, pessimistic, and speculative
without real
present in the
own
each individual bent upon finding the
way
leadership, except that which spirit of
;
is
out of a hated round of existences through a keen conviction that there
the
Brahma
in the
is
that, consequently, this 1
See above,
p.
13
only one fundamental truth,
universe
and
in
world of things
one is
s
self;
illusory,
The
Prehistoric
and must be discarded
in
Gods
119
order to release from
existence.
But these two
approximately the same point, and they continue with enough of the same materials to make the study of each in some religions
began
at
measure dependent upon the other. concerned with the Vedic side only. siderable religious
to this
number
We
A
are here
very con
important Vedic divinities, conceptions, and sacred institutions belong of
common Aryan
larged, their
1
period.
Their sphere
meaning better defined, and
is
en
their chro
nology shifted across long periods of time, if we keep our eye on the Avesta. Of course we must not neg lect to allow for the process of recoining
ideas have passed through in India.
which these In a certain
sense every prehistoric religious idea that has man aged to survive and to emerge in India has become
Hindu
not the least fascinating part of these re searches is to show just how the spirit of India na ;
tionalises or individualises the ideas that
on a
different soil.
Two
spheres of Vedic ideas and practices concern
us here in a particular degree. of the great 1
were born
The first is
the sphere
Vedic god Varuna, his dual partner
Die Arise he Periode; Darmestetter, Sacred Books of Die Religion des Veda, pp. 26^"., Hillebrandt, Rituallitteratur p. n, and the bibliographic
See, Spiegel
the East, iv., p. Ivi, ff; Oldenberg,
^ 341 ff; notes there given; Macdonell, Vedic Mythology, p.
7 ff.
The
I2O
Veda
Religion of tne
Mitra, and a set of gods
known
belong both Varunaand Mitra.
as Adityas, to
whom
Varuna, unquestion
ably the most imposing god of the Rig-Veda,
is
in
charge of the moral law or order of the universe, that
we have seen, dates at 1600 B.C. The second sphere is
rta which, as
soma, which
is
man
first
of
is
pair,
"
vant,
that of the plant
accepted joyfully by the Vedic
was pressed first by a mythic the name of Yama, and by his divine It
tipple.
father Vivasvant.
who
back
pressed artfully so as to yield an intox
icating liquor that
gods as their
least as far
Yama
has a sister YamT, the
first
unconventionally people the world. Vivas
the shining
one,"
is
the father of
Yama, the
progenitor who carries this familiar chain of He is, in all probability, either logic to an end. sun or the the or, mixedly, "the sun, final
"
"
;
"fire,"
the divine
fire."
mythology presents
We
shall
In
In each of these spheres Vedic itself in its
deal with
common
god Varuna
them
in
most
order stated.
the
with most scholars
is
brilliant aspects.
to be connected,
believe that the
I
if
not identified,
with the chief good and wise god of the Zoroastrian
namely Ahura Mazda, or Ormazd, that_Js Varuna carries the title Asura, Wise Lord."
faith, "
*
Lord,"
the same word as
;
this,
however,
much, because other the Veda are honoured with the same dis-
must not be held gods of
Ahura
to say too
The
a partnership which
But Varuna
is
in the
expressed
consists of himself
It
however, bination.
a close partner in
dual number.
and the god Mitra, who
more than
little
121
is
title.
tinguishing
Gods
Prehistoric
a silent partner in the
Such partnerships are frequent
Veda, but exceedingly rare
in
in
is,
com the
the Persian Avesta.
Yet the Avesta, in a matter-of-fact manner, joins Ahura and Mithra in the same dual partnership as the
Veda does Varuna and
Mitra.
1
Since
Ahura
is
the paramount divinity of the Avesta his pairing with Mithra has every appearance of a fossil, left
over from a time
when Ahura s supremacy had not
yet become absolute, in other words, from a time
when Ahura and Mithra were on seems to
It
me
an
a par of dignity.
almost unimaginable feat of
scepticism to doubt the original identity of the pairs.
Ahura
figures,
however, by himself
two also.
Again, it seems unlikely that Ahura Mazda, when mentioned by himself, is not the same Ahura that appears in the combination Ahura and Mithra, be cause Ahura Mazda, taken by himself,
Varuna, the Vedic partner of Mitra.
is
so very like
In the Zoroas-
system Ahura Mazda orders the world, and assigns to all good creatures and entities their re Ahura creates the spective places and activities.
trian
divine order 1
(as/ia),
the good
See Spiegel, Die Arische Pcrivde,
p.
waters and plants : 185 ff.
The
122
Religion of the
and
light, earth,
made
a
way
causes the
sleep
;
Ahura
The Veda
the
order.
human
1
overt or covert. 2
deeds,
Varuna
in the
times in almost the same words.
same
He
is
spirit, at
the sup
he has spread the atmosphere has put fleetness into the steed, milk into the cows. He has placed intelligence the heart, fire into the waters, the sun upon the the forests
;
;
the soma-plant upon the mountains. a path for the sun
;
He
As guardian of not to be deceived, does not
is
describes
porter of beings
first
he that
It is
stars.
grow or wane.
to
all
He was
good.
and the
for the sun
he sees
is
father of divine
first
moon
divine order
that
all
progenitor, the
Veda
over
an^ into
sky,
He has opened
the floods of the rivers hasten
obeying the divine order. Even more pointed than Ahura s is the expression of Varuna s omniscience and undeceivableness he sees seaward
3
like racers
:
all
the past and
third wherever
do not
all
the future
two men
secretly
he
is
present as a
scheme
;
his spies
close their eyes.
The hymn Atharva-Veda picture
;
o
r
6 presents a rugged Varuna in his role of omniscient and 4.
1
omnipotent god: Yasna 37. i 44. 3. Yasna 31. 13 43. 6 45. 4 Vendidad 19-20. Cf. Oldenberg Journal of the German Oriental Society, vol. I, p. 48. 3 Rig- Veda 5. 85. 2 87. i 8. 41. 5. 1
;
2
;
;
;
;
;
in
The "
The great guardian among these gods
anear.
He
this the
gods know.
*
Gods
Prehistoric
Whoso
that thinketh he
is
moving
sees as
;
gether and scheme,
King Varuna
is
if
stealthily
stands, walks, or sneaks about, if off, whoso runs to cover
goes slinking
and knows
123 from all
and whoso two sit to
there as the third
it.
here belongs to King Varuna and broad sky, whose bounds are, far away. The yonder two oceans are Varuna s loins yea, in this petty drop of water is he hidden. "
Both
this earth
also
;
Whoso should
beyond the heavens far away from King Varuna. From the sky his spies come hither with a thousand eyes they do watch over the earth. "
would yet not be
flee
free
;
"
All this
King Varuna does behold
what
is
between
the two firmaments, what beyond. Numbered of him are the winkings of men s eyes. As a (winning) gamester puts down the dice, thus does he establish these (laws)."
Another hymn, Rig-Veda 7. 86, depicts Varuna as guardian of moral order, hence angry at the mis deeds of men.
The
contrite attitude of his suppli
ant, a singer of the family of the Vasishthas, the
authors of the seventh book of the Rig- Veda, has a strong
Hebraic
flavor,
and,
hymn, suggests many a passage
like
the
of the
preceding Psalms :
The
124
Religion of the
Veda
i.
and great
truly,
"Wise,
is
own
his
nature,
Who held asunder spacious earth and heaven. He pressed the sky, the broad and lofty, upward, Aye, spread the
stars,
and spread the earth out broadly. 2.
With my own
"
How
self I
hold communion
shall I ever with
Varuna
Will he without a grudge accept
When may
I
:
find refuge?
my
offering
?
joyous look and find him gracious
?
3"
I
Fain to discover
go to those
The 1
this
my
self-same story they
God Varuna
sin, I
who know, and it is
whom
question,
ask of them.
all in
concert
me
tell
;
thou hast angered. 4-
"
What was my
chief offence,
That thou wouldst
O
Varuna,
slay thy friend
who
sings thy praises?
Tell me, infallible Lord, of noble nature,
That
I
may be prompt
to
quench thy wrath with homage 5-
"
Loose us from
From Loose
all
committed by our fathers, which we ourselves committed
sins
those, too,
us, as thieves are loosed that lifted cattle
As from
a calf, take off Vasishtha
s
fetters
!
;
!
!
The
Prehistoric
Gods
125
T
was deception,
6.
T T
was not
my own
sense,
Varuna!
was scant thought, strong drink, or
The
dice, or passion.
old are there to lead astray the younger,
Nay, sleep
itself
provokes unrighteous actions. 7-
"
me do
Let
The
service to the merciful giver,
zealous god, like a slave, but sinless
The
gracious god gave wisdom to the He leads the wise, himself more wise,
!
foolish, to riches.
8. "
May Reach
this
our song,
to thy heart,
O Varuna, we pray thee, O god of lofty nature
On home and work do
!
thou bestow well-being
Protect us, gods, for evermore with blessings
We
are
;
"
!
accustomed to make much allowance
general similarities in the conceptions of the different peoples, but
should reach so
far.
it is
for
gods of
scarcely possible that they
The connection
tween Ahura Mazda and Varuna
is
that exists be
expressed, how-/
ever, not only through their general similarity as I
supreme arbiters of the world and its moral law. That very particular conception, which dignifies alike
Veda and Avesta, namely, Vedic
rta,
Avestan
asha (areta), and Cuneiform Persian arta, is, of course, not entirely put in the keep of those two gods. But
1
1
The
26
it is
One
theirs in an especial degree.
interesting parallels
Varuna
righteousness."
28. 5)
2.
;
Ahura Mazda
The words
most
"
spring of the rta,
as/take khdo,
the rta
(Yasna sound the same.
is
is
khd rtasya (Rig- Veda
is
are sound for
high thought of
of the
between Veda and Avesta
that both gods are described as the
or
Veda
Religion of the
in
many ways
to the Confucian idea of order,
10. 4).
The
similar
harmony, and ab
unquestionably the best conception that has been elaborated by the
sence
disturbance.
of
Aryans. We have seen 1600
B.C.,
and
it
is
reaches back at least to
yet, notwithstanding its early date,
superior to any
is
that
It
remaining Indo-European peoples.
Veda
is
it
of the earlier conceptions of the
concerned,
it
presents
As
itself
far as the
under the
threefold aspect of cosmic order, correct and fitting 2 cult of the gods, and moral conduct of man,
We
have in connection with the rta a pretty complete
System
As
of Ethics, a kind of
Counsel of Perfection.
the basis of cosmic order the rta rules the
world and nature. The established
facts of the visible
world, but especially the events of nature that recur ^"^periodically, 1
Above,
2
The same
are fixed or regulated
by
rta.
Those
p. 12.
threefold
character
is
quite evident in the Avestan
See Mills Journal of the American xx., pp. 31 /., 277
as ha.
/"
Oriental Society vol. ,
The
Gods
Prehistoric
127
daughters of heaven, the Maidens Dawn, shine upon the morning sky in harmony with rta, or when they wake up in the morning they rise from the seat of rta.
The sun
is
He
is
rta.
placed upon the sky in obedience to the called the wheel of rta with twelve spokes.
This means that he courses across the sky as the year of twelve months. Even the shallow mystery that the red, raw of the
cow yields
white, cooked milk
cow guided by the
1
rta"
their acts that
the rta N
The gods them
selves are born of the rta or in the rta
they show by
"
is
(rtajdtd)
they know
;
the rta y
observe the rta, and love the rta?
The religion of the Veda, as we have
observed, rests
upon the material foundation of cult and sacrifice, These performances are not always regarded merely as
merchandise wherewith to
of the gods.
Vedas, as
But even
In a later time, the time of the Yaju
we have
sacrifice are
the blessings
to evolve intrinsic virtues
They begin
and harmonies.
traffic for
3
seen,
:\
the technical acts of the
imbued with magic and divine power.
in the
Rig-Veda the
sacrifice fire is
kindled
under the yoking of the rta" or, as we should say, under the auspices of world order. Agni, the god of "
1
"
O sage mir, wie geht es zu, Giebt weisse milch die rote
2
rtajnd, rtdyu, rtasap, 3
Above,
p. 31.
j
Kuh
and so on.
?"
German nursery rhyme.
The
128
fire, is
"
Religion of the
scion of the
He
his
rta"
or
work with
"
Veda
first-born of the
rta"
rta, carries oblations to
performs on the path of rta" Prayers, lowing like cattle, longing for the soma-drmk" take effect in
the gods
"
"
accordance with rta.
A
1
figure of speech, bold to
the point of grotesqueness, turns prayer into u rta2 fluid, distilled by the tongue." Holy sacrifice, in
from
distinction
rta
"
:
With
I
call
foul
magic,
is
performed with
upon the gods, undefiled by
witchcraft. *
perform my work, carry out my thought. Thus exclaims a poetic mind conscious of its own rta
rectitude.
I
3
Finally in
man
the moral law.
s activity
Here
it
the rta manifests
takes
itselfjas.
by the hand the
closely
Untruth, on the other hand, is anrta, more rarely asatya, the same two words with prefix of negation. The two words satya and kindred idea of truth, satya.
anrta form a close dual compound,
"truth
and
lie,"
watched "sincerity and falsehood," both zealously 4 over by God Varuna. They remain the standard words
for these twin opposites for all
Varuna is the
real trustee of the rta.
struggles towards the rta he
passage to become 1
Rig- Veda
9. 94. 2.
3
Ibid., 7. 34. 8.
5
Ibid., 10. 8. 5.
for the *
is
7.
49. 3.
time.
said in a remarkable
time being
Ibid., 9. 75. 2.
*Ibid.,
Hindu
When God Agni God Varuna.
6
The
Prehistoric
Gods
129
^
vj
Truth and
lie
and wrong-doing.
Q*^
1
Yama (Adam)
invites
k<x
by an easy transition, right In a famous hymn YamI (Eve)
include,
incestuous intercourse.
to
Mythically speaking this is, of course, unavoidable they are the first pair, and there are no other human
:
But the poet conceives of the
beings whatsoever.
own
situation in the spirit of his
time.
When
Yarn!
pretends to justify the act Yama exclaims pithily: In saying the rta we shall really say the anrta" "
which, rendered more broadly, means to say
"
:
we pretend to justify the act as being rta, doing, we really shall knowingly engage in
We may
"
wrong-doing.
Anyhow, don
"
saying:
the
t
let
When right-
anrta,
imagine Yama finally \\ us beat the devil about U
stump!"
Varuna and Mitra, the dual still
pair, are implicated further in a group of divinities of the name
The number
dditya. tain.
Sometimes
Aryaman
it is
as third.
of these
three
:
gods is very uncer Mitra and Varuna, with
This third god, no
less
than the
name of Aryaman s Airyama. The name of this not too determinate god seems to mean comrade accordingly Aryaman figures in the Veda as the first
two,
is
Indo-Iranian
Avestan counterpart
:
the
is
"
";
groomsman at the wedding rites. Beyond triad the name dditya becomes very indefinite,
typical this 1
Rig- Veda 10. 10. 9
./
!
I I
&
1
The
30
Religion of the
Veda
both as to number and the individuals which
it
is
supposed to harbor. As regards number, the god Indra sometimes swells the three to four. Then there
seven, a favourite and vague
is
number
;
to this
1
the legendary Martanda (Indra) is at times added as eighth. In later times the number rises to twelve.
Not more than
mentioned by name out Bhaga, Daksha, and Anga in
six are ever
right in the
Veda:
addition
the three mentioned
to
"
Fortune," is
Bhaga, not only Indo-Iranian, but even Indo-
European, as we have seen. is
portioner,"
Daksha,
Now
above.
"
Anga,
"
Portion,"
a very faint abstraction.
And
Ap-
so
is
"
"Dexterity,"
the
Veda
Cleverness."
conceives of the Adityas as the
descendants of a feminine Aditi
who
cuts a consid
erable figure as a very abstract female, suggesting
the ideas of
"
freedom from
and
"boundlessness,"
guilt,"
finally identified in the
"
fetters,"
freedom from
She
"universe."
Hindu mind with
is
"
earth."
A father who might of this
be responsible for the offspring interesting lady is never mentioned. We are
struck
first
a purely
own
of
*
with the fact that Aditi, the mother,
Hindu product, is obviously younger than her
sons, the best of
Indo-Iranian 1
all
period.
whom I
are at least as old as the
have, for
See Macdonell, Vedic Mythology^ p. 43.
Above, p. 109.
my
part little
The
Prehistoric
doubt but what Aditi
some
of
have suggested that the and that originally yore,"
members are or
of yore
"of
most substantial
prehistoric were thus fitly "
named
"
gods perhaps con the description of Indra as later
gods of
with this
trast
I
antique gods whose
this set of
131
a well-executed abstraction
In the past
kind.
word dditya meant
"
is
Gods
old."
We may
"
"
born
(anujdvara), in a legend told in Taittirlya
Brahmana
From
(2. 2. 10).
the word dditya, conceived
as a metronymic, the feminine Aditi
abstracted.
that the
If this
Veda had
the sense of
in
is
forgotten the meaning of dditya
of
some
case before
the
"
speculative genius might invent
Another explanation, that
Macdonell,"
greater simplicity.
"
nally
has perhaps the advantage of starts from the expression
is
applied several times to the
This, he thinks,
sons of
of
He
aditeh putrdh) which
Adityas.
This was necessarily the
yore."
mother Aditi.
Professor
might be easily well taken we must assume
freedom,"
may have meant
perhaps better
"
origi
sons of
such an expression may have led to the personification of Aditi as a female mother of Adityas. At all events Aditi may be safely re "
guiltlessness
garded as 1
See
;
later
my essay, The
drippings
Symbolic Gods, in Studies in
Gildersleeve, p. 45. 3
from the very sappy
Vedic Mythology, p. 122.
Honor of B
.
L.
The
132
myth
Religion of the
Veda
Varuna and the Adityas.
of
tation of Aditi as
"
The
boundlessness," or
interpre
"
universe,"
very well upon an assumed mother of these great gods. Aditi is later defined as earth," a sits
"
narrowing of her scope, somewhat as
we
of
the
modern languages make synonymous the terms "world"
and
The mythic
earth."
cycle represented
Varuna-Ahura gion, and,
*
"
is
important
more permanently,
by Mitra-Mithra and Vedic reli
for early for the
whole history
religion
There is no chapter of Aryan and mythology that has stimulated the
instinct
of
of Persian religion.
ultimate
interpretation
more
persist
I am of those who can ently than this very one. not imagine any cessation of these attempts for any
The one
great length of time.
these myths
genesis of
the
Aryan
in the
Mitra.
form mihir 2
is
solid point in the the solar character of
In later Persian the word mithra is
the
name
of the sun.
As
pre
Mithras passed, in the centuries after Christ, out of the bounds of Per
viously stated,
this
solar
and started upon a career of conquest which threatened at one time to subject all Western sia
civilisation.
1
See the author in Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenldndischen Vedic Mythology, p. 125. ; Macdonell, Above, p. 85.
Gesellsehaft, xlviii., 552, note
The
Now
what
is
Prehistoric
natural
the
Gods
origin
133 other
that
of
partner in the dual partnership, namely, Vedic Va-
runa the Asura, Avestan Ahura Mazda?
Not very
years ago Professor Oldenberg advanced and defended ingeniously the hypothesis that Varunais
many
Moon, and
the
follow to a
Varuna
are
we have
very
logical
Mitra and
are
members, as
They
group of gods called Adityas.
chooses, perhaps a
larly in the
little
hastily,
the
sum total of this group. Simi Ahura is accompanied by the soAvesta,
number seven
2
as the
Immortal Holy
"
conclusion.
Sun and Moon.
.seen, in a
Oldenberg
called
he did not hesitate to
this theory
Ones,"
the
Amesha
Spents,
the angels of the Puritan Zoroastrian faith.
make up the number
also
is
note,
seven.
Mithra,
They we may
altogether absent from the Avestan arrange
ment.
Now
Oldenberg believes not only that Varuna and Mitra were the Moon and the Sun, but that the
Amesha
Adityas,
identical
essentially
Spents, were the planets.
He
with
assumes
:
the still
further that the whole set, originally, were not Indo-
European divinities at all, but that they were bor rowed by the Aryans from a Shemitic people presumably the Babylonians 1
See his
latest
far
treatment of the matter in Zeitschrift der Deut1., p. 43 ff.
schen Morgenlandischen Gesellschaft, vol. 2
See above,
enough advanced
p. 129.
j
The
134 in
Veda
Religion of
astronomical knowledge to observe the interrela
moon, and the planets. The Adityas and the Amesha Spents have been
tions of sun,
compared
often, perhaps over-confidently.
necessary, in order to feel unconvinced
It is
not
by Professor
Oldenberg s chain of consequences, to deny a certain nebulous cluster of ancillary or subsidiary divinities which hovered about the persons of the supreme Ahura-Mithra, Varunatwin-gods a matter of fact the Amesha Spents are
Indo-Iranian
As
Mitra.
not the Adityas. indefinite in
ment
in
I
do not believe that the Adityas,
number and gradual
India, represent that cluster,
very gradual Hindu
Avesta, but are not listed as
Macdonell
class of
s
or
develop
or even
its
Several Adityas,
substitutes.
notably Mitra, Bhaga, and
of the
in their
Aryaman recur Amesha Spents.
my own hypothesis
in
the
Either
as to the origin
Adityas presupposes that their origin as a gods is gradual and secondary. The Amesha
Spents, on the other hand, are sheer abstractions. confess that there
is
not
in
me
I
the faith to see in
them anything as concrete as personified planets. The mere names of the Immortal Holy Ones "
"
show what
Mind
";
mean. They are Vohu Manah, :
Asha
Khshathra 1
I
"
Vahishta, "
Vairya,
See above, p. 131.
Best
Wished-for
"
Good
Righteousness Kingdom,"
";
or
The "
Good Kingdom
Prehistoric
Gods
Spenta Armaiti,
";
135 "
Holy Har and
"
Haurvatat,
mony";
Ameretat,
Soundness,"
It is
"Immortality."
hierarchy, but
it
to the bone.
If
"Health";
a beautiful, heavenly
unmythological, non-naturalistic anywhere, then here is the place
is
where sprang up purely symbolic gods ner
the
of
Pilgrim
As
creations
symbolic
is
is
s
if
I
understand him
by the striking ethical manifested by the gods of this
in part led thereto
character which
as
Bunyan
Shemitic source of this deified solar
system, Professor Oldenberg,
group
in
man
s Progress.
for the
aright,
in the
is
at so early a period of
the
common
Indo-European history period of Persia and India. He
thinks that the Shemites preceded the Indo-Euro-
peans the
in the evolution of ethical concepts,
ethical
coloring of
came along with the I
have shown, we
the
and that
Ahura-Varuna myth
divinities themselves.
find
the chief
But, as ethical
Aryan
concept, the rta, safely imbedded in the
Persian
dynastic Arta-names that are reported in the Cunei-.
form Tel-el-Amarna
tablets,
1600 years B.C.
Now
back of the period from which Pro fessor Oldenberg would deduce his results. I should prefer to judge that the wide prevalence of this idea
that date
at a all,
lies far
very early date shows rather that some,
Indo-Europeans
had
advanced
in
if
not
ethical
J
The
136
Religion of the
Veda
perception at an earlier date than has hitherto been suspected, at a date when the Shemites had not as yet
evolved any ethical ideas of quite as fine a flavor as the rta. not the only scholar to Varuna has suggested the moon. Yet I think
Professor Oldenbcrg
whom
is
when taken outside
that this interpretation,
of that
hypothesis which involves the entire solar system, has not very
much
dualic connection of
in
its
confess, moreover, that listen to
out
beyond the
favor
Varuna with I
am
close
Mitra, the sun.
I
not quite willing to
god which leaves Ovpavoz. There has been scepticism about the equation
any interpretation
of this
the cold Greek
in
some
phonetic
.ovpo(v<^
which time has not justified. Greek
Indo-European nori^-nnos or uorn-cnos ; Sanskrit varunas is Indo-European norn-nos. The is
two forms
differ
no more than,
nutanas and nutnas,
and ffrcyvos,
"
recent,"
"
covered."
Mere
is
for instance,
Vedic
or Greek ffTtyavoz a situation
met with
kind of inquiry. The interpre tation of the myth is, as usual, not quite certain. quite often
Few
in this
interpretations of advanced
certain.
Next, the etymology,
etymologies of
like that
are quite of
many
proper names, likewise brings
mythic The next step bonded guaranty. that they who do not believe in the intcrprc-
with is,
myths
it
no
The are
tation
there
is
prone to
little
ogy which
will
never be
will
this
gards
Prehistoric
Gods
137
the etymology. But pooh-poohing an etymol
belittle in
gain
The time
not stay pooh-pooned.
when any
interpretation that disre
obvious comparison will
pass
from perplexity and misgivings.
free
current
All settle
ments that do not regard it will be temporary It and doomed in the end to be repudiated. would seem to me that we must accept this im portant etymology, and submit to
its
guidance.
It
shows that Varuna belongs not only to the IndoIranian (Aryan) time, but reaches back to the Indo-European time, and that he represents, on the impeccable testimony of ovpavo$ some aspect of the heavens, probably the encompassing sky, in accordance with the stem uorn which is its essential t
element.
Rig- Veda
8.
distinguished god, embraces the I.
6
50.
Varuna. sun,
is
states that Mitra (the
The dualism
Varuna, the and Rig- Veda
41. 3 states that
of
all,
sun)
is
Heaven and
the eye of its
eye, the
not less well taken than the dualism sun and
moon. Into the gusty discussion which has grown up
in
a particular degree around this point of interpreta tion
I
would lead
my
hearers no farther.
There
is
perhaps not a single point in the comparative study of this
most important sphere of Aryan
religion
which
The
138 is
lifted entirely
Religion of the
Veda
above doubt.
have endeavored
I
to give a conservative estimate of the varying inter pretations, as free from fanciful exaggeration of the
from unwholesome scepticism. now turn to the second great sphere of
probabilities as
We may
it is
Indo-Iranian mythology.
men and
sacrificers,
It
deals with
the
first
and the soma-liquor, the most
distinguished sacrifice to the gods.
One
of the duties of primitive
man
he grows
as
into the irksome habit of looking for the reason of
things
is
He
to find a reason for himself.
does not
take himself for granted, but assumes that he orig inated from something or other. This is as a rule
not as easy as *
it
is
in the
myth
of Deucalion.
All
that he had to do was to throw stones, the bones of
Mother Earth, behind him, and, behold, there
were men. The abstract benevolent Divinity turning himself into a creative Father God is not always at
he does not on the whole represent a very primitive form of thought, certainly not in India.
hand
;
An
important and widespread conception, partly religious in character, is Totemism. This is founded
on the
belief that the
human
race,
or,
more
fre
quently, that given clans and families derive their
descent from animals
and
"
Wolf
our time.
:
totemic names like
"
Bear
"
"
carry traces of this sort of belief into
This particular question
is
a splendid
The theme
Gods
Prehistoric
have never been
of universal ethnology, but I
able to discover that
upon the ancient
it
139
has any considerable bearing
The many
religion of India.
hints
at its possible importance should be substantiated
by a
larger
and clearer body
present available.
We them
seems
of facts than
at
1
have met previously the greatest parents of Heaven and Earth. Their union was con
all
:
ceived in early Indo-European times as the fruitful
source of the heavenly gods. Occasionally they shoulder the additional responsibility for the human In the Indo-Iranian period there was race as well.
a personage, Vedic Vivasvant, Avestan Vlvanhvant, who figures rather paradoxically as the father of the first
men,
Yama and Manu.
He
is,
as the
ceived as the Father of men. occasionally
2
God Agni,
regarded as the
progenitor
Vedic
Sun con
texts state distinctly and intelligently, the "
Fire,"
of
is
men.
3
There is in this some vague symbolic connection with the process of obtaining fire by friction. This is the Vedic process the two sticks which are rubbed :
are conceived as parents
;
Agni
is
progeny, and, next, possibly, the the epithet dyu, 1
2 3
"
living,"
is
their child, the
first
man.
Certainly
used, on a large scale,
Cf. Oldenberg, Die Religion des Veda, p. 68 ff. See Hillebrandt, Vedische Mythologie, vol. i., p. 488^.
Rig-Veda
1.96.2; 10.53.6.
first
The
140
and man
of fire
Religion of the
Veda
It continues, or
alike.
seems to con
tinue, a sense of the relationship of Agni and man. Now the Veda discloses, and all Hindu tradition ;
harps upon, a father of the or
of
Manu, word manu there
man
human "
Pitar,
race
Father
by the name
Manu."
nothing else than our own word
is
good reason to believe that this
is
was
"
Manush
set
as a kind of
up
Adam or Noah
"
The man ":
"
original in
Indo-
2
For a while the primitive mind European times. seems to be well content with this eponymous man: later on, as I shall presently
show,
Manu
is
in his
turn duly furnished with a well-established father,
Vivasvant, about whose origin people have ceased to
worry.
From
a later time, yet still a very early time, namely, the Indo-Iranian period, comes the Vedic
myth
of
Yama, the son
of Vivasvant.
This myth
is
common piece of As to the component
the clearest and best-preserved
property of the two religions. ideas of this
means
myth
"
twin."
twin pair that earnest.
The
I
He
see no is
room
for doubt.
the male of the obligatory
required to people the world in real female YamI, little as is said about her
is
the earlier parts of the myth, plays
in
Yama
1
Eve to Yama
s
See Bergaigne, La Religion Vedique, vol. i., p. 59 ff. 2 They [the Germans] Compare Tacitus, Ger mania, chapter 2 honor Tuisto, a god who has sprung from the earth, and his son Mannus, as the originators and founders of the race." "
:
The Adam.
She
is,
Prehistoric
Yama
however, not
independent, self-poised
Gods
As
sister.
141 bone, but his
s
a truthful histo
have been compelled to record that Yamr, like Eve, was the prime mover in the nefarious but ne-
rian I
[
cessary act of peopling the world.
Both Manu and first
Yama
Yama s
men.
are primarily nothing but
father Vivasvant
is
marily the sun, whose divine character that time quite completely forgotten
probably
is, :
f/
p_ri-
however, at
old as
is
this
probably not original, because the first and Yami, are in reality an attempt to
affiliation it is
Yama
twins,
beg the question of the origin of the human race al together. The descent of man from the sun represents another start towards solving the difficulty of course this conception must and does blend with the Yama ;
In the
pair.
same way Manu begins quite
adopt Vivasvant all
for his father,
The myths begin
time.
early to
and he remains so
for
to interlace very much,
and to sprout shoots in unexpected directions. A famous pair of riddle-stanzas, Rig- Veda 10. I/. I and
expand the theme
2,
cording to 1
posed
:
it is
an interesting fashion, ac interpretation which I have pro worth while to present it as an extreme in
an
example of the blend of real
myth
original
mythic roots into a
:
Tvashtar, the creator, offers his daughter Saranyu 1
Journal of the American Oriental
Society, xv.,
*
The
142
Religion of the
Veda
marriage to the whole world of gods and mortals.
in
The
who
suitor
gains favor
Vivasvant, conceived
is
as a mortal.
Saranyu, barely wedded, is displeased with Vivasvant and flees not, however, until she ;
had given
birth to the twins
Yama
and Yaml.
This
marriage, you perceive, provides the twins with a
mother, whereas they have previously had only a In order to make sure her escape, she father. changes into a mare and flees to the gods, who hide her away from her mortal family, Vivasvant, Yama, and Yaml. The gods, in order to make matters still
more
varna,
affections. "
acter
safe,
who
;
it
is
construct another female, called Sa-
to take Saranyu
place in Vivasvant
s
The word savarnd means of like char trickily states that the new female was at "
one and the same time
and
s
like
Saranyu
in
appearance, Vivas
also suitable in character to the mortal
vant
more
suitable than the divine
Saranyu,
we
may perhaps understand. Vivasvant begets Manu with the Savarna, and thus Manu comes into pos session
both of a father and mother.
Ultimately Vivasvant finds out the deception practised upon him, follows
Saranyu
and thus gaining her "
Agvins,
the
1
favor, begets with her
Horsemen
abandons them
also,
the shape of a horse,
in
1
the
"
just
Cf. the classical Pasiphae myth.
or as
Dioscuri.
she has
Saranyu previously
The
Prehistoric
abandoned the twins
we may
Gods
143
Yama and YamI, and
resumes,
understand, her independent station as a
divinity.
The
final
outcome
of these
mythic entanglements two progenitors of the human race Yama the son of Vivasvant, and Manu the son of Vivasvant. are
:
They remind especially as
us in a
Manu
is
way
of
Adam
and
Noah,j,
Hindu
the hero of the
flood-
legend, which is astonishingly like the account of the book of Genesis. Vivasvant and his double pro
geny
all
purely
of
them
human
are
endowed
qualities.
for a
good while with
According as the profane
or sacred interest preponderates these
first,
and, of
course, great men become kings or great sacrificers of yore. Manu is the typical first sacrificer. The later
time of the Veda, as he performs on place, fancies himself a Manu, doing
sacrificer of the
his sacrificial
Manu (manusvat), in the house of Manu. the Avesta Vlvanhvant is the first mortal
like
haoma (soma)
pressed the drink
continued to do
in
His son Yima and
corporeal world.
so,
but
Yima
In
who
behalf of the his
descendants
turns rather into a
golden age, in which nor heat nor cold there is nor old age nor death nor want nor disease. He becomes the leading Epic
worldly
ruler,
the
king of a
;
;
personality in later Persian times.
he
is
called
"
Ruler
Yima,"
In the Avesta
Yima Khshaeta
;
this ex-
\j
The
144
Religion of the
Veda
pression turns in later Persian into Djemshed, the
well-known hero
of
the
Persian
Epic, the
Shah
Nameh, or Book of Kings the name is now familiar to Western readers as the interlocutor in Omar \
Khayyam s Rub ayat. The myth takes another, even more important turn in the Veda. Yama is the first mortal king who died and found for the race of men a heaven where they may
rejoice in the
company
of the pious
dead, especially those pious archpriests of mythical
He
antiquity, the Angiras.
who
Vivasvant
is
firm
is
the
of mortals
first
died and went forth to this heaven
abode,
me
s
son,
where
the king, where are
1
"
:
is
yonder flowing
Where
heaven
s
waters,
(Yama) went before and found a dwelling from which no power can shut us out. Our fathers of old have travelled
there let
the path:
it
live immortal."
"He
leads every earth-born mortal thither.
There, in the midst of the highest heaven, beams unfading light, and eternal waters flow there every ;
wish "
is
on the
fulfilled
have
These blessed
left
crepitude of their bodies
crooked of 1
2
3
;
3
limb."
Atharva-Veda
18. 3. 13.
Rig-Veda 9. 113. Atharva-Veda 3.
meadows of Yama. behind them the de
"
rich
8.
28. 5; 6. I2O. 3.
they are not lame nor
The
Prehistoric
Gods
145
same Yama, such is the terror of death, becomes in due time the Hindu Pluto, god of hell Yet
this
and judge tant
is
Which shows how impor
of the wicked.
the special and national treatment of myths,
and how constant
is
the disregard of what
may
be called the radical beginnings of myths. From Yama of the golden age of man to dread Yama, the in
the later
Mythology
parative
And
men
he figures Pantheon of the Mahabharata Com
destroyer of the bodies of
now, the
freely given
as such
traces every step.
sacrificial
substance which,
to the gods, secures to
when
mortals the
golden age of the Avesta and the paradise of the Veda is the old Indo-Iranian drink, Vedic soma, Avestan
an accepted fact with each people that this drink was prepared from a plant of the same
haoma.
name
;
It is
that
it
was an intoxicating drink
;
and that
it
was regarded as the tipple of the gods, inspiring them to those valorous deeds which men craved of them.
Physically,
it is
a plant that grows
upon
the mountains, has green shoots, and yields a golden fluid
which insures health and long
death.
No wonder
that
life
Haoma-Soma
is
and averts king of the
plants, and that the pressing and offering of it was an important act. After pressing it was purified
through a sieve of hair and mixed with milk doubtless the earliest milk-punch on record. The
The
146
Religion of the
Veda
Rig-Veda and the Avesta report the names of the same ancient worthies that prepared the fluid for Vedic Vivasvant, Yama, and Trita Aptya |Avestan Vlvanhvant, Yima, Athwya and Thrita. This marks the most intimate, if not the most importthe gods
:
;
;ant, relation
between the two
religious literatures.
Mythically, this wonderful drink was conceived as
coming from heaven, the type on earth enly fluid that
is
hidden
in the clouds.
of the
heav
In the
Veda
a heavenly eagle, doubtless the lightning, breaks
through the brazen the heavenly fluid earth, that
downpour
is
causes
is,
It is the simple
castle, the cloud,
within which
confined, and carries
it
down upon
to pour
phenomenon
of refreshing
and
it
off to
the earth.
of cloud, lightning, life-giving rain
and
which
is
turned into the heavenly prototype of this delightful drink.
1
The
Iranian
a bird,
by
earth
to
haoma
though
is
not
told.
drink finally turns
god, his
also fetched
manner In
both
slays
of
from heaven his
descent
literatures
demons,
wisdom
the
casts mis *
light
for
See the author in Journal of the American Oriental Society,
xvi.,
siles,
1
and gains
is
the
in
perfect
Greek mythology, see Usener in Rheinisches Museum, lx., z^ff. For winged lightning see Jacobsthal, Der Blitz in der Orientalise hen und Griechischeti Kunst, p. 19, 25 i ff.
For analogous conceptions
&/.,
ff, 2
42.
Vedic, sukratu
= Avestan
in
hukhratu.
The men,
"
Prehistoric
Gods
147
the best world of the pious, the luminous
world."
haoma
In the Avesta the
somewhat
fossilised
and symbolic.
:
and worship are
use has become secondary
its
In the
practices
Veda soma
distinguished offering, the
figures as the
most
champagne of the gods, inspires them to valor
which exhilarates them and
ous deeds against demons and the enemies of the liberal sacrificer. Herculean Indra especially stands
need of an especial meed of courage in his demon therefore he is the most insatiable consumer fights
in
;
of
pools of
"
very
soma"
own allowance
He
as the texts say. at
gods, including Indra,
noontide
come
in
;
the rest of the
at the other
ninth book of the Rig- Veda
practice
of
brewing
this
the sacred
Bacchanalian drink
praises the drink itself as a static language.
tells of
nodal
The en
points of the day, morning and evening. tire
has his
god
in poetic
;
it
and ec
We may remember that the hieratic
parts of the Rig- Veda are preoccupied with the dis-
pensal of soma to such an extent that, in a sacral sense of least,
we may speak
rcah as a religion of soma I
of the religion of the
rites.
have tried with as secure a touch as
to sketch
some
of the principal
ideas which the Vedic
in
my power
myths and
religious
Hindus preserved out
of the
long past which preceded their occupation of India.
The
148 I
am
Religion of the
Veda
mindful of the relative insecurity of prehistoric
reconstructions
they must, in the nature of the case, to some extent be prehistoric guesses. Neverthe :
handling these specimens, and remembering others which time forbids me to treat here, my own
less, in
faith at least in the reality of these
very old
fossils of
human thought has grown and not shrunk. When I say human I mean, too, that they are so very human. They are of the logic of mental events. The effect upon the higher grade of primitive mind which the
facts
and events of the
naturally be expected to have
which we have
We
traced.
visible
that
world
may
the effect
is
must, of course, not
imagine either Indo-Europeans or Indo-Iranians as folk, but rather as semi-barbarous nomad and
town
agricultural tribes,
accustomed to look hard, and to be
^strongly interested in the sights that nature offers.
our analyses are not true they are well Father Sky and Mother Earth next, the if
Certainly
found
:
;
inevitable children of Father Sky, namely, the visi
and luminous phenomena on the sky, the or shiners," as the most persistent idea
ble bodies "
demos,
of the early
ness
;
gods
;
their destruction of hostile dark
their character as overseers
cosmic and moral order voice of another
;
little less
and guardians
of
thunder, the
commanding
obvious god
in
heaven
they appear treated with simplicity and directness,
;
we
The may say with after a
s
inevitable logic.
man, a
first
and man
Gods
Prehistoric
first
The perplexed
way
we come
search
man
pair the propagation of
destiny after
;
death
is
more
carried out with clever realism. until
149
;
subjective, yet
There
is
no better
to the clarified, yet intrinsically
impotent philosophies of a much later time. Because all these myths, fancies, poems, and chains of logic are founded on the outer universe and on
no
less
human
consciousness, therefore
This
sure that they are real.
is
we are reasonably an even more valu
able guaranty than philological exactness and his torical sense which, of course,
should strengthen the
hands of the trained investigator in every detail. In my opinion the mental sanity of Comparative
Mythology
its
is
a true science
;
brief to practise the profession of
and
it is
newed emphasis that the
permissible to say with re religion of the
Veda
is
the
child in direct succession of the prehistoric ideas
which
this science calls
out from the dim past.
LECTURE THE FOURTH. The Transparent, Opaque Gods.
Translucent, and
Religious Con ceptions and Religious Feel ing in the Veda.
The transparent gods: their importance for the study of Father Sky and Daughter Dawn Surya, a religion god of the sun Vata and Vayu, gods of wind The most transparent god: Agni, Fire Agni as the sacrifice fire Prehistoric gods of fire Birth and youth of Agni Agni as god of the morning New births of Agni Agni on the altar, the agent of the gods Priesthood and divinity of Agni A hymn to Agni Other myths of the Fire God The translucent gods: definition of the term God Vishnu God Pushan God Indra, as an example of an opaque god Traditional explanation of the myth of Indra and Vritra Professor Hillebrandt s interpretation of the same myth Renewed definition of the religion of the Rig- Veda Renewed definition
of
Vedic practicalities
Conflicting
prayers
and sacrifices The conception of faith Faith related to Truth and Wisdom Faith personified Faith and works The reward for faith postponed to heaven Contrast between early (craddha) and later "faith"
"devotion"
the sacrificer
The
(bhakti)
"Gift-praises,"
The
another sop to
religious feeling of the Rig- Veda utilitarian sense The glory of the gods Absence
150
Transparent and Opaque Gods
151
Poetic inspiration of real sentiment towards the gods the true religious feeling The complacent master-
The poets own estimate
singers
of their
work
The
divine quality of devotion.
FOR
my
spirit
part of
always come to this theme in the
I
scientific
elation.
You know from
preceding statements what I mean by transparent gods. They are the gods who are at one and the
same time nature object and person. In other are formations whose words, they mythic personi fication
vivid
is
arrested
memory
personification.
the chemical
by the continued action and the which lead to
of the very qualities
is
Figuratively speaking, just
when
about to precipitate or to crystalise
something unrecognisable, and far removed from its elements, it is shaken and dissolved anew. into
We
and quanti In the midst of the uncertainties and
are spared the labor of a qualitative
tative analysis.
intricacies of this subject as a
whole the assurance
that these processes be renews the courage of the
There
of discordant opinions,
hope that out of the Babel many of them grown on the
soil of just scepticism,
the gods and the beliefs of
investigator.
is
ethnic religions will reveal their origins. that,
I
believe
next to the Science of Language, the Science is the clearest of mental or historical
of Religion,
sciences, for the very reason that
it
is
possible to
The
152 trace
some
ligious
Veda
Religion of the
most advanced products of
of the
re
thought to simple and tangible beginnings and in human consciousness.
in nature
mythology
Comparative
At
these
influenced
by extending the
studies profoundly
time within which
has
and the
field
we may carry on our observations.
the risk of seeming too insistent, let me point how it has spanned the distance be
out once more,
tween prehistoric
human
"
Father Sky
personality of the
Now
and the strenuous
"
Olympian Zeus
of the
the Vedic Pantheon brings us poets. into the very workshop where the gods are made.
We
a
visit to
have encountered before some transparent Father Sky (Dyaush Pitar), who comes "
"
gods.
from olden times, and does not grow into anything like the Pater, but
is
personality of
there submerged
that have gained ground
and
Greek Zeus
by other formations
at his expense.
seen what his daughter Ushas
Veda
in the
is
:
beautiful, ageless in distinction
We have
Eternally
young
from the wither
ing race of man, she appears as a lovely maiden dis
playing her charms to the world. While doing this she caters at the same time to interests which are the reverse of poetic.
She
starts the
day
of sacrifice, her
face set towards very practical performances.
She
secures rewards for pious men and their agents with the gods, namely the priests. Yet, on the whole, the
Transparent and Opaque Gods
153
poetic possibilities of this loveliest of nature sights
She
gain the day.
releases
from service her
sister
Night as she rises from the darkened East higher and higher to flood heaven and earth with her waves of light.
To
the Sun-God she
him her bosom
s
splendor.
a bride, opens for Or, she loves the two is
Agvins, the Dioscuri, with whom she travels on their Divine and gracious maiden, car drawn by birds.
but yet no more than one of nature s splendors, she is the type of many a heaven-born story, could we but read it aright.
Next Surya(Sol, Helios) appears upon the stage. He is the Sun-God treated as transparently as pos sible.
Sky
;
He is styled the son of Dawn is his bride, or, in
Dawns
On
are said to be his mothers.
by seven tawny
steeds, his course
great gods, the old
Aryaman. Again, he Agni
Dyaus, the Father another mood, the
(Fire).
He
is
is
a car drawn
guided by other
Adityas, Mitra, Varuna and is
the eye of Mitra, Varuna, or
the preserver and soul of
tion, of everything that stands or moves.
by him men pursue
their vocations.
He
all
crea
Enlivened is
far-see
ing, man-beholding, takes note of the good and bad
deeds of mortals.
They
rejoicing in the security
in turn look
up to him, and the inspiration which
his light affords. I
shall
let
speak for
itself
the hymn, Rig- Veda
1
The
54
1.50,
in
Religion of the
the attractive metrical
Veda translation
(with
John Muir see his v., p. 160, and Metrical
slight changes) of the late Dr.
;
Original Sanskrit Texts, vol. Translations from Sanskrit Writers, p. 179:
Hymn
to
Surya
By lustrous heralds led on high, The fire Sun ascends the sky ;
His glory draweth every eye.
The
stars
which gleamed throughout the
Now
scared, like thieves slink fast away, Quenched by the splendor of thy ray.
Thy beams
to
Like blazing
men
fires
thy presence show they seem to glow.
;
Conspicuous, rapid, source of light, Thou makest all the welkin bright. In sight of gods and mortal eyes, In sight of heaven thou scalest the skies.
O
fiery
God, with thy keen eye,
Thou scannest, like God Varuna, The doings of all busy men. Thou stridest o er the sky s broad space, Thy rays do measure out our days ;
Thine eye
all
living things surveys.
Seven tawny steeds thy chariot bear, Self-yoked, athwart the fields of air, Bright Surya, god with flaming hair.
night,
Transparent and Opaque Gods
155
That glow above the darkness we Beholding upward soar to thee, For there among the gods thy light
Supreme
And
is
seen, divinely bright.
there are other gods, not a few,
whose
origin
So the two positively on the surface. of whom, the former wind-gods Vata and Vayu, on the likely evidence of Teutonic Wotan-Odhin, nature
in
is
A
good bit of profound probably prehistoric. is contained in the mere fact that
is
human philosophy Vata
is
described as a real person in language such
as that of the following finally
1
hymn, and that he may
be invited to partake of oblations
Hymn
Now And
to
:
Vata
Vata s chariot s greatness Breaking goes it, thunderous is its noise. To heaven it touches, !
Makes
light
lurid,
and whirls the dust upon the
earth.
Then rush
together
all
the blasts of Vata
women
To him they come With them conjoint, on the same chariot as
Hastes the god, the king of
:
to their trysting
all
;
travelling,
creation.
Sleepless hastes he on his pathway through the air, Companion of the watery flood. First-born and holy,
Rig-Veda 10. 168, reproduced with some changes from Professor Hopkins s translation, The Religions of India, p. 88. 1
The
156
Religion of the
Whence, forsooth, arose created
Veda
and whence was he
he,
?
The breath of gods and source of life is Vata. This god doth journey whithersoe er he listeth, His sound is heard but no one sees his figure. With our oblation
But there
is
let
us this Vata honor
one figure that looms
others in ancient
Hindu
far
religious history
!
above
from Veda
to Mahabharata, as the classical illustration of
phenomenon god
of nature
be
may
one and the same time.
at
how
a
and personal
itself
It is
all
the god Agni
and god at the beginning Fire," who is element and remains so to the end. Richard Wagner adopts in *
the Nibelungen tetralogy the doubtful interpretation of the
upon
Norse god Loge (Loki) as this red-haired,
wishes to hedge with
This
is
impish god to fire
Wotan calls appear when he
fire
;
his erring child Brunhilde.
interesting, because
it
shows how even the
to bridge over, un the great gap that is critically, as behooves the poet, between the reality of nature and the unstable spec
modern poetic fancy may get
ulation of myth-makers. in
their scholastic
mood
itself
Native Hindu theologians find time to worry over
the fact that a god like Agni can be devouring element and intelligent god at one and the same time.
Even the Epic poet
in
the
Mahabharata
Transparent and Opaque Gods There
stops to wonder:
he kindled
is
made
to say
"
:
but one Agni, yet and Agni himself is
is
"
manifold
157
;
Because
can
I
multiply myself
by the power of mental concentration (yoga), there am I present in the bodies (of men, as vital
fore
2 fire)."
Agni
is,
next
to
most prominent
the
Indra,
god of the Rig- Veda, quantitatively speaking. He is the theme of more than two hundred hymns, and owes
prominence to the personifica tion of the sacred fire which is present at all Vedic his special
performances.
In the hieratic of the
the popular)
hymns
few cases
which Agni
in
connected with the take this simple unfold
its
own
is
Rig-Veda there
And
it
the sacrifice
story step
from
will
be
not more or less directly
sacrifice.
article,
(in distinction
by
is
fire,
How
step.
now
well
and
it
to
let it
turns in
the hands of these priestly poets into a person gifted with the thinly disguised qualities of fire into a mes ;
senger mediating between
men and
archpriest typical of holy rites
But to the end, as we
;
and
gods; into an finally
into a
show, the origin god. of all these ideas is never forgotten the god remains a more or less well-assorted bundle of fire qualities shall
;
and 1
2
fire
epithets.
Mahabharata Ibid.,
i.
3.
Therefore, too, he remains to the
134.8
7.6=916.
= 10658.
The
158 last
Religion of the
Veda
an indifferent vehicle for far-reaching specula
tions, or the finer sort of religious feeling.
The
word
Sanskrit
"
agnis,
fire,"
at all events,
is
Indo-European; Latin ignis, Lithuanian ugnis, Old Slavic ognl. Some kind of worship of the sacrifice fire,
and with
likely to
it
some degree
have taken place
in
of personification,
is
Indo-European times.
The Greeks and Romans,
as well as the Aryans,
offered libations to the
when using
fire
offerings to their gods.
we know
it
to
But there was no
convey definite
the chaste figure of Hestia of the Greeks, or Vesta of the Romans, contrasted result that
of
;
with boisterous male Agni, shows that the conception must have been enable
it
faint
initial
and unstable, to
to produce shapes so thoroughly diverse.
In the main
God Agni
is
in
every essential a product
of the poet-priests of the Rig- Veda.
In India, as elsewhere, tion,
and
mode
this
far as the sacrifice fire sticks, or
fire
was produced by fric fire was obligatory as
of starting
was concerned.
The two
drills, called aranl, are therefore
fire-
Agni
s
parents, the upper stick being the male, the lower ,tthe female.
They produce him under "
Ayu wood
"
Living the god
the type of or suggests
;
is
the
name
of
wonderful to narrate, from the dry born living. At once he becomes
human progeny, and faintly figures as, the first man and the originator of the
{\ Transparent and Opaque Gods
,
human
race.
he
born of a mother
is
The
suck.
159
The new-born
1
child
infant
is
hard to catch
who cannot
give
;
him
soon as born devours the
as
;
.
parents.
With
a different touch, because powerful exertion
required to produce
is
quently called
"
Son
of
Agni by
friction,
he
is
fre
Strength."
The pronounced ritualist the Rig- Veda fixes Agni as
quality of the poetry of
ing, rather than of the night.
Interpretations of Rig-
Veda
a divinity of the
morn
passages which involve reference to something
like the cosy family hearth, the tea-kettle
simmering, the wind soughing outside, are generally moonshine. Nor is his definite association with the morning just
what we should expect it to be from our point of view no suggestion, perchance, of the merry dairy maid milking the cows, or the housewife busy with ;
a comfortable breakfast.
Familiar, home-life touches
are not absent altogether even
they are more abundant
But
(Grhya-Sutras).
in
in the
ritualistic,
and
little else.
ness, destroys
the
demons
and
the Rig- Veda
in
the
"
main Agni
He
;
House-books" is
cosmic iv
dispels the dark
of night.
He
throws
open the gates of darkness earth and sky are seen when Agni is born in the morning. He is even ;
1
See above,
p. 139.
,
The
160
.supposed to
lift
Religion of the
Veda
daily the eternally youthful sun to
the sky to furnish light to the people.
Such
his cosmic aspect in the
is
1
means
epithet usharbudh, which
We have
seen before that he
son of Dawn. 2
is
On the
morning.
other hand his ritualistic character betrays
itself in his
at
"waking
dawn."
also regarded as the
All this emphasises the opening of
day, ushered in by the Goddess Dawn, and the gods that wake in the morning Agni, and come in the morning, like the Agvins and
the
sacrificial
God
others.
Every morning Agni sacrifice "
the
;
this secures for
youngest."
old Agni, and
On
produced anew
is
him the appropriate
the other hand he
now comes
born again as a youth. and ancient is called
;
His new births are
having grown old he
Thus
it
the same
"
"
is
happens that he
"
"
epithet
the same
a good deal of playful or
mystic handling of this paradox. contrasted with his old
is
for the
very young
in
the Vedic poets delight in this kind of mental see-saw. The mystery is shallow what is
passage
;
;
meant
is,
that the vigorous
Agni recalls There is no ducted the 1
2
p.
of the present-day
his traditional importance in the past.
first
73-
than Agni, for he con Just as he flames up to-
sacrificer older sacrifice.
Rig- Veda 10. 156. 4.
Above,
life
Transparent and Opaque Gods
dawn
at
day of
161
so he shone forth under the auspices
former dawns at the
forefather: Bharata, or
sacrifice of
Vadhryacva
many
a great
Divodasa, or
;
Trasadasyu. After having been kindled Agni is placed upon the altar or, if we trust the testimony of the ritual
upon three
1
Fagots are now piled on, fat oblations are poured in he waxes big his tongues, three, or seven, shoot up he has four eyes, or a thousand eyes both things mean that texts of the Veda,
altars.
;
;
;
he
is
sharp-sighted
his jaws are sharp
;
;
and
shine golden, or his iron grinders clutch. is
figure
changed
he
:
is
his teeth
Then
the
flame-haired, tawny-haired,
glowing head faces in all direc Ghee, or melted butter, is his food: he
tawny-bearded tions.
;
his
therefore called
is
ghee-backed, ghee-faced, gheeeven more boldly, Agni himself says, Once, ghee is his eye. This is the point where Agni begins to take on a little more of the flesh and blood of per haired.
upon the skeleton of his elemental qualities. For he receives the offerings neither passively nor
sonality
At
selfishly.
as late a time as that of the great
Epic, the Mahabharata
ghee that scribed 1
in
is
poured into
1-
he
is
my
made
mouth,
the Veda, nourishes the
Cf. Rig- Veda 2. 36.
1.7-
2
4
;
5.
n.
2
;
10. 105. 9.
to say: in the
"The
way pre Gods and the
1
The
62
Manes
.
.
Religion of the
called
.
Manes come
my mouth
by
to eat the
Veda the Gods and the
ghee."
In fact the gods cannot subsist without him.
A
very neat story which, as usual, remains one of the stock themes of story-telling India in later times, tells in
two hymns
of the
1
Rig-Veda
how Agni on
Agni has it older brothers have worn
a certain occasion tired of this service.
born
in
upon him that
his
themselves out in their job, and concludes that he
had better dodge a
like fate.
Whereupon he
es
But the god Yama discovers and betrays him, and Varuna, as the spokesman of capes into the waters.
the gods, finally induces
him
for a consideration to
resume the task of expediting the gods. The names which he obtains 2
"
such as
"
oblation-eater
reappear familiarly
in
and
sacrifice to the in this capacity, ;
"
oblation-carrier,"
the Mahabharata and
later.
There they are pigeon-holed, along with numerous other names, to be selected in the manner of the Norse kennings, to vary the diction, to swell its dignity, and to ease the task of the verse-maker.
With 1
a different turn, he brings the gods to the sac-
10. 51 and 52. For other later
tales of Agni lost and found again see the Maha bharata legends in Holtzmann, Agni nach den Vorstellungen des 2
Mahabharata, 3 Huta<;a,
p.
a ff.
hutat;ana, hutabhuj, hazyabhaksha, etc.; hutavaha, havy-
avah, havvavahana,
etc.
Transparent and Opaque Gods and seats them on the strewn
rifice,
He
earth,
thus
heaven
familiar with the roads that connect
becomes and
grass.
163
and becomes the regular messenger be In this capacity he is associated
tween the two.
with the Angiras, a race of mythic semi-divine priests whose name seems to be identical with Greek
ayyskoZ (angel), messenger." They also mediate between gods and men, and naturally Agni is an "
Angiras, the
first
seer Angiras, the ancient Angiras,
the most inspired of the Angiras.
Agni
officiates at the sacrifice
and becomes the
divine counterpart of the earthly priesthood priest, serving-priest,
the very also
:
house-
priest in general, as states
stanza of the Rig-Veda.
first
or invents the
inspires,
thought he frees
and
brilliant
As such he speech and
prayer, and, what is very important, from sin. For the sacrifice, of course, is
of
the staple means of conciliating
the gods
when
The idea of supposed to be angry. blends with that of seer a ad sage. He priesthood is so expert and well-travelled as to assume in a very
they are
pronounced sense the
qualities of omniscience
and
1
omnipresence.
He knows
everything by virtue of his wisdom felly does the wheel.
embraces wisdom as a adjective kavikratu, 1
Cf.
Holtzmann
s
"
;
he
The
possessing the intellect of the
essay, cited above, p. 5.
The
164
sages,"
applies to "
him
Veda
particularly,
and the epithet
having innate
wisdom," is exclusively the function of archpriest and archsage to godhead it is but a step. Agni is the divine
jdtavedas,
own.
his |
Religion of the
From
benefactor of his worshipper fuel
takes across
And
then, finally, he
the other gods
carry
him
iron walls, or
calamities, as in a ship over the sea.
all
mighty heaven and in
who sweats to
him he protects with a hundred
:
is
all
divine monarch, surpassing
the worlds,
who worship
is
superior to
all
him, or takes his place whom the poets
the long line of supreme gods
indifferently, or henotheistically, as
convenient times with
praise at
it,
and
all
Max
the
Miiller
put
all
the fervor
resourceful verbiage which
marks the
diction of the Rig- Veda
:
Then hail to Agni on his brilliant chariot, The shining signal of every holy sacrifice, Of every god
The
in
might divine the equal,
gracious guest of every pious mortal
Dressed out
in all thy
!
ornamented garments,
Thou standest on the very navel of the earth, The hearth of sacrifice. Born of the light, Both
priest
and king,
shalt hither fetch th
immortals
!
For thou hast ever spread both earth and heaven,
Tho being their son thou hast Come hither, youthful god, to And bring, O Son of Strength,
spread out thy parents. us that long for thee, the bright immortals
(Rig-Veda
!
10.
i.
5-7.)
Transparent and Opaque Gods I
have followed the main current of Agni
make
order to
clear the
meaning
165
s life injf*
of arrested person
ification, or arrested anthropomorphism.
The Vedic
poets are far from restricting themselves to this one Fire is not only in the sacral fire-sticks, but
view.
he
everywhere as sun and lightning in as glint on the surface of the waters as
visible
is
the sky
;
:
;
the embryo of plants and trees that willingly give
it
up when in flames as the spark of flint and the rocks and even in the heat of the body, and as ;
;
vital
force latent in
remarkable
all
living things.
Especially
the certainly
Indo-European myth which deals very clearly with a twin descent from heaven the descent of fire, and the descent of the is
:
heavenly fire is
In
fluid.
Agni
its
Vedic treatment the heavenly
of the lightning
soma, the ambrosial drink
;
"
:
the heavenly fluid
is
The one (namely, the
Matarigvan brought from heaven the other (namely, soma) the eagle brought from the heavenly J
fire)
;
have spoken before of the descent of the the descent of Agni from heaven is heavenly fluid doubtless connected with the lightning fire. Ma rock."
I
3
;
tarigvan, however, class of
5
brings Agni, belongs to the
mythic persons for
the attribute 1
who
"
opaque."
Rig-Veda, i. 93. Above, p. 146.
6.
whom
Even
I
have reserved
this dramatic nature
.
1
The
66
act, all
Religion of the
Veda
which the plastic spirit of the Greeks shapes for time into the main motif of the Prometheus
tragedy, appears to
heaven
s
method
sacrifice:
myth. true of
of furnishing
fire
poets merely as and soma for the
does not turn into a real humanised
it
And what of
all
the Vedic
have deduced here
I
the
s traits in
Agni
Veda
;
in detail is
he
is
at
one
moment element and phenomenon, at another person and god, at all times as clear as his own light to teach the nature of the gods. I
have used the term transparent
in
connection
with divine personifications
whose
naturalistic basis
and whose starting point
human
consciousness
absolutely clear. of speech
though
Now
whose
wish to be understood
It refers to
structural outline
may
still
great deal of truth, although
it is
tations of secondary matter.
It
loss of the original
is
the term translucent, figure
it is, I
plain physical sense.
in
in its
mythic formations be traced with a
obscured by incrus is often merely the
simple name which is the cause Dawn Divinities of the name "
of the obscuration.
Sun
"
"
"
Fire
(Agni), bring
credentials that every one can read.
But the quick
"
(Ushas),
(Surya), or
"
substitution of an attractive, or pointed epithet for
the original
name may plague
the investigator for
all
time to come, and deprive him of mathematical cer tainty, even though every instinct draws him in the
Transparent and Opaque Gods right direction. will not find
it
An
unusually unsympathetic sceptic hard to rest his feet upon some pro
jecting ledge of doubt,
we must not
167
and
all
history cries out that
try to dislodge sceptics
by
violence.
Every middle-aged student of Comparative Mythol ogy and Comparative Philology recalls the time when even the most complex myths were blandly ex plained as nature processes
nothing in that line could be too fanciful and far-fetched to find adher ;
No
cock might crow in a fairy-tale without becoming party to an involved and profound sunmyth. We have all sobered much there is now,
ents.
;
perhaps, too
much
insistence
upon the element
uncertainty which goes with the term
of
".probable,"
no matter how closely the probable may approach certainty.
Tho two
Agvins, the Dioscuri, are translucent They harbor some phenomenon of morning gods. The other light as one part of their dual character.
probably the corresponding phenomenon at eve. But just what this duality is we were unable to say. It is something to have limited this brilliant Indo-
is
1
European myth so
far,
rather than idle fancy. seen, belongs
also
worse interpretation 1
See above,
p. 116.
and to
find
behind
The god Varuna,
to this class will turn to
;
as
it
reason
we have
for better or
for
some phenomenon
The
i68
Religion of the
heaven which suggests the god
of
overseer, be
Veda
s salient
encompassing sky, be
it
quality of
moon.
it
I
choose two other gods as the type of translucent gods, Vishnu and Pushan in both cases we shall be ;
This may engaged with variant aspects of the sun. seem to some minds a suspicious monotony of ex the so-called solar theory. But I am nothing daunted the sun is important and ever present with early observers I shall let planation, in fact
it
is
:
;
him
own
fight his
If I
am
not mistaken,
Vishnu a service
"
through the
(tredlid
the
"
8
earth."
The
m and snu,
leading fact in
itself
meaning Vishnu s
that he takes three strides
is
A
name
passage in the Sama-Veda
Vishnu strode through over the back of Here the word for through" is vi ;
the word for
the
two words
Veda
vi krawi).
states that
have done the cause of
I
pointing out that the
back."
the
activity in
in
of the
compounded
is
battles.
"
"
back" is
name Vishnu.
strides lands
Vishnu
sdnu (snu)
The in
the two parts of
third of these
enormous
the highest heaven, in the
bright realm of light, where even the winged birds do not dare to fly. 3 There in the highest stepping 1
2
American Journal of Philology, vol. Sama-Veda 2. 1024, yato vishnur
sdnavi. 3
Rig- Veda
i.
155. 3,
5.
xvii., p. 428.
vi
cakrame prthivya adhi
Transparent and Opaque Gods is
place
Vishnu
fount of
s
1
This place
honey.
identical with the highest place
169
of
Agni
;
Vishnu
guards the highest, or third place of Agni, the
on high, the sun. rejoice.
place
;
is
fire
There the gods and pious men
a
Liberal sacrificers ever look forward to this fixed like an eye in heaven.
it is
3
Later Veda
texts clearly define the three steps as earth, atmos-
phere, and heaven.
Vishnu represents the sun
in
from the horizon of the earth, through
his ascent
the atmosphere to the zenith, considered as the solar His swift climb over the back of the uni paradise. verse through the cosmic triad justly arrested the
fancy of the poets, and they name him accordingly. Instead of holding to the proper name of the sun, or to his life,
more
familiar functions of giver of light
they express in the name Vishnu, and
fancies connected with
it
and
in the
the sufficiently remarkable
from earth to the paradisiacal zenith involves but three stations earth, atmos fact that his ascent
:
phere, and heaven.
records
show the
division of the
From
Rig- Veda
I.
154. 5.
Ibid., 10. i. 3.
3
Ibid., i. 22. 20.
4
See above,
p. 91.
Hindu
greatest interest in this threefold 4
Other notions, such as with his wide steps for his
universe.
that Vishnu marks off
2
the earliest time
The
70
1
Religion of the
Veda
worshippers corresponding breadth or wide scope for success and prosperity, and that he frees them from restraint
and
trouble, follow as an almost inevitable
In a later time Vishnu
consequence.
the highest place }
To
Trinity.
pious.
sectarian
is
elevated to
one of the so-called Hindu
the end he remains the Vishnu of the
solar paradise to
But
he
;
is
whom
go the
spirits of
the departed
same time he represents to his worshippers the pantheistic Brahma, or at the
with which the soul of
"all-soul,"
man
is
ultimately
destined to unite.
choose as the second example of a translucent god, the shepherd god Pushan. His chief claim to I
usefulness
is
that he
knows the roadways
;
protects
from their dangers, such as wolves and robbers guards cattle, so that they be not dashed to pieces ;
in
the ravine
;
brings
them home unhurt when they
have gone astray and, in general, restores lost Pushan personally drives the cows to pas things. ture he weaves the sheeps dresses, and smoothes ;
;
their coats
by
goats.
gruel,
;
he carries a goad, and his car is drawn seeing that he lives on mush or
And
whereas the other gods revel
his bucolic nature is pretty clear.
in
soma or ghee,
His name means
which may, of course, be the epithet of any benevolent god, and therefore veils rather than "
Prospero,"
tells his particular
character.
Transparent and Opaque Gods
The
171
following specimen shows the tone of the not
too numerous
hymns addressed Rig-Veda
Guide
Who,
And
us,
O
6.
to him:
54.
Pushan, to a
man
wise, straightway shall point the way,
say to us
"
:
Lo, here
"
it is!
With Pushan joined
He points And saith
let us go forth our houses out to us,
to us
"
:
;
"
Right here they are
His chariot s wheel doth never break Its seat doth never tumble down Nor doth his wheel s rim ever crack.
!
;
;
Whoso payeth
Him Pushan That man
tribute to the
god
never doth forget
is first
;
to gather wealth.
May Pushan follow our kine, May he protect our horses too, And furnish us with solid wealth
!
naught be lost, nor aught be hurt naught be injured in the pit Our cattle sound bring back to us
May May
;
;
!
May Pushan And
drive our lost
The standard a sun-god.
hand and wide, goods back to us
pass his good right
Around about and
far
!
interpretation of this
This
is
well supported
god
is
again as
by some higher
The
172
mythic
traits in
which
He
lord
wanting.
Veda
Religion of the
is
this
of
not altogether things that stand or
god
all
is
move almost the same words describe Surya (Helios). ;
He
also
the lover or husband of the Sun-Maiden
is
who
Surya, that arch-flirt
carries
on
affairs
with the
male Surya, the Agvins, and Soma. He alone has the very ancient epithet aghrni This glowing." "
the sun, and besides hardly any other article than fire. Now fire Pushan is not. To consider fits
him, under these circumstances, a mere pero,"
or an abstract
Lord
"
of the
particularly
song (daind)
a
good
and restorer of
to an overseeing heavenly body,
we may trust another Lithuanian folk which I may be permitted to quote
if
:
Oh,
at the yester
I lost
my
little
even tide
lamb
Oh, who
shall help
My
little
only
lamb
!
me go and
seek
?
went and asked the morning The morning star replied I have to build the dear sun I
star,
:
"
At morrow I
is
Contrariwise his
path-finder, cattle god,
lost things point
god Pros-
Paths,"
deal like begging the question. abilities as
"
s
morning
went and asked the evening
The evening star I have to make
"
At every even
replied : the dear sun
tide."
s fire
tide."
star,
s
bed
Transparent and Opaque Gods I
"
I
My
replied
I
The
:
have been smitten with a sword, sorry face I
1
hide."
went and asked the lovely sun,
The dear sun gave "
73
went and asked the waning moon,
The waning moon
I
1
Nine days ll
I
11
reply
seek,
not set in the
;
and on the tenth a
sky."
familiar notion that the sun oversees every
3
thing appeals in this instance to the simple reasoning
A more suitable
power of shepherd
folk.
a shepherd god
not easy to imagine.
fore dress
it is
him out
in
shepherd
s
origin for
They
clothes, feed
there
him on
shepherd s food, and turn him into a heavenly bell wether of their flocks. But his real natural history
me
does not seem to
to be very
the simple-minded fable.
much
disguised by
We may safely call Pushan
a translucent god.
The most prominent of the gods of the Rig-Veda About two hundred and fifty hymns are Indra.
is
devoted to his praise, perhaps one-fourth of all the hymns of the collection. No account of Vedic religion can pass by his big personality, and yet his essence and quality are that of lower, rather than higher 1
8
Cf. the Lithuanian folk-song, above, p. 114.
Professor Chase
s
rendering, Transactions of the American Philo
logical Association, vol. xxxi., p. 193. * H\ioc>Tta.voTtTri<->,
Iliad 3. 277
;
yEschylus, Prometheus Bound, 91.
1
The
74
Religion of the
religious conceptions,
even
Veda
we adopt no higher To the growingly finer Veda Indra contributes
if
standard than the Rig-Veda. religious thought of the later
nothing positive. Negatively, the coarse grain and the fleshliness of his character which, taken all in all, are foreign to the gods of the
Vedic Pantheon,
very unfavorable attention. I
i
1
I
anthropomorphic, that the
human
is,
Indra
is
arrest
so grossly
he embodies so completely and bluster, gluttony,
qualities of brag
make him the peg upon which to hang scepticism. In that way he contributes Of negatively to the advance of Hindu thought. drunkenness, and
lust, as to
this later on.
This god has remained opaque to the eye of Vedic study. He is not wanting in superlative cosmic qualities.
biting off
gaged
in
In fact the poets never, unless
come nearer more than they can chew, than when en
except perhaps
in
the case of Varuna,
lauding Indra.
He has nocounterpartamong No one, celestial or ter
those born or to be born. restrial,
has been born, or shall be born, like unto him.
All the gods yield to him in might and strength.
1
He
supports earth and sky, or spreads out the earth.
More
particularly, 4
demiurge 1
2
Rig- Veda
he
is
the
2
Hindu Hercules and
the doer of great deeds for the people. 4. 18. 4; 7. 32. 2; 8. 51. 7.
Ibid., 2. 15. 2.
Transparent and Opaque Gods
He
slays dragons
and monsters
;
he
is
the typical
slayer of the foes of the pious sacrificer.
deeds of heroic valor he
is
175
To
these
stimulated by immense
potations of intoxicating soma.
In order to accom
plish the slaughter of the arch-dragon Vritra
he drank
on one occasion three lakes of that delightful bever age, so that decidedly he had a jag on, which, it has been noted, rhymes well with dragon. Accordingly he has a tremendous body, strong jaws and lips. He tawny-haired and bearded, carries a club in his hand, and fights on a chariot drawn by two bay steeds. is
In general the Vedic poets cannot be accused of coarseness
were
yet
;
it
seems
that, in this instance,
"
this,
Lord
of
Strength,"
they
by the mighty deeds
irresistibly attracted
as they call him.
This
of is
probably owing to the fact that he is felt to be the national hero of the Aryan invaders in their struggles against the dark-skinned aborigines, whom they must
overcome
in
order to hold possession of the land
which they invaded.
And
nations are never coarser
than when they put their own nationality into an tagonism against another nation. In a recent war, familiar to all of us, a
prominent warrior on the side consuming de
of the stronger nation expressed his
make, by his own valorous deeds, the language of the weaker nation the vernacular of Hades. This
sire to
is
the spirit of the worship of Indra.
The
176 But
it
Veda
Religion of the
would be a mistake
to suppose that Indra
is
a mere coarse embodiment of the jingo valor of a superior race exercised against a weak enemy fated
Indra
to subjection. lucent, that
is,
is
not even trans
is
longer define his origin with
no doubt that he originated
The
in visible nature.
To
where.
that Indra
character
we can no
certainty, but there
somewhere
s
begin with, there
is
no
s origin is prehistoric.
difficulty
is
to tell
belittling the fact
His name occurs
Avesta (Andra) where, as is often the case with earlier Aryan divinities, he is degraded to a demon. in the
I
But
Vedic epithet, Vritrahan, Slayer of the same name as that of the abstract
his chief
Vritra,"
is
"
genius of Victory,
Verethraghna
in the Avesta,
the Armenian dragon slayer Vahagn.
hand there then
If
we
is
no
and
the other
real Indra literature outside of India.
are forced to turn to India in order to
explain Indra,
we must not
forget that his origin
outside of India and precedes
The
On
1
Hindu
is
history. 32, is
done
into prose, rather than into metre, in order to
show
following specimen, Rig-Veda
how Indra and
i.
his principal exploit,
namely, the slaughter of the dragon Vritra and the liberation of the waters, really presents itself to the mind of the
clearly
poets 1
:
See Hillebrandt, Vedische Mythologie,
vol.
iii.,
p.
Transparent and Opaque Gods 1.
Let
me now
tell
177
forth the heroic deeds of Indra,
which he that wields the club performed of yore. he slew the dragon, broke the way for the waters ;
He cleft
the belly of the mountains. 2.
God
He slew the dragon who lay upon the mountain. Like Tvashtar forged for him his heavenly club.
roaring cattle, the sea.
down came
Lusty as a
3.
bull,
the waters, flowing swiftly to
Indra demanded soma from three His missile bolt he ;
vats drank he of the pressed drink.
took
in
hand, the generous god, and slew the first-born
of the dragons. 4. When thou didst smite, O Indra, the first-born of the dragons, when thou didst make naught of the wiles of the wily, then, bringing out both sun and heaven and
dawn, thou verily didst not find a foeman worthy of thy steel.
A
drunken weakling, Vritra, did challenge the great 6. hero, the mighty, dashing fighter. He did not withstand the impact of his weapons with broken nose lay shat :
tered he whose foe was Indra.
Over him lying
like a broken reed, the waters Those go (very waters) which Vritra had encompassed with his might, at the feet of them the 7.
so,
flowing at will.
dragon prone lay stretched. nor the 13. Nor thunder, nor lightning did help him hail-storm which he cast about him. When Indra and ;
the dragon fought their battle, then times the liberal god won the battle.
even for future
These stanzas carry us into the very midst of a
The
178
myth whose questions
who
is
:
Veda
Religion of the
them three
three elements bring with
First,
what are the waters
Vritra that shuts
them
in ?
?
Secondly,
Thirdly,
who
is
Indra that liberates them after a struggle that puts him so very much on his mettle ? Hindu tradition,
commentators and
later classical Sanskrit literature,
has always had an unhesitating answer The waters are rain Vritra is the cloud that shuts them off :
;
from the earth
;
Indra, therefore,
is
the storm or
thunder god that rends the clouds with his lightning bolt and frees their waters. This interpretation, at first
sight thoroughly sensible
was
and most
satisfactorily
good while held to be good by most western students of the Veda and Comparative suggestive,
for a
The trouble with it turned out to be the Veda has the real storm and rain god
Mythology. that
Parjanya,
and that the hymns addressed to him
describe thunder-storms in language that
and cannot be mistaken
is
very dif
anything else The than the phenomena of the thunder-storm. sober facts of the Indra- Vritra myth are as follows ferent,
for
:
A god armed with a bolt who
holds the rivers in confinement within the
mountains. ains. sea. 1
fights a dragon or serpent
He
the dragon, cleaves the
kills
mount
The rivers flow from the mountains to the Thus the texts there is nothing to show that
See above, p. in.
:
Transparent and Opaque Gods the mountains
mean
clouds,
and the
i
79
rivers the flow
of rain.
After such and other premonitory symptoms of scepticism and unrest, Professor Hjllebrandt has recently advanced
new theory
a
of
Indra, Vritra,
and the waters, which he expounds with great in He argues that the streams genuity and learning. 1
of India
and the neighboring Iranian countries are
at their lowest level in the winter; that the confiner
of their waters
winter monster
is
the frozen winter, conceived as a
by the name
of Vritra,
"
confiner;"
that Vritra holds captive the rivers on the heights of
the glacier mountains; and that, consequently, Indra
can be no other than the spring or summer sun who frees them from the clutches of the winter dragon: "
Behold,
in
winter
s
chain sleeps the song of the "
waterfall under the
dungeon roof of crystal ice So sings a Swedish poet, Count Snoilsky. And another Swedish poet, Andreas Aabel, rings out the "
antistrophe:
now and now Just
Now winter
We can 1
2
!
Hear the mountains proud cascade
!
check and prison,
it
has broken winter
s
it
courses free along
its road!"
2
true that the emergence of spring from
it
is
is
sometimes treated poetically as a
understand this
much
battle.
better in a north coun-
See Hillebrandt, Vedische Mythologie, See ibid, p. 187.
vol.
iii.,
p.
i^l ff-
1
The
180
Religion of the
Sweden where the
try like
conflict
Veda is
hard and long.
Even there these phenomena seem hardly
to suggest
so fierce and Herculean a contest as that which
supposed to take place between Indra and the giant Vritra
is
frost
:
Released from ice are stream and brook,
By
spring-tide
These words
enchanting, enlivening look.
s
Goethe seem to come so much
of
nearer to what might be expected.
But over and beyond, Indra performs fessional
of other
capacity of Hercules a
He
"
stunts."
stables of the avaricious
in his
pro
large assortment
releases the
cows from the
who
them and
confine
will
not sacrifice them to the gods. He also performs the heavenly analogue of this deed he breaks open :
the stables of darkness, presided over by another
demon !|
of the
name
enly cows, that
is,
of Vala,
and releases the heav-
the light of
dawn and
the sun.
seems impossible to hold aloof this important myth from the classical myths of Heracles and It
three-headed Geryon, and Hercules and three-headed Hercules carries off the cattle which belong Cacus. to the monster, or, in the case of Cacus, which the
monster had stolen from the hero, and had hidden
away
in
his cave.
variety of other 1
1
Indra, moreover, kills a great
demons.
To
the immediate con-
See Oldenberg, Die Religion des Veda,
p.
143
ff.
Transparent and Opaque Gods
Veda he
ception of the
is
181
indeed a sort of Hercules,
the most personal of ajljthe ..gods, so personal that
Who people begin to doubt his existence, and ask, has seen him?" I have brought much sympathy to "
Professor Hillebrandt
may
interpretation which I
s
hope end turn out to be the right one for the has left me in the frame of mind indicated
in the
present
it
;
by the word opaque.
I
confess, I cannot pass over
as lightly as does Hillebrandt the
tradition that Vritra
of Indra with
Vayu
by the
tively
is
unanimous Hindu
The
the cloud.
"Wind"
is
paralleled sugges
association of Parjanya
"
Wind."
Parjanya the thunder-storm.
is
partnership
and Vata,
beyond peradventure a god
of
It is therefore still possible that
and the waters represents a specialised poetic treatment of a myth of thunder storm, cloud, and rain. The myth may have, so to
the
myth
of Indra, Vritra,
been brought down to earth Indra, the storm god, becomes a Hercules, and kills a dragon who hoards in the mountains (formerly, the clouds), speak,
:
the rivers (formerly, the rain of the
clouds).
For
most important theme in seems to me that we must look to the
a final solution of this
mythology future.
theory,
it
The if
it
confirmation of Hillebrandt
comes
Western Asia.
more
at
all,
s
Such confirmation should
definitely Indra s
masterly
must come from Iran or
and Vritra
s
establish
character in the
1
The
82
Veda
Religion of the
Indo-Persian time from which,
if
not from a
earlier time, dates their beginning.
If
still
these earlier
data should by any chance ever show Indra and Vritra in the mutual relation of summer and winter,
then Hillebrandt then,
hypothesis, and
s
I
fear not until
would be triumphantly vindicated.
RELIGIOUS CONCEPTIONS AND RELIGIOUS FEELING IN THE VEDA.
The is
in
religion of the Rig-Veda, as
its
most
we have
seen,
superficial aspect a priestly religion
works designed to propitiate and to barter with The outer form in which it pre personal gods. of
sents itself rifice
with
is
its
as poetry of the sacrifice.
ceremonial formalities
is,
The
sac
as I have
ventured to say, the epidermis of Vedic religion. In its next layer the religion of the Veda is ex pressed in hymnal worship of the same personal
;
|
gods who get the offerings. Whatever we may say about the origin of these gods, one by one, they are to the Hindu conception for the most part related to the visible and audible forces of nature. its
larger aspect, cosmic nature,
of inspiration of the
was the inspiration
European
Nature
in
the prime source
religious bard, just as
of his prehistoric
it
Aryan and Indo-
The conception of nature and notwithstanding many crudities, is
ancestors.
the nature gods,
Vedic
is
Religious Conceptions and Feeling I shall
singularly poetic.
show
ious consciousness, in so far as their admiration
upon
and
183
later that the relig it
praise,
concentrates
marks
itself
the
in fact
highest point in the Vedic Rishis mental and spirit
In the end
ual possibilities.
something more than
it
will
be found to be
religious poetry
it
;
rather
is
religion or religious sense expressing itself as poetic
inspiration.
Anyhow we must
not believe that the
has swamped everything. The delight in the gods, especially the half-personalised nature forces which are treated as gods, is too unstinted and gen ritual
erous to allow us to doubt sure that many, their beautiful
if
not
all,
hymns
its
to the goddess
the sun-god Surya with the poets, delighting in their
am
I
genuineness.
of these poets addressed
full
theme
Dawn,
swing
for the
or to
of creative
theme
s sake,
We
and chiseling their poems for the poems sake.
may
believe that these priest-poets at times,
when
asked the favor of the gods not but as joyously unconscious bene greedy beggars, ficiaries of divinities whose power to reward is in in their best vein,
as
and who, and worthy
cidental to their inherent generous nature,
therefore present themselves as a brilliant
theme
of song.
But the every-day existence of something dreadful
different.
It is
practicalities.
loaded
They
these
men
down with
must
live
by
is
those this
j|
The
184
Veda
Religion of the
very trade of theirs, namely, praise of the gods and purveyance of the sacrifice. When they turn
minds away, as they constantly do and must do, from those well-conceived personifications they tend downward. As middle-men between the gods and their
men they must, above all, take care of men, their own selves not least of all. Men can subsist and prosper only if the gods return in kind. The gods, on the whole, are good they do not beat down the ;
requests of
him that comes with prayer and cup
of
soma.
Reciprocity, frank unconditional reciprocity, thus becomes an accepted motive Give thou to "
:
me,
I
give to
thee,"
is
the formula.
king, or rich householder,
is
priests,
each of
prising habit of becoming as time goes by.
Vedic religion
of
In this is
sacrificing
thereby placed between
the upper and the nether mill-stone
both gods and
The
1
:
he must
whom show
satisfy
a sur
more and more exacting
way
the high poetic quality
crowded and choked by many
conceptions mean from the start, circumstances into a mean shape.
or bent
by these The gods them
notwithstanding their luminous origin, are brought down to the plane of human weakness. Open to adulation, they become vain eager for ad selves,
;
vantage, they become shifty; reflecting human desires, they become sordid, and in some cases even indecent. 1
dehi
me daddmi
le.
Cf. the
Roman
do ut des.
Religious Conceptions and Feeling In the
first
place,
Vedic poets engage
grant
I
suppliants.
in
same time, and cannot wishes of their numerous
at the
the conflicting
all
in a sort
The gods cannot be
of scramble for the gods.
one and the same place
185
have dealt with this theme which
may
interest the broader students of the history of relig ions, in a recent
paper presented to the
XlVth Inter
national Congress of Orientalists, held at Algiers in 1905.
and
The
the paper,
title of
Sacrifices, tells
On
Conflicting Prayers
a good deal of the story.
notion which comes out quite persistently "
requires art to
"
hog
the gods, and
is
The
that
it
not a very
it is
delectable notion either from the aesthetic or the eth
Yet not
less so perhaps than the over the slaughter of enemies, which has been known to be chanted by both sides ical
Te
point of view.
Deum laudamus
at the
same time when each
side claimed victory.
1
See Johns Hopkins University Circulars of 1906, Nr. 10, p.
2
Or consider "
ff.
:
Gieb regen und gieb sonnenschein Fur Reuss und Schleuss und Lobenstein Und wollen andre auch was ha n
So mogen
sie s dir selber sa
;
n."
My colleague, Professor Gildersleeve, proposes the following lish transfusion :
"
I
Give rain and sunshine we implo For us upon the Eastern sho ;
any others want a share Themselves may offer up the If
prayer."
2
Eng
1
The
86
Religion of the
Veda
instance, poets of the ancient family of the bards, Vasishthas, on a certain occasion brag that
So,
for
they made Indra prefer their those of
gone
own soma
libations to
Pagadyumna Vayata, though the
latter
had
to the trouble of fetching Indra from a great
distance.
Frantically emphatic prayer
man who
of the
naughty
is
praying
tricks of various sorts
;
imprecation
same time
;
and
show us under
this
at the
aspect the whole world of praying and sacrificing men engaged in a sort of universal game of tag the :
hindmost
is
The Vedic Hindus have made
"it."
a
I am glad to say that this at the end of the Vedic out particular crudity passes which period with the slow twilight of the gods
sad botch of this matter.
"
"
from polytheism, myth, and
shifts the interest fice to
When
sacri
the theosophic speculations of the Upanishads. the personal gods emerge again in later Hin
duism, they are much clarified question about their presence in
;
at least the risky
many
places at one
and the same time, and the equitable distribution of know, never asked again. There is scarcely any idea which has suffered so much from the utilitarian aspects of Vedic religion their favors
as the
is,
as far as I
Vedic idea of
itself is
of interest
equivalent
of
etymological
;
t
Latin and
meaning
To
begin with, the word qraddha the sound for sound
faith.
it is
of
our this
own word
credo. is
The
absolutely
Religious Conceptions and Feeling
means
It
transparent.
"
to set one
s
heart
187
upon."
This etymology, which is still quite clear to the VeThe dic poets, shows it full of ethical possibilities.
word
starts well in the
Rig-Veda. It means first of and godhead of the gods.
belief in the existence
all
So, a poet
is
anxious to make certain the position of
the god Indra, that blustering, pinchbeck, braggart, Herculean god whose shortcomings have gone far to
Vedic freethinker.
establish a certain position for the
The poets say "
The
of
him
:
one of
terrible
whom
they ask, where
is
he
?
He
makes Nay verily they say of him, he is not at all. shrink the goods of his enemy like a gambler the stakes of his opponent
:
Put your
him
faith in
O
He,
folks, is
Indra."
(Rig- Veda
12. 5.)
2.
As
a strong warrior, he verily fights with might in behalf of the people. Aye, then they have battles great faith in strong Indra, as he hurls down his weapon." "
(Rig-Veda "Who,
them
art,
i.
55, 5.)
what mortal, can overcome him whose treasure
O
Indra
?
Through
faith
in
God, on the decisive day, does he that
thee,
O
liberal
obtain
strives
booty."
(Rig- Veda
So there
is
no doubt that
faith
7.
means the
32
-
*4.)
belief in
the existence of the gods, and their interference in the life of man. It would be doing injustice to those
1
The
88
Religion of the
Veda
early believers to say that they did not develop the
idea beyond this stage of later text of the
and unfaith "
mere primary
is lies
A
utility.
Yajur-Veda says: Faith
is
truth,
:
The
creator (Prajapati) having beheld two qualities He put un separated truth and lie from one another. faith into
lie,
faith
he placed into
truth."
(Vajasaneyi Samhita
Next,
The
faith
is
wisdom
;
faith
fool saith in his heart,
"
order to disprove his folly
is
the sisterof wisdom:
there
it
19. 77.)
is
no
In
god."
becomes needful
to
couple the ideas of Faith and Wisdom. From a later time we have very interesting accounts of the initia tion of disciples,
and
Vedas.
their instruction in the
Teacher and pupil in a kind of dramatic dialogue carry on the solemn action Teach me the revealed books "
:
(of the
thee "
Veda),
my Lord
the revealed
Teach me the Vedic "
I
pupil.
saith the pupil.
books,"
replieth
tradition,
my
teach thee the Vedic
"
I
teach
the teacher. saith the
Lord!"
tradition,"
replieth
Teach me Faith and Wisdom,
the teacher. Lord!"
!"
saith l
Wisdom."
my
I teach thee Faith and the pupil. In another text, as the pupil puts on the "
sacred girdle which he wears during disciplehood, he
addresses 1
it
:
See (^ankhayana Grihyasutra
Grihyasutra
3. 9. I.
2.
7,
and compare
Agvalayana
Religious Conceptions and Feeling "
Daughter of Faith, born of Zeal,
Seers that did create the beings. sign to us Thought and Wisdom
and
sister
Do ;
189
was she of the
O
girdle, as also assign to us Zeal
thou,
Strength."
(Atharva-Veda Faith kindles the turn, the sacred cal religion, "
in
is
fire,
sacrifice-fire
this chief
6. 133. 4.)
and, by
emblem
way
of re
of Brahmani-
charge of both Faith and
Wisdom
:
Through Faith the fire is kindled, Through Faith the oblation is offered. head of fortune,
Faith, that stands at the
Her do we with our song
proclaim."
(Rig- Veda 10. 151.
i.)
On the other hand, the Brahmanical disciple appeals to
Agni Jatavedas
faith
he
(the holy
fire)
and wisdom, to keep intact
may
to preserve for his
memory,
him
so that
not forget the sacred texts, and to secure him
in well-being.
1
Next,_ Faith becomes a person, a goddess. That for the mechanical character
would not be bad but
which she then assumes.
Imagine and in order to one must be imagine pretty well steeped in Hin duism the frame of mind of a poet who skilfully this
exalts the
goddess Faith, but
accept oblations
:
1
C^ankhayana Grihyasutra
2.
10. 6.
finally asks
her to
The
190 "
Veda
Religion of the
Through Faith
the gods obtain their divine quality; is the foundation of the world.
Faith, the goddess,
May she pleased come to our sacrifice, Bring our wish as her child, and grant us immortality! "
Faith, the goddess, is the first-born of divine order, Upholder of all, foundation of the world,
That Faith do we revere with our oblations
May
she create for us an immortal (Taittirlya
"
;
world."
Brahmana3.
12. 3. 1,2.)
Faith dwells within the gods,
Faith dwells upon this world, Faith, the mother of wishes
With oblations do we prosper
her."
(Taittirlya
So
far so
good.
All that
Brahmana
2. 8. 8).
a development of
is still
the idea of faith in harmony with a decent belief in personal gods.
Unfortunately, the Vedic conception
of faith, at least the prominent or average conception
sinks to a
much lower
plane.
In the main and in the^ and the Brahmans
end, faith expresses itself in works,
who it
anything but mealy-mouthed have seen to In that they shall be benefited by these works. are.
other words, he
who
gives baksheesh (dakshina] to^
the Brahmans, he has faith (graddha). In a hymn that is otherwise not badly pitched the poet requests the personified goddess Faith to
make
his poetic
take well with the liberal sacrificer, and to
work
make him
Religious Conceptions and Feeling
with him that giveth, and him that
"
persona grata shall
An exceedingly interesting hymn
*
give."
Atharva- Veda, not at
all
wanting
isaddressed to the demoness
The name
of the lady
is
lovely, rests
she has
:
is
or
it
"
Avarice.",
Of course she
Arati.
in
as a
for
Venus.
coaxed to go away
is
full-
a golden complexion,
is
in fact quite
is
the old
as
"schoene Teufelinne,"
German poetry has charms she
Grudge,"
upon golden cushions;
an Apsaras, or
of the
in poetic inspiration,,
"
Yet she appears
primarily an abstraction. fledged person
191
With
all
her
:
Bring (wealth) to us, do not stand in our way, O do not keep from us the sacrificial fee when it is taken to us! being Homage be to the power of grudge, "
Arati
;
to the
power
of baffling!
whom
Adoration to Arati!
implore with holy word (Vac Sarasvatl), the yoke-fellow of thought, may Faith enter him to-day, aroused by the burnished soma drink! "Him
I
"
(Atharva-Veda
That
is
sparkles
to say,
when the burnished soma drink* when the pious emotion that
in the cup,
comes from the
skilful
hymn
rich sacrificer, then enters into
kind
?
The kind
he gives long for 1
5. 7. i, 5.)
stirs
the heart of the j
him Faith.
But what
Then to the Brahmans. How the Brahmans do baksheesh, especially when they are poor
Rig-Veda
that drives out niggardliness.
!
10. 151. 2, 3.
\ t
The
192
There ulates
"
:
essions
Who
who
the record of one
is
Veda
Religion of the
plaintively ejac
What
gentleman, desirous of more poss get us out of this wretched misery?
will
desireth to
give presents?
sacrifice,
Who
and who
desireth
long
is
life
willing to
from the
1
gods?"
Even
mean and
this
selfish construction of Faith,
on one famous occasion side.
at least turns forth a better
A zealous young Brahman, Naciketas by name,
observes that baksheesh
is
by way
of being freely
given. In fact his father Vajagravasa has performed a desperately pious sacrifice, the All-his-property"
He
luscious morsel for the Brahmans.
"
sacrifice
has given
away
in sacrifice
that he possesses.
Naciketas.
He
and attendant
Then Faith
fees all
enters into the
wishes, so to say,
"
boy
to get into the
band-wagon." He startles his father by asking: whom wilt thou give me ? The father replies "
"To "
:
death"
we can imagine
come from the
lips of
a
To
the formula that would
modern fond
father,
if
his
son were to ask him a question so very awkward. Naciketas takes him
Yama, the God get
the better
hospitality, 1
and goes down to
He
manages, however, to
of Death.
of
Yama, not
but also extracting
Atharva-Veda
283^";
literally
the author,
only enjoying his
from him certain
7. 103. i. Cf. Ludwig, Der Rig- Veda, vol. iii., p. American Journal of Philology, vol. xvii, p. 408 ff.
Religious Conceptions and Feeling information
profound existence.
Now
concerning
the
193
riddle
of
1
not claim that this important concept
I shall
was unmixedly mean and unspiritual. Indeed we have seen that it is not wholly so. This much, how ever,
is
anxious mind of the ritual
clear that the
is
almost entirely fastened upon Faith as the promoter of the sacrifice and its attendant gifts to the BrahIn the end a^raddha, devoid of faith," is the typical epithet of the demons of avarice, the
mans.
"
f
\>.
who
withhold the cows from the gods and the One or two writers have the hardihood Brahmans.
Panis,
to put
up a chain
Sacrifice,
of four links
Baksheesh.
2
Faith, Consecration,
Since consecration (dlksha) in
means
this connection
:
really
nothing but ancient
hocus-pocus preliminary to the sacrifice, where, we may ask, is there a franker avowal of shady motives that ordinarily present themselves elsewhere with a thick coat of whitewash
But what
is
there in
?
it
for the sacrificer,
we may
very well for him to silence those rau cous voices of demand, and keep giving for a while.
ask?
It is all
He must he
in
the long run get something in return, or
will balk.
Our
texts, explicit
leave no doubt in our book
1
See the
2
Atharva-Veda 13
first
of the
15. 16. 4.
minds
if
as to the
nothing
way
Katha Upanishad. Gopatha Brahmana ff. ;
I.
in
1.39.
else,
which
The
194
Religion of the
Veda
the sacrificer was rewarded, or thought he was re
warded, under this otherwise monotonously one We have seen that Faith, sided arrangement. (^raddha, is/it a t
is
personified.
Now
the sacrifice, called
and the baksheesh, called (by another name)
purta, enter into a close compound, the ishtdpurta.
They,
in their turn, get to
reality,
have a kind of personal
and turn into a kind
of beneficent genius, or
perhaps better a kind of solid asset which becomes useful with the gods during life, and, mark you, after death as well. During life, the god helps him who sacrifices
and gives baksheesh he adds to, does not But it is for the most part a ;
rob his property.
1
In a well-known funeral question of future reward. hymn of the Rig- Veda the corpse is addressed most realistically
:
Do
thou join the Fathers, do thou join Yama, join thy ishtdpurta (that which thou hast sacrificed and given to the priests) in the highest heaven "
"
!
(Rig- Veda 10. 14.
And
the following
is
8.)
a particularly realistic treat
Again a dead man blessed as he goes to heaven
ment
of
the same ideas.
is
:
Know him (the pious dead), O ye associated gods in When he shall the highest heaven, recognise his form have arrived by the paths that lead to the gods, disclose "
!
1
Rig-Veda
6. 28. 2.
Religious Conceptions and Feeling to
him
his ishtapurta
accumulated through
195
(that is, the merit which he has sacrifice and liberality to the
"
priests
)
!
(Taittirlya
And
Samhita
i.)
so another poet, in a better vein, says in a
verse that has
become famous
in India:
highest step of Vishnu (that seen by the liberal giver ever dise) in the heavens." eye "
5. 7. 7.
The is
:
is
the solar para
it is
(Rig- Veda
fixed like an
i.
22. 20.)
At a later time when the Hindus in their highest mood turn the ordinary gods into supernumeraries, when metempsychosis takes the place of a journey to heaven, when they have sloughed off priests, sacri The fice fire, spoon, and ghee, all that is changed. degraded (Jraddha or Faith "
Devotion,"
Only
that
Being that
is,
is
is
replaced by Bhakti,
devotion to the Eternal True,
at the root of all things.
The
up in the savings-bank of heaven, and the Fathers are engaged in ever
ishtapurta, piled
where
Yama
lasting feasts,
isrlaiCed^by karma, the accumulated
deeds of a given lifetime and the attendant evolution which these deeds have worked upon the spirit. This so definitely shapes character as to determine the nature of the next rebirth, until a perfect life shall free the mortal
from the
toils of all existence,
The
196
Veda
Religion of the
and replace him in the bosom of the One True Being. Of all this later on.
However, even these saccharine promises about the accumulated credit given in heaven for sacrifice
and baksheesh seem not to have been regarded by the poet priests as a sufficient guarantee that they
might securely count upon that faith which meant works useful to them. They employ another device. Being skilled verse-smiths, they begin to use their craft to forge chains of poetry which shall hold rich patrons willing captives.
They compose the or gdthd
"
ddna-stutis, "
gift-praises,"
stanzas singing the praise of
1
ndragahsyak,
In dithyrambic
on the part of generous mythic kings and patrons, are nar
language exorbitant givers of old,
men."
so-called
gifts
rated, so as to stimulate the potential patron of the
present day.
They
sing these praises so stridently
that the Vedic texts themselves, in their soberer
moments, decry the tion. men"
The poet
" "
gift-praises
of a
"
as lies
and pollu
stanza singing the praise of
and the brandy-drunkard are likened unto one
another: they are polluted, their gifts must not be I question whether the religious litera accepted. ture of any other people
resembles either
in
contains anything that
character or extent the
Cf. Ludwig, Der Rig-Veda, vol. iii., p. 274 ff.; Atharva-Veda {Indo- Aryan Encyclopedia], p. 100. 1
"
gift-
Bloomfield, The
Religious Conceptions and Feeling "
praises
of the
Veda
and
in its naivete
its
;
the type
is
197
thoroughly Hindu
boundlessness.
To
begin with, there is in the Rig- Veda a doubtless late hymn consecrated to Dakshina, or "
It is
Baksheesh."
he
takes, as
only a poetaster who under the broad road of
says, to unfold
"
to show how important it is to keep with Then, refreshing obviousness he claims i.
Baksheesh,"
giving.
e.
:
Those
give daks hind dwell on high in the that give horses dwell with the sun. They that give gold partake of immortality and they that give garments, Soma, prolong their lives."
heavens
;
that
they
;
O
(Rig-Veda
There are forty or more
Veda
alone
10. 107. 2.) "
in the Riggift-praises continue the rest of they throughout I do not mean to dwell upon them
;
the Veda.
"
beyond a
single example.
ever, that
some
We may
of this baksheesh
remark,
how
must have proved
a veritable elephant on the hands of the receiver,
except for the fact that baksheesh
it
was
as a rule imaginary
:
"
Listen, ye folks, to this (a song) in praise of a hero shall be sung Six thousand and ninety cows did we get :
!
(when we were) with Kauruma among the Rueamas Kauruma presented the Seer with a hundred jewels, ten chaplets, three hundred steeds, and ten thousand !
"
cattle."
(Atharva-Veda
20.
127.
i,
3.)
The
198
Veda
Religion of the
Operations on such a scale are calculated to show the magnates of the present day meat-packing trust that they have yet to learn from these arch-flatterers a trick or If is
my
two
in
the
of collecting cattle.
way
hearers shall ask
now
what, after
all
this,
Rig-Vedic religion, I am for my unready to answer in accordance with
the essence
of
part
not
hints
thrown out before.
more
precisely, poetic exaltation, or the pride
joy of poetic creativeness.
It
is
This
poetry, or rather,
is
and
conceived
at first
and promoted by the gods, because they get the fruit of it in the form of praise and The finer the frenzy of the poet and the flattery. to be favored
more
finished
the product of his
art,
the better
Therefore the gods, next, co operate with the poets, promoting their devotion and its expression. Finally, these twin factors of pleased are the gods.
devoted
fervor
hymns and
and
its
utterance
in
stanzas create sensations of satisfaction
which are easily taken the article
successful
is
for sanctification.
not very genuine.
But
it
At
first
goes on being
the receptacle of better thoughts until it grows into what we may consider real religious feeling. To some extent we can test this statement by
showing what the religious feeling of the Veda is The frank system of not, rather than what it is. barter of the sacrificer s soma and ghee for the god s
Religious Conceptions and Feeling
199
and protection, with considerably more than one-eighth of one per cent, brokerage for the t
that, surely,
priest
is
jp.,Q..t,
the religious feeling in
the souls of the composers of the Rig-Veda hymns. I
have taken pains to show how constantly pres.
ent
is
this external side of their religion
religion that
is
free
from
all
the religion
from which
safe-guarding
self,
throw the
The contemplation
the true ring.
God in
after
god
It
wonder
perfunctory
steps into line
the
stone.
first
is
does not seem to
It is
may
absent every form of
of the glory of the
a matter of intellectual
without end.
is
:
external considerations,
;
gods as
expressed times
me it is
and gets
to have quitei
told it.
by
rote..
They each
turn establish the heavens and the earth
they sun on his course, almost indifferently well. Perhaps, as I have hinted before, their rotation in the ritual, rather than forgetfulness of the virtues of ;
start the
the preceding god,
is
the truth at the bottom of this
kathenotheism or henotheism, as it.
It is
nice in
polytheism grown cold its
Max
Miiller called
in service,
and un-
distinctions, leading to an opportunist
monotheism
in which every god takes hold of the and none keeps it. Anyhow it is very me sceptre No one who reads in the hymns the end chanical.
accounts of the wonderful performances of the gods will deny that the poets at times grow truly
less
.
;
200
The
warm and
feel their
really carried
Religion of the theme.
away by
it.
But
Veda
Sometimes they are I do not believe that
and majesty, or the incomprehensibleness of the gods, have produced a permanent either the greatness
impression of their superiority and perfection which should permit us to speak of settled intellectual religious consciousness in the Rig- Veda.
Most conspicuously there tion of
is
no sentimental
rela
any great depth between gods and men, and
therefore no piety in the higher sense of the word. I
mean
piety that
is
not mere emotional self-excite
ment, but reasonable and settled reverence of tried
and true gods.
As
a matter of fact the gods are
good, and, at least in a general way, they are just In India, as we have seen, the gods have in also. charge especially the order of the world, and that is at the proper time, to the advantage of the suppliant mortal.
Conversely, and especially,
stands ready to punish the wrong-doer.
sometimes describe Varuna of their
own unworthiness
s
The poets
power, and the sense
or sinfulness in language
that reminds us of the Psalmist. [is
god Varuna
Varuna, however, the Rig-Veda: he
no longer pre-eminent even no really lasting impression on India
ihas left
in
s relig
If Varuna had prevailed India would have ions. become monotheistic and theocratic, which it never
did.
Religious Conceptions and Feeling Occasionally a start
glowing relation of love
made towards
is
and confidence
201
a warmly the singer
;
need of help trusts that the god will help him. But there is no permanent, clarified, unselfish love., of the gods such as overrides the experience of their
in
instability,
such as
lives
down
what
faith
is
in the
fests itself in
have seen
Veda it is the faith The Vedic poets
are trained
that mani
:
works.
"
master-singers."
trate
the melancholy fact
And we
that they do not always help.
Such poets are not likely to pene man. There is no real
far into the soul of
warmth
or depth, no passionate indistinct feeling, no
unsatisfied longing
which can be made hopefully en
durable, or even pleasurable and exalting, through
the mystery of a relationship with perfect beings, un
derstood by each individual soul in
Anything
like a
fection of the
its
own way.
contemplative, trustful joy in the per
gods comes much
later:
it
of the
is
BhagavadgTta, rather than the Rig- Veda.
But these master-singers do believe in their own art wonderful poetry, and in the exaltation of ;
in their
its composition. The gods both the the and devout mind at the accept poetry
mind which goes with
value put upon
them by the poets
;
the poets are se
renely certain that the gods are well satisfied. 1
"
Like
prayers,"
(a
1
This
cow) her calf so do the poets lick (the gods) with their A
says Rig- Veda 10. 123.
I.
The
2O2 then
is
and
lasting
belief
Religion of the
mind
the state of
religious
the
in
that approaches genuine
and
fitness
Rig-Veda: those
of
rhythmical, and assonant stanzas
tering,
rapture
over
the
upon the
is
The
poet.
"
himself
calls
glit
genuine
;
mind, while
excited, throbbing
the glow of composition
poet
the
in
feeling
beauty
Veda
"
inspired
vipra, "
compositions vipah,
inspirations "
composes, vepate matl,
he
is
";
his
calls
;
and when he
inspired in his
mind."
workmanship and the gods unresisting admiration, the Rig-Veda makes us forget at times that unpleasant economic founda In the poet
s
pride of exquisite
tion of the performance, lery of the gods
for
namely
what there
is
flattery in
*
it.
and cajo Soon both
gods and men are engaged fraternally in promoting devotion and its best possible expression in hymns, as things of intrinsic worth, as beautiful elevated
And
cosmic potencies.
summit
so
we
the
find at
finally
of this thought, the captivating
and impor 2
tant prayer of the poet of the Savitri stanza, that
the god himself shall inspire his devotion. I
have used the word
We may
"master-singers."
The
take this word quite stringently and seriously.
hymns often Rig- Veda
allude to the songs of old that were
We
6 puts this baldly to god Indra hither with this prayer don t bethink yourself a minute. 1
"
8. 21,
:
;
wishes, you have gifts. 2
See above p
86.
Here we
are with our
songs."
com-
cite
We
you have
Religious Conceptions and Feeling
203
first posed by the Rishis of the past. The very hymn in the Rig-Veda strikes this note in its second
Agni, worthy to be adored by the ancient Rishis and the present ones may he conduct the "
stanza:
gods hither
Kanva
sings
dress out
"
Another time a poet
1
"
!
my
In the spirit of the olden times do
:
(Hear),
O
new and
I
songs like (the poet) Kanva, through
which (god) Indra gets "
of the family of
his fiery
Or again
strength."
Indra, him that hath produced
:
for thee a
lovely song, with comprehending
mind a
pious song such as of yore has strengthened the di 2 In more confident or vine order of the universe/ ecstatic
temper, the poets often declare that they
have produced new songs of
praise,
and
One poet recom
opinion, these are first-rate songs.
mends
of praise, that
new, beautiful song heart;" another exclaims
his
from the
"
word, the new, the
my
"
:
fresh-born."
respect
to their
amounts
to saying that the
good
that, in their
this
predecessors
I
With
One
thing
is
sition.
are just as
charm
n
Rig- Veda
8. 6.
2
Rig- Veda
8. 95. 5.
;
cf. 8.
of
:
What comes later in the way of sacred
1
due
we have nothing The Rig- Veda is pretty of its own type of compo
certain
beginnings before us. nearly the final expression
like
all
pretty nearly
new hymns
as the old, in addition to having the
novelty.
comes
bring forward
44. 12
;
8. 76. 6.
poetry
The
204 is
Veda
Religion of the
We
distinctly epigonal, or after-born.
are face to
face with the finished product of this past age. If
we
consider that the theme
clarified polytheistic
gods, but
is
the worship of un-
little
advanced beyond
the point where they originated somewhere in nature, or in a tolerably
primitive consciousness,
we may
say, taking the fat with the lean, that the pride of
these poets in their
work
is
justified.
must not apply the chaster standards
Of course we of a later time,
we expect perfectly even results. Anyhow, poet s own eyes the Rig-Vedic hymn is a thing
nor can in the
of blameless, finished beauty.
war
as a skilled artisan a it is
free
from all
blemish," "
winnowing-basket," fice."
The
chariot.
as
He has fashioned it He has filed it until
as grain
ghee
is
heart of the poets
is
winnowed
clarified for is
in their
in the
the sacri
work, they
are unquestionably giving the best they have.
poems
are their inspirations.
above their are lift
too
The
In so far as they rise
human
interests, in so far as they than blarneying beggars, they something higher themselves up through their own art rather than all
the intrinsic qualities of the gods upon
spend
whom
they
their efforts.
In the end the gods themselves take a hand in these valuable
and delectable poetic performances.
Al
though they cannot directly furnish the metres, alliterations, beautiful words, and bold figures of
Religious Conceptions and Feeling
205
they can perform another service. They furnish the devout mind, the inspiration that is
speech,
may
behind the hymn. In fact the gods themselves per-/ form prayers, and fashion hymns May the go "
:
who perform brahma
(that
is,
their thrice-covering protection
furnish
prayer)
from
"
evil
l
us
"
Sing exhorts a poet of ye a braJnna given by the gods 2 the house of Kanva. Prayer, or devotion, is so !
!"
beautiful as to be imagined dressed out in glowing colors
and bright garments
"
:
May God Agni
lift
up
"
or our devotion that hath glowing color May God Agni place on high our brightly adorned devo "
!
"
3
Heaven and Earth,
tion
!
the
sacrifice,
stable
:
and orderly, guide
4 aglow with shining hymns.
Prayers,
personified^oby the path of the divine order to the gods Indra and Agni they are the messengers be ;
tween the two worlds.
6
Hymnal
beatification
of
prayer can scarcely reach higher than the follow ing:
"
Prayer born of yore in heaven, Eagerly chanted in the holy assembly, Delightfully dressed out in bright array, Ours is that father-inherited prayer of old
(Rig-Veda 1
Rig- Veda 10.66.
3
Ibid., 5
i.
2
5. 4
143. 7; 144. i.
Ibid., 3. 12.
7
and
I.
173.
3.
!"
3. 39. 2.)
Ibid.,
i.
37.
4
Ibid., 4. 56. 2.
;
8. 32. 7.
The
206
The itself
Veda
Religion of the
namely that Prayer or Devotion becomes divine and assumes a tolerably distinct last
step,
The
personality, deserves to hold our attention. "
epithet
Goddess
is
designations of prayer "
numerous
"
to
given
freely
There
and devotion.
is
the
"
Goddess Devotion
Lovely (Dhl) the goddess Holy Thought" (Sushtuti); the goddess "
;
"
Praise"
(Manlsha), and others. tour de force, such
And by
1
as
an almost comical
possible only in
is
India,
Devotion, having become divine, turns into a real personage who might in the company of the other
gods call out a second layer of the same article: Drink the soma, O ye Agvins, in the company of in Agni and Indra, of Varuna and Vishnu "
...
the
company
of
2
all
For the history
pious
of the
Devotions."
human mind
this last out
come, present in the ancient literature of this gifted people, is of unusual importance. The father mystic idea of the divinity of Devotion and
its
expression, the notion that the sacred inspired thought and word can itself be god, will concern us more later
From
the point of view of religious feeJingjt^ the last and best word of the Hindus as to the
on. is
There comes to mind the
nature of the divine. verse of the Gospel of 1
See Rig-Veda 35.
3.
I/".
18.
3
;
"
John 4.
43-
:
i
;
7-
first
In the beginning was 34- i
and 9
;
8.
27. 13.
Religious Conceptions and Feeling
207
Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God." Here the original Greek for Word is Logos. This is not quite the same as
the
"
"
the Hindu
we
"
Devotion,"
meet again
shall
in
The Logos
Brahma.
or
"
Holy
its
Utterance,"
as,
originated in the philosophy
of the Stoics and the Neo-Platonists tual rather than emotional. in this:
which
finished expression
:
it is
intellec
But the two are
alike
they seek the creative power and the crea. mind or heart of the universe rather
tive plan in the
than
in its
farther on
mechanical manifestations.
how
very peculiar
is
We shall
see
the treatment which
the Hindus gave to this important and original con cept, led on thereto by the melancholy genius that
be supposed to preside over the hot sombre For the present, and in this connection, we land.
may
be satisfied to see the origin of this seemingly mystic idea exposed to our eyes with a degree of
may
clearness that
is
not obscured by
coloring.
Like almost
ideas
the
of
Hindus
all
its
mythological
other important religious
this
idea,
when analysed
patiently with the help of their rich literature, sheds light on the seeming mysteries of other religions.
LECTURE THE FIFTH. The Beginnings
of
Hindu Theosophy.
Statement of the problem Time when theosophy originated Metempsychosis and pessimism unknown in the Place where the higher religion earlier Vedic records originated theosophic
The
charade lation
philosophy at the sacrifice The charade Specimens of the theosophic
Priest
hymn
riddle
between the
of
sacrifice
Dirghatamas and theosophy
Interre
On
the
supposed origin of theosophy with the royal caste Criticism of this view Transition from ritualistic polytheism to theosophy dammerung"
the
idea
of
and analysis
Failure
unity
Early scepticism
God Varuna
of
The
creation
of the creation
hymn
hymn
"Gotter-
Monism,
or
Translation
Attempts at mono
Lord of Creatures Vicvathe Prajapati, karman, creator of the universe, and kindred concep tions Purusha, the world man Brihaspati, the Lord Transcendental monotheistic conceptions: of Devotion Defects of the earlier mono etc. "Time," "Love," theism
theistic
and monistic attempts.
appreciation of the higher forms of Hindu ism has gotten to be one of the foremost
THE
intellectual arts of our time, because the final results
of
Hindu thought count
really
noteworthy achievements of the 208
among the most human mind. In
The Beginnings
of
Hindu Theosophy 209
order to understand the origin and nature of the
higher religion of the Veda it is necessary to twist many threads into a single skein. It is a question of when, where,
by whom, and how
this question,
considered aright, will contribute to
if
;
each phase of
the clearness of the whole.
As
regards the time
appear,
and
I
when higher
would remind
relative
my
religious motives
hearers of the indefinite
character of Vedic chronology.
The
older Upanishads, the Vedic texts which profess
higher religion or theosophy, are written in about the same language and style as the so-called Brah-
mana
These
texts.
are prose
latter, as
works which, quite
mud, define the
sacrifice
illustrative legend.
part of the
And
Brahmanas
;
Upanishads, through the
you may remember, like the
Hebrew Tal
with minute prescript and the older Upanishads are the majority of the older
medium
of the Aranyakas,
join their theosophic speculations right
dead
ritual.
To some
1
on to the
extent the bones of the ritual
skeleton rattle about in early theosophy in quite a
The Upanishads and theosophy are Veda neither Hindu believer nor west
lively fashion.
part of the
ern
critic
of the
Vedic 1
Now
the thought
Upanishads has its forerunners in all parts of back to the Rig- Veda in the
literature clear
See above, p. 43. 14
;
has ever doubted that.
;
The
210
Atharva-Veda
Veda
Religion of the
even shows signs of at least tem We cannot expect the
it
porary going to seed.
family-books of the Rig- Veda, or the ninth, soma book to break out in theosophy. These books are to the
hymns addressed
collections of
definite sacrifice
:
gods at a
to that business they attend.
It
does not follow that what they do not mention does not exist at that time. We must beware of too straight-lined a view of these matters,
one type
fol
lowing another like a row of bricks, or like different troops of the same army. I am not wise enough to say when the following stanza was pronounced :
"
They
call (it)
Indra, Mitra, Varuna, and Agni, or
the heavenly bird Garutmant (the Sun). call
the
Yama,
One Being
in
many ways they ;
The call it
sages
Agni,
Matarigvan."
This verse states that the great gods of the Veda are but One Being therefore it at once takes a high ;
stand in the range of possible human thought. And yet it occurs in a hymn of the Rig- Veda, namely, the famous riddle-hymn of Dlrghatamas, in the
book
of that collection.
tenth book 1
Some
3
is
as
2
Another statement
follows
"
:
For instance,
"
10. 8.
44
:
eternal, self-begotten, full of joy, subject to 2
the
That One breathed
stanzas of the Atharvan occupy the most advanced position
of the Upanishads.
death
in
first
who knows
Rig- Veda
i.
the wise, ageless 164. 46.
Free from desire, true,
none, he no longer fears
Atman." 3
Rig- Veda 10. 129. 2.
The Beginnings
Hindu Theosophy
of
without breath, by inner power; than nothing whatever else existed besides."
Here
two
are
statements in
it,
211
truly,
two Brahmanical
hymns, composed in the trishtubh metre, the same metre in which the Vedic poets love to call upon their fustian god Indra, and yet their intention is
They herald monism they claim but one essence, one true thing: it is but a step from such ideas to the pantheistic, abso lute, without a second, Brahman-Atman of the unmistakable.
that there
;
is
Upanishads and the
On
later
Vedanta philosophy.
the other hand, there are in the earlier religion,
whether
it
be
hymn and
sacrifice
to the gods, or
theosophic thought, no clear signs of belief in the
no pessimistic view of life, and consequently no scheme of salvation, or rather release (mukti) from the eternal round of existences, transmigration of souls
in
which
;
birth, old age, decay,
and death are the
nodal points in the chain of lives. That this phase of the higher religion belongs to a later time, to a different geographical locality,
and
social state different
and to an economic
from that of the
earliest
Vedic time, seems exceedingly likely. So we are led to the conclusion that there was a period of monistic speculation,
vanced
tentative
in
at the time of the
the later hieratic
hymns
character, yet fairly
ad
composition of at least
of the Rig- Veda.
But
this
The
212
Veda
Religion of the
higher religious thought lacked the twin factors of
metempsychosis and pessimism which really deter mine its Hindu character. Pessimist view of trans migration, and release from transmigration are the true signs of
Hinduism
in the broadest sense of that
word: through these twin conceptions the Hindu idea, as we may call it, is marked off from all the rest of
human thought without ;
tions about the divine
these,
Hindu specula
might readily pose as a kind of
the world of religious thought from the Prophets and Plato to Spinoza and Kant. may safely date the entrance of metem Volapiik, or Esperanto, for
all
We
psychosis and pessimism towards the end, rather than
the beginning of Vedic tradition. It seems to mark a most important division of the Veda into two periods.
Other marks, such as more or less advanced
the presence or absence of complica ted witchcraft practices; the sudden and unexpected priestly ritual
;
glint of a brilliant theosophic idea
or the varying forms of Vedic literary tradition involve real distinc tions of time, but they are more gradual, and are easily construed subjectively. rate,
involve
;
They do
not, at
any
anything as vital as the presence or
absence of that pessimist doctrine of transmigration to its cost even at the
which holds India captive present day.
Next, where did the higher religion spring up
The Beginnings There
is
at this
of
Hindu Theosophy 213
time no centre of learning, no stoa,
no monastery, no university. of the
With the beginning
growth of the higher religion there are con
many names, but
nected
not one name.
There
is
no
Buddha who is of a later have no reason to look to some confined
great teacher of genius like
We
time.
space within which this business of world philosophy
was
carried
on exclusively.
Indeed, the sporadic,
tentative nature of the earliest high thought, the in
and
way
was approached from many different sides many different moods, shows that it flitted
which in
it
about from place to place, and was the play-ball of many minds. But, I believe, we can tell pretty defi nitely the kind of
received
its
first
environment from which theosophy impulse, and within which it pros
pered up to goodly
size
and strength.
That, curi
ously enough, was the great Vedic sacrifice with its mock business and endless technicalities, calculated to
deaden the
put the
soul,
lid tight
and apparently the very thing to
on higher religious inspiration and
aspiration.
The rifices,
great Vedic sacrifices, the so-called qrauta sac
such as the rdjasuya (coronation of a king),
or the aqvamedha (horse-sacrifice) were performances
intended to strengthen the temporal power of kings. They were, of course, undertaken either by kings or at least rich Kshatriyas, rather than by the class of
The
214
Veda
Religion of the
smaller house-holders
who could
did not have any use for them.
not afford them, and
They had
in
them
the elements of public, tribal or national festivals. Of course they were expensive. large number of 1
A
priests
were present.
We have seen
these gentlemen were not at (dakshina) for their services.
in the past that
shy about asking fees
all
Now we
are told dis
Vedic Kings, or tribal Rajas, were not only interested in the mechanical perfection and outward success of the sacrifices undertaken under tinctly that the
their patronage,
but that they were even more im
pressed by the speculative, mystic, and theosophic
thoughts which were suggested by various phases of the
Both
sacrifice.
in
the Brahmanas and in the
anishads kings appear as questioners of
Brahmans who
Up-
the great
them some knotty sacrificial some question connected with the Whenever their questions are existence. solve for
problem, or even riddle of
answered to their
satisfaction,
in
the midst of a
continuous discourse, the King again and again is I excited to generosity give thee a thousand "
:
(cows)/
says King Janaka of Videha to the great
theosopher Yajnavalkya, as the latter unfolds his marvellous scheme of salvation in the Great Forest "
2
Upanishad." 1
Cf. 2
Kings were known to give away
Ludwig, Dcr Rig-Veda,
Brihadaranyaka Upanishad
vol. 4. 13.
vi., p. x.
their
The Beginnings
Hindu Theosophy 215
of
kingdoms on such occasions, and kings became them selves glorious
expounders of theosophic
The beginnings
the Upanishads but, as polytheistic and
said before, in the
preceded the connection with the great
the kind just mentioned the Brahmans,
sacrifices of
found
the long run,
in
we have
ritualistic religion that
Especially in
Upanishad.
religion.
of theosophic thought are not in
it
to
their
advantage to
impress the generous givers/ the patrons of the sac rifice, not only with their mastery of sacrificial tech "
nique, but also with their theological profundity.
To
some extent learned theological discussions
in prose,
of a highly scholastic(Talmudic) nature,
this
pose. fice,
This we
such as
is
may
call
fulfil
pur
the philosophy of the sacri
displayed, for instance, in the exposi
tion of {.\\eagnihotra sacrifice in
atapatha Brahmana
But furthermore, they employ a very inter esting form of poetic riddle or charade to enliven the mechanical and technical progress of the sacrifice ii. 6. 2.
intellectual pyrotechnics. I question a of such whether type religious literature is known in any other religion, or whether the riddle has ever
by impressive
elsewhere been drafted into the service of religion one of the stages of its advancement. In other
as
words, religious charades are a part of Hindu re ligious literature. 1
1
See Ilaug, Vedische Rdthselfragen
und Rathselspriiche, Transac-
The
216
Religion of the
The Vedic word as a whole,
"
for higher speculative discussion
and especially for the
poetic, riddle
is
Veda
mostly
religious,
brahrnodya or brahinavadya, that
is,
analysis or speculation about the brakma, or relig
very generally carried on by two priests, asks questions, the other answers them.
ion."
It is
one of
whom
It is a
two
kind of theological
parties
:
"
quiz,"
prearranged by the
questioner and responder know
their
parts to perfection.
At the
horse-sacrifice
two
priests ask
and answer
:
Who, verily, moveth quite alone who, verily, is born again and again what, forsooth, is the remedy for cold and what is the great (greatest) pile ? "
;
;
;
"
The answer "
is
:
The sun moveth
and again
Agni
;
the moon is born again quite alone the remedy for cold the earth ;
(fire) is
the great (greatest)
is
The
called
priest
Adhvaryu
;
1
pile."
Hotar asks the
priest
called
:
What, forsooth, is the sun-like light what sea is there unto the ocean what, verily, is higher than the what is the thing whose measure is not known ? earth "
;
like
;
"
;
The answer "
Brahma
is
is
:
the sun-like light
tions of the Munich Academy, 1875, p. Der Rig-Veda, vol. iii., p. 390 ff. ;
American Oriental 1
*]
;
heaven
ff. of
the
Society, vol. xv., p. 172.
Vajasaneyi Samhita 23. 9 and 10.
is
the sea like
the reprint
author,
Ludwig, Journal of the ;
The Beginnings
of
Hindu Theosophy 217
unto the ocean (the god) Indra is higher than the earth the measure of the cow is (quite) unknown. ;
1
;
Again the following questions and answers
:
I ask thee for the highest summit of the earth I ask thee for the navel of the universe I ask thee for the "
;
;
seed of the lusty steed
I
;
ask thee for the highest
heaven of speech." This altar is the highest summit of the earth this sacrifice is the navel of the universe this soma (the in "
;
;
toxicating sacrificial drink)
(God Indra (that
is
?)
;
this
is
Brahman
to say, the highest
It is interesting to
the seed of the lusty steed priest is the highest heaven
exponent) of speech.
"
2
note that these riddles show us
again the Hindu mind preoccupied with the nature phenomena of the world, at a time when the old nature gods have
become completely
crystallised.
Again, as regards the status of these riddles, the
Kena Upanishad opens with a very
similar pair of
riddle-stanzas, showing that the state of
mind
at the
bottom of nature-worship, brahmodya, and Upani shad marks advancing mental interests, but yet advance along the same line.
The
Rig- Veda
(i.
164) contains a
hymn which
is
nothing but a collection of fifty-two verses of poetry, all of them, except one, riddles whose answers are not given.
There can be
1
The
2
Ibid., 23. 6 1
same
text, 23.
and
62.
little
47 and 48.
doubt that the occa-
2
1
The
8
Veda
Religion of the
upon which these riddles were let off was the same as with those just cited, namely, the sacrifice. sion
The
subjects of these riddles are cosmic, that
taining to the nature
mythological, that
about the gods the
;
per
is,
of the universe
phenomena
;
referring to the accepted legends
is,
psychological, that
human organs and
sensations
;
is,
pertaining to
or, finally,
and tentative philosophy or theosophy. and earth, sun and moon, air, clouds and
crude
Heaven rain
;
the
course of the sun, the year, the seasons, months,
days and nights the human voice, self-conscious the origin of the first creature ness, life and death ;
;
and the originator of the universe such are the abrupt and bold themes. Here figures also (stanza 46) that seemingly precocious statement which con
symptomatic for all future Hindu thought, namely, that above and behind the great multitude of gods there is one supreme person the suggestion,
tains
behind the gods there is that Only Being of whom the gods are but various names
"
"
ality
;
}JLIOL\
call it Indra, Mitra, Varuna, and Agni, or the Garutmant (the sun). The sages call the bird heavenly One Being in many ways they call it Agni, Yama, "
They
;
"
Matarievan.
How
closely attached to the sacrifice theosophic
and speculations remained as they grew in clearness
The Beginnings importance,
of
we cannot
that in time the
two
Hindu Theosophy 219
say
all
;
intrinsically
that
as
we
and
see
in
from the
sacrifice
Given the mind, the thought
But
it
is
the
Hindu
to be, independently
it
lations.
its
is,
that theosophic
thought would not have sprung up mind, endowed
say
uncongenial themes
Nor can we assert
parted company.
we can
perverted scholastic
scintil
will
come.
easy to see that the beginnings of higher
religion started around the sacrifice,
by
calling out
the higher aspirations of the patrons of the sacrifice.
Wisdom-searching Rajas, weary of the world, Janaka and Ajatagatru at an earlier time, Buddha and Bim-
much
bisara at a later time, have as
Hindu
to do with the
the thirst for religion development newer and larger truth on the part of the Brahmans of
themselves.
as
The Rajas were
the Maecenases of the
We
imagine very easily that some of them got a surfeit of the world, and were attracted The beginnings of theosophy to the things beyond. "
poor
clerics."
grew up around the
sacrifice
which was under their
patronage. The Brahmans grew up to their patrons and, we may add, to their own higher needs.
They began
to offer these patrons something
than ritual technicalities.
more
In the long run they must
hold their position and reputation by something better than by handling with ludicrous correctness fire-wood and sacrificial ladle
;
soma drink and
obla-
The
22O
Religion of the
tions of melted butter.
And
in
Veda the long run their
minds, which somehow, the hocus-pocus of the sac rifice had neither deadened nor satisfied, rose to those higher and permanent requirements which led abandonment of the sacrifice and lasting
to practical
devotion to philosophic religion.
The
question, next, as to
who
carried
on the
higher religion has been answered incidentally in what has just been said. If what is stated there is stated correctly, that the
we
shall not
go astray
if
Brahmans were the mainspring
we assume in the
ad
vance of higher thought, just as they were the main factors in the worship of the gods and in ceremonial practices.
But
this
same question requires to be
more precisely for the following reason. A number of distinguished scholars have recently ad vanced the theory that Hindu theosophy is not, as stated
has been tacitly assumed, in the main the product of Brahmanical intellect, but that it was due to the spiritual
insight
of the
Royal or Warrior Caste.
1
Professor Garbe of the University of Tubingen,
an eminent student of Hindu philosophy and at same time a scholar well versed in the early
the
literature of
the Vedas,
is
the most ardent advo-
See Deussen, Allgemeine Geschichte der Philosophie, vol. i., part PP- 354 ff-\ Garbe, Beitrdge zur Indischen Kulturgeschichte, pp. 3 Litter atur, pp. ff.\ Winternitz, Geschichte der Indischen 1
2
The Beginnings cate of this view.
Brahman
of
Garbe
civilisation
he
casion has
Hindu Theosophy 221
of
;
is
not at
on more
poured out
all
an admirer
than
the vials of
one oc his
just
wrath against the intolerable pretensions and cruel ties which the Brahmans have practised during the period of their ascendancy in India through several milleniums. But not content with that, he believes
Brahmans were not only bold bad men, but that they were too stupid to have worked their
that the also
way from
the sandy wastes of ritualism to the green
summits where grows the higher thought of For centuries the Brahmans were engaged
India. in
ex
cogitating sacrifice after sacrifice, and hair-splitting definitions
and explanations of senseless "
hocus-pocus.
All at
once,"
ritualistic
says Professor Garbe,
To be thought appears upon the scene. traditional then the sacrificial even sure, god-lore, lore, and folk-lore are not rejected, but the spirit is "
lofty
no longer
satisfied
surround the
with the cheap mysteries that
sacrificial altar.
A
to solve the riddle of the universe
the
own
self
passionate desire
and
holds the mind captive
its ;
relation to
nothing
less
will satisfy henceforth."
Parts of this observation of Professor Garbe are
nay even familiar. But not every part, it seems to me. Having in mind Yajnavalkya and Uddalaka Aruni of the Upanishads, or ankara and correct,
The
222
Religion of the
Veda
Vedanta Philosophy, one may fairly doubt the unredeemed stupidity of the Brahmans at Kumarila
of the
any period of India question more
once
"
in
s
I
history.
would, for
particularly the expression
my
part,
"all
at
the above statement.
Mental revolutions rarely come
The evidence
of all in India.
continuous
shows
records
Hindu thought has
its
all
at once, least
of India s remarkably
that
every
important
beginning, middle, and final
development. As regards theosophy, its beginnings are found in the Vedic hymns its middle in the ;
and
its final
Upanishads tems of Philosophy, ;
"
of later times.
I
somehow gotten
am
like
development in the Sys the Vedanta and Sankhya "
afraid that Professor
into the state of
Garbe has
mind that there
is
only one kind of good Brahman, namely, a dead Brahman, to paraphrase a saying about that other Indian, the
American Indian.
Selfishness, foolish
the marks of these ness, bigotry, and cruelty galore some Brahmans have left in their compositions, fool
But there were, and there The older Upani are, Brahmans and Brahmans. shads, written in approximately the same language
ishly as
and
behooves knaves.
style as the so-called prose
Brahmana (Talmudic)
texts, figuring largely as parts of these compositions,
were composed by Brahmans who had risen to the lies the the way of works conviction that not "
"
The Beginnings
of
Hindu Theosophy 223
Countless Brahman knowledge. names crowd these texts Naciketas and Qvetaketu,
salvation that
is
:
Even
Gargya and Yajnavalkya, and many others.
the wives or daughters of great Brahmans, Gargi and Maitreyl, take part in spiritual tourneys, and occasionally, as in the case of
Gargi in the Great
Forest-Upanishad (3. 6 and 8), rise to a subtler ap preciation than the Brahman men of the mystery of the world and the riddle of existence.
The
scholars mentioned have
their position
by the
been attracted to
interesting fact that the
anishads narrate several times that
Up-
the ultimate
philosophy was in the keeping of men of royal caste and that these warriors imparted their knowledge to Brahmans. This is put in such a way that the Brah
;
after
man, "
lays
king
having aired his own stock of theosophy
down
is
"
before the king
s
superior insight.
The
then represented as graciously bestowing his
saving knowledge upon the Brahman. Once or twice, however, the king turns braggart, and mars his gen erosity by claiming that the warrior caste are the real thing,
and that they alone
in all
the world are
able to illumine these profound and obscure matters.
Thus the extreme example of this kind is narrated in two Upanishads. The Brahman vetaketu Aruni, 1
ignorant of the doctrine of transmigration, 1
Brihad Aranyaka Upanishad
6. 2
;
is
Chandogya Upanishad
com5. 3.
The
224 pelled
to look for instruction to
Jaivali,
who
to
become
receives
King Pravahana
him graciously and condescends In the course of his preach
his teacher.
ment the King says "
Veda
Religion of the
Brahman
to the
:
Because, as thou hast told me, this doctrine ere this
and up to thy time has not been in vogue among the Brahmans, therefore in all the world sovereignty has re mained in the hands of the warrior caste. As surely as we desire that thou and ail thy ancestors shall remain well-disposed
towards
so
us,
no Brahman ever possessed I
doubt whether
surely has
this
to this
day
knowledge."
statement, and others of
this
a similar nature, justify us in regarding the warrior
As
caste as the spiritual saviors of India.
regards
King Pravahana Jaivali s statement, it is specious on the face of it. For what have royalty and transmi gration to do with one another?
In
doctrine of transmigration has no
its
essence the
more regard
for
royalty than for the lowest caste, because its purpose is release from any form of individual existence (see
the sixth lecture). narrate these
Then
exploits
again, the very texts that
of
the Kshatriyas are un
questionably Brahmanic. Would the arrogance and selfishness of the Brahmans have allowed them to preserve and propagate facts calculated to injure
permanently their own standing?
The
situation
is
somewhat
Surely not. there never
as follows
:
The Beginnings was a time
in
Hindu Theosophy 225
of
when the Aryas,
India
that
is,
the three upper of the four ancient castes, were
excluded from Brahmanical piety. sophy, by
its
very terms, shuts
the special profession at all in
nothing
it
1
Now, as theodown on the ritual,
the Brahmans, there
of
is
to exclude occasional intelligent
and aspiring men from the other noble (Arya) castes. This is true even at the present day Svami Vive:
kananda was no Brahman, but a member Kayastha or clerk shad
(4.
the
The Chandogya Upanihow Satyakama, the son of
caste.
narrates
4)
of
the gadabout servant-maid Jabala, was admitted to
Brahmanic disciplehood by Haridrumata,
for
the
very reason that he did not try to cover up his low birth.
Satyakama,
in
the end, obtains the highest
When
it
comes to higher
knowledge.
bars are consciously let
Mokshadharma (Vanik) caste
of
Brahman
and
In the
"
seller of juices, scents,
teaches righteous In the same text * the
roots,"
Jajali.
Brahmans learned
Rishi Para^ara declares that
Veda
at all times.
Mahabharata 3 the Vaigya
man Tuladhara,
leaves, barks, fruits,
ness to the
down
the
religion the
regard a virtuous Qudra, or
in
the
low caste man,
as
the equal of Brahmans. 1 Compare Pandit Shyamaji Krishnavarma, Transactions of the Fifth International Congress of Orientalists, vol. ii., p. 218 ff.
2
12.
3 261^".
12.
290^".
The
226
Veda
where the good Brahman, of Professor Garbe will not hear, comes in. The
Here,
whom
Religion of the
I
Brahman authors minded Brahmans enough
is
think,
of the Upanishads, just as highof
to permit all
religious activity,
all
ages, were honest
fit
men
in
and
liberal
to participate in higher
wisdom and
they express particular admiration
in in
piety.
Nay,
such participa
them something were carried away by They unexpected it to a certain ecstasy, the kind of ecstasy that goes
tion, because, after
all,
there was to
in all this.
with a paradox, as when the son of a peasant in Europe works his way to a professorship in a uni versity.
must not
As
regards the Rajas, or other nobles,
forget, too, that they were after
source from which
all
blessings flowed.
all
we the
Even
in
I theosophic occupation the Brahman have said before, the poor cleric with the Raja as I think that any one who reads these his Maecenas.
remains, as
statements of royal proficiency
in
the highest wisdom
attentively will acknowledge that they are dashed in the Upanishads, as they are in the Ritual, with a
goodly measure of captatio
benevolentice.
In other
words, the genuine admiration of high-minded nobles is not necessarily divorced from the subconsciousness that
well to admire in high places.
Even
good Brahmans might do that. King Janaka of Videha punctuates the Brahman
really If
it is
The Beginnings
brilliant exposition of
s
Yajnavalkya
repeated gifts
Hindu Theosophy 227
of
theosophy by
we may wonder
of a thousand cows
who counted them, and what Yajnavalkya them as he
did with
King
Ajatacatru of Benares, real intellectual
will
not allow admiring Brahmans to starve.
is,
think that a saying of the modern sage and pious
I
ascetic,
Paramahansa
the
the
essentially
right
Ramakrishna,
upon the
light
throws
1
exceptional
character of the theosophic exploits of kings
"
:
Men
always quote the example of the King Janaka, as that of a man who lived in the world and yet attained
But throughout the whole history of mankind there is only this solitary example. His
perfection.
case
was not the
tone
down
rule but the
this statement,
question as follows
Not
:
and apply
all
tually or morally sound, but
to the present
it
Brahmans were
helpers from the other castes,
Royal
caste,
lent occasional aid,
at
ankara and
Kumarila, the intellectual leaders of India 2
intellec
some Brahmans were
times, as they were in the days of
all
We may
exception."
;
brilliant
more
especially the
and
this aid justly
compelled acknowledgment and admiration. I
am now come
at last to the
higher thought, that
is,
my
task
is
the main or essential thoughts of
Max
1
See
2
See above,
Mtiller, p.
how of Hindu now to show how "
"
Hindu theosophy
Ramakrishna, His Life and Sayings,
219.
p. 127.
The
228
Religion of the
Veda
In the transition from the nature gods, the legends, the ritual, and the folk-lore practices, to the arose.
theosophy of
settled flit
like
phantoms
lators or seers,
time.
The
later times,
many
conceptions
across the vision of these specu
sometimes not to be heard of a second
air is
charged with experimental,
electric
thought. No religious or philosophic literature of ancient times has buried so many lost children as "
"
the
Hindu
the storm and stress period that ends
in
with the Upanishads. started to rear so
No
many
people of thinkers have thought to be
edifices of
abandoned without regret or scruple when found wanting in the end. They have left behind them
many
enough have
a ruin which they might well
finished,
and within which the
many another
nation,
would
exacting,
have
permanent and congenial Reason can Philip Sidney s saying:
cheerfully settled
upon
as
"
habitations.
not show
less
religious thinkers of
itself
more reasonable than
to leave off
reasoning on things above reason," does not hold with the Hindus. They would certainly have stig
matised such sweet reasonableness as the philosophy On the of sloth, if they had ever heard of it. contrary, the
old questions of whence, why, and
whither fascinate and enthrall their thoughts from the time of the Vedic Rishis to the present day.
Remarkable
as this
may
sound,
we have
really
no
The Beginnings
Hindu Theosophy 229
of
Hindu thought
record of any period of
of
which we
can say definitely that it was wanting in the highest and most strenuous thought, from the time of the 1
riddle-hymn of Dirghatamas and the creation-hymn, to the modern Vedantins and Paramahansas of the type of Ramakrishna and Vivekananda.
To
begin with, negatively speaking, there are at a
very early time traces of scepticism. ological gods
in
The
old
myth
strong flesh tints are just the least
There are those who begin to say
bit disconcerting.
and, doubtless, there They are number of those who begin to weaken in that faith ($raddha] which means monotonously The way in sacrifice, and gifts to the Brahmans.
of the gods
"
:
not,"
a growing
is
which the Veda
insists
upon
this faith
shows that
it
could not always be taken for granted. Especially the god Indra who is a good deal of a Bombastes
Furioso must have presented himself to the eye of the more enlightened as a brummagem god, tricky, Indra, like Zeus, braggart, drunken, and immoral. will
have
his fling.
There
is
a story about himself
and a lady by the name of Ahalya in which he assumes the outer form of that lady s august priestly
husband
for
his
own
purposes, and this as well as
other treacherous acts are a fruitful source of moral ising in the later 1
Rig-Veda
i.
Veda.
164 and 10. 129.
Even
in
the Rig-Veda,
if
The
230
we
Religion of the
read between the
there are those
lines,
who
Indra, and those
Veda
apologise for
him
who mock
:
lovely praise to Indra, vying one with the Even truthful praise, if he himself be true.
"Bring
other,
*
Indra is not, who ever though one or another says saw him, who is he that we should praise him? :
(Rig-Veda
Or again
100- 3.)
8.
:
*
whom
they ask, where is he? Nay verily they say of him, he is not at all He makes shrink the goods of his enemy like a gambler
"The
terrible
one of
.
the stakes of his opponent
Put your faith
in
him
O
He,
:
folks, is
Indra."
(Rig-Veda
Hence they "
infidel,"
2.
12 5.)
that have no faith are called a^raddha,
or anindra,
"repudiators
Every onward movement
of
of
Indra."
Hindu thought takes
place at the expense of the old gods of nature
divine attribute
;
the
becomes more important than the
mythological person. The individual natural history In of the gods becomes a thing of minor interest. this sense
the
of
polytheism
Rig- Veda
is
decadent even
themselves.
It
in
the
hymns
shows signs of
going to seed for philosophy. The gods in turn perform about the same feats of creating and up holding the world the interest of the poets in the acts has evidently increased at the expense of the :
1
Rig-Veda
7. 6. 3
and
5. 2.
3.
;
10. 48. 7.
The Beginnings The
agents.
Hindu Theosophy
of
gods, too,
we must not
231
have
forget,
taken, very mechanically, fixed positions in the ritual
devoted to their service.
One
is
thing
in
certain,
the host of figures that crowd the canvass in the transition period from mythology to theosophy the nature gods play no real
role.
They
are,
not ex
if
actly abandoned, at least relegated to a subordinate
position
and treated
Every embodiment
with comparative coldness.
of the divine idea
is
now
abstract
The
higher forms of early Hindu re ligion operate decidedly from the ontological side, from the severely intellectual side. Faith and piety, or symbolic.
sentiment and emotion, right and wrong, invariably take the second place, as long as there is to settle the question of the universe, the great cosmos
the fore,
little
cosmos; time; space; causality.
man, There ;
perhaps, the plastic possibilities of the early
gods through poetry, legend, and the art of repro duction remain in India a coarse-grained exercise of second rate
power
:
one needs but to
call
up
for
comparison the part that Greek mythology plays Greek literature and art. It
is
in
interesting to test this on the person of one
great nature god of the early time.
We have
that in a very early prehistoric time, the
period of the
Hindus and
seen
common
Iranians, there existed a
high view of the gods as moral forces, as the omni-
The
232
Religion of the
scient guardians of the moral law
Veda and order
of the
Avestan Ahura Mazda and Vedic Varuna
universe.
are the guardians-in-chief of the rta, the cosmic
moral order of the universe and man. in his ethical strength
1
Vedic Varuna
has a Hebraic flavor.
side of even the loftiest figure
and the
and
By
the
loftiest traits
of the Hellenic or Teutonic
Pantheon Varuna stands
like a
the side of a priest of
Jewish prophet by Dagon. And yet what permanent moral strength have the Hindus derived from Varuna, and what be
comes
Varuna himself
of
velopment Waters,"
a
?
A second
mere stage
in the course of his
rate
"
Neptune,
Lord
de
of the
In the straight-lined
figure.
advance, looking neither to the right nor to the left, to the recognition of the one Brahma, the universal spirit, as
the one Reality, and the consequent
soriness of really
the entire phenomenal world, there
no more room
than for an idol of that
illu-
Varuna
is
for righteous clay, unless
is
and stern Varuna
you can make out
but a particular manifestation of the
One Brahma, and then he
is
no more important than
any other manifestation.
The absence
of a strong chronological scaffolding
not only for the events of Hindu history, but also for the events of Hindu thought. It is the cus felt
is
tom 1
"
to speak rather glibly of
See above,
p. 126.
"
late
and
" "
early
in
The Beginnings
of
Hindu Theosophy 233 As
these thought movements.
are at the beginning of higher
we
Hindu thought con
most important and most permanent poets of the Vedic time, writing, not
fronted with idea.
a matter of fact
its
Some
badly, in Vedic metre, see
more or
the idea of God, in so far as
it
less clearly that
can be conceived at
presupposes the idea of absolute unity. It is a thought both independent and of leonine boldness.
all,
Independent, because there
is
thinkers, or foreign literature.
no suspicion of foreign Bold, because
soon lead to the conclusion that there
one
real thing, ists
both
in
one ding an
else
we may say
ception, a bolder conception has not
the brain of haps,
sick,
man
come from
;
all
else
of this con
emanated from
a bolder conception cannot, per
the brain of man.
1
of
will
which ex
We have become
acquainted with one expression of this unity
hymn
it
but one
the universe and in man, and that
Whatever
illusion.
is
"That,"
is
in
the
"
Dlrghatamas They call it Indra, Mitra, and or the Varuna, heavenly bird Garutmant Agni, (the sun). The sages call the one being in many ways :
;
they
call
Deussen,
it
Agni, Yama,
in his
Matarigvan."
History of Philosophy,
2
Professor
remarks that
no more epoch-marking word has been uttered in India until we come to the famous tat tvam asi, 1
2
Rig-Veda 1.164.46. Allgemeine Geschichte der Philosophic, vol.
i.,
part
i,
p.
106.
The
234 "
thou
Religion of the
Veda
art the
That," of the Chandogya Upanishad. Lest some one should suspect this to be a mere blundering thought for the nonce, a kind of freak or
sport of mental rumination, the
same Dlrghatamas
contains the idea several times more
hymn
;
for
instance in stanza 6: "
In ignorance do I ask here them that haply know, did support the six regions of the world ?
Who
What
was, forsooth, this one unborn thing
The
tenth book of the Rig-Veda contains the
famous creation
hymn
(10.129).
"
?
This remarkable
production has always interested Sanskritists pro foundly it has also passed over into the general ;
and philosophy. That great and the late Professor William D. Whitney,
literature of religion
sober
critic,
remarked anent
it
in 1882, that
the unlimited praises
which had been bestowed upon it, as philosophy and as poetry, were well-nigh nauseating. And yet, 1
twelve years
later, in 1894,
Deussen, who,
I
am
sure,
not trying to contradict Whitney, breaks out into
is
new
praise,
more
ecstatic than ever:
its
"In
noble
simplicity, in the loftiness of its philosophic vision it is
possibly the most admirable bit of philosophy of
olden
times."
And
"
again,
No
do justice to the beauty of the 1
2
translation can ever 2
original."
Proceedings of the American Oriental Society, vol.
History of Philosophy,
vol.
i.,
part
i,
I
think
xi., p. cxi.
pp. 119 and 126.
The Beginnings we may grant
Hindu Theosophy 235
of
that the composition shows a
good deal of rawness, unevenness, and inconsistency. Yet it is perhaps easier to undervalue such a performance than It occurs in one of to exaggerate its importance. the earliest literatures of the world
;
it
brushes aside
mythology, and it certainly exhibits philosophic depth and caution when it designates the fundamen all
tal
cause of the universe not by a name, but as
(tad\ or
judge
"
for
the one thing
themselves
"
(ekam).
But
let
"
that
"
my hearers
:
FIRST STANZA.
Nor
was there nor non-being ; there was no and no sky beyond. What covered all, atmosphere and where, by what protected ? Was there a fathom "
less
1
being
abyss of the waters ?
The poet
describes
mordial chaos. unconceivable
;
"
deftly as possible a pri
as
There was not non-being, for that is there was not being in the ordinary
What was
experience of the senses.
there
?
The
next stanza carries on his negation and poet then abruptly presses forward to a positive con in the
clusion
:
SECOND STANZA. "
1
Neither death was there nor immortality
Cf.
Chandogya Upanishad
6.
2.
2.
;
there
The
236
Veda
Religion of the
was
not the sheen of night nor light of day.
One
breathed, without breath, by inner power ; than
truly nothing whatever
The poet
It is
and breathes, but out breath material.
That One
"
it
(literally
express a
first
what posi
"
(tad
ekatri)
;
it
exists
breathes in a higher sense, with "wind")
It is difficult to
more
or even a
it
besides."
careful in his thought of
is
tively was.
else existed
That
which
physical and
is
imagine a more cautious,
successful attempt to conceive
and
cause or principle without personality. fail to observe that even so subtle
Yet we must not
a conception as the neuter That One is furnished with the anthropomorphic attribute of breath, be "
"
cause after
some
in
all,
in
the long run,
sort of flesh
takes up
anew the
must be decked out
and blood.
The
description of chaos,
up with a second description
it
it
third stanza
and follows
of the primal force
:
THIRD STANZA. Darkness there was, hidden by darkness at the The beginning- ; an unillumined ocean was this all. "
was enveloped in a shell might of devotional fervor was born"
living force which
by the
,
Unquestionably we have here the in
expressed 1
Prajapati. 1
See below,
the
Brahmana
According to p. 240.
tales
that one
idea, frequently
of
the creator
this the primal
being be-
The Beginnings
of
Hindu Theosophy 237
gins to create through the force of devotion (tapas).
Here an even more primary condition the fundamental force
is
assumed
is
either another start at a primeval cause, or,
may
:
is
This devotional fervor marks
born from, devotion.
ical as this
or
put forth by,
itself
seem,
is
yet uncreated sages.
paradox
the devotional fervor of the
Anyhow
these sages appear
upon the scene as del ex machina in the next stanza, and then,
after this
gap has been spanned, the work
of creation can really proceed.
FOURTH STANZA. "Desire
arose in the beginning in That ;
first seed of mind.
root
of being
Desire, "
Love,"
was
it
the
The sages by devotion found the
in non-being, seeking it in (their)
Kama, the equivalent means here the desire to
heart."
Greek
of live
;
it is
"Epcos
the
possible seed or fruit of the mind, for there
conceivable action of the
mind which
is
first
is
no
not preceded
by life. The second hemistich introduces an even more primordial creative role on the part of the sages,
whose devotion
the act of creation.
come the sages
is
the real promotive force in
The poet does not
at this stage
whence
tell
The
of the drama.
production of this creation, which is here defined as out of non-being," contradicts, being" coming "
the
"
first
stanza where
"
non-being" is
denied
"
:
How
The Religion
238 can
come out
being
Chandogya Upanishad
Veda "
of
non-being?
Moreover
(6. 2. 2).
the previously postulated
terms eliminates
of the
"
That Only
"
non-being."
it
ignores
which by
The poet
"
asks the
its
here un
questionably entangles himself in sham-profundity left out all reference to non-being"
he had better is
it
of
a term handled
deftness which
fondness for
Then
is it
the inverse ratio to their
in
it.
obscure, and
takes a wholly
desire
own
"
That
in
new
philosophic scepticism.
the wake of
any case
:
it
unimportant.
turn into the direction of
This
Only,"
had sprung forth
a mystical fifth stanza
is
in
quite unexpected in
whose mind
ought
to,
creative
aided by
its
or the sages creative fervor, go on to create the
world,
if it
does anything at
all
:
SIXTH STANZA. "
Who
Who can here proclaim it ? whence cometh this creation ? born,
truly knowetJi ?
Whence hither
On this side are the gods from its creating, Who knoweth then from whence it came to being?
SEVENTH STANZA. "
I
by the Hindus with a degree
is
The hymn continues with which
;
"
from whence it came to made itself, or whether not
This creation
Whether
it
being,
He who is its overseer in highest heaven, He surely knoweth or perchance he knoweth
not."
"
The Beginnings
Hindu Theosophy 239
of
The avowed purpose
of all philosophy
the world and
is
to ac
count for the presence of contents, needs to and is not which self-evident, something its
as
be explained beyond the point of mere individual experience, or analysis through empirical knowledge.
The
performs this act not without and with petulance due to scep some unsteadiness In putting forth a fundamental principle ticism. creation
hymn
without personality
it
does not
fall
far
behind the
best thought of later times inside or outside of In dia.
It fails
where
all
fails, in
philosophy
bridging
over to this particular idealistic or phenomenal world, even after the fundamental principle has been ab stracted,
a form.
no matter
We may
how rarefied and non-committal
in
expect, therefore, other starts to
The Veda, as I have hinted number of attempts supreme monotheistic being who is far
wards the same end.
before, contains an astonishing
to establish a
easier to handle than the monistic
monotheistic god who, veniently assumes
all
"
when once
responsibility.
That Only
"
;
a
conceived, con
We
have seen
more than once how supreme divine action makes a show of gradually detaching itself from the persons of the various gods
and
cult,
the mind lar
and how
who
figure in the earlier
this action impresses itself
myth upon
as really more important than the particu divine agent who was at any given time supposed
The
240 to perform
Religion of the
Veda
Creation of the world
production of out and the earth of the spreading sky and lordship over all that moves or stands these the sun
;
;
;
some
are
it.
of the grander acts in world
Even
life.
in
the Rig- Veda these acts are bunched and thrown into the lap of a divinity "
Lord
of
more or
a
by the name
Various
Creatures."
less abstract
and
of Prajapati
earlier divinities of
specialistic
character,
especially Savitar, the inspiring, enlivening principle of the sun, and Tvashtar, a kind of divine carpenter
or artificer of less important objects, are blended in
product it goes as far to realise personal mono theism as was ever possible in India. One hymn this
;
Prajapati
pictures
in
very glowing colors
he
;
a true creator, ruler, and preserver, and yet,
it
1
is
is
very interesting to observe, that the description of not, after all, differ very materially from that
him does
god Indra in the hymn, Rig- Veda 2 may be seen from a comparison of the two.
of the polytheistic 2. 12,
Some
as
of the stanzas of the Prajapati
follows
hymn
are as
:
Rig-Veda
10. 121.
golden germ arose in the beginning, Born he was the one lord of things existing, The earth and yonder sky he did establish
i.
"A
What god 1
2
Rig-Veda
shall
we
revere with our oblation
?
10. 121.
See Deussen, Geschichte der Philosophic,
vol.
i.,
part i,p.
128^".
The Beginnings
of
Hindu Theosophy 241
gives life s breath and is of strength the giver, At whose behest all gods do act obedient, Whose shadow is immortality and likewise death
2. "Who
What god "The
3.
king,
shall
who
we as
revere with our oblation
it
breathes and as
it
?
shuts
its
eyes,
The world
of life alone doth rule with might, Two-footed creatures and four-footed both controls
What god 4.
"Through
shall
we
revere with our oblation
?
whose great might arose these snow-capped
mountains,
Whose are, they say, the sea and heavenly river, Whose arms are these directions of the space What god shall we revere with our oblation ? "
we come to the tenth stanza does this omnipotent god who so far has not betrayed his Golden name, unless we so regard the epithet Germ in the first stanza, reveal himself as Prajapati Not
until
"
"
:
and there s no other Prajapati, thou art the one dost encompass all these born entities
io.
Who
!
Whate
May
er
we wish while
that be ours
!
offering thee oblations, May we be lords of riches
"
!
easy to feel both the inferiority and the of this Creator God who lords convenience greater it over everything, without exactly having estab It is
lished
any particular mental or moral claim to his
prerogatives. "
sophic 16
That
As compared with Only,"
the sheer philo
the one thing without
humanly
The
242
Religion of the
Veda
definable quality, Prajapati cuts a sorry figure, and
marks a backward movement. have
symbolic,
The supreme being
by the way.
fall
conceived as V^vakarman,
is
*
universe
highest ing
as Parameshthin,
;
he
fabricator
who
of
the
occupies the
the self-exist Svayambhu, Skambha, Support"; as Dhatar, Vidhatar, "Arranger"; and others. "
"
as as
"Maker";
"
"
as
summit";
being";
we
and philosophic, which make a
ritualistic,
short spurt and
as
are,
other monotheistic conceptions,
many
said,
There
These are mere symbolism.
move in the direction of mono pantheism is made through the personifica
In another theistic
tion of
all
His head
way
a
nature as a giant
is
heaven, his eye
Ymir
man
is
Veda
called Purusha.
the sun, his breath
the Edda.
The
a microcosm, or small world,
versely, the world
diffused.
widely
in
man,"
is
10.
90 "
1.
notion that
and
that,
con
a huge man (macranthropos) is Here are some stanzas of Rig-
is
:
The Purusha with thousand heads, With thousand eyes and thousand feet, Surrounds the earth on every side, goes ten digits yet beyond.
And "
2.
is
Purusha reminds us of the
the wind, and so on.
cosmic giant,
*
Purusha, aye,
The world
is
that
all this
world,
was and that
will be.
The Beginnings He
3.
of
Hindu Theosophy
243
even rules th immortal world
Which must
sustain itself
"Thus
is
great
this his
Yet even beyond
by food.
majesty he goes.
in strength
A
quarter of him all beings are. Three quarters are immortal beyond."
The most cations
is
significant of all monotheistic personifi
derived from the sphere of worship and
namely the God Brihaspati or Brahmanaspati, Lord of Prayer or Devotion." He presents him
ritual, "
self at first as
a mere personification of the acts of
the poets and priests. We remember a preceding statement that the Vedic poets consciousness is in
vaded by and impressed with the dignity and charm of their
own
poetic devotions.
They go
so far as to 1
very devoutness to the level of divinity. In Brihaspati we have a personification of prayer this
lift
A
beautiful performance both in one. * stanza of the Rig- Veda has it When, O Brihas
and
religious
"
:
pati,
men
first
speech, giving
sent forth the earliest utterance of
names
to things, then
a jewel treasured within pure."
was disclosed
them, most excellent and
In another famous
hymn
of the Rig- Veda
3
Holy Speech," is represented as the companion and upholder of the gods, and as the foundation of
Vac,
1
"
See above, p. 206.
2
10.
71.1
3
10.
125
The
244 all
Religion of the
religious activity
a later time
and
its
attendant boons.
we have the
statement that
Veda
Holy Song
(Dhena)
Weapon
(Sena)
is
the wife of
1
Brihaspati at of the
"
the wife of
is
"
Brihaspati just as Indra.
metaphoric
significant "
"
From
more
first is
placed as an ally by the side
regal gods, like Indra, Agni,
in their fights against
The Vedic gods sacrifice, just as
demons and
and Soma,
stingy unbelievers.
derive strength from prayer and
do Hindu men
conception from the beginning.
this is a familiar
The thought which
underlies Brihaspati has in store for itself a greater
more permanent result in the still more Brahma, which is religious devotion in the Of this in the last lecture. For the pres absolute. future and a
abstract
ent Brihaspati rises from his modest position as aider
and abettor of the war-gods to become father of the gods, upholder of the ends of the earth. Sun and
moon
s
alternate rise
is
Like a blacksmith
his work.
Brihaspati soldered together this world.
That hap
pened before the races of the gods came into being perhaps at the time when being was born of non;
"
"
"
being."
More transcendental are the exploitations in the direction of monotheism of such conceptions 1
See the author, Journal of the German Oriental Society^
xlviii., p. 599.
vol.
The Beginnings "
as Kala, "
Eros
more
;
of Prana
Hindu Theosophy
Father Time
"
Time,"
"
of
"
of
;
Breath of Life
"
245
";
Kama,
"
Love,"
and others even
The conception of Eros the first movement in The
and tentative.
faint
we have met above as One after it had come into
life
;
deification
its
is
never
very pronounced. Prana, or Breath of Life," is an almost universal cosmic principle it will occupy our attention in connection with the final shaping of "
;
Hindu theosophy. The most transcendental personifications "
pati,
is
the lord of
that of
Time"
creatures,"
at first
namely
nature.
Now
this generative
power
:
Praja-
an abstraction,
readily associated with the generative
is
of these
"
is
power
of
revealed par
ticularly in the cycle of the year.
By easy associa with year: next identified Prajapati boldly Prajapati reflected, This verily, I have created as
tion "
is
counterpart, namely, the year.
my
*
say,
Prajapati
is
Therefore they
the year/ for as counterpart of
himself he did create the
year."
Thus
the prose
Brahmana texts naively, yet closely, reason. And out of some such reasoning "Time" itself emerges as a monotheistic conception, in whose praise the Atharva-Veda "Time
sings
two hymns
1
:
runs, a steed with seven reins, thousand-eyed, The seers thinking holy thoughts,
ageless, rich in seed.
mount him 1
19. 53
;
and
all 54.
the beings are his wheels.
The
246
Religion of the
Veda
Time begot yonder heaven, Time That which was and that which shall "
Time, spreads
also these earths. be,
urged forth by
out."
(Atharva-Veda After a survey of these manifold,
19. 53.
all
i
and
5.)
them more
of
or less shaky attempts to account for the universe
and man, one impression, which fore,
grows mightily.
I
I
have spoken of be
mean the presence
lectual subtlety, the absence of sentiment. like
a practical bearing of
all
these earlier
of intel
Anything monothe
and monistic creations upon the Hindu mind and heart seem as yet almost altogether wanting. istic
In a sense they are not religious, but crudely philo sophical.
That
is,
if
we
define religion as the inti
mate, mutual, personal relation between man and the higher powers that surround him. In so far as they
and
are religious in this sense these monotheistic
monistic creations do not advance perceptibly be
yond the stage of the polytheistic nature gods, the ritual, and the sorcery of earlier times. The extrava gant power of Prajapati cause for cajolery "
is still
nothing more than a
:
and there s no other Prajapati thou art the one dost encompass all these born entities!
Who
er we wish, while offering thee oblations, that be ours May we be lords of riches
Whate
May
!
(Rig-Veda All this
is
far
from being the
final
"
!
10. 121.10.)
form of the
The Beginnings higher religion. its
of
Hindu Theosophy
When Hindu
theosophy has reached
growth and has stretched
full
247
its
we
limbs
find
all its various intellectual movements still keep on differing among themselves considerably, to the But they are end, as they did at the beginning.
that
absolutely agreed on one point, namely, their final
Their
purpose.
final
purpose
salvation
is
from the endless chain of existences
in
;
release
which death
marks the passage from link to link. This salvation can be effected in only one way, namely, profound and genuinely religious appreciation of the identity rests
own
self with the One True Being. This the twin of doctrine upon Transmigration and
of one
s
Monism without which India would not be India. The earlier forms of monotheistic and monistic speculation tion.
I
show no
thought
sign of a belief in transmigra
advisable to let this belief
it
mark
the division between the tentative, purely specu lative philosophy of the earlier time, and the thought of the Upanishads, which ious.
is
in its essence truly relig
The Upanishads, with
ments and through
all
move
their fluttering thought, never
lose sight of that great
came the
their curvy
all
purpose of salvation.
How
how it how Brahma, the
belief in transmigration in India;
led to a pessimistic
view of
life
;
One, the Universal, the True, finally shaped himself from out of the mass of conflicting and yet converg-
248
The
Religion of the
Veda
thoughts about the Divine which we have sketched to-day and how release from the chain of
ing
;
Brahma may be ob be the theme of our concluding
existences through union with
tained lecture
that will
on the
religion of the
Veda.
LECTURE THE SIXTH. The
Final Philosophy of the Veda.
Death and future
life
Early notions of Hell
in paradise
The idea of retribution Limit of reward for good deeds The notion of death-anew, or "re-death" How comes the belief in transmigration Hindu doctrine The method of transmigration of transmigration The doctrine of karma, or spiritual evolution How transmigration and karma appear to Western minds The pessimist theory of life Cause of Hindu pessi mism Pessimism and the perfect principle (Brahma) "
"
Dualistic
one
of
s
pessimism
Salvation
through
realisation
own Brahmahood
The conception of the Atman, the soul principle
dtman, "breath," as life of the Universe Brahma, the spiritual essence of the Universe Fusion of Atman and Brahma Maya, or the world an illusion The unknowableness of Brahma Emerson s poem on the Brahma The fulness of Brahma: a story of Yajnavalkya and his wife Maitreyi Transition from philosophy to piety Hindu asceti Professor Huxley s critique of asceticism Pilgrim s
cism
progress
under the
and disciplehood life
religion
The
of the forest-dweller
life
Brahma
of
of
the
Investiture
householder
and wandering
ascetic
The
Ultima
Thule.
THE and
Veda
conception of the polytheistic gods, the relations which the early Hindus have s
established with
them by means J 249
of their songs o of
The
250 praise
Religion of the
and nourishing
simple.
The temper
are
gifts,
Veda a spirit very
of
of these things almost guaran
tees beforehand equally simple notions about death
and future
life.
There
is
a paradise above, conceived
oftenest as a solar paradise, where the gods are hav
Man would
ing a delightful time.
have a share
in this delight, like
be most happy to the gods immortal.
Therefore the gods are implored to let
man
the pious
their behalf.
come
them
to
that has spent his substance freely in
1
Next, this elementary belief is fittingly out with simple rites and ancient legends. padded The bodies of the dead are burned and their ashes are consigned to earth.
But
this
is
viewed, symbolic
ally, merely as an act of preparation
it
is
for that other life of joy.
Arms
utensils, especially sacrificial utensils, are
buried
called forthright
and
cooking
with the corpse. For the occupations and necessi who have gone forth (preta), as the ties of those "
"
dead are called euphemistically, are the same as upon the earth, sacrificing included. fathers of old
who have gone
The
have found another good place. the
first
went
royal man,
righteous fore
forth in the past
they
Especially Yama,
forth as a pioneer to the
distant heights in the skies.
He
searched and found
a way for all his descendants. He went before and found a dwelling from which no power can debar 1
Rig- Veda
i.
31. 7
;
91.
i
;
125.
5,6)5.
55.
4
;
63. 2.
The
Final Philosophy of the
The Fathers
mortal man.
and
this
There
of old have travelled
midst of highest heaven,
in the
in
Dawn, beams unfading
eternal waters flow.
There
of beautiful foliage,
engaged
the
251
it,
path leads every earth-born mortal thither.
the Goddess
in
Veda
of the
company
after death at
Yama
gods
s call
Yama in ;
sits
the lap of
light,
there
under a tree
an everlasting bout
there mortals gather
to behold Varuna.
They
imperfections behind them on returning to their true home, the rich meadows of which no
have
left all
In that place there are no lame
one can rob them. nor crooked of limb to the strong
;
the weak no longer pay tribute
all alike
;
share with
Yama
and the
gods the feast of the gods.
Underneath the coat bitter after
of sugar the pill of death
Fitfully the
all.
is
Vedic Hindu regales
himself with the hope of paradise, but his real crav ing "
is
expressed in Vedic literature countless times
May we
:
hundred autumns, surrounded by On the way to Yama the dead must
live a
lusty sons!
"
pass the two
broad-nosed,
four-eyed dogs,
the
speckled and the dark according to another turn of this myth these same dogs, originally sun and moon, wander among men and pick the daily candidates ;
1
that are to go on their last
Soon we pilgrimage. hear of the foot-snare of Yama. Think or do what 1
See above,
p. 105.
The
252
Religion of the
Veda
death remains uncanny. The prospect of paradise is marred to some extent by visions of hell,
you
will,
the inevitable analogical opposite of paradise, that
deep place of bottomless, blind darkness, which in is fitted out with the usual gruesome
a later time
stage-setting in the style of
wall-paintings in the
From
Dante
Campo Santo
the start there
is
s
Inferno, or the
at Pisa.
the idea of retribution.
To
Yama s blissful seat only they who have done good may aspire. We remember the belief that the things and given the priests (the ishtdpiirta) await highest heaven the faithful as a sort of twin guard
sacrificed in
ian
angels, securing for
them
bliss.
On
the other
hand, the oppressors of the Brahmans, they who spit upon the Brahmana sit in the middle of a pool of blood chewing hair." The tears which did "
"
.
.
roll
.
from the eyes of the oppressed, lamenting Brah
mana, these very ones,
O oppressor of Brahmans, the
In gods did assign to thee as thy share of water." an early version of hell the sage Bhrigu observes some yelling men who are being cut up and devoured
by other men who
also yell
we do
us in yonder world, so this
"
:
So they have done to to them in return in
2
world."
But now the Hindu, subtle and at the same time naive, given over to rigid schematism and mechan1
Atharva-Veda
9
(^atapatha
5.
19. 3.
and
Brahmana n.
13.
16.
I.
The
Final Philosophy of the
ical consistency, as all
Veda
his intellectual history shows,
becomes nervous about the permanence
What
253
of
life
after
the effect even of his good deeds should not last forever? What if, instead of the death.
if
hoped-for immortality in yonder world, there be
death again ity
which
?
One
lasts
text
fancies a limited immortal
only a hundred
years, that
man upon
ideal length of the life of
is,
the
The
earth.
good deeds is after all finite day and night, or, as we should say, time may exhaust the In strict logic that must stock of one s good works.
treasure of
;
mean death anew.
So we read
texts of fervent wishes
and cunning
ensure imperishableness of one cut off
in
the Brahmana rites
potent to
good works, and to 2 the possible recurrence of death. There are s
also performances intended to secure to the deceased
ancestors who, for aught one knows, are in the
same
danger of re-dying, genuine, instead of temporary and 3 This conditional immortality. death-anew," or "
(punarmrtyii) as the Hindus call it, is an exceedingly characteristic idea, but it is not yet transmigration of souls. As long as its scene is loca "
"
re-death
ted entirely in the other world, and as long as
thought possible to avoid or cure expedients of 1
2 3
sacrifice,
it
it is
by the ordinary
so long the essential character
Brahmana 10. I. Brahmana 3. n. atapatha Brahmana 12. 9*
(^atapatha
5. 4.
Taittiriya
8. 5. 3.
12.
The
254
of that belief
is
Veda
Religion of the not yet present.
But the
transition
from one to the other was easy. If men can die in is no way, short of annihilation, to se cure peace for anything that started out by being
heaven there
in the im Next, the notion of re-death agined world beyond was after all too shadowy it lacked the practical data of experience. It was very "
mortal.
"
;
natural to transplant the consequences of to this earth, the
home and
"
re-death
"
hearth of death where
He who men, every wink of the eye. must die again comes on to do it on earth where the trick is so well understood lo and behold, we have like fish, die at
the essential of metempsychosis, namely a succession of lives
and deaths
being.
I
am
in
the career of one and the same
far from believing that
reasoning, taken by
even such smooth
itself, suffices to
account for the
presence of this important doctrine in India. The germs of the belief in transmigration are very likely to have filtered into the Brahmanical consciousness
from below, from popular sources, possibly from
some
of the aboriginal,
non-Aryan tribes of India. has always borrowed immensely
Brahmanical religion from folk beliefs and practices, and has always man aged to impart to these borrowings the look of integral Brahmanical doctrine.
Like a 1
will-o -the-wisp the belief in transmigration
See Alfred Bertholet, See ten-wander ting (Nr.
2 of the
iii.
J
Series
The flares it
up
in
among
Final Philosophy of the
many
parts of the world.
Veda
We
255
hear of
the Egyptians and the Celts, but
it
has
developed most significantly among the Greeks and Hindus. Its wide vogue is due to a fusion of some of the simplest observations
and reasonings about
and death, such as can scarcely fail to come to the mind of primitive man. It is pure folk-lore. life
Three suppositions are required First,
man
for this belief:
has a soul, separate and separable from
the body.
Secondly, animals, plants, and
even inanimate
objects similarly have souls.
Thirdly,
all
these souls can change their habita
tions.
The
man
has a soul depends in the main upon two observations: First, breath of life and its cessation after death. Life s breath is con strued lives
belief that
by primitive observers
as an entity
which
with the living body and leaves it at death. life s breath departs, the soul departs. Sec
When
ondly, intercourse of the living with the dead con tinues in dreams and hallucinations.
that the dead after
all
exist.
This shows
Primitive
man does
not recognise illusions.
The
belief in
animal and plant souls, and even
of Religionsgesehichtliche Volksbucher^ edited
Michael Schiele), Halle
a. S.
1904.
by Professor Friederich
The
256
Religion of the
Veda
souls of inanimate objects (fetish), is based upon the same sort of simple logic. Animals have both life s breath and some measure of reason. Nomads, cattle-raisers, hunters, inhabitants of forest
and
sea-
coast are thrown into intimate intercourse, each with particular classes of animals
whose mental resources
are not only obvious, but often clash with
and
fable
fairy-tale
survives the
folk s very
belief in reasoning, soul-inhabited animals
nard the
man
s
Clear up into the high literature of beast
interests.
Fox and Bre
Rabbit.
r
own
in the search after his
dered into the notion that
:
see
real
Rey
Primitive man, too,
origin has often blun
man
is
descended from
one or the other animal.
This has given rise to the very important religious, political, and economic institutions
As
known
as
Totemism.
regards plants, the
Hindu Law-Book
of
Manu
forbids the chewing of red rosin, doubtless because
looks like coagulated blood, and blood must not
it
supposed to be alive. The weird twilight shapes of trees and plants, the sough be drunk.
of the
The
wind
suggest
As
1
is
in the leaves of
life in
the forest-trees again
the vegetable kingdom.
regards inanimate things,
ber the child
s
we need but remem
relation to its doll, or, that children
punish with their 1
tree
own
oft-tasted penalties the stick
See von Negelein, Archiv fur Religionswisssnschaft^
vi.,
246.
The
Final Philosophy of the
over which they stumble.
remoter analogies of
seem
In
human
brief,
life
Veda
257
the nearer or
which pervade, or
them
to pervade all objects in nature present
man
selves to early
as guarantees or suggestions of
universal animation, of souls present in every shapen thing.
And now the
passage of these souls from one kind
of receptacle to another, from
man
man
to
man, from
to animal, plant, or stock, or stone, follows
The
inevitably.
records of primitive beliefs are
full
of it. I will merely remind you of the belief in wer wolves as one instance of this kind. In the final
outcome
of
all
these notions
account for the destiny of
some
man
peoples, eager to after death,
have
assumed a chain of variegated existences. And with this goes very generally some notion of evolution forward or backward.
The
character of the creature
given existence controls the degree of This last bit of logic has next existence. flowered out in India as the important doctrine of in a certain
the
karma or deed." As far as India "
concerned one thing is certain real metempsychosis does not enter into the higher
thought of India, takably until
however, i
is
:
or, at least, is
we come
to the Upanishads.
this belief has finally
See below p. 259.
not stated unmis
When,
taken shape we find
in
The
258
Veda
Religion of the
the following established items of faith
it
living creature
Every
:
reborn in some organic shape
is
every living creature had a previous existence
every living creature death, until in
some
;
;
and
again and again the prey of
is
life all
desire
and
all
activity as
the outcome of desire shall have been laid aside.
This
is
the
Hindu
nation of the
salvation, namely, absolute resig
finite, futile, illusory
of the will to live,
and the act
world; cessation
of living.
This of
produces union with Brahma. Not until mor man has cast off every desire of his heart does he
itself
tal
enter immortal into Brahma.
We
have now arrived
at the thought or the position of the Upanishads, the
the long line of Vedic texts.
last in
Like
all
Vedic
thought, the thought of the Upanishads is not sys tematic, but tentative, fanciful, and even romantic. It feels
its
misty, wavering, sometimes
way through
The more
conflicting beginnings.
come
later
on
systems of
one or the other of the so-called
Hindu philosophy.
Upanishads so important a doc must be established on reason. There are two
Still
trine
in
even
in the
questions to be asked.
wander from
life
to
tation differ from at
a
rigid conclusions
life
life
;
to
why must the soul secondly, why does its habi First,
life,
liable to reincarnation
one time as an animal high or low
human being
of various degrees
;
;
at
and
:
another as at yet an-
The
Final Philosophy of the
other even as a god
?
Veda
259
For our convenience we may
answer the second question first. The celebrated Law-Book of Manu, at a time when this doctrine has become cut and dried, teaches that a
who
priest
trusted to
steals the substance
him
Brahman
which has been en
for sacrifice to the
gods
will in his
next existence become a vulture or a crow.
Why ?
Because the vulture and the crow make their living by stealing food. Briefly, man is what he does.
Note the superb moral This
is
possibilities of this teaching.
the well-known doctrine of karma, or
"
deed,"
now famous wherever men are interested in evolution of the human mind. Deed and the or
"
desire,"
as the
Hindus
are essentially one and the
man
s
nature
deavors, his
as
is
founded
;
call
it,
same
thing.
of existences
own
is
On
desire
as his desires so are his en
deeds the character of his next birth
of his
regulated, for he
deeds.
If his
will,
back of the deed,
endeavors so are his deeds.
his
the
karma
is
in
himself the
in a
By
the round
given
life
sum has
accumulated for him a good balance, as it were, the next life will be delightful and noble conversely, if ;
the next birth will be, consequently, as a low and degraded being. Life is character char his life
is evil,
and inherent from previous existence, and character modelled and shaped by the deeds of
acter inherited
1
Manu
ii. 25.
The
260
Religion of the
Now we may answer the first
the present existence.
The answer
is
must the soul wander
Why
question, namely,
Veda
at all
?
No
:
to release from
life
deed leads the way to salvation, and union with Brahma. Aye, to
be sure, as the fragrance of a tree in blossom so the fragrance of a good deed is wafted afar, saith the 1
But even the best deed
Chandogya Upanishad. a thing from
the
finite.
It
is
very nature limited and vitiated by rewards itself, it punishes itself, accord its
ing to a process of automatic psychic evolution, but
the fruit of the finite can "Yajnavalkya,"says 3
"
if,
Upanishad,"
speech goes into the sun, his
tions of space, his
be only
Artabhaga
in
finite
man,
his breath into wind, his
into the
body
:
the "Great Forest
after the death of this
fire,
mind
itself
his
eye into
his ear into the direc
moon,
into the earth, his self (atmari)
into ether, the hair of his
body
into plants, the hair
blood and semen into water, Then spake what then becomes of the man?"
of his
head into
Yajnavalkya:
trees, his
"Take
me by
the hand,
my
dear!
Artabhaga, we two must come to an understanding about this privately, not here among people." And they went out and consulted.
was
And what
they said
DEED (karma), and what they praised was DEED
Verily, one becomes good through good deed, evil
through 1
5. 10.
9
deed."
.
Brihadaranyaka Upanishad
3. 2.
13.
:
evil
The Later
Final Philosophy of the
in the
same
Veda
261
1
Yajnavalkya describes the from the body and its conse
tract
departure of the soul
Then his knowledge and his works quences to man and his previous experience take him by the hand. As a caterpillar which has wriggled to the tip of a "
:
blade of grass draws
over to
itself
(a
new
blade), so
does this man, after he has put aside his body, draw himself over to a new existence. Now verily they .
say:
Man
so
his insight
is
is
altogether desire (kratu)
;
as
.
(kdmd) as ,
is
his desire
his insight so is his
is
deed (karma)\ as is his deed so is his destiny." More than one Western reader, when he ponders 1
the doctrine of transmigration as rooted in desire
and deed, is likely to ask the question why the Hindus did not rest content with its outcome. The bulk of their spiritual energy in Brahmanism, as well as in Buddhism and the other Hindu sects, is ex
pended I
gauge him
Why
this so
is
aright,
and flowers
more
and deed, plucking
at the risk of
thorns, or sting from life, fuller life.
?
willing to tarry in the
is
garden of will, desire,
man The Western man, if
break the chain that ties
in the effort to
to existence.
its
life
its fruits
an occasional prick from noxious
insects.
Here are some
its
We want
of the points
connected with transmigration that are naturally
sympathetic to Western minds 1
Brihadaranyaka Upanishad chapter the first.
4. 4.
:
3; see also
Brahma Upanishad,
The
262
Love
1.
of
Religion of the
life,
Veda
and abhorrence of annihilation
transmigration ensures
some form
life in
for ever
:
and
ever.
The twin ghosts of fatalism and predestination are laid. Where will and deed, with character as their 2.
result, rule is
thing
every destiny, nothing
pre-determined.
outside interference, 3.
It
is
Man
is
accidental,
himself, free
the arbiter of his
own
involves the perfection of retribution
no
from
destiny. :
reward
and punishment adjust themselves automatically and It opens wide the organically to virtue and vice. door of hope to the lowly and oppressed, and checks the excesses of the cruel mighty. "
Methinks we have sinned
And
this is
erringly, as
despairing,
some old world
It is
mere
But
justice.
it
is
the
knows how to reward merit just as un it knows how to punish sin inexorably.
no human being so hedged in by calamity, and degradation, but what he or she may start
There vice,
s
Hell,"
loses its sting. justice that
in
Byron
is
on the upward road by some act of determination Grant me my heaven now," If the wish, for good. "
fails
of fulfilment,
fulfilled in
And
who knows
that
the train of heroic effort
it
may
not be
?
yet the deep-seated instinct of life which makes men all over the earth, India included, wail
The
their dead, goes
Hindu
Veda
Final Philosophy of the
hand
in
hand
in all
higher forms of
religion with the apparently sincere expres
sion of a desire to be released from at first negative, in the
life.
Pessimism,
end positive and profound,
becomes the ruling theory of Hindu life. With attractions, fascinations, and beauties of life, felt
263
all
the
life is
to be a fetter, or a knot which ties the heart to
the world of sense
;
and release (moksha) from the
everlasting round of lives (samsdra) salvation (nirvana).
Buddhism
later
is
the Hindu
on expresses
the urgent need of salvation from existence in its well-known fourfold doctrine of suffering. Its first clause establishes the truth of suffering suffering
life
is
is
;
;
loved
is
suffering.
The
woe and and
children,
as the evils
delusion, age
1
),
and vanities of
all
where hunger and
and death, desire
desire for possessions are life,
knowledge has been attained. principal
conviction that
less distinctly in the
futile is
expressed hardly Great Forest Upanishad (3. 5. 2 thirst,
is
age is suffering disease is suffering union is not loved is suffering separation from ;
;
with what
what
Birth
:
1
lumped
for
alike
before the highest
Anyhow,
all
the
Hindu systems of religion and philosophy How many births are past, I cannot tell How many yet to come, no man can say "
;
:
But this alone That pain and
I
know, and know
full well,
grief embitter all the
way."
(South-Indian Folk-song, quoted in the Rev. Dr. John Morrison New Ideas in India, p. 213.)
s
The
264
Religion of the
Veda
out with the assurance that the world
start
suffering,
and that
account for
We
it
is
their particular business
and to remove
must not
is full
of
to
it.
forget that the perpetual decay
and
death and replacement which is the gist of human when looked at purely from the outside is not
life
redeemed
in India
by any theory, or instinctive faith advancement. There is in all Hindu general no of thought expression hope for the race, no in
theory of betterment all along the line. Each in dividual must attend to his own uplifting that is to free
him from a world whose worthlessness
is
con
demned is
to
in unmeasured terms. Admitting that this no small extent mere theory that the average ;
Hindu worries
along, sustained
by
life,
hope, sun
shine, and what not, whence the theory ? The question has frequently been put point blank
How
did
Hindu pessimism
originate
?
I
:
believe that
the answer, or at least a partial answer, may be made India herself, with some degree of certainty, to wit :
through her climate, her nature, and her economic conditions, furnishes reasonable ground for pessim ism.
As
regards economic conditions political eco
nomists say that the value of human life in any country may be estimated by the average wage of its
earners.
gaged
for a
A
low caste servant
wage
of five cents a
may
to-day be en
day out of which he
The
Final Philosophy of the
Veda
265
must, owing to caste laws, find his own keep, and India s nature is possibly that of a family besides.
more malignant than that country.
The
of
any other
civilised
floods of great rivers devastate
times entire districts
;
per contra,
when the
at
rains
are withheld at the time of the capricious monsoons,
famine with plague or cholera in its wake, decimate the population. The tribe of venomous serpents
and the blood-lust of the tiger claim their regular quota of victims.
Our the
first
hymns
acquaintance with the Aryan Hindus in of the Veda shows them to us a sturdy,
life-loving people
on the banks, or
in the region of
the river Indus, the land of the five streams, the
modern Punjab in Northwestern India. That coun try they had conquered, fresh from the highlands that separate India from Iran. tests,
By
successive con
hinted at in a very interesting legend of the
Brahmana
1
they advanced eastward, until they had overrun the plain of the Ganges the hottest texts
civilised land
land of shads,
on the face of the earth.
This
is
the
Hindu theosophy, the land of the Upanithe land where Buddha preached, some
centuries after the earliest Upanishads.
most famous sermon was delivered
at
Buddha
Benares, in
the very centre of the plain of the Ganges. 1
(^atapatha
Brahmana
I.
4.
I.
10-18.
s
There
The
266
in
anywhere on the face of the the doubts and misgivings that beset
the land of Bengal,
civilised earth,
human
life at its
the belief that that
Veda
Religion of the o if
best might permanently harden into
life is
Hindu
a sorry affair.
literature
comes from these lands shows us that the
Aryans did not succumb to this change, for they remain a great and remarkable people. But this unquestionably left an indelible their on The mental subtle character. impression ness of the race did not perish, but their bodies
habitat of theirs
suffered
;
hypochondria,
melancholia,
dyspepsia
what we may conquered the conquering Aryan, whose stock was no doubt the product of a more northerly and invigorating climate. call
it
Now
it is
time to remember once more that the
conception of the it
Brahma
had
One True Being
let
now
us
risen to a considerable height,
call
ap
parently long before the doctrine of transmigration
had taken hold of the Hindu mind, and established
Even aside the theory of despair of the w orld. from such a theory it is natural for the mind of man
in
r
it
every clime and time to evolve some great power that is behind the phenomena of the world, to estab in
lish
to
its
own
principle that
is
satisfaction
underneath
world, and then to long for
some
of
sort
perfect
this obviously imperfect
some kind
with that power or principle.
of association
So teach us
all
higher
The
Final Philosophy of the
and religious philosophies.
religions
Veda
267
Without doubt
the Hindus did this before pessimism and indepen
But when pessimism began to
dently of pessimism.
Hindu view
taint the force,
the root of
of
life,
the
all,
then the eternal
One True and
all-
Perfect
Thing offered the only logical escape from the evils of existence.
The theory
of the
Brahma and the theory
of trans
migration united like the two branches of a river. The wandering of the soul through the realms gov
erned by death must be the consequence of its As long as lasts the will separation from Brahma. to live this
life
finite desires
of death, as long as this will
and
separate from
means
finite
deed, so long the soul remains
Brahma
in the chain of successive lives
and deaths, each new the preceding
life.
shaped by the karma of Escape from this chain can be life
accomplished only by union with the Single True Being, the Brahma.
Hinduism has again able turn,
if
we
Western mind.
test
it
in this
matter taken a remark
by the normal temper
It is a
of the
kind of dualistic pessimism,
which the good that is in the world as well as the evil that is there are both made to emphasise the in
evil.
It
avenues
is
;
a pessimism that
the avenue of
is
evil,
the avenue of good, because
reached through both because it is evil and ;
it
suggests by
its
very
The
268
terms the existence of learned one
world
way
Veda
Religion of the
We
evil.
Westerners have
or another to endure this naughty
But when
fairly well.
it
becomes too bad we
remember that the refuge is with the Omnipotent Power. That is the silver lining to the cloud of human existence. The Hindu mind turns
are apt to
way the silvery sheen of Brahma has cloud lining. The conception of this One True
this the other
a
;
Being, out of which flow all visible things, might have been an anchor of strength and a head-spring A palpably pos of hope and joy for the Hindus.
consequence of their thought is, that all men have the divine or Brahmic spark, that all are micro sible
cosms, flung
off
macrocosm, the
human
for
some reason
Brahma.
If
so,
upon truth and
existence must be based
wholesomeness, no
less
than the Universal Brahma.
Not
so did the Hindus proceed.
the
Brahma
tion,
by that superb then individual
all
They
attributes
imaginable
lavish of
upon
perfec
and then proceed to apply the same standard
to this world
very sorry
home
in
:
of course they find
affair.
The
it
by contrast
a
world ceases to be a desirable
which one may
live,
sustained perhaps
by
the hope of better things to come, because it is measured by the standard of Brahma and found
wanting.
which
is
When lifted
the
Brahma
is
praised, that
above hunger and
thirst,
Brahma
above
grief
The
Veda
Final Philosophy of the
269
and worry, above old age, decay, and death, the per sistent personal
creatures
is
age, decay,
There
is
question
is
application
full of
hunger,
that this world of
is,
thirst, grief,
worry, old
and death. yet one consequence to be drawn. The What is the cure asked, as it must be "
:
for desire, the thirst for life
and
its
contents
How
?
cut the fetter, or the knot of adhesion to the illusory
How
world? answer haps
get rid of the will to
The
live?"
or per
through knowledge. Knowledge, would be better to say intuition, of the the individual self with the great True One
is,
it
unity of
;
and the recognition, ever present, of the divided, tracted, illusory nature of everything finite a mortal has recognised Brahma, feeling, myself,"
bodily
how
life?
"
dis
When He is
can he longer desire and cling to is the culminating thought of the
This
Upanishads and the Veda, expressed to say, the essence of
the solemn
in
Thou art That." That man is itself Brahma. The
three words tat tvam asi, is
:
"
man when once he
has seen That (tad apagyai], becomes That (tad abkavat), because in truth he wise
Thus the final always was and is That (tad dslt). attainment of man is this knowledge it is the works of the Jew, and the faith of the 1
;
"
"
"
"
Christian 1
salvation
by the complete ascendency
See Vajasaneyi Samhita (Tadeva Upanishad), 32.
12.
The
270 the
of
Religion of the
divine in
one
Veda
and the consequent temporal and illusory.
s
self,
submergence of all that is It is time now that we return to the which
I
propounded
last
the brahma, the One, the Universal
question
How
for to-day s lecture.
did
finally
spirit,
shape himself from out of the mass of ideas whose constant drift was in the direction of oneness,
or, as
we may of the
One finally call it, monistic pantheism? main circumstances of the higher religious
thought of the time just preceding the Upanishads was a strong monotheistic tendency which seemed to develop simultaneously
and peacefully along with
the monistic ideas, such as the the
"That,"
the
"
Only,"
"
Being."
In the Upanishads monotheism
is
practically at
an end, whereas the attempts to designate the ab stract conceptions just mentioned emerge from the stage of tremulous venture to confident and familiar
statement. final
Yet they
name
of
the
are not
Universal
Upanishad mind seems tangible and
any one
them the
of
Even the
Being.
to prefer something
suggestive, something that
more
after
all
has attributes. In the seething caldron of the earlier speculation there occur yet two other conceptions which have
become pretty well of the Upanishads.
crystallised even before the time
The
first
of these
is
the con-
The
Final Philosophy of the
ception of the dtman, which means
and then
self."
cerned there
meaning wind,
"
As
"
of
far as
first
271
"
breath,"
the early poetry
is
con
not the least doubt about the primary
is
dtman.
1
It is familiarly correlated
the breath of the
man
Veda
2
with
The dtman
gods."
or
after death returns to
mingle with the wind from which it is supposed to have come. The later Veda abounds in crude and fanciful psychosoul of
3
physical observations in which the parts and func tions of the
human body,
more or
the
little
cosmos, are
with the phenomena of the outer world, the big cosmos. An important of this sort that the human is, body is per thought correlated
less skilfully
vaded by plural breaths, pranas or at mans ; these vivify the body, and are the essential part, the ego, of the living individual.
Several of the older
Upan-
ishads contain a fable, resembling the Latin fable of "
the belly and the
The
among themselves
are quarrelling
They
members."
for
bring their case before Prajapati, Prajapati advises
creatures."
them
1
The
For the meaning
of Philology,
supremacy. "
see the author in
xvi., p. 421.
2
Rig- Veda
3
Ibid., 10. 16. 3
7. 87. 2 ;
;
10. 168. 4.
90. 13
;
92. 13.
body
mind
it
de-
same word in American Journal
of tman, the reduced stem of the "self,"
the lord of
loss affects
voice, the eye, the ear, the
the pronominal sense of
powers
to leave the
one by one and to observe which most.
vital
The
272
Veda
Religion of the
discommoding the body quite a good deal. But when the breath was on the point of departing,
parted,
proud steed from the Indus would pull and tear the pegs of his tether, so it pulled and tore "just
as the
the other vital
powers."
Hence a
to the dtman.
dtman all
members
the
all
things that
come
And
they yielded the palm
text declares:
"
From
the
Of
spring into existence.
dtman
into existence the
is
the
first."
The
dtinans, or breaths, are finally conceived as
coming from a
single dtman, the universal breath,
or
A
self,
or ego.
Brahmana
text declares
"
:
Ten
(kinds of) breath dwell in man the universal dtman is the eleventh all the breaths are contained in ;
:
That
him."
own
the dtman, after
is,
its
supreme place
in
has been permanently fixed, is trans ferred on exactly the same terms to the universe
the
self
outside of man. at the all
The dtman,
same time the
beings
;
all
is
lord of the gods, the creator of
the worlds are an emanation of his
great universal self It is
the lord of breaths,
:
finally
the dtman
easy to see that with
the term dtman in
its final
all
is
the
all.
the refinement of
outcome,
it
certainly has
a strong physical touch, at least in the beginning of its use. The final shaping of the idea consisted in associating, or rather fusing, with this
dtman another
conception, coming from a totally different quarter,
The
Final Philosophy of the
Veda
273
namely, the olden Vedic sphere of devotion, prayer, holy performance, in fact religion in general. Even in the Vedic hymns, as we have seen, the epithet Goddess is freely given to the numerous names "
"
for prayer, devotion, religious emotion,
and kindred
Unquestionably the sdvitrl stanza owes
ideas.
puzzlingly paramount position in
Hindu
its
religion to
the same estimate of devotion as a thing essentially divine.
We
1
have also made acquaintance with a of Prayer," Brihaspati, an important,
"Lord
symbolic but not lasting attempt to pour the sacred function of the poets and priests into the mould of a personal
He
god.
marks one of those
false starts
towards
Veda abounds. More and more the sacred word, the constant com
personal monotheism in which the later
panion of the
sacrifice, is felt to
ing spiritual essence. Starting as prayer, act,
it
2
The
be a kind of
sacred word
is
uplift
brahma.
charm, sacred formula, religious
becomes the symbol of holy thought and holy
utterance (\6yo$\ the outpouring of the soul in highest longings. 1
See above,
2
Professor Oldenberg
It is
its
the best wish of a spiritually
p. 202. "
regards
zauberfluidum
"
as
the
original
But does magic essence really explain, and does it not itself stand in need of explanation ? Anyway it seems to me that this distinguished scholar s present sympathy with what may be called ethnological explanations of religious phenomena, that is the theory that such phenomena must necessarily begin somewhere in the lowest bathos of savage folk belief, is leading him on a trail farther
meaning
of
brahma.
than that trodden by this word.
"
"
The
274
minded and
Veda
Religion of the
becomes
gifted people that
for a while
personal god, and at last the divine essence of the universe.
The conception
subtle and
abstract as the monistic philosophical
conception of
comes
intellectually not as
is
That Only True Being," which from the head. But from the point "
entirely
of view of heart-felt
emotion
the most exalted
is
it
Such is the conception brahma, used in the neuter gender, not yet the mas of gentile
divine
culine
God Brahma who,
tion
placed at the
is
trinity,
folk.
renewed personifica
after a
head of the
Brahma, Vishnu, and
Hindu so-called The brahina is
later
"
:
(Jiva
the word, the truth in the word
is
brahma. Through
brahina heaven and earth are held
together."
The two
conceptions of dtman and brahma, in their origin, respectively, the physical and spiritual essences of the universe, are fused into one concep tion.
there
They is
are used in general as
a tendency to use brahma,
synonyms.
"
Holy
Still
Thought,"
as the designation of the universal principle in the
outer world in the
inner
dtman,
;
life
of
"
Self,"
man.
as the
The
same
principle
conviction that the
braJnna without and the dtman within are one and the real religion of the Upanishads. The power which operates in the universe, creating, sustaining, and destroying, the power behind this
the same, that
is
imperfect world that perchance
moves on
to
some
The final
Veda
Final Philosophy of the
development
the power that manifests
;
275
itself in
this eternal power is identical every living thing with our own innermost and truest self, equally ;
when
imperishable
stripped of
all its
external and
This conviction
accidental
circumstances.
balmed
the famous words, tat tvam
art
in
That,"
Brahma."
aham brahma
or
is
em
asi, "Thou
"
asmi,
I
am
the
These are the slogans of higher religious and they contain the corollary that the
thought world of things which we see in space, as we ideally assume it to be with our eyes and bodies, themselves ;
phenomena, are mere shadows
cast
by the one truth
the innermost Personal Self identical with the outer Universal Self, the brahma-dtman.
1
Now we
have seen that our empirical knowledge which shows us a manifold variegated world where in only brahma, and a body where there in truth only dtman, or the brahma in ourselves,
truth there is
that
all
that
is
is
mere ignorance,
The things that
distraction, or illusion.
are unfolded before our eyes in space,
those things to which
we
ourselves belong with our
ponderable bodies, are not true entities, they are not The Catholic mystic, Johannes Scheffler, called Angelus Silesius (horn 1624), arrives at the same end in a stanza of his collection of poems called Cherubinischer Wandersmann : 1
"
Ich bin so gross wie Gott,
Er
ist
wie ich so klein
;
Ich kann nicht unter ihm,
Er
liber
mich nicht
sein."
The
276
Religion of the
As long
the dtman.
as this
Hindus say there is avidyd literally and philosophically say that there
is
maya
this single truth is
so far as
it
no more
ignorance," "
nescience."
more Or they
or,
All else aside from
"
illusion."
after all
nection with Brahma, have it is
not recognised, the
is "
a mere mirage in the desert, and
is
must
Veda
have some kind of a con
some
reality in
Brahma,
than the reflection of the real
real
moon
which we see trembling on the ripple of the waters.
Even the very conception
of nescience or illusion
of course, not real, because
whatever time-less,
it
is,
can be annihilated, and
temporary is not real. What induced the space-less, and cause-less Brahma to enter
is
upon the escapade of this phenomenal world of time, space, and causality, the Hindu thinkers cannot tell Their mythology
us.
primitive being
s
is
crude ideas of the
full of
loneliness and desire to multiply, but
these ideas belong to the lower forms of their religion
they are not entertained by their philosophers.
;
This
the point where Hinduism like every system of Plato s TO ovrcos idealistic philosophy breaks down. is
or
;
the ens realissimum; Kant
That only True
s
ding an sick; the
all very well, but Upanishads the world of phenomena to explain that aye there s the rub. This pesky world of plural things, full of "
irrational quantities
why does
are
it
exist,
pounding along toward some end that
and will
is it
not
show
a
The
Final Philosophy of the
uniting principle
Hindu
will
?
With that kind
Veda
277
of suggestion the
have nothing to do.
Entranced by the Brahma he wafts away
absolute reality of the one
world of experience as a conjurer an optical
the
delusion.
Into the maze of difficulties and inconsistencies
which opens out here we need not go. The mani fold modifications, adjustments, and the trimming
down
of the
main thought which the Upanishads
are driven to undertake belong to philosophy rather
than religion. According to the Upanishads own definition of the dtman, everything that these works
undertake to say about anything other than the dt
man
is
mere
the dtman
figure of speech,
and every definition of
itself is also figure of
Every defi nition is necessarily stopped by the words: "No, No (na ncti). The Brahma has no attributes speech.
"
(nirguna).
Yea,
the
Hindu when
in
the proper
mood, advancing straight to the last consequence, looking neither to the right nor to the possibility of
dous paradox
knowing Brahma this,
considering
left,
altogether. all
intuition of this very conception.
denies the
Tremen
depends upon the In a conversation
with his wife Maitreyl the great thinker Yajnavalkya asserts that there is no consciousness after death, be cause there must be two in order that one should see 1
Brihadaranyaka Upanishad
2. 4.
12 ff.
The
278
Religion of the
Veda
the other, smell, hear, address, understand, recognise the other. But if one has himself become Atman "
"
(that
is,
by means of what and whom should By means of what and whom should
Self
)
he then see?
he then smell, hear, address, understand, recognise ? In brief and dry language, being himself the subject,
"
and there being no object, there
no cognition nor
is
consciousness.
Emerson
s
keen and terse poem on the Brahma
which the Brahma
itself
of absolute unity.
speaks, approaches
But the
made warm and glowing counted among the best
chilly
in the
if
They know not I
which
may
English language:
he the slain think he
If the red slayer think
Or
sombre theme
in these lines
slays, is
slain,
well the subtle
ways
keep, and pass, and turn again.
Far and forgot to me is near, Shadow and sunlight are the same, The vanished gods to me appear, And one to me are shame and fame.
They reckon I
ill
who
When me
they
am And
hymn
leave
me
out
am
;
the wings the doubter and the doubt.
The
I
the
fly I
the
Brahmin
;
sings.
strong gods pine for my abode pine in vain, the Sacred Seven
And
;
But thou meek lover of the good Find me, and turn thy back on heaven. !
in
this idea is
be
The
Final Philosophy of the
But we are concerned with the value
Veda of the
279
Upani-
shads as religion, in a world which for practical purposes must be admitted to be real, for man who
purposes must be admitted to be real. vetagvatara Upanishad starts out with the
for practical
The
old question
:
we born ? Whereby do we live, and we go ? O ye who know Brahma, tell us at whose command we abide here, whether in pain or in
Whence
are
whither do
pleasure
?
Should Time, or nature, or necessity, or
chance, or the elements be considered as the cause, or he who is called Purusha, that is, the Supreme Spirit ?
The Upanishads answer for practical purposes The Supreme Spirit that is alike in the universe and in man that is the essence of all. It is Being, :
without a second, without beginning and without end, without limitations of any kind. Whatever there
or seems to be,
is,
and man,
is
mind and matter, nature
one substance only, namely, Brahma.
The same Yajnavalkya, whose
desperately ration
answer to his wife Maitreyl we have just heard, takes also a more human view of the Atman. This is told in the frame of a quaint little story, as alistic
follows
:
Yajnavalkya had two wives, Maitreyl and Katyayanl. Of these two Maitreyl knew how to discourse about the 1
Brihadaranyaka Upanishad
2.
4 and
4. 5.
The
280
Religion of the
Veda
brahma ; Katyayani, on the other hand, knew only what women are supposed to understand. Now Yajnavalkya desired to change his life of householder to that of religious hermit. "
"
Maitreyl,"
says he,
I
shall
now
from the
retire
condition of householder, and as a preliminary divide my goods between thee and Katyayanl." Then spake If, O lord, this whole earth with all its Maitreyf wealth belonged to me, would I then become immortal, or not ? By no means," replies Yajnavalkya. Only "
:
"
"
"
would thy life be wealth does the expectation of immortality." Then That through which I do not become replied Maitreyl like the life of the rich
not carry with
;
it
"
:
immortal, what good rather thy
me ? Expound to me Then Yajnavalkya: "Truly dear to us, beloved lady, and now is
that to
knowledge."
thou wast previously
Well then,
thou hast increased our love.
I shall
expound
All things of the attend then, to what I say world, and every relation in the world are dear to us not because of their own value, but because of the dtman, their true essence. Wife, husband, sons, wealth the high it
to thee
:
;
;
and warrior
the worlds, the gods, the the sacrifice are to us not because of and dear Veda, their own value, but because of the dtman, their true stations of priest
;
As one grasps the tones of an instrument with the instrument itself so are grasped all things when the essence.
dtman
is
grasped.
Truly he that hath seen, heard, re
cognised, and understood the dtman he knows the whole world."
We may be
sure that Yajnavalkya does not really
intend to expound to his beloved Maitreyl the ex1
Cf. Rdmakrishna,
His Life and Sayings,
p. 135
(number
161).
The
F inal Philosophy of the
Veda
281
tremes of super-sensual rationalism. In effect he expresses the ideal of union with the supreme being, the ultimate endeavor of
all
that have
religions
At
evolved a supreme being worth uniting with.
a later period there comes out of the permanently untenable, cool
intellectualism
The
of the
Bhaktas or
the religion of the destiny of
Upanishad thought acute and mystic monotheism, very cism of those Christian
friends of
"
Upanishads
"pious
is,
devotees."
after
all,
an
like the
mysti Tauler god/ John
and Thomas a Kempis.
By knowledge they dis cover the Supreme Intelligence and perceive its essence by devotion (bhakti) they feel the sweet ;
Supreme Being and reciprocate its loving So the Bhagavadglta, the Song of the Celes
ness of the intent. tial,"
pious
"
can finally
man
truth,
my
me
not
is
make
Through greatness and
lost."
It
call
Bengali
Supreme Being say
love he recognises
my
essence.
comes to
He
of the
me
in
that loves
this finally, that
know
but a preparation for what Supreme of In love God. the words of the modern
ledge of the
we
the
"
:
is
Saint and Ascetic
Knowledge the Love of
Ramakrishna
"
:
The
God may be likened to a man, while God is like a woman. Knowledge has
of
entry only up to the outer rooms of God, but no one can enter into the inner mysteries of God save a lover, for a
woman
has access even to the privacy
The
282
Religion of the l
of the
Almighty."
And
Veda
arrives at the last possible conclusion
and love
There pure
is
of
God
same thinker
finally the
are ultimately one
"
Knowledge
:
and the same.
no difference between pure knowledge and We might have predicted the same
love."
To a religion which strives with all its might know the truth, truth s sister, love, does not long
result.
to
remain a stranger. Yajnavalkya, as
and
goes to
Hermits"
we have
live
in
(vXofiioi)
seen,
abandons
Such
the forest.
"
Forest-
must have been common
India several centuries before Christ. cises
his wives
Buddha
in
criti
them, and declares himself as against their life and practices as a hindrance rather than
ascetic
a help to a life of perfect desires, a
life
of true
freedom from passions and
emancipation.
advocates moderation in cluded.
He
prefers the
all
He
himself
things, salvation
"middle
both he and we say (the media
of the
via, or
road,"
in
as
madhyama-
Greek by the name of Megasthenes was the ambassador of the Graecomdrga).
About 300
B.C. a clever
Persian king Seleukos at the court of Chandragupta
the city of Pataliputra (31 1-302
in
B.c).
Chandra
gupta Sandrakottos or Sandrokyptos as the Greeks had succeeded, after the death of Alex called him ander the Great, 1
in
founding the great Indian empire
Rdmakrishna, His Life and Sayings,
p.
138 (number 172).
The of the
Veda
Final Philosophy of the
283
empire known India. Megasthenes wrote a work
Maurya dynasty, the
largest
up to that time in called Indica which contains much important
He
formation about the India of his day.
tells
in
that
these ascetics were indifferent to the good or evil that happens to is
man
that
;
dreamlike illusion
;
all
being, in their opinion,
that they regard the world as
created and perishable
;
and believe that God who
has created it pervades it completely. Considering the source, this is an uncommonly good description of
the pessimistic pantheism of the Upanishads.
Alexander the Great himself was much impressed with these Sages of the Forest." He sent one "
Onesikritos to talk with them.
laughed
at
After having been
by the ascetics for his
mantle, hat, and boots, and told to the stones
if
full
lie
dress
of
naked upon
he would learn from them, he was
finally initiated
into the
Hindu
idea, to wit, that
that which removes not only sorrow but also joy from the soul of man. Professor Huxley in his Evolution and Ethics (p.
the best doctrine
is
65) has subjected the
According to him the is
Hindu
ideal to severe criticism.
summum bonum
of the
Hindu
a state of impassive quasi-somnambulism which
but for risk of
acknowledged holiness might run the being confounded with idiocy. It leads to its
the abandonment
of
property, social
ties,
family
The
284 affections,
Religion of the
Veda
common companionship, until all that man is the impassive attenuated men
and
remains of a
dicant monk, self-hypnotised into cataleptic trances which the deluded mystic takes for foretastes of final
union with Brahma.
mind the extreme case
of
Professor
Yogin
Huxley has
in
of the later time,
who confounds hocus-pocus and humbug with re As a matter of fact the Upanishad religion ligion. is
a religion of perfect freedom, and equally as a
matter of fact the religious of the Upanishads do find it advisable as a rule to retire from active life after
having done their duty
in active life.
Yajnavalkya step marks not only the new order of thought but also the new order of life which the s
dtman-brahma imposes upon
religion of the
India.
we may say that henceforth India leads a double life. The first is the life of every day. The fragile human creature enters through the mother s In fact
womb, where
has been protected by the pious prayers and ceremonies of its parents, into the be If it only knew it, wildering sunshine of this world. it
it
would be glad that the karma
ence entitles shelter of a
its
of its former exist
soul in the present existence to the
human body, howsoever
might have happened transmigration.
in
Birth
lowly.
Worse
the hazard of the lottery of
means
that the soul in ques
tion has not yet joined Brahma.
He who
has not
The done
Veda
;
;
;
;
or as something else
any old thing as we
in this place or in that place,
might say
285
born again as worm or as fly as fish as lion or as boar as bull or as tiger, or
so, alas, is
or as fowl
man
Final Philosophy of the
to the quality of his works,
according
and the degree of his
knowledge, that is in accordance with the doctrine of karma. Thanks to the past the present is secure worse might have happened than to pass through 1
:
human mother s body more enduring shelter of the mother s love. The Hindu mother, like any other mother, rejoices the temporary shelter of a into the
her child, especially if he is a boy, and asks no Father questions about his ultimate cosmic destiny. in
and mother now bend every energy to raise the child so that he may become an honored member of the Brahmanical community, beloved alike of god and man. The Hindu books of Rules of Home Life, the so-called Grihyasutras, 2 tell a touching story of the
pious care with which the child infancy.
Indeed the
life
of his life has its
own
piloted through
of the Brahmanical
sacramental throughout.
is
is
Hindu
Every important phase The most im
sacraments.
portant of them are the investiture by his teacher
with the sacred cord, and his marriage. This investiture is looked upon as a spiritual 1
Kaushltaki Upanishad
2
See above,
p. 41.
i.
2.
The
286
Religion of the
The
second birth, or regeneration.
becomes a man
in a
Veda little
mortal
higher sense, because his teacher
teaches him the Veda, syllable
by
syllable,
word by
word, stanza by stanza. disciplehood he
During the period of his the devoted servant of his teacher
is
who, throughout Hindu
tradition, is regarded as
even
own parents. No own family, he now
better entitled to respect than his
how rich and powerful his obedient to his teacher, taking care of his wants
matter lives
to the point of gathering his fire-wood for
him
life.
in
and begging
the village, humble and chaste in his
own
In return he obtains from his teacher the sacred
knowledge, the Veda. Especially, the sacrosanct that famous brief stanza which at an early Savitrl, 1
time carries within
the presentiment of the deep to come, by placing in the relation it
theosophy that is of cause and effect the physical and of the universe "
spiritual essences
:
^hat lovely glory of
Savitar,
The heavenly god, we contemplate Our pious thoughts he shall promote." :
After he has absolved the study of the Veda he
becomes a full-grown man.
The
teacher, according
to the beautiful account of the Taittirlya (i. 1
Upanishad
n), dismisses his pupil with the following last Rig- Veda
3. 62.
10
;
see above, p. 86.
The
Final Philosophy of the "
injunction
:
Tell the truth
neglect the study
of
the
;
Veda
287
do your duty, do not
Veda
After having
!
given to your teacher your gift of love, see to
it
Do not
that
the thread of your race be not cut
off
lect truth, duty, health, property,
and the study of
Veda
the
!
!
Honor your mother as a god Honor your teacher god
your father as a
!
Honor your guest
!
neg
Honor as a
god
!
as a god Live an irreproachable honor your superior give alms in true spirit When in doubt follow the judgment of Brahmans of life
;
!
!
;
"
tried authority
Then he
!
passes into the
life
stage of full-grown
man, husband and householder (gr hast ha). His great now worship and sacrifice to the gods, and
duties are
the begetting of sons. The latter are of great im portance, because they carry on through unbroken generations the cult of the Manes or Fathers who,
vaguely inconsistent way, are still carrying on a happy life in the abodes of the blessed between in a
transmigrations for their
we must
This as reward
suppose. lives.
supposedly very pious the end of this stage that we
It is at
may suppose Yajnavalkya takes leave of his beloved Maitreyl. The curtain now drops on the scene of all temporal interests It is a wife, children, home, and property. :
curious fact that in theory at least the higher religion of the
Upanishad begins where the
religions of other
The
288
Religion of the
Veda
peoples are content to conclude their
young Brahman
ing disciplined the
him how tected
to
life
;
having taught an orderly, god-fearing, god-pro having secured safe continuation of his
his admission to the
;
and having
;
heavenly
what more
is
Not so the Hindu. is
Hav
live
race through pious sons
Fathers
offices.
home
finally
gained
of the blessed
needed?
Over this pigmy
religion
which
engaged only with the needs of the ponderable,
perishable man, towers as a giant the grandiose con ception, than which, in
that the
True
Universe.
man
in
There
is
The
selves are part.
cemented by every
is
way, no higher
its
in fact
the
is
One True
one eternal truth
:
possible, in all
of this
the
we our
distracting, misleading, adhesion,
sense, to a divided individual ex
istence in a world of illusory
phenomena, come no one
knows whence, but none the
less certainly false, re
The Hindu quires time and patience to undo. theory assumes four stages or a^ramas (literally, "
in
hermitages")
the investiture.
the
The
seen, are disciplehood
come the two
life
of
man
after his rebirth at
we have and householdership. Then
first
two
stages,
as
stages of Forest-dweller, or Hermit,
and Wandering Ascetic.
In the hermit stage he
and may yet keep up some simply connection with wife and children, and continue his lives in the forest,
sacred practices.
But
in
the last stage
all
worldly
The interest
passion
is
Final Philosophy of the
Veda
289
abandoned, every fetter of affection, desire, sundered. There is no fixed abode, he
is
happens, subsists as he may, indifferent to but the realisation that he is the brahma. This
lives as it all
realisation of itself means the destruction of nescience:
with
it
the phantom world of sorrow and joy sinks
out of sight.
The
soul
knowing
at last that
it
is
brahma, namely truth, sunders the chain that holds it
captive through
namely
illusion.
transmigration to the
This
is
world,
the salvation of the Hindu,
namely the perfect knowledge that the soul of man him is the unpolluted, not to be pollu
that dwells in
ted, serene, holy, eternal, blissful, divine self
atman, or brahma.
The
realisation of this truth,
the
un
hindered by any other desire, that is all that is needed; than it nothing else whatsoever can have anything
more than temporary importance.
INDEX A Kemp is,
Thomas, 281
Alexander
Spentas, "Holy Im 133 ff. Anca, 130 Andra, 176. See Indra Angiras, semi-divine priests, i44, 163 Anquetil du Perron, 54 mortals,"
Antiope of Bceotia, mother _of Dioscuri, 1 16
Apri-hymns,
91,
92,
Arati, "Demon of 191
"
Fire, 78, 87, 89, no, 127, 156/7.,
244; son of Ushas (Dawn), 73, 1 60; his descent from heaven (lightning), 165;
produced by
friction,
139,
men progenitor of (Ayu), 139, 158; servant of the gods, 162; and his brothers, story of, 162 158;
Agni
Jatavedas
scient"),
229 A ham brahma asmi, the Brahma," 275 of,
am
ff.,
See Rta Artabhaga, a theosopher, 260
Aryaman,
129, 134, 153
Aryan. See Indo-Iranian Aryans, Indian, geographical _ provenience of, 23 Arya Samaj, a reform asso
126, 133, 232.
criticised
Buddha, 282; by fessor Huxley, 283
by Pro
Ascetic wanderer, 288
Ahura Mazda (Ormazd), 120
l6 5
85. 93
Arta.
Asceticism, "I
Grudge,"
Arrested anthropomorphism,
ciation, 9
("Omni
164, 189
Ahalya, story
79
Aranyaka Texts, 49, 50, 209
Agni and Soma, 78
God
78,
Apsaras (nymphs), 46, 191
3 I "
18,
Amesha
213, 216 Acvins, or Dioscuri, 46, 90 ff., 94, no, 112 ff., 141, 160, 167, 172 Aditi, 130 ff. Adityas, 78, 92, 120, 129/7., 153; meaning of the word,
Agni,
Great,
Altar, three altars, 161
dhist Emperor, 19, 53 Afvamedha, "horse-sacrifice"
I
the
282
Aborigines of India, 24, 175 Abstract gods, 96, 109, 131, 135, 191, 242 Afoka or Piyadassi, Bud
See
Asura Airy ama,
As ha. See Rta Asura
= Ahura,
133
Atharvangirasah,
See Aryaman 129. Ajatacatru, 219, 227 Akbar, Emperor, 52 ff. 291
and
curses,
Atharva-Veda, 4
"blessings
"
ff-t
26, 29 17, 25
ff.,
39,
77 its theosophy,2O9 1
Index
2Q2 Atman,
"Supreme
211,
87,
270
Spirit,"
See
280.
ff.,
Brahma and cf. Breath Atmospheric Gods, 92 Aurengzeb, Emperor, 52 Avesta and Veda, mutual relations
of,
24,
15,
13,
_ II8
Ayu,
or Brahmana Texts, 4$ff., 48, 209 Brahmanaspati see Brihaspati Brahmanical philosophies, 2,
Brahmanas,
:
51, 108,
229
Brahmanism, extent
designation 139, 158
"Living,"
of fire
and man,
with Buddhism, 3 Samaj, a
Brahma
association,
194
ff.,
hymn
252; 197
197, 227,
229,
addressed
to,
Behistan rock, cuneiform in scription on, 14
and
"Being
non-being,"
235,
"Belly
name
and the
Brahma-
216
ff.
Breath of Cf.
life,
Atman
Brihaspati,"
as entity, 255.
Lord of
Prayer,"
243, 273 Buddha, 213, 219, 282; date of, 18; his sphere of ac tivity,
268 108
2, 3,
members,"
Bhaga, old word for
"God,"
109, 130, 134
Bhagavadgita, 201, 281 "
"
Cf.
devotion,
195, 281.
Devotion
name
87,
118,
211,
232,
260; meaning of the word, 205, 273; final shap ing of, 273; without at tributes, 277; pessimistic conception of, 267 ff.; erson s poem on, 277; final union with, 266, 289. 248,
Em
Cf.
Atman
106
Candragupta,
or
Chandra -
gupta, 18, 282 ankara, a philosopher, 221, 227 <JCaste,
Bhrigu, a sage, 252 of Bhrigvangirasah, Atharva-Veda, 40 Bimbisara, a Buddhist, 219 Brahma, the ultimate prin ciple,
of
vadya, theosophic riddles,
fable of, 271 Benfey, Theodor, 102, 108 Bentinck, Lord William, 9 Bergaigne, Abel, 72
Bhakti,
;
reform
n
or
Brahmodya,
Buddhism,
238
237
2
Atharva-Veda, 40
Babylonian influence on Ar yan religion, 133, 135 Baksheesh, 69 ff., 71, 190 ff.,
9,
Brahma-Veda,
B
of,
221; contrasted
criticised,
system
of,
5,
6,
7,
8,
264; revulsion against, 8; its
relation to theosophy,
225 Castor and Pollux deukes), no, 113 Celestial gods, 92 Cerberus and Cerberi, of,
105
(Polu-
myth
ff.
Chandogya-Upanishad,
234,
238, 260
Chandragupta. gupta
See Candra
Chase, G. D., Professor, 115.
Index Children of IIO,
I
"Father
Sky,"
Devotional (creative) fervor,
12
2 37
Climate and nature, influence of upon mythology, 82
;
cause of pessimism, 265
Comparative Mythology,
108,
167; criticism of, 100 ff. Conflicting prayers and sacri fices, 185 "Cosmic order." See Rta Counsel of perfection, 126 Creation hymn, 229, 234 ff. Creative fervor, 237
or "Oral rotriyas, ditionalists, "21
Dhatar,
"Maker,"
Dhena,
"Holy
Dirghatamas, author of a riddle-hymn, 210, 217, 229, 2 33
Djemshed (Yima Khshaeta), Persian epic hero, 143 of Yama, dogs of death, 105, 106, 251
Dogs
Dreams and 2
Dyaus, Dyaush Pitar, ther Sky,
66, 92, 95, 110, ff.
E
a god, 130
Economic
conditions pessimism, 264
"Baksheesh,"
Ushas, Dawn, See Baksheesh Ddna-stuti, gift-praises, 196 Dara Shukoh, a Mogul prince, of
Emerson
71.
"
52
"Fa
"
139, 148, 152
name
Eros,
poem on Brahma, personified,
"Love,"
237 245
Vedic
Ethics,
126
Hystaspes, 14 Dawn, mother of Agni, 160. See Ushas Death, early notions of, 249 ff. "Death or "Reanew," death, 253 D e i v 6 s, "Shiners," Indo-
s
and
278
"
ff-
Darius
hallucinations,
55
D Dakshina,
wife
no
46
D aksha,
242
Song,"
of Brihaspati, 244 Diespiter, Jupiter, Dioscuri. See Afvins
Tra
Qvetaketu Aruni, 223 Qvetagvatara Upanishad, 279 Cyavana the Bhargava, story of,
2 93
I.
system
of,
ff.
its
Ethnology, Mythology, 93
relation
to
"
European word "
Faith,
for gods,
108, 148 Kama, personified, Desire, "
2
37 Deucalion, myth of, 138 Deussen, Paul, Professor, 56, 234 Devotion, 195, 202 ff., 281; personified, 206, 273; con trasted with Faith, 193. Cf. Prayer. 233>
"
conception
of, 109, personified, 189; faith and works, 190, 269; related to truth and wis dom, 1 88; reward of, post poned to heaven, 193 Family-books" of Rig- Veda 1
86
ff.;
27, 79, 210 Father God, 138 Fathers in heaven, 250, 251,
287 "
Father Sky.
"
See Dyaus.
Index
294 and
Festivals, public
II
tribal,
214 Fetish, 256
ff.
emblem of Brahmanism,
Fire,
production of, Cf. Agni Fjorgyn and Fjorgynn, 189;
139,
158.
Hindu story
Flood,
1 1 1
of,
Haridrumata, a teacher, 225 See Dy-
Heaven and Earth. aus Helena,
45,
M3 288
282,
Four stages of life, 4, 288 Future life, early notions 149, 249
Dioscuri,
Hell, descriptions of, 252
Henotheism
"Forest-dwellers,"
of
sister
IJ 3
of,
(Kathenothe-
ism), 164, 199
and
Heracles
Geryon
;
three-headed
Hercules and
three-headed Cacus,
ff-
Hermits
(vXoftioi),
180
282, 288
Hestia- Vesta, 158 Hieratic religion of Veda, 60 to the belongs upper classes, 77 Hillebrandt, A., Professor, i79 ff;
Ganges, a river, 23, 265 Garbe, R., Professor, 220
Gargya and GargI,
ff.
theoso-
Hindu and Greek Mythology
phers, 223
Garutmant
sun)
(the
210,
218 Gatha ndrdfansyah, "praises of men, 196 Ghee, food of the gods, 63, "
161
intensely religious, 3, 4 Holiness, conception of, 109 Hopkins, E. W., Professor, 23, 155
"Gift-praises,"
196
Horse-sacrifice, 213, 216
Girdle, sacred, 188
House-Books
Gods, Indo-European words 08; three classes of, 87, 91; chronology of, 90, 93 relative importance of, relative clear 89, 90, 93 ness of their origin, 93-96 daily order of their ap for,
compared, 83 life and institutions
Hindu
1
;
;
(Grihyasu 285
tras), 41, 77, 159,
Huxley cism,
critique of asceti
s
283
Hymns, 75.
artistic
quality
of,
203
;
pearance, 90 ff. character of, 184 ff.; glory of, 199 Gospel of John, beginning of, 206 Grasco-Parthian rulers of In ;
dia, 14
Greek and Hindu mythology compared, 83 Greeks estimate of their own religion, 84
Grihyasutras: Books"
see
"House-
Ignorance, or "nescience," 276 Illusion (maya), 276, 288 Images, absence of in Veda. 89 India and Persia, historical contact between, 14, 118 India, land of religions, 2 geographical isolation of, 1 1 her nature, climate, etc., 85, 265
;
;
Index Indian and Persian religions contrasted, 118 India s exploration, future of, 22
India of,
s
religion,
continuity
10
295
Kanvas, a family of poets, 28, 203,
205
Karma, or spiritual evolution, 195, 257. 259, 284; Western 261 ff. wife of Yajnavalkya, 277 Kennings, 162 Kings, interested in theosophy, 214, 219, 220, 223, 227 Kronos, 84 Kuhn, Adalbert, 102, 108 Kumarila, a philosopher, 222, 227
estimate
of,
Katyayam,
Indo-European period, 100; .of religion, 16, 108 Indo-Iranian period, 100; of religion, 13, 118 Indo-Parthian Kingdoms, 14 Indra, 78, 89, 92, 94, 130, X I3 1 i47 177. l86 187, 217, 244; cause of scepticism, 174, 229 Indra and Agni, 78 Indra and Varuna, 78 Indra- Vritra myth, explana tions of, 178, 179 Indus, a river, 23, 265 Initiation of a young Brah man, 188 Investiture of a young Brah man, 285 sacrifice and Ishtapurta, baksheesh," 194 ff., 252. See Baksheesh .
57>
"
Lithuanian dainos, or songs, 114, 172
Loge (Loki), Norse god of fire, 156 Logos, or "Word" (divine), 207, 273 Lost cattle, Lithuanian poem about, 172
M J
Macdonell, A. A., Professor,
mother
Jabala,
of
Satya-
kama, 225 225 Janaka, king of Videha, 214, 219, 226, 227 "Omniscient," Jatavedas,
Jajali,
name of Agni, 164, 189 aundice, charm against, 42 uggernaut, car of, 9 upiter,
no
"Time,"
"Love,"
237. 245
I
Manu, Manush Pitar, Father Manu, 140, 143 Manu, Law-Book of, 256, "
"
Martanda, 130 Maruts, 92
K Kama,
3
259
yotishtoma-sacrifice, 77
Kala, 245
I
wife of YajnaMaitreyi, valkya, 223, 277 Man, origin of, 138, 149 Manicheism, 85 Mannus, son of Tuisto, 140
personified, personified,
"Master-singers," 201, 202 Matarigvan, 165, 210, 218 Maurya dynasty, 18, 283 Maya, "Illusion," 276, 288 Megasthenes, Greek author, 282
Index
296
Metempsychosis. See Trans migration Metres, 24; belonging to different hours of the day, 80 to individual gods, 80 Mithraism, 85 Mitra (Persian Mithra, Mi thras), 92, 120 ff., 129, i3 2 If-. I 53 210, 218 ;
Moderation
in
asceticism,
Odhin, a Norse god, 155 Oldenberg, H., Professor,
72,
J
33 ff-, 273 Onesikritos, a Greek, 283 Opaque gods, 96, 174 Oupnekhat, Persian trans lation of the Upanishads, 54/7-
282, 284
Mohammedanism 10, 52
in
ff_.
Sanskrit
Mokshamulara,
name
Max
of
India,
Miiller, 53
Monism, idea of unity, 56^., 210,
218,
247,
233,
269.
and
marriage
"Sun-Maiden,"
of,
114
Morning and evening 114
ff.,
star,
172
"Mother
Pantheism, ism
242.
See
Mon
Pantheon
See Pantheism
Moon
Pairs of gods, 78
Earth,"
no,
95,
of the Veda, 78, 88 ff. Paracara, a Rishi, 225 Paradise, 250, 287; solar, 169 ff. Parameshthin, "He who oc cupies the highest place, 242 Parjanya, God of Thunder, 92, in, 178, 181
"
138, 148
Mountains as winged
birds,
legend of, 48 Muir, Dr. John, 154
Max, 53, 71, 102, 164, 199 Mystics, Christian, 275, 281 Mythology, 29; in its relation
Miiller,
to Ethnology, Indo-Iranian,
103.
Cf.
and Indo-
European
N Naciketas, a theosopher, 192, 223
Na
neti,
"no,
no,
Nature myth, 148,
152
nomena
ff.;
"277
29,
81,
108,
nature phe
in legends, 48; in
riddles, 217 Neoplatonism, 207 Nidhanas of the Sama-Veda,
37
of Religions," in Chicago, 9 Parsis in India, 10, 14, 118 Patrons of sacrifice, 193 ff., 215; of theosophy, 219 Perkunas, Lithuanian God of "Parliament
Thunder, in, 115 Persian and Hindu religion contrasted, 118 Persian names in arta, 12 Pessimism, 3, 4, 212, 263; its origin, 264; its final fixation, 267 Philosophy, its relation to practical life, 10. See The
osophy Phcebus Apollo and Marsyas, 84 Pischel, R., Professor, 113 Poetic inspiration, 75.201^. Popular religion, 42, 77
Index Prajapati, tures,"
Crea "Lord of 236, 240, 245, 246,
297
Ritual and theosophy, 213,
218
Royal
271
Prana,
of
"Breath
Life,"
its
influence 214, 223,
227
personified, 245
Pravahana
caste,
upon theosophy,
Jaivali,
a royal
theosopher, 224
Rta
"cosmic arta}, 120, 121, 125 ff., date of the conception,
(asha,
order,"
Prayer beatified and deified, Cf. Devotion 205, 243. Prayer of the gods, 205
232
;
12, 19,
135
Rudra, 92
Prehistoric gods, 90, 96, 99 ff. Priests, various kinds of, 80,
216 Prithivl,
"Earth,"
Cf.
92.
"Mother Earth"
Pururavas and Urvaci, story 46 Purusha,
"
and
man, supreme spirit, 242, 279 Pushan, 92, 170, 171 "cosmic
R Rammohun
former,
life
of,
of 33,
215
of,
Raja
Sacraments in daily Hindus, 4, 285 Sacrifice, philosophy
8,
Sacrifice post, 67, 79 Sacrificers, origin of, 138 Sages as creators, 237 Salvation, 5, 211, 247, 263, 269, 289 ff.; Veda of music, 36; popular origin of, 38; inferior position of, 39; connected with god Indra, 37; related to Sha manism, 38 Sandrakottos, Sandrokyptos (Candragupta), 18, 282 Sankhya philosophy, 2 Saranyu, mother of the Ac-
Sama-Veda, 25 Roy, a re
53
Rajasuya, "coronation" of a king, 213 Ramakrishna, a saint and ascetic, 227, 229, 281 Religion, science of, 151
Religious liberty, 8, 19, 53 Renan, Ernest, 85 Retribution, 252, 262
vins, 91, 113, 141
ff.
Reverence, Indo-European conception of, 109 Ribhus, 78
Satyakama, son of Jabala,
Riddles,
Saule,
210,
theosophic, 215 ff., 218 Rig- Veda, 17, 25 ff.; geo graphy of, 23 language of, 26; character of, 29; er ;
roneous view of
authors and redaction, 61 ff.; qual its
of its ity hymns, utilitarian and ritual
63
;
char
acter of, 31, 67, 75, 182 religious essence of, 198/7.
;
See
Veda
a low-caste 225 en,"
Lettish 115 ff.
theosopher, "Sun-Maid
See
"Sun-
Maiden"
Savarna, wife of Vivasvant, 142 Savitar, 74, 86, 91, 92, 240. See next Savitri, or Gayatri stanza, 286. See 86, 202, 273, preceding Scepticism, 174, 181, 229; philosophic, 238
Index
2g8 Johannes, a
Scheffler, tic,
mys
275
and
Schopenhauer
Symbolic gods, 96, 109, 131, 135, 191, 242
Upan-
ishad philosophy, 55 ff. Seleukos, a Greece-Persian king, 282 Self-hypnosis, 9, 284 Sena, wife of Indra, 244 Sentimental regard of gods,
200
Shah Jehan, a Mogul Empe ror, 52
Shah Nameh, Persian Epic, 144
Shankar Pandurang Pandit,
Talmud, 209, 215, 222 "creative Tapas, fervor," 237 Tat tvam asi, "Thou art the That," 233, 269, 275 lauler, John, a mystic, 281 Teacher and pupil, 188, 286 Tel-elcuneiform arna, tablets of, n, 135
Am
Temples, absence
21 Sikhs, religion of, 10
Terrestrial gods, 92
Skambha,
Theosophy,
"Support," 242 (haoma), plant, and liquor pressed from it, 77,
Soma
78, 120, 122, 138, 143, 145, J I ^s function in 47>
75>
Vedic religion, 65, 147; in Avestan religion, 147; brought from heaven by an eagle, 146, 165; per sonified,
78,
92,
172;
as
the moon, 113 "Sons
of
God,"
myth of, no, 114 Stages of life, four, 4, 288 Stobhas of the Sama-Veda, universal worship of, 104; progenitor of man, 139, 141; as shepherd and finder of lost objects, 172 ff. See Savitar, and Surya Sun and moon as dogs, 105, 251 Sun-Maiden, 90, 91, 112 ff., n5 ff; 172 Surya (Helios) 86, 87, 92, 112, 153, 154, 172
Sun,
"
"
Surya. See "Sun-Maiden" Suttee, or widow-burning, 9
Svayambhu,
"The
"
isting,
242
Self -ex
89
beginnings
of,
208, 215, 219; time of its
appearance, 209
221; ff., place where it originated, 212 ff. its authors, 219, 227: chronology of, 233 Thor (Donar), in Thrita and Athwya, 146 ,
Thugs, sect of, 9 Thunder, god of, in, 148 "Time,"
Lithuanian
of,
"Father
Time,"
personified, 245
Totemism, 138 ff., 256 Transcendental gods, 244 Translucent gods, 96, 166 Transmigration of souls, 57, 211
ff.,
ff.
3,
224, 247; origin
and explanation of, 254 ff. date of, 257; Western es
;
timate of, 261 ff.,; release from, 258 Transparent gods, 93-96, 151 ffTrita Aptya, 146 Truth and untruth, 128 Tuisto, father of Mannus, 140 Tuladhara, a low-caste thcosopher, 225
Tvashtar, 91, 141, 240 "Twilight of the gods," 98, 230
Index u pher, 221 See Monism Unity, idea of. Universe, threefold division of, 91, 169 Upanishads, 2, 52 ff., 209, 215, 222, 257 ff., 274, 287; discovery of, 52; critical estimate of, 57, 58; Hindu estimate of, 57; influence of, on Western philosophy, of to
ritual,
;
66
no,
127, 152
ff.,
;
;
Veda and Avesta,
71 ff; 78, 9 ff.
ff->
Vedanta philosophy,
2,
51,
229 Vedas, Concordance
of,
18,
Vicpala, a racing mare, 113 Vifvakarman, Fabricator of universe, 242 Vidhatar, "Arranger," 242 Vishnu, 92, 168 ff.. 195 "
Vivas vant (Vivanhvant), fa ther of
Yama and Manu,
120, 139, 141
251
t
Utilitarianism, 61, 183, 198
Vac, Vac Sarasvati,
"Holy
personified,
191,
243 Vajacravasa, a zealous Brah man, 192 Vala and the cows, myth of, 180
Varuna,
119, 92, 94, l6 7 i2&ff., 153. l62 200, 250; identical .
Uranos, 232
ff.,
146
Vivekananda, Svami, a reformer,
ligious
Speech,"
mutual
relations of, 13, 15, 24, 118 Veda and Mahabharata, 16
"
identical with Uranos, 84 Varuna, 136 Urva9i, an Apsaras, 46 Ushas, "Dawn," a goddess, 30,
of, 24; character of its literature, 25, 65, 76, 80; its composers, 27, 28, 6 1 its metres, 24, 80 mode of acquiring it in school, See Rig-Veda 188, 286.
ginnings
Uddalaka Aruni, a theoso-
55; relation 35, 209
299
9,
re
225,
229 Vrishakapayi, 91 Vritra, a demon, 175 ff. Vritrahan (Verethraghna, Vahagn), epithet of Indra, 176
W
121, 174,
Wagner, Richard, 59, 156 Warrior caste, its relation to
with
theosophy, 219, 220 ff. Whitney, William D., 18, 234
136; collapse of,
Vasishthas, a family of Vedic authors, 28, 123, 186 Vata, and Vayu, "Wind,"
Woman
s
incantation against
rival, 43
Women
as theosophers, 233,
279
155,
Wotan, a Teutonic god, 155
Veda, 17 ff. date of, 18, 209; canon of, 17; oral tradition unhistorical char of, 2 1
Yajnavalkya, a theosopher,
87,
personified, 181
92,
,
;
acter of its tradition, 20, date of its manu 23; scripts,
21
;
literary
be
214, 261,
221, 277,
223, 227, 287, 284, 290 279, Yajur-Veda, 25 ff., 31 ff., 127
Index
300
of paradise and 140, 144, 145, 10, 250, 251
Yama, king hell,
162,
105, 2
Yama and
the first pair, 48, 120, 129, 140,144 Yaska, author of Nirukta, 90 Yatnl,
Yima, Yima Khshaeta, See
Yama
Ymir, cosmic Edda, 242 "Yodels"
in
man
in
143.
the
Sama-Veda, 37
Zarathushtra
(Zoroaster),
118 Zeus, Zeus Pater, 83, 95, no, See Dyaus 152. Zeus Bagaios, 109 Zoroastrian angels (Amesha Spentas), 133 ff. Zoroastrian (Parsi) religion, n, 13, 118 ff.
.
.26
BLOOMFIELD THE RELIGION OF VEDA
1908 12J139 I