The Development of Hindu Iconography c12.35

c12.35

The most interesting fact to be noted in this connection is that the ideology which seems to underlie many of the above divinities corresponds very little to the concept of such Vedic deities as Indra, Mitra, Agni, Varuṇa and others. It is true we cannot describe the former as so many Hindu divinities and their representations as those of so many Hindu gods, yet it can be suggested that they contributed a great deal towards the formation of the concepts underlying some of the later Hindu deities. The apparent reproductions of mythical scenes on these prehistoric objects might also have contained the germs of different mythologies of the later period. It is not suggested, however, that the myths current about many of the Vedic gods and the anthropomorphic conceptions underlying them had nothing to do with the shaping and development of a good many of their epic and purāṇic counterparts. I have already written about the great part which the former had to play in formulating the various god-concepts of later times; this can also be fully demonstrated in any work dealing with the images of the various Hindu gods and goddesses. But what I want to emphasise here is that the Vedic traits of the latter, especially in the case of some of the cult divinities, were really superimposed on their primitive pre-Vedic core. As the Vedic period was far nearer to the epic and purāṇic times and as copious literary data of the former age are available to us, we can trace out the analogies and influences with more certainty. Further researches and excavations in various old sites of India, let us hope, will supply us with more clues and links of the intervening period, that are now missing, which will enable us to connect the Indus Valley evidence with the epic and the purāṇic data with more definiteness. Even the changes in the Vedic beliefs and practices of a date later than that of the early Ṛgvedic hymns, as has been suggested by me in the previous sections of this book, were brought about by the rites and customs of these prehistoric people of India.