Elements of Hindu Iconography v1.c7.6

v1.c7.6

As regards the existence or otherwise of image worship in the Vēdic period in the history of India, opinion is divided among European savants. Prof. Max Muller, (*Chips from a German Workshop*, I. 35), answers the question, ‘Did the Vēdic Indians make images of their gods,’ in the negative. He says, “The religion of the Vēda knows no idols. The worship of idols in India is a secondary formation, a later degeneration of the more primitive worship of the ideal gods.” On the other hand Dr. Bollenson finds in the hymns clear references to images of the gods, (*Journ. of the Germ. Orient. Soc.* xxii, 587, ff). “From the common appellation of the gods as *divō naras*, ‘men of the sky’, or simply *naras* (later?), ‘men’ and from the epithet *nṛipēśas*, ‘having the form of men’, *R. V.* iii, 4, 5 we may conclude that the Indians did not merely in imagination assign human forms to their gods, but also represented them in a sensible manner.”