Vedic Metre in its Historical Development c17.s2.17

c17.s2.17

263. The first Vedic pantheon appears to have been formed under the pressure of war. The various cults noted in the last section may have been maintained with various degrees of zeal by different Aryan clans: but any such difference became small in the face of the dark-skinned natives, who did not practise even the fundamental ceremonies; who ‘kindled no fire, and pressed no Soma.’ In the pantheon thus formed the war-god naturally took the first place. But when this pressure was removed new forces political, philosophical and aesthetic began to assert themselves, and to influence the forms of religious worship. Great kingdoms were established in the New Land, and their sovereigns and chancellors prided themselves in establishing an order of peace and justice, repeating on earth the everlasting harmony of the kingdom of heaven, and embracing the light-skinned and the dark-skinned as members of one family. Under such influences the half-forgotten lore of Chaldaea was in part revived, and under the names sometimes of the pair Mitra and Varuṇa, sometimes of a single deity as Varuṇa, Savitar or Bhaga, a sovereign power is established in the pantheon itself, possessing a moral grandeur not altogether unworthy to be compared with that of Ahura Mazdā or Yahveh. In the exuberant life of a tropical country the beginnings of philosophy arose in questionings as to the source and the unity of the manifold vital powers of the universe, the setting-out of its parts in the order of space, and the existence of a ‘beyond’ known to the initiated only. Thus the fire-god took again a new character as the source of life in man and beast, in cloud and rock, in mountain and wood. Some old-world myth of a giant who takes three steps was turned to a picture of earth, heaven, and the third mysterious region: and from these in turn the fancy builds up three earths, three heavens, and even a threefold order of the universe.