A History of Ancient Sanskrit Literature, so far as it illustrates the Primitive Religion of the Brahmans c11.5

c11.5

From this point of view the Vedic language and poetry may be ascribed to a modern or secondary period in the history of the world, if only it be understood that what preceded that period in India, or in any other part of the Aryan world, is lost to us beyond the hope of recovery, and that, therefore, to us the Veda represents the most ancient chapter in the history of the human intellect. We find no traces in the Veda, or in any Aryan work, of a growing language, growing in the sense in which some of the Turanian languages may be said to be still growing at the present day.¹ The whole grammatical mechanism is finished, the most complicated forms are sanctioned, and the only changes of which the Aryan speech, arrived at the point where we find it in the Veda, admits, are those of gradual decay and recomposition. Nor do we find any traces, in the Veda, of a growing religion. We look in vain for the effect produced on the human mind by the first rising of the idea of God. To the poets of the Veda that idea is an old and familiar idea: it is understood, never questioned, never denied. We shall never hear what was felt by man when the image of God arose in all its majesty before his eyes, assuming a reality before which all other realities faded away into a mere shadow. No whisper will ever reach us of that sacred colloquy when God for the first time spoke to man, and man to God; when man within his own heart heard that still small voice through which the Father of mankind revealed himself to all his children, to the Jew first, and also to the Gentile; and when God received the first response from human lips: "Who art thou, Lord?" That first recognition of God, that first perception of the real presence of God, — a perception without which no religion, whether natural or revealed, can exist or grow, — belonged to the past when the songs of the Veda were written. The idea of God, though never entirely lost, had been clouded over by errors. The names given to God had been changed to gods, and their real meaning had faded away from the memory of man. Even the earliest hymns of the Veda are not free from mythological phraseology. How far the poets retained a vague consciousness of the original purport of the names of the gods is difficult to say. To our eyes the science of language has disclosed the smallest fibres in the tissue of these names, and allowed us an insight into the darkest secrets of their growth. We can see *nomina*, where even the most keen-sighted native could discover nothing but *numina*. Sometimes, however, we feel surprised at the precision with which even such modern writers as Kumârila are able to read the true meaning of their mythology. When Kumârila is hard pressed by his opponents about the immoralities of his gods, he answers with all the freedom of a comparative mythologist¹: "It is fabled that Prajâpati, the Lord of Creation, did violence to his daughter. But what does it mean? Prajâpati, the Lord of Creation, is a name of the sun; and he is called so, because he protects all creatures. His daughter Ushas is the dawn. And when it is said that he was in love with her, this only means that, at sunrise, the sun runs after the dawn, the dawn being at the same time called the daughter of the sun, because she rises when he approaches. In the same manner, if it is said that Indra was the seducer of Ahalyâ, this does not imply that the god Indra committed such a crime; but Indra means the sun, and Ahalyâ (from ahan and lî) the night; and, as the night is seduced and ruined by the sun of the morning, therefore is Indra called the paramour of Ahalyâ.”