The Religion of the Veda: The Ancient Religion of India (from Rig-Veda to Upanishads) c8.10.3

c8.10.3

Since the Indo-Europeans are one people, let us first study their own minds in their own literature or archeological remains, before turning 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. When the smoke shall have cleared there will be—of this I am certain—less airy reliance on ethnological quantities irrational in Indo-European mathematics. But there will be left a goodly stock of Indo-European divinities and simple myths, profoundly interesting, not only with the interest of hoary antiquity, but even more so because they determine and explain the main lines along which move the mythologies of the Indo-European peoples of historical times. The main substance, though by no means the entire substance, of the mythologies and religions of these peoples—this is as true to-day as it was in the days of Benfey, Kuhn and Müller—is the nature myth. If we count Brahmanical 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 religious history that has been opened out by the study of India. Had we but fuller records of ancient Indo-European history and literature, these fuller records would reveal more common myths and religious ideas. The added facts would fill in the necessarily sketchy picture, but it would still be the same picture.