The Religion of the Veda: The Ancient Religion of India (from Rig-Veda to Upanishads) c8.91

c8.91

As for the Shemitic source of this deified solar system, Professor Oldenberg, if I understand him aright, is in part led thereto by the striking ethical character which is manifested by the gods of this group at so early a period of Indo-European history as is the common period of Persia and India. He thinks that the Shemites preceded the Indo-Europeans in the evolution of ethical concepts, and that the ethical coloring of the Ahura-Varuna myth came along with the divinities themselves. But, as I have shown, we find the chief Aryan ethical concept, the *ṛta*, safely imbedded in the Persian dynastic Arta-names that are reported in the Cuneiform Tel-el-Amarna tablets, 1600 years B.C. Now that date lies far back of the period from which Professor Oldenberg would deduce his results. I should prefer to judge that the wide prevalence of this idea at a very early date shows rather that some, if not all, Indo-Europeans had advanced in ethical perception at an earlier date than has hitherto been suspected, at a date when the Shemites had not as yet evolved any ethical ideas of quite as fine a flavor as the *ṛta*.