The Religion of the Veda: The Ancient Religion of India (from Rig-Veda to Upanishads) c8.95

c8.95

One of the duties of primitive man as he grows into the irksome habit of looking for the reason of things is to find a reason for himself. He does not take himself for granted, but assumes that he originated from something or other. This is as a rule not as easy as it is in the myth of Deucalion. All that he had to do was to throw stones, the bones of Mother Earth, behind him, and, behold, there were men. The abstract benevolent Divinity turning himself into a creative Father God is not always at hand; he does not on the whole represent a very primitive form of thought, certainly not in India. An important and widespread conception, partly religious in character, is Totemism. This is founded on the belief that the human race, or, more frequently, that given clans and families derive their descent from animals: totemic names like "Bear" and "Wolf" carry traces of this sort of belief into our time. This particular question is a splendid theme of universal ethnology, but I have never been able to discover that it has any considerable bearing upon the ancient religion of India. The many hints at its possible importance should be substantiated by a larger and clearer body of facts than seems at present available.¹