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The Religion of the Veda: The Ancient Religion of India (from Rig-Veda to Upanishads) c9: Lecture the Fourth. The Transparent, Translucent, and Opaque Gods.—Religious Conceptions and Religious Feeling in the Veda

The Religion of the Veda: The Ancient Religion of India (from Rig-Veda to Upanishads) c9

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Contents

Lecture the Fourth. The Transparent, Translucent, and Opaque Gods.—Religious Conceptions and Religious Feeling in the Veda

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The transparent gods: their importance for the study of religion—Father Sky and Daughter Dawn—Sūrya, a god of the sun—Vāta and Vāyu, gods of wind—The most transparent god: Agni, Fire—Agni as the sacrifice fire—Prehistoric gods of fire—Birth and youth of Agni—Agni as god of the morning—New births of Agni—Agni on the altar, the agent of the gods—Priesthood and divinity of Agni—A hymn to Agni—Other myths of the Fire God—The translucent gods: definition of the term—God Vishnu—God Pūshan—God Indra, as an example of an opaque god—Traditional explanation of the myth of Indra and Vritra — Professor Hillebrandt’s interpretation of the same myth—Renewed definition of the religion of the Rig-Veda—Renewed definition of Vedic practicalities—Conflicting prayers and sacrifices—The conception of faith—Faith related to Truth and Wisdom—Faith personified—Faith and works—The reward for faith postponed to heaven—Contrast between early “faith” (çraddhā) and later “devotion” (bhakti)—“Gift-praises,” another sop to the sacrificer—The religious feeling of the Rig-Veda—The utilitarian sense—The glory of the gods—Absence of real sentiment towards the gods—Poetic inspiration the true religious feeling—The complacent mastersingers—The poets' own estimate of their work—The divine quality of devotion.

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FOR my part I always come to this theme in the spirit of scientific elation. You know from preceding statements what I mean by transparent gods. They are the gods who are at one and the same time nature object and person. In other words, they are mythic formations whose personification is arrested by the continued action and the vivid memory of the very qualities which lead to personification. Figuratively speaking, just when the chemical is about to precipitate or to crystalise into something unrecognisable, and far removed from its elements, it is shaken and dissolved anew. We are spared the labor of a qualitative and quantitative analysis. In the midst of the uncertainties and intricacies of this subject as a whole the assurance that these processes be renews the courage of the investigator. There is hope that out of the Babel of discordant opinions, many of them grown on the soil of just scepticism, the gods and the beliefs of ethnic religions will reveal their origins. I believe that, next to the Science of Language, the Science of Religion, is the clearest of mental or historical sciences, for the very reason that it is possible to trace some of the most advanced products of religious thought to simple and tangible beginnings in nature and in human consciousness.

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Comparative mythology has influenced these studies profoundly by extending the field and the time within which we may carry on our observations. At the risk of seeming too insistent, let me point out once more, how it has spanned the distance between prehistoric "Father Sky" and the strenuous human personality of the Olympian Zeus of the poets. Now a visit to the Vedic Pantheon brings us into the very workshop where the gods are made.

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We have encountered before some transparent gods. "Father Sky" (Dyaush Pitar), who comes from olden times, and does not grow in the Veda into anything like the personality of Greek Zeus Pater, but is there submerged by other formations that have gained ground at his expense. We have seen what his daughter Ushas is: Eternally young and beautiful, ageless in distinction from the withering race of man, she appears as a lovely maiden displaying her charms to the world. While doing this she caters at the same time to interests which are the reverse of poetic. She starts the day of sacrifice, her face set towards very practical performances. She secures rewards for pious men and their agents with the gods, namely the priests. Yet, on the whole, the poetic possibilities of this loveliest of nature sights gain the day. She releases from service her sister Night as she rises from the darkened East higher and higher to flood heaven and earth with her waves of light. To the Sun-God she is a bride, opens for him her bosom’s splendor. Or, she loves the two Açvins, the Dioscuri, with whom she travels on their car drawn by birds. Divine and gracious maiden, but yet no more than one of nature’s splendors, she is the type of many a heaven-born story, could we but read it aright.

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Next Sūrya (Sol, Helios) appears upon the stage. He is the Sun-God treated as transparently as possible.

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1.50, in the attractive metrical translation (with slight changes) of the late Dr. John Muir; see his *Original Sanskrit Texts*, vol. v., p. 160, and *Metrical Translations from Sanskrit Writers*, p. 179:

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*Hymn to Sūrya*

By lustrous heralds led on high,
The fire Sun ascends the sky ;
His glory draweth every eye.

The stars which gleamed throughout the night,
Now scared, like thieves slink fast away,
Quenched by the splendor of thy ray.

Thy beams to men thy presence show ;
Like blazing fires they seem to glow.

Conspicuous, rapid, source of light,
Thou makest all the welkin bright.

In sight of gods and mortal eyes,
In sight of heaven thou scalest the skies.

O fiery God, with thy keen eye,
Thou scannest, like God Varuna,
The doings of all busy men.

Thou stridest o'er the sky's broad space,
Thy rays do measure out our days ;
Thine eye all living things surveys.

Seven tawny steeds thy chariot bear,
Self-yoked, athwart the fields of air,
Bright Sūrya, god with flaming hair.

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That glow above the darkness we
Beholding upward soar to thee,
For there among the gods thy light
Supreme is seen, divinely bright.

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And there are other gods, not a few, whose origin in nature is positively on the surface. So the two wind-gods Vāta and Vāyu, the former of whom, on the likely evidence of Teutonic Wotan-Odhin, is probably prehistoric. A good bit of profound human philosophy is contained in the mere fact that Vāta is described as a real person in language such as that of the following hymn,¹ and that he may finally be invited to partake of oblations:

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¹ Rig-Veda 10. 168, reproduced with some changes from Professor Hopkins's translation, *The Religions of India*, p. 88.

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Hymn to Vāta

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Now Vāta's chariot's greatness! Breaking goes it,
And thunderous is its noise. To heaven it touches,
Makes light lurid, and whirls the dust upon the earth.

Then rush together all the blasts of Vāta:
To him they come as women to their trysting;
With them conjoint, on the same chariot travelling,
Hastes the god, the king of all creation.

Sleepless hastes he on his pathway through the air,
Companion of the watery flood. First-born and holy,

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Whence, forsooth, arose he, and whence was he created?

The breath of gods and source of life is Vāta.
This god doth journey whithersoe'er he listeth,
His sound is heard but no one sees his figure.
With our oblation let us this Vāta honor!

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But there is one figure that looms far above all others in ancient Hindu religious history from Veda to Mahābhārata, as the classical illustration of how a phenomenon of nature may be itself and personal god at one and the same time. It is the god Agni "Fire," who is element and god at the beginning and remains so to the end. Richard Wagner adopts in the Nibelungen tetralogy the doubtful interpretation of the Norse god Loge (Loki) as fire; Wotan calls upon this red-haired, impish god to appear when he wishes to hedge with fire his erring child Brunhilde. This is interesting, because it shows how even the modern poetic fancy may get itself to bridge over, uncritically, as behooves the poet, the great gap that is between the reality of nature and the unstable speculation of myth-makers. Native Hindu theologians in their scholastic mood find time to worry over the fact that a god like Agni can be devouring element and intelligent god at one and the same time. Even the Epic poet in the Mahābhārata stops to wonder: "There is but *one* Agni, yet is he kindled manifold";¹ and Agni himself is made to say: "Because I can multiply myself by the power of mental concentration (*yoga*), therefore am I present in the bodies (of men, as vital fire)."²

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¹ Mahābhārata 3. 134. 8 = 10658.

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² *Ibid.*, 1. 7. 6 = 916.

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Agni is, next to Indra, the most prominent god of the Rig-Veda, quantitatively speaking. He is the theme of more than two hundred hymns, and owes his special prominence to the personification of the sacred fire which is present at all Vedic performances. In the hieratic (in distinction from the popular) hymns of the Rig-Veda there will be few cases in which Agni is not more or less directly connected with the sacrifice. And it is well now to take this simple article, the sacrifice fire, and let it unfold its own story step by step. How it turns in the hands of these priestly poets into a person gifted with the thinly disguised qualities of fire; into a messenger mediating between men and gods; into an archpriest typical of holy rites; and finally into a god. But to the end, as we shall show, the origin of all these ideas is never forgotten; the god remains a more or less well-assorted bundle of fire qualities and fire epithets. Therefore, too, he remains to the last an indifferent vehicle for far-reaching speculations, or the finer sort of religious feeling.

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The Sanskrit word *agnis*, "fire," at all events, is Indo-European; Latin *ignis*, Lithuanian *ugnis*, Old Slavic *ognĭ*. Some kind of worship of the sacrifice fire, and with it some degree of personification, is likely to have taken place in Indo-European times. The Greeks and Romans, as well as the Aryans, offered libations to the fire when using it to convey offerings to their gods. But there was no definite result that we know of; the chaste figure of Hestia of the Greeks, or Vesta of the Romans, contrasted with boisterous male Agni, shows that the initial conception must have been faint and unstable, to enable it to produce shapes so thoroughly diverse. In the main God Agni is in every essential a product of the poet-priests of the Rig-Veda.

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In India, as elsewhere, fire was produced by friction, and this mode of starting fire was obligatory as far as the sacrifice fire was concerned. The two fire-sticks, or drills, called *araṇī*, are therefore Agni's parents, the upper stick being the male, the lower the female. They produce him under the name of Āyu "Living"; wonderful to narrate, from the dry wood the god is born living. At once he becomes the type of human progeny, and faintly figures as, or suggests the first man and the originator of the human race.¹ The new-born infant is hard to catch; he is born of a mother who cannot give him suck. The child as soon as born devours the parents.

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¹ See above, p. 139.

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With a different touch, because powerful exertion is required to produce Agni by friction, he is frequently called "Son of Strength."

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The pronounced ritualist quality of the poetry of the Rig-Veda fixes Agni as a divinity of the morning, rather than of the night. Interpretations of Rig-Veda passages which involve reference to something like the cosy family hearth, the tea-kettle simmering, the wind soughing outside, are generally moonshine. Nor is his definite association with the morning just what we should expect it to be from our point of view; no suggestion, perchance, of the merry dairymaid milking the cows, or the housewife busy with a comfortable breakfast. Familiar, home-life touches are not absent altogether even in the Rig-Veda; they are more abundant in the "House-books" (Gṛhya-Sūtras). But in the main Agni is cosmic and ritualistic, and little else. He dispels the darkness, destroys the demons of night. He throws open the gates of darkness; earth and sky are seen when Agni is born in the morning. He is even supposed to lift daily the eternally youthful sun to the sky to furnish light to the people.¹

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¹ Rig-Veda 10. 156. 4.

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Such is his cosmic aspect in the morning. On the other hand his ritualistic character betrays itself in his epithet *usharbudh*, which means "waking at dawn." We have seen before that he is also regarded as the son of Dawn.² All this emphasises the opening of the sacrificial day, ushered in by the Goddess Dawn, God Agni, and the gods that wake in the morning and come in the morning, like the Açvins and others.

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² Above, p. 73.

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Every morning Agni is produced anew for the sacrifice; this secures for him the appropriate epithet "the youngest." On the other hand he is the same old Agni, and now comes a good deal of playful or mystic handling of this paradox. His new births are contrasted with his old; having grown old he is born again as a youth. Thus it happens that he is called "ancient" and "very young" in the same passage; the Vedic poets delight in this kind of mental see-saw. The mystery is shallow; what is meant is, that the vigorous life of the present-day Agni recalls his traditional importance in the past. There is no sacrificer older than Agni, for he conducted the first sacrifice. Just as he flames up today at dawn so he shone forth under the auspices of former dawns at the sacrifice of many a great forefather: Bharata, or Vadhryaçva; Divodāsa, or Trasadasyu.

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After having been kindled Agni is placed upon the altar or, if we trust the testimony of the ritual texts of the Veda, upon three altars.¹ Fagots are now piled on, fat oblations are poured in; he waxes big; his tongues, three, or seven, shoot up; he has four eyes, or a thousand eyes—both things mean that he is sharp-sighted; his jaws are sharp; and his teeth shine golden, or his iron grinders clutch. Then the figure is changed: he is flame-haired, tawny-haired, tawny-bearded; his glowing head faces in all directions. Ghee, or melted butter, is his food: he is therefore called ghee-backed, ghee-faced, ghee-haired. Once, even more boldly, Agni himself says, ghee is his eye. This is the point where Agni begins to take on a little more of the flesh and blood of personality upon the skeleton of his elemental qualities. For he receives the offerings neither passively nor selfishly. At as late a time as that of the great Epic, the Mahābhārata² he is made to say: "The ghee that is poured into my mouth, in the way prescribed in the Veda, nourishes the Gods and the Manes . . . called by my mouth the Gods and the Manes come to eat the ghee."

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¹ ^1 *Cf.* Rig-Veda 2. 36. 4; 5. 11. 2; 10. 105. 9.

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² 1. 7. 7. *ff* = 917 *ff.*

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In fact the gods cannot subsist without him. A very neat story which, as usual, remains one of the stock themes of story-telling India in later times, tells in two hymns of the Rig-Veda¹ how Agni on a certain occasion tired of this service. Agni has it born in upon him that his older brothers have worn themselves out in their job, and concludes that he had better dodge a like fate. Whereupon he escapes into the waters. But the god Yama discovers and betrays him, and Varuna, as the spokesman of the gods, finally induces him for a consideration to resume the task of expediting the sacrifice to the gods.² The names which he obtains in this capacity, such as "oblation-eater" and "oblation-carrier,"³ reappear familiarly in the Mahābhārata and later. There they are pigeon-holed, along with numerous other names, to be selected in the manner of the Norse kennings, to vary the diction, to swell its dignity, and to ease the task of the verse-maker. With a different turn, he brings the gods to the sacrifice, and seats them on the strewn grass. He thus becomes familiar with the roads that connect heaven and earth, and becomes the regular messenger between the two. In this capacity he is associated with the Angiras, a race of mythic semi-divine priests whose name seems to be identical with Greek ἄγγελος (angel), "messenger." They also mediate between gods and men, and naturally Agni is an Angiras, the first seer Angiras, the ancient Angiras, the most inspired of the Angiras.

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¹ 10. 51 and 52.

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² For other later tales of Agni lost and found again see the Mahābhārata legends in Holtzmann, *Agni nach den Vorstellungen des Mahābhārata*, p. 12 *ff.*

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³ *Hutāça*, *hutāçana*, *hutabhuj*, *havyabhaksha*, etc.; *hutavaha*, *havyavah*, *havyavāhana*, etc.

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Agni officiates at the sacrifice and becomes the divine counterpart of the earthly priesthood: house-priest, serving-priest, and priest in general, as states the very first stanza of the Rig-Veda. As such he also inspires, or invents the brilliant speech and thought of prayer, and, what is very important, he frees from sin. For the sacrifice, of course, is the staple means of conciliating the gods when they are supposed to be angry. The idea of priesthood blends with that of seer and sage. He is so expert and well-travelled as to assume in a very pronounced sense the qualities of omniscience and omnipresence.¹

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¹ *Cf.* Holtzmann's essay, cited above, p. 5.

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He knows everything by virtue of his wisdom; he embraces wisdom as a felly does the wheel. The adjective *kavikratu*, "possessing the intellect of the sages," applies to him particularly, and the epithet *jātavedas*, "having innate wisdom," is exclusively his own. From the function of archpriest and arch-sage to godhead it is but a step. Agni is the divine benefactor of his worshipper who sweats to carry him fuel: him he protects with a hundred iron walls, or takes across all calamities, as in a ship over the sea. And then, finally, he is divine monarch, surpassing mighty heaven and all the worlds, is superior to all the other gods who worship him, or takes his place in the long line of supreme gods whom the poets indifferently, or henotheistically, as Max Müller put it, praise at convenient times with all the fervor and all the resourceful verbiage which marks the diction of the Rig-Veda:

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Then hail to Agni on his brilliant chariot,
The shining signal of every holy sacrifice,
Of every god in might divine the equal,
The gracious guest of every pious mortal!

Dressed out in all thy ornamented garments,
Thou standest on the very navel of the earth,
The hearth of sacrifice. Born of the light,
Both priest and king, shalt hither fetch th' immortals!

For thou hast ever spread both earth and heaven,
Tho' being their son thou hast spread out thy parents.
Come hither, youthful god, to us that long for thee,
And bring, O Son of Strength, the bright immortals!

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I have followed the main current of Agni's life in order to make clear the meaning of arrested personification, or arrested anthropomorphism. The Vedic poets are far from restricting themselves to this one view. Fire is not only in the sacral fire-sticks, but he is visible everywhere: as sun and lightning in the sky; as glint on the surface of the waters; as the embryo of plants and trees that willingly give it up when in flames; as the spark of flint and the rocks; and even in the heat of the body, and as vital force latent in all living things. Especially remarkable is the certainly Indo-European myth which deals very clearly with a twin descent from heaven: the descent of fire, and the descent of the heavenly fluid. In its Vedic treatment the heavenly fire is Agni of the lightning; the heavenly fluid is *soma*, the ambrosial drink: "The one (namely, the heavenly fire) Mātariçvan brought from heaven; the other (namely, *soma*) the eagle brought from the rock."¹ I have spoken before of the descent of the heavenly fluid²; the descent of Agni from heaven is doubtless connected with the lightning fire. Mātariçvan, however, who brings Agni, belongs to the class of mythic persons for whom I have reserved the attribute "opaque." Even this dramatic nature act, which the plastic spirit of the Greeks shapes for all time into the main motif of the Prometheus tragedy, appears to the Vedic poets merely as heaven's method of furnishing fire and *soma* for the sacrifice: it does not turn into a real humanised myth. And what I have deduced here in detail is true of all of Agni's traits in the Veda; he is at one moment element and phenomenon, at another person and god, at all times as clear as his own light to teach the nature of the gods.

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¹ Rig-Veda, 1. 93. 6.

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² Above, p. 146.

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I have used the term transparent in connection with divine personifications whose naturalistic basis and whose starting point in human consciousness is absolutely clear. Now the term translucent, figure of speech though it is, I wish to be understood in its plain physical sense. It refers to mythic formations whose structural outline may still be traced with a great deal of truth, although it is obscured by incrustations of secondary matter. It is often merely the loss of the original simple name which is the cause of the obscuration. Divinities of the name "Dawn" (Ushas), "Sun" (Sūrya), or "Fire" (Agni), bring credentials that every one can read. But the quick substitution of an attractive, or pointed epithet for the original name may plague the investigator for all time to come, and deprive him of mathematical certainty, even though every instinct draws him in the right direction. An unusually unsympathetic sceptic will not find it hard to rest his feet upon some projecting ledge of doubt, and all history cries out that we must not try to dislodge sceptics by violence. Every middle-aged student of Comparative Mythology and Comparative Philology recalls the time when even the most complex myths were blandly explained as nature processes; nothing in that line could be too fanciful and far-fetched to find adherents. No cock might crow in a fairy-tale without becoming party to an involved and profound sun-myth. We have all sobered much; there is now, perhaps, too much insistence upon the element of uncertainty which goes with the term "probable," no matter how closely the probable may approach certainty.

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The two Açvins, the Dioscuri, are translucent gods. They harbor some phenomenon of morning light as one part of their dual character. The other is probably the corresponding phenomenon at eve. But just what this duality is we were unable to say.¹ It is something to have limited this brilliant Indo-European myth so far, and to find behind it reason rather than idle fancy. The god Varuna, as we have seen, belongs also to this class; for better or for worse interpretation will turn to some phenomenon of heaven which suggests the god's salient quality of overseer, be it encompassing sky, be it moon. I choose two other gods as the type of translucent gods, Vishnu and Pūshan ; in both cases we shall be engaged with variant aspects of the sun. This may seem to some minds a suspicious monotony of explanation, in fact it is the so-called solar theory. But I am nothing daunted : the sun is important and ever present with early observers ; I shall let him fight his own battles.

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¹ See above, p. 116.

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If I am not mistaken, I have done the cause of Vishnu a service in pointing out that the name itself is compounded of the two words *vi* and *snu*, meaning "through the back."¹ The leading fact in Vishnu's activity in the Veda is that he takes three strides (*tredhā vi kram*). A passage in the Sāma-Veda states that "Vishnu strode through over the back of the earth."² Here the word for "through" is *vi* ; the word for "back" is *sānu* (*snu*)—the two parts of the name Vishnu. The third of these enormous strides lands Vishnu in the highest heaven, in the bright realm of light, where even the winged birds do not dare to fly.³ There in the highest stepping place is Vishnu's fount of honey.¹ This place is identical with the highest place of Agni; Vishnu guards the highest, or third place of Agni, the fire on high, the sun.² There the gods and pious men rejoice. Liberal sacrificers ever look forward to this place; it is fixed like an eye in heaven.³ Later Veda texts clearly define the three steps as earth, atmosphere, and heaven. Vishnu represents the sun in his ascent from the horizon of the earth, through the atmosphere to the zenith, considered as the solar paradise. His swift climb over the back of the universe through the cosmic triad justly arrested the fancy of the poets, and they name him accordingly. Instead of holding to the proper name of the sun, or to his more familiar functions of giver of light and life, they express in the name Vishnu, and in the fancies connected with it the sufficiently remarkable fact that his ascent from earth to the paradisiacal zenith involves but three stations: earth, atmosphere, and heaven. From the earliest time Hindu records show the greatest interest in this threefold division of the universe.⁴ Other notions, such as that Vishnu marks off with his wide steps for his worshippers corresponding breadth or wide scope for success and prosperity, and that he frees them from restraint and trouble, follow as an almost inevitable consequence. In a later time Vishnu is elevated to the highest place; he is one of the so-called Hindu Trinity. To the end he remains the Vishnu of the solar paradise to whom go the spirits of the departed pious. But at the same time he represents to his sectarian worshippers the pantheistic Brahma, or "all-soul," with which the soul of man is ultimately destined to unite.

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¹ *American Journal of Philology*, vol. xvii., p. 428.

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² Sāma-Veda 2. 1024, *yato vishṇur vi cakrame pṛthivyā adhi sānavi*.

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³ Rig-Veda 1. 155. 3, 5.

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¹ Rig-Veda 1. 154. 5.

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² *Ibid.*, 10. 1. 3.

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³ *Ibid.*, 1. 22. 20.

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⁴ See above, p. 91.

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I choose as the second example of a translucent god, the shepherd god Pūshan. His chief claim to usefulness is that he knows the roadways; protects from their dangers, such as wolves and robbers; guards cattle, so that they be not dashed to pieces in the ravine; brings them home unhurt when they have gone astray; and, in general, restores lost things. Pūshan personally drives the cows to pasture; he weaves the sheeps' dresses, and smoothes their coats; he carries a goad, and his car is drawn by goats. And seeing that he lives on mush or gruel, whereas the other gods revel in *soma* or ghee, his bucolic nature is pretty clear. His name means "Prospero," which may, of course, be the epithet of any benevolent god, and therefore veils rather than tells his particular character.

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The following specimen shows the tone of the not too numerous hymns addressed to him:

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Rig-Veda 6. 54.

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Guide us, O Pūshan, to a man
Who, wise, straightway shall point the way,
And say to us: “Lo, here it is!”

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With Pūshan joined let us go forth;
He points our houses out to us,
And saith to us: “Right here they are!”

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His chariot’s wheel doth never break;
Its seat doth never tumble down;
Nor doth his wheel’s rim ever crack.

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Whoso payeth tribute to the god
Him Pūshan never doth forget;
That man is first to gather wealth.

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May Pūshan follow our kine,
May he protect our horses too,
And furnish us with solid wealth!

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May naught be lost, nor aught be hurt;
May naught be injured in the pit;
Our cattle sound bring back to us!

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May Pūshan pass his good right hand
Around about and far and wide,
And drive our lost goods back to us!

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The standard interpretation of this god is again as a sun-god. This is well supported by some higher mythic traits in which this god is not altogether wanting. He is lord of all things that stand or move; almost the same words describe Sūrya (Helios). He also is the lover or husband of the Sun-Maiden Sūryā, that arch-flirt who carries on affairs with the male Sūrya, the Açvins, and Soma. He alone has the very ancient epithet *āghṛṇi* "glowing." This fits the sun, and besides hardly any other article than fire. Now fire Pūshan is not. To consider him, under these circumstances, a mere "god Prospero," or an abstract "Lord of the Paths," is a good deal like begging the question. Contrariwise his abilities as path-finder, cattle god, and restorer of lost things point to an overseeing heavenly body, particularly if we may trust another Lithuanian folk-song (*daina*) which I may be permitted to quote:

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Oh, at the yester even tide
I lost my little lamb!
Oh, who shall help me go and seek
My only little lamb?

I went and asked the morning star,
The morning star replied:
"I have to build the dear sun's fire
At morrow's morning tide."

I went and asked the evening star,
The evening star replied:
"I have to make the dear sun's bed
At every even tide."

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I went and asked the waning moon,
The waning moon replied:
“I have been smitten with a sword,¹
My sorry face I hide.”

I went and asked the lovely sun,
The dear sun gave reply;
“Nine days I’ll seek, and on the tenth
I’ll not set in the sky.”²

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¹ *Cf.* the Lithuanian folk-song, above, p. 114.

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² Professor Chase’s rendering, *Transactions of the American Philological Association*, vol. xxxi., p. 193.

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The familiar notion that the sun oversees everything³ appeals in this instance to the simple reasoning power of shepherd folk. A more suitable origin for a shepherd god it is not easy to imagine. They therefore dress him out in shepherd’s clothes, feed him on shepherd’s food, and turn him into a heavenly bell-wether of their flocks. But his real natural history does not seem to me to be very much disguised by the simple-minded fable. We may safely call Pūshan a translucent god.

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³ Ἥλιος πανόπτης, *Iliad* 3. 277; Æschylus, *Prometheus Bound*, 91.

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The most prominent of the gods of the Rig-Veda is Indra. About two hundred and fifty hymns are devoted to his praise, perhaps one-fourth of all the hymns of the collection. No account of Vedic religion can pass by his big personality, and yet his essence and quality are that of lower, rather than higher religious conceptions, even if we adopt no higher standard than the Rig-Veda. To the growingly finer religious thought of the later Veda Indra contributes nothing positive. Negatively, the coarse grain and the fleshliness of his character which, taken all in all, are foreign to the gods of the Vedic Pantheon, arrest very unfavorable attention. Indra is so grossly anthropomorphic, that is, he embodies so completely the human qualities of brag and bluster, gluttony, drunkenness, and lust, as to make him the peg upon which to hang scepticism. In that way he contributes negatively to the advance of Hindu thought. Of this later on.

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This god has remained opaque to the eye of Vedic study. He is not wanting in superlative cosmic qualities. In fact the poets never, unless except perhaps in the case of Varuna, come nearer biting off more than they can chew, than when engaged in lauding Indra. He has no counterpart among those born or to be born. No one, celestial or terrestrial, has been born, or shall be born, like unto him. All the gods yield to him in might and strength.¹ He supports earth and sky, or spreads out the earth.² More particularly, he is the Hindu Hercules and demiurge; the doer of great deeds for the people.

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¹ Rig-Veda 4. 18. 4; 7. 32. 2; 8. 51. 7.

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² *Ibid.*, 2. 15. 2.

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He slays dragons and monsters; he is the typical slayer of the foes of the pious sacrificer. To these deeds of heroic valor he is stimulated by immense potations of intoxicating *soma*. In order to accomplish the slaughter of the arch-dragon Vritra he drank on one occasion three lakes of that delightful beverage, so that decidedly he had a jag on, which, it has been noted, rhymes well with dragon. Accordingly he has a tremendous body, strong jaws and lips. He is tawny-haired and bearded, carries a club in his hand, and fights on a chariot drawn by two bay steeds. In general the Vedic poets cannot be accused of coarseness; yet it seems that, in this instance, they were irresistibly attracted by the mighty deeds of this, “Lord of Strength,” as they call him. This is probably owing to the fact that he is felt to be the national hero of the Aryan invaders in their struggles against the dark-skinned aborigines, whom they must overcome in order to hold possession of the land which they invaded. And nations are never coarser than when they put their own nationality into antagonism against another nation. In a recent war, familiar to all of us, a prominent warrior on the side of the stronger nation expressed his consuming desire to make, by his own valorous deeds, the language of the weaker nation the vernacular of Hades. This is the spirit of the worship of Indra.

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But it would be a mistake to suppose that Indra is a mere coarse embodiment of the jingo valor of a superior race exercised against a weak enemy fated to subjection. Indra’s character is not even translucent, that is, we can no longer define his origin with certainty, but there is no doubt that he originated somewhere in visible nature. The difficulty is to tell where. To begin with, there is no belittling the fact that Indra’s origin is prehistoric. His name occurs in the Avesta (Andra) where, as is often the case with earlier Aryan divinities, he is degraded to a demon. But his chief Vedic epithet, Vritrahan, “Slayer of Vritra,” is the same name as that of the abstract genius of Victory, Verethraghna in the Avesta, and the Armenian dragon slayer Vahagn.¹ On the other hand there is no real Indra literature outside of India. If then we are forced to turn to India in order to explain Indra, we must not forget that his origin is outside of India and precedes Hindu history.

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¹ See Hillebrandt, *Vedische Mythologie*, vol. iii., p. 188 *ff.*

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The following specimen, Rig-Veda i. 32, is done into prose, rather than into metre, in order to show clearly how Indra and his principal exploit, namely, the slaughter of the dragon Vritra and the liberation of the waters, really presents itself to the mind of the poets:

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1. Let me now tell forth the heroic deeds of Indra, which he that wields the club performed of yore. He slew the dragon, broke the way for the waters; he cleft the belly of the mountains.

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2. He slew the dragon who lay upon the mountain. God Tvashtar forged for him his heavenly club. Like roaring cattle, down came the waters, flowing swiftly to the sea.

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3. Lusty as a bull, Indra demanded soma; from three vats drank he of the pressed drink. His missile bolt he took in hand, the generous god, and slew the first-born of the dragons.

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4. When thou didst smite, O Indra, the first-born of the dragons, when thou didst make naught of the wiles of the wily, then, bringing out both sun and heaven and dawn, thou verily didst not find a foeman worthy of thy steel.

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6. A drunken weakling, Vritra, did challenge the great hero, the mighty, dashing fighter. He did not withstand the impact of his weapons: with broken nose lay shattered he whose foe was Indra.

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7. Over him lying so, like a broken reed, the waters go flowing at will. Those (very waters) which Vritra had encompassed with his might, at the feet of them the dragon prone lay stretched.

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13. Nor thunder, nor lightning did help him; nor the hail-storm which he cast about him. When Indra and the dragon fought their battle, then even for future times the liberal god won the battle.

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These stanzas carry us into the very midst of a myth whose three elements bring with them three questions: First, what are the waters? Secondly, who is Vritra that shuts them in? Thirdly, who is Indra that liberates them after a struggle that puts him so very much on his mettle? Hindu tradition, commentators and later classical Sanskrit literature, has always had an unhesitating answer: The waters are rain; Vritra is the cloud that shuts them off from the earth; Indra, therefore, is the storm or thunder god that rends the clouds with his lightning bolt and frees their waters. This interpretation, at first sight thoroughly sensible and most satisfactorily suggestive, was for a good while held to be good by most western students of the Veda and Comparative Mythology. The trouble with it turned out to be that the Veda has the real storm and rain god Parjanya,¹ and that the hymns addressed to him describe thunder-storms in language that is very different, and cannot be mistaken for anything else than the phenomena of the thunder-storm. The sober facts of the Indra-Vritra myth are as follows: A god armed with a bolt fights a dragon or serpent who holds the rivers in confinement within the mountains. He kills the dragon, cleaves the mountains. The rivers flow from the mountains to the sea. Thus the texts: there is nothing to show that the mountains mean clouds, and the rivers the flow of rain.

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¹ See above, p. 111.

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After such and other premonitory symptoms of scepticism and unrest, Professor Hillebrandt has recently advanced a new theory of Indra, Vritra, and the waters, which he expounds with great ingenuity and learning.¹ He argues that the streams of India and the neighboring Iranian countries are at their lowest level in the winter; that the confiner of their waters is the frozen winter, conceived as a winter monster by the name of Vritra, "confiner;" that Vritra holds captive the rivers on the heights of the glacier mountains; and that, consequently, Indra can be no other than the spring or summer sun who frees them from the clutches of the winter dragon: "Behold, in winter's chain sleeps the song of the waterfall under the dungeon roof of crystal ice!" So sings a Swedish poet, Count Snoilsky. And another Swedish poet, Andreas Aabel, rings out the antistrophe: "Hear the mountains proud cascade! Just now it has broken winter's check and prison, and now it courses free along its road!"²

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¹ See Hillebrandt, *Vedische Mythologie*, vol. iii., p. 157 *ff.*

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² See *ibid.*, p. 187.

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Now it is true that the emergence of spring from winter is sometimes treated poetically as a battle. We can understand this much better in a north country like Sweden where the conflict is hard and long. Even there these phenomena seem hardly to suggest so fierce and Herculean a contest as that which is supposed to take place between Indra and the frost giant Vritra:

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Released from ice are stream and brook,
By spring-tide's enchanting, enlivening look.

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These words of Goethe seem to come so much nearer to what might be expected.

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But over and beyond, Indra performs in his professional capacity of Hercules a large assortment of other "stunts." He releases the cows from the stables of the avaricious who confine them and will not sacrifice them to the gods. He also performs the heavenly analogue of this deed: he breaks open the stables of darkness, presided over by another demon of the name of Vala, and releases the heavenly cows, that is, the light of dawn and the sun. It seems impossible to hold aloof this important myth from the classical myths of Heracles and three-headed Geryon, and Hercules and three-headed Cacus. Hercules carries off the cattle which belong to the monster, or, in the case of Cacus, which the monster had stolen from the hero, and had hidden away in his cave.¹ Indra, moreover, kills a great variety of other demons. To the immediate conception of the Veda he is indeed a sort of Hercules, the most personal of all the gods, so personal that people begin to doubt his existence, and ask, "Who has seen him?" I have brought much sympathy to Professor Hillebrandt's interpretation which I hope may in the end turn out to be the right one; for the present it has left me in the frame of mind indicated by the word opaque. I confess, I cannot pass over as lightly as does Hillebrandt the unanimous Hindu tradition that Vritra is the cloud. The partnership of Indra with Vāyu "Wind" is paralleled suggestively by the association of Parjanya and Vāta, "Wind." Parjanya is beyond peradventure a god of the thunder-storm. It is therefore still possible that the myth of Indra, Vritra, and the waters represents a specialised poetic treatment of a myth of thunder-storm, cloud, and rain. The myth may have, so to speak, been brought down to earth: Indra, the storm god, becomes a Hercules, and kills a dragon who hoards in the mountains (formerly, the clouds), the rivers (formerly, the rain of the clouds). For a final solution of this most important theme in mythology it seems to me that we must look to the future. The confirmation of Hillebrandt's masterly theory, if it comes at all, must come from Iran or Western Asia. Such confirmation should establish more definitely Indra's and Vritra's character in the Indo-Persian time from which, if not from a still earlier time, dates their beginning. If these earlier data should by any chance ever show Indra and Vritra in the mutual relation of summer and winter, then Hillebrandt’s hypothesis, and I fear not until then, would be triumphantly vindicated.

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¹ See Oldenberg, *Die Religion des Veda*, p. 143 *ff.*

Religious Conceptions and Religious Feeling in the Veda

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The religion of the Rig-Veda, as we have seen, is in its most superficial aspect a priestly religion of works designed to propitiate and to barter with personal gods. The outer form in which it presents itself is as poetry of the sacrifice. The sacrifice with its ceremonial formalities is, as I have ventured to say, the epidermis of Vedic religion. In its next layer the religion of the Veda is expressed in hymnal worship of the same personal gods who get the offerings. Whatever we may say about the origin of these gods, one by one, they are to the Hindu conception for the most part related to the visible and audible forces of nature. Nature in its larger aspect, cosmic nature, is the prime source of inspiration of the Vedic religious bard, just as it was the inspiration of his prehistoric Aryan and Indo-European ancestors. The conception of nature and the nature gods, notwithstanding many crudities, is singularly poetic. I shall show later that the religious consciousness, in so far as it concentrates itself upon their admiration and praise, marks in fact the highest point in the Vedic Rishis’ mental and spiritual possibilities. In the end it will be found to be something more than religious poetry; it is rather religion or religious sense expressing itself as poetic inspiration. Anyhow we must not believe that the ritual has swamped everything. The delight in the gods, especially the half-personalised nature forces which are treated as gods, is too unstinted and generous to allow us to doubt its genuineness. I am sure that many, if not all, of these poets addressed their beautiful hymns to the goddess Dawn, or to the sun-god Sūrya with the full swing of creative poets, delighting in their theme for the theme’s sake, and chiseling their poems for the poems’ sake. We may believe that these priest-poets at times, when in their best vein, asked the favor of the gods not as greedy beggars, but as joyously unconscious beneficiaries of divinities whose power to reward is incidental to their inherent generous nature, and who, therefore present themselves as a brilliant and worthy theme of song.

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But the every-day existence of these men is something different. It is loaded down with those dreadful practicalities. They must live by this very trade of theirs, namely, praise of the gods and purveyance of the sacrifice. When they turn their minds away, as they constantly do and must do, from those well-conceived personifications they tend downward. As middle-men between the gods and men they must, above all, take care of men, their own selves not least of all. Men can subsist and prosper only if the gods return in kind. The gods, on the whole, are good; they do not beat down the requests of him that comes with prayer and cup of *soma*. Reciprocity, frank unconditional reciprocity, thus becomes an accepted motive: “Give thou to me, I give to thee,” is the formula.¹ The sacrificing king, or rich householder, is thereby placed between the upper and the nether mill-stone: he must satisfy both gods and priests, each of whom show a surprising habit of becoming more and more exacting as time goes by. In this way the high poetic quality of Vedic religion is crowded and choked by many conceptions mean from the start, or bent by these circumstances into a mean shape. The gods themselves, notwithstanding their luminous origin, are brought down to the plane of human weakness. Open to adulation, they become vain; eager for advantage, they become shifty; reflecting human desires, they become sordid, and in some cases even indecent.

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¹ *dehi me dadāmi te*. *Cf.* the Roman *do ut des*.

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In the first place, Vedic poets engage in a sort of scramble for the gods. The gods cannot be in one and the same place at the same time, and cannot grant all the conflicting wishes of their numerous suppliants. I have dealt with this theme which may interest the broader students of the history of religions, in a recent paper presented to the XIVth International Congress of Orientalists, held at Algiers in 1905.¹ The title of the paper, *On Conflicting Prayers and Sacrifices*, tells a good deal of the story. The notion which comes out quite persistently is that it requires art to "hog" the gods, and it is not a very delectable notion either from the æsthetic or the ethical point of view. Yet not less so perhaps than the *Te Deum laudamus* over the slaughter of enemies, which has been known to be chanted by both sides at the same time when each side claimed victory.²

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¹ See *Johns Hopkins University Circulars* of 1906, Nr. 10, p. 1 *ff*.

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² Or consider :

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"Gieb regen und gieb sonnenschein
Für Reuss und Schleuss und Lobenstein ;
Und wollen andre auch was ha'n
So mögen sie's dir selber sa'n."

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My colleague, Professor Gildersleeve, proposes the following English transfusion :

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"Give rain and sunshine we implo'
For us upon the Eastern sho' ;
If any others want a share
Themselves may offer up the prayer."

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So, for instance, poets of the ancient family of bards, the Vasishthas, on a certain occasion brag that they made Indra prefer their own *soma* libations to those of Pāçadyumna Vāyata, though the latter had gone to the trouble of fetching Indra from a great distance. Frantically emphatic prayer; imprecation of the man who is praying at the same time; and naughty tricks of various sorts show us under this aspect the whole world of praying and sacrificing men engaged in a sort of universal game of tag: the hindmost is "it." The Vedic Hindus have made a sad botch of this matter. I am glad to say that this particular crudity passes out at the end of the Vedic period with the slow "twilight of the gods" which shifts the interest from polytheism, myth, and sacrifice to the theosophic speculations of the Upanishads. When the personal gods emerge again in later Hinduism, they are much clarified; at least the risky question about their presence in many places at one and the same time, and the equitable distribution of their favors is, as far as I know, never asked again.

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There is scarcely any idea which has suffered so much from the utilitarian aspects of Vedic religion as the Vedic idea of faith. To begin with, the word itself is of interest; it is *çraddhā*, the sound for sound equivalent of Latin and our own *credo*. The etymological meaning of this word is absolutely transparent. It means "to set one's heart upon." This etymology, which is still quite clear to the Vedic poets, shows it full of ethical possibilities. The word starts well in the Rig-Veda. It means first of all belief in the existence and godhead of the gods. So, a poet is anxious to make certain the position of the god Indra, that blustering, pinchbeck, braggart, Herculean god whose shortcomings have gone far to establish a certain position for the Vedic freethinker. The poets say of him:

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"The terrible one of whom they ask, where is he? Nay verily they say of him, he is not at all. He makes shrink the goods of his enemy like a gambler the stakes of his opponent: Put your faith in him—He, O folks, is Indra."
(Rig-Veda 2. 12. 5.)

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"As a strong warrior, he verily fights with might great battles in behalf of the people. Aye, then they have faith in strong Indra, as he hurls down his weapon."
(Rig-Veda 1. 55, 5.)

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"Who, what mortal, can overcome him whose treasure thou art, O Indra? Through faith in thee, O liberal God, on the decisive day, does he that strives obtain booty."
(Rig-Veda 7. 32. 14.)

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So there is no doubt that faith means the belief in the existence of the gods, and their interference in the life of man. It would be doing injustice to those early believers to say that they did not develop the idea beyond this stage of mere primary utility. A later text of the Yajur-Veda says: Faith is truth, and unfaith is lies:

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"The creator (Prajāpati) having beheld two qualities separated truth and lie from one another. He put unfaith into lie, faith he placed into truth."
(Vājasaneyi Saṁhitā 19. 77.)

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Next, faith is wisdom; faith is the sister of wisdom: The fool saith in his heart, "there is no god." In order to disprove his folly it becomes needful to couple the ideas of Faith and Wisdom. From a later time we have very interesting accounts of the initiation of disciples, and their instruction in the Vedas. Teacher and pupil in a kind of dramatic dialogue carry on the solemn action: "Teach me the revealed books (of the Veda), my Lord!" saith the pupil. "I teach thee the revealed books," replieth the teacher. "Teach me the Vedic tradition, my Lord!" saith the pupil. "I teach thee the Vedic tradition," replieth the teacher. "Teach me Faith and Wisdom, my Lord!" saith the pupil. "I teach thee Faith and Wisdom."¹ In another text, as the pupil puts on the sacred girdle which he wears during disciplehood, he addresses it:

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¹ See Çāṅkhāyana Grihyasūtra 2. 7, and compare Āçvalāyana Grihyasūtra 3. 9. 1.

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“Daughter of Faith, born of Zeal, sister was she of the Seers that did create the beings. Do thou, O girdle, assign to us Thought and Wisdom; also assign to us Zeal and Strength.”

(*Atharva-Veda* 6. 133. 4.)

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Faith kindles the sacrifice-fire and, by way of return, the sacred fire, this chief emblem of Brahmanical religion, is in charge of both Faith and Wisdom:

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“Through Faith the fire is kindled,
Through Faith the oblation is offered.
Faith, that stands at the head of fortune,
Her do we with our song proclaim.”

(*Rig-Veda* 10. 151. 1.)

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On the other hand, the Brahmanical disciple appeals to Agni Jātavedas (the holy fire) to preserve for him faith and wisdom, to keep intact his memory, so that he may not forget the sacred texts, and to secure him in well-being.¹

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¹ Çānkhāyana Grihyasūtra 2. 10. 6.

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Next, Faith becomes a person, a goddess. That would not be bad but for the mechanical character which she then assumes. Imagine—and in order to imagine this one must be pretty well steeped in Hinduism—the frame of mind of a poet who skilfully exalts the goddess Faith, but finally asks her to accept oblations:

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