The Religion of the Veda: The Ancient Religion of India (from Rig-Veda to Upanishads) c9.42

c9.42

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.