The Religion of the Veda: The Ancient Religion of India (from Rig-Veda to Upanishads) c9.45

c9.45

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.