The Religion of the Veda: The Ancient Religion of India (from Rig-Veda to Upanishads) c9.s1.1

c9.s1.1

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.