The Religion of the Veda: The Ancient Religion of India (from Rig-Veda to Upanishads) c9.s1.57

c9.s1.57

The contemplation of the glory of the gods as a matter of intellectual wonder is expressed times without end. It does not seem to me to have quite the true ring. It is perfunctory; it is told by rote. God after god steps into line and gets it. They each in turn establish the heavens and the earth; they start the sun on his course, almost indifferently well. Perhaps, as I have hinted before, their rotation in the ritual, rather than forgetfulness of the virtues of the preceding god, is the truth at the bottom of this kathenotheism or henotheism, as Max Müller called it. It is polytheism grown cold in service, and unnice in its distinctions, leading to an opportunist monotheism in which every god takes hold of the sceptre and none keeps it. Anyhow it is very mechanical. No one who reads in the hymns the endless accounts of the wonderful performances of the gods will deny that the poets at times grow truly warm and feel their theme. Sometimes they are really carried away by it. But I do not believe that either the greatness and majesty, or the incomprehensibleness of the gods, have produced a permanent impression of their superiority and perfection which should permit us to speak of settled intellectual religious consciousness in the Rig-Veda.