An Outline of the Religious Literature of India c6.8

c6.8

There is sufficient evidence available to enable us to form a clearer picture of this period than of the far earlier Indo-European period. Most of our knowledge arises from a comparison of the Veda, the earliest Indian literature, with the earliest literature of the Iranian peoples, viz. the Avesta, the sacred book of the Zoroastrians of ancient Persia. A careful comparative study of the two reveals the fact that the Indo-Iranian people had advanced beyond the early Indo-European faith. The religion centres in the heavenly gods and the animistic divinities are far less prominent. There can be little doubt that among the gods reverenced were Varuṇa, Mitra, Soma, Aryaman, Indra, the Aśvins (i. e. the Dioskouroi), and two semi-divine figures, Vivasvant and Yama. All occur in both literatures except Varuṇa, Indra, and the Aśvins. These are not definitely vouched for by the Avesta,² but they are named in an inscription found by Winckler at Boghaz Keui in Asia Minor and believed to date from 1400 B.C.;¹ and there are so many points of resemblance between Ahura Mazda, the God of Zoroaster, and the Varuṇa of the *Rigveda* that one is almost driven to believe the two to be identical in origin.² There were three forms of sacrifice in use among the early people, the shedding of oblations of grain and milk on the sacred fire, the setting forth of basins of an intoxicating beverage (Sansk. *soma*, Avestan, *haoma*) for the gods to drink, and the sacrifice of animals. Soma had already been deified, and the priests had begun to sing hymns as an accompaniment to the ritual with which it was offered. The presence in the *Avesta* of a considerable number of ritual terms and designations of priests, which are exact equivalents of technical words and phrases found in the Vedas,³ proves that the basis of the liturgy and the ritual of the Vedic and the Zoroastrian religions had already taken shape. One most remarkable conception, the idea of law physical and moral as a fixed divine order, was formed at a very early date. It is already found in Persian proper names at a very early date, possibly 1600 B.C., in the form *arta*, and it appears in the *Rigveda* as *ṛita*, and in the *Avesta* in the form *asha*.