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The Religion and Philosophy of the Veda and Upanishads v1.c11: Chapter 4. The Avesta and Comparative Mythology

The Religion and Philosophy of the Veda and Upanishads v1.c11

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Chapter 4. The Avesta and Comparative Mythology

§ 1. The Avesta

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While the literary evidences for Vedic religion are of quite exceptional value and importance, it must be admitted that of other material for realizing the mode in which the gods were conceived there is none available :¹ we have not the statues and other forms of representation, such as paintings, coins, seals, statuettes, &c., which are of such value in the case of Greek religion. No Indian art products or coins of the early Vedic period have been discovered, and that any should so be discovered is most improbable. On the other hand, great value attaches to the Avesta as a source for the understanding of Vedic religion. The close similarity in form of the Avestan language and the Vedic is beyond all doubt : certain changes in sounds² make indeed an apparent external divergence, but the vocabulary, the formation of words, and the syntax correspond with much exactitude, and, what is even more important, the verses of the Avesta often breathe the same religious spirit as those of the Rigveda. The similarity of religious views in the pre-Zoroastrian period must have been of the most close and striking type : the prose formulae of the Veda no less than the verses show a profound likeness of form and content, and the practical identity of modes of thought between Iran and India is sufficiently indicated by the striking parallelism between the form of parts of the Buddhist canon and the Iranian literature. The extraordinary similarity of view as of speech, indeed, makes it hard to believe in any early separation of these two branches of the Indo-European family, and suggests that they must have continued to be in close touch with one another until a comparatively late period, when the advance of the Vedic section towards India interposed difficulties of communication between them and the Iranian tribes, and gave a decisive turn to divergences of view which were beginning to form themselves in the Aryan community. The divergence from the common religion of the still undivided Aryans is clearly far greater in the case of the Avesta : there is no good ground to doubt that its present form is the result of the definite individuality of Zoroaster at a comparatively late date,³ though doubtless he merely brought to a head tendencies which had been developing before his time. Under that change much of the old Aryan mythology disappeared or was deeply altered, and it is, therefore, the more remarkable that so much similarity should remain.

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¹ Jouveau-Dubreuil’s *Vedic Antiquities* affords nothing of more than speculative value; see also Marshall, CHI. i. 616 as to the alleged burial mounds of Lauriyā Nandangarh; *Arch. Survey of India Rep.* 1904–5, pp. 38 ff.

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² Exaggerated in the ordinary transcription of the Avestan sounds, which is now under revision by Wackernagel and others; Andreas, GN. 1909, pp. 42 ff.; 1911, pp. 1 ff.; cf. Bartholomae, VOJ. xxiv. 129 ff.

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³ For a theory of Israelite influence, see Pettazzoni, *La Religione di Zarathustra*, pp. 82 ff., and a criticism by Keith, JHS. xli. 279 f.; F. W. Thomas (JRAS. 1916, p. 364) suggests that Asura came from Assyria and that Zoroastrianism is a moralizing Assyrian creed; the difficulty is to find its Assyrian parallel.

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The figure of Ahura Mazdāh cannot possibly¹ be dissociated from Varuṇa who bears the epithet Asura, the term applied to other Vedic gods, while in the later Saṁhitās the Asuras have become the foes of the gods. Like Ahura, Varuṇa is the lord of holy order, Ṛta, which corresponds to the Avestan Aša : he is closely united with Mitra, as Ahura with Mithra, the sun-god : he is the chief of the Ādityas as deities of light, as Ahura is connected with the Ameša Spentas,² who like the Ādityas are not at first fixed in number : Varuṇa guards the sun from falling and makes it a path wherein to wander along the heaven, as Ahura keeps the earth from falling and provides the sun with a pathway. But, apart from these coincidences, the mere moral grandeur of both deities can only be explained by a common origin : the history of Varuṇa in India is that of moral elevation which gradually disappears, and the god sinks to a mere god of the waters, of quite secondary importance. It is inconceivable that this fact should be explained in any other way than that as a god he was brought to India, when under less favourable circumstances his moral quality evaporated. This theory, moreover, renders it easy to understand the success of the Zoroastrian faith and its choice of Ahura as the great and only god in the proper sense of the term : it was not a creation, but a purification of a conception existing among the people of Iran. The loss of the name Varuṇa is natural enough, and it is now probable that we actually have a record of the period when Varuṇa and Mitra were Aryan or Iranian gods in the list of the gods of Mitanni, referred to above. The same list contains the name of Indra, and supports the view that this deity was Aryan, for the same conclusion is irresistibly suggested by the fact that the Avesta knows a demon Indra, and a genius of victory whose name Verethraghna is unmistakably equivalent to Vṛtrahan, the epithet *par excellence* of Indra, as slayer of Vṛtra his greatest foe.³ We do not know the precise steps of the process by which Indra fell from honour among the Iranians : there was, however, an obvious incompatibility of temper between the moral and stately Varuṇa and the impetuous war god Indra, which comes out even in the Rigveda, but in India there was no religious reformation to regard Indra as the inferior deity and reduce him to the rank of a demon.

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¹ Hillebrandt (*Ved. Myth.* iii. 11) denied this, but the argument is incredible; cf. Oldenberg, ZDMG. l. 48; Meyer, *Gesch. des Alt.*³ I. ii. pp. 913, 921.

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² See B. Geiger, *Die Ameša Spentas* (Wien, 1916). The š really is a mere misrepresentation, Andreas and Wackernagel, GN. 1911, p. 3, n. 1; contrast Bartholomae, VOJ. xxiv. 173.

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³ Oldenberg, JRAS. 1909, pp. 1090–5; Moulton, *Early Zoroastrianism*, p. 69. The theory that the Iranian genius is the genuine old Sondergott of War, and Vṛtra an Indian creation, through a misunderstanding of the term 'assault repelling', is quite unacceptable. The old Armenian deity Vahagn defeats dragons; Hillebrandt, *Ved. Myth.* iii. 188 f.

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The identity of Ahura and Varuṇa lends great probability to the identification of the Ameša Spenta and the Ādityas. It is true that no great stress can be laid on the number seven, which is not certainly primitive and may be ethnic in significance, but it is a reasonable view that the highly etherialized and spiritualized conceptions of the Ameša Spenta are merely the reflex of the more substantial though still abstract deities, the Ādityas. It must be noted that in India also these gods are not in essence personifications of nature, but, as their names denote, represent activities of human life, and the Iranian development in their case is a natural parallel to the refinement of the character of Asura into something far above the average god; moreover Bhaga, the giver of good things, one of the Ādityas, bears a name which in Iranian as Bagha denotes a god in general. The identity of Mitra with Mithra is patent and undeniable, Iran seems to have known Dyaus,¹ and there are as clear identities in minor figures such as that of Apāṁ Napāt, and Apãm Napāt, Gandharva and Gandarewa, Kṛçānu and Keresāni, both of whom appear in connexion with the Soma, Vāyu and Vayu, a genius of air, Trita Āptya, and the two forms, Thrita and Āthwya. The Avesta and Rigveda agree in the terms Yātu and Druj (Druh) as applied to evil spirits. Still more interesting is the parallelism of Yama, son of Vivasvant, the first of men and ruler of paradise, with Yima, son of Vīvaṅhvant. The waters and plants as deities are invoked by both.

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¹ Herodotos (i. 131) asserts that the Persians called the whole circle of the heaven Zeus, probably not an allusion to Ahura; Spiegel, *Eran. Alt.* ii. 15; von Schroeder, *Arische Religion*, ii. 338 ff.; Moulton, *Early Zoroastrianism*, pp. 391f. We need not seek to find the actual Iranian name in Herodotos, who naturally uses the Greek term.

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Quite as striking are the similarities in the cult. In both India and Iran a priest called Hotṛ or Zaotar must originally have been the chief performer, the name denoting the act of offering the libation. The fire cult produced the Atharvan priest of India, the Āthravan of Iran, though Agni seems a specifically Indian development,² a fact which explains perhaps why he does not appear with Mitra and Varuṇa, Indra and the Nāsatyas in the list of gods of the Mitanni. The sacrifice bears the same name Yajña and Yasna respectively, and many other words used in the ritual correspond. More important still is the fact that the Soma is celebrated by the singers in both lands as the plant that grows on the mountains, watered by the rain of heaven, and brought by the eagle. It was in both lands pressed, and the juice passed through a sieve and then mixed with milk. But the deposition of Indra, who in India is the Soma drinker *par excellence*, from that place of honour in Iran, has resulted in the alteration of the old ritual of the drinking of the Soma by the god and then by the priests.³ Both peoples too at one time spread a strew, Barhis or Baresman, for the god to sit upon when he came to receive their offerings, and the old term spread (*stereta*) was preserved by the Iranians even after they had ceased altogether to conceive of the idea of the god coming to seat himself at the sacrifice. In both countries the pious offerer is styled the man who has spread the strew; in both again the service of praise consisted in large measure of hymns, whose close similarity of language and thought has already been noted.

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² Moulton, *Early Zoroastrianism*, pp. 70, 71.

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³ Moulton (op. cit., pp. 71–3) adopts the view that the opinion of Zoroaster was definitely hostile to Haoma, while in the West the original intoxicating plant was replaced by a harmless one, which was not drunk.

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The similarity of the concept of moral order, Ṛta or Aša, has been also noted: the names of the Mitanni kings afford to us curiously enough the proof that the term Arta was known in the fourteenth century B.C. at the latest. The form Arta is of special interest as it does not show the sound change of the Avesta, if indeed that be real and not a mere mistranscription; it may of course have belonged to the Iranian of pre-Avestan date, or it may have been an Aryan dialectical form, but at any rate the vitality and age of the idea are thus early established. Moreover, the idea of Ṛta is one which, like the moral elevation of Varuṇa, has no future history in India, pointing irresistibly to the view that it was not an Indian creation, but an inheritance which did not long survive its new milieu.

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Another conception, of minor importance, but of interest, which survived in the Avesta, is the conception of thirty-three gods. The origin of the idea is wholly unknown in the Rigveda, where neither for eleven nor for thirty-three is any explanation available, and this points to its great antiquity. But beyond this we cannot go: the effort of Hopkins¹ to evolve the number eleven from a primitive ten, and to find a circle of ten gods known to India, Greece, and Teutonic mythology must be regarded as unsuccessful: the Greek number is not very early, and is twelve, and no legitimate means of reducing it to ten is known, and even twelve is not Homeric, while the Teutonic circle of twelve is so late as to be certainly no more than a mere borrowing.²

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¹ *Oriental Studies*, pp. 153, 154.

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² Golther, *German. Myth.*, p. 200; for Greece, see Farnell, *Cults of the Greek States*, i. 84, 85; cf. also Keith, *JRAS.* 1916, pp. 350-6.

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The curious phenomenon that in Iran the gods of India appear as demons, while in India the Asuras as demons are contrasted with the great Ahura Mazdāh, has naturally given rise to much discussion: the simplest view, that the divergence of terminology arose directly from a religious split among the tribes caused by the Zoroastrian reforms which led to the differentiation of the two as Indian and Iranian, is now usually admitted not to be tenable; but the terminology has been thought to reflect hostile conflicts between Iranians and Indians in times after the two nations had developed separate lives.³ For this view we would have good authority if we could accept the identification⁴ of a mysterious Gaotema who is found in the Yašt,¹ and who was, it has been asserted, none other than Gautama Buddha. The identification, however, rests merely on the similarity of name, and this being the case, and the name being an old Indian one, it is perfectly clear that it should not be used for serious argument.² Still less seriously can we take the suggestion that the Buddhist religion was really suggested to the Buddha from an outside source, and that not Aryan. The effort³ to show that Buddhism was Tibetan in origin, and the Buddha a Mongolian of Gūrkha type, by such evidence as that of the form of the Stūpa, and the alleged Tibetan affinities of the Vajjis or Licchavis, or the equation of Çākya with non-Aryan⁴ Scyths, and the prevalence of Mongolian feature types on Barhut and Sanchī sculptures, is wholly fantastic, and certainly affords no reason to see any close intercourse with Iran in any early period. Of such intercourse the Vedic literature affords no clear evidence at all: the most that can be said is that the energy with which the fire cult was practised in the north according to the testimony of the Çatapatha Brāhmaṇa may be accounted for by the proximity of the north-west to Iran, and the difference between the two forms of fire cult is so great as to render even this conclusion uncertain and precarious.

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³ See below, Part II, Chap. 15, § 1.

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⁴ Moulton, *Early Zoroastrianism*, p. 28. His further suggestion that the demons Indra, Saurva (= Çarva), and Nāoṅhaithya are due to this later contact of Indra and Iran is quite untenable. On an alleged Zoroastrian period of Indian

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¹ xiii. 16.

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² Keith, JRAS. 1915, p. 798.

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³ Rawlinson, JBRAS. xxiii. 223, 224; Vincent Smith, IA. xxxii. 234; *Oxford Hist. of India*, pp. 47 ff. See B. C. Law, *Kṣatriya Tribes of Ancient India*, pp. 25 ff.

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⁴ Even Minns (*Scythians and Greeks*, pp. 85 ff.) has been misled into taking history, see Keith, JRAS. 1916, pp. 138 ff., and cf. the articles in the *Modern Review* (1916), xix. 373 ff., 490 ff., 597 ff. as Mongolian practices which are Iranian and nomadic, this tendency reaching the absurdity of deriving Papaios = Zeus (Herodotos, iv. 59) from Uralo-Altaic *baba*, ignoring Phrygian Papas.

§ 2. Comparative Mythology and Religion

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While in the case of the Avesta clear aid is available for the study of Vedic religion, comparatively little can be gained from the comparison of other Indo-European systems of religion.⁵ The reason for this fact is not any doubt that the Indo-Europeans before the separation of the race, in whatever way this took place, had a religious system: every probability points in this direction, but the question of the exact form of this system eludes scientific decision. The evidence as to the nature of Greek religion is large in quantity, and much of it is old, but it is perfectly certain that in Greece the Hellenes settled among men of another race and culture who had already developed a high or at least elaborate form of religion, and the Indo-European constituents of Greek religion are difficult to detect, and have been very variously estimated. Roman religion is partly obnoxious to the same defect and partly only known to us at a late date.⁶ For Celtic, German, Lettish, Lithuanian, and Slavonic religion we are practically¹ dependent on very late sources, and in all these cases again we cannot be sure of what are the Indo-European elements. As a rule, therefore, these religions can serve merely as other non-Indo-European religions serve, as sources of comparison with a view to explaining parallel customs and usages by the operation of the same ideas: they do not enable us to conclude that an Indian usage was actually brought by the Vedic Indians with them into India as part of their own religion. In many cases this was doubtless the case, but the lack of conclusive evidence renders it necessary to admit that certainty cannot be obtained.

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⁵ O. Schrader's account (ERE. ii. 11 ff.) is ingenious, but most of his conclusions are not proven. See also Carnoy, *Les Indo-Européens*, chaps. xix and xx; L. von Schroeder, *Arische Religion*.

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⁶ Warde Fowler, *Religious Experience of the Roman People*, p. viii.

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¹ There are important notices of Scythian religion in Herodotos (i. 216; iv. 59, &c.), of German in Caesar (BG. vi. 21) and Tacitus's *Germania*, and of the Slavs in Procopius (iii. 14. 22 ff.).

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There are a few cases where the parallelism existing among the words used by the different Indo-European peoples gives us the right to conclude the existence of a common worship. Thus we know that the conception of the gods as heavenly is Indo-European and that there existed the figure of Dyaus Pitṛ, the Greek Zeus Pater, the Latin Jupiter:² the similarity of this god as concerned with the thunder with the German Donar³ and Norse Thorr is clear: moreover his connexion with the oak as at Dodona has a plausible parallel in Jupiter feretrius, in the Lithuanian Perkúnas,⁴ the Slav Perunu,⁵ perhaps the Phrygian Bagaios,⁶ and also among the Celts⁷ and the Germans, a fact which has recently been brilliantly explained by Warde Fowler, confirming the older views of Grimm, as directly due to the observation that the lightning strikes the oak far oftener than any other European forest tree. But this very case shows how little can be won for Indian religion: Dyaus is a faint and shadowy figure in Indian mythology, and it is impossible not to remember that in Aegean religion in Greece and in Asia Minor, whose connexion with Europe in religious matters was close before the rise of any of the Aryan religions in Europe, a thunder god is a conspicuous figure.

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² The OHG. Zíu cannot be compared with certainty; it is parallel rather with *deva*; Kretschmer, *Gesch. d. Griech. Sprache*, p. 78; Moulton, *Early Zoroastrianism*, p. 393, n.; Feist, *Kultur der Indogermanen*, p. 344. But cf. Helm, *Altgerm. Rel.* i. 270 ff.

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³ According to Feist (*op. cit.*, p. 482) a loan word from Gallic Tanaros. Contrast Helm, *op. cit.* i. 278. Cf. Rhys, *Celtic Heathendom*, pp. 57 ff. for Celtic parallels.

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⁴ Cf. Gray, *Myth. of All Races*, iii. 358, n. 24.

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⁵ Cf. Machal, *ibid.* iii. 295; von Schroeder, *Arische Religion*, i. 545 f.

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⁶ Von Schroeder (*op. cit.* i. 288, n. 2, 553, n. 1) insists on connecting Bagaios with Bogu.

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⁷ Rhys, *Celtic Heathendom*, pp. 218 ff.

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A still more striking case of the difficulty of using comparative mythology is afforded by the cult of fire. Among the Greeks Hestia, among the Romans Vesta, though her worship has been asserted to be merely derived from Greece, and among the Lithuanians Ugnis Szventà, seem to have been the object of deep veneration as the goddess of the family hearth. Of this worship we have a parallel in India, where the fire is among other names called the household fire, and where its sanctity is great in the extreme. But the difference of sex shows that there is a long way between the two conceptions, and suggests that the worship of fire in Indo-European times was animatist rather than anthropomorphic. Similarly, while the worship of the earth is doubtless to be found in every Indo-European form of religion, there is nothing so characteristic of that worship to enable us to ascribe to it any special feature in Indo-European times, and the union of sky and earth is a world-wide myth, which we certainly need not suppose the Indo-Europeans had to borrow from any other source.¹ The worship of sun and moon may be assumed, and is probable enough, but it was perhaps of no very great moment. The waters also were objects of worship, and the wind god is found under the same name among the Lithuanians as in India, and that people has a celestial smith parallel to Tvaṣṭṛ. There are also cases in which identity of myth is of real importance: the Nāsatya of India occur among the Mitanni gods, they are undoubtedly parallel to the Dioskouroi and to the gods of a Lettish myth,² and they seem to have Germanic and Celtic parallels. Again, while the etymological equation of Erinys and the Vedic Saraṇyū is open to the gravest doubt, there can be little probability in denying any connexion between the legend of Saraṇyū’s wedding and her taking the shape of a mare, and the legend of the Tilphossian Erinys.³ Herakles or Hercules is not Indra, but the myth of the setting free of the cows from the control of the Paṇis has a clear parallel in the myths regarding Geryoneus and Cacus. If the verbal identification of Çabara and Kerberos is not above suspicion, still the mythical conception is parallel, and in a different case that of Kubera and the Kabeiroi Prof. Hopkins has sought, though probably without success,⁴ to prove original identity of character as well as similarity of name. Other cases in which etymological identity of name is still claimed with a possibility of accuracy, though without any certainty, include the equation of Varuṇa and Ouranos, which could both arise from Indo-European Uoruenos, the Maruts and Mars, the Ṛbhus and the Norse Alfr, German Alb, elf, and the Bhṛgus and Phlegyai. Even Prometheus, though the connexion with the late *pramantha*, ‘churning stick’, has long since been abandoned, has been identified by the high, though in this case not convincing, authority of Victor Henry⁵ with the Māthava who, according to the Çatapatha Brāhmaṇa⁶ played a prominent part in the advance of the Indian fire cult from the western to the eastern lands, and it is certain that the legend of the theft of fire has a claim to be Indo-European.⁷ In the case of Uṣas the parallelism with Eos and Aurora is wholly beyond doubt, but the actual worship of the goddess is clearly in large measure an Indian development. Vedic Druh, Avestan Druj, have parallels in Norse Draug and Old English Dreág, ‘malignant spirit’.

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¹ Cf. Dieterich, *Mutter Erde*, pp. 92 ff.

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² Mannhardt, *Die lettischen Sonnenmythen*. Wide’s view (*Lak. Kulte*, p. 316) to the contrary is, I think, clearly wrong; cf. Gray, *Myth. of All Races*, iii. 320 ff.

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³ Lang, *Modern Mythology*, pp. 65–8; Max Müller, *Beitr. zu einer wiss. Myth.* ii. 107 ff.

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⁴ *JAOS.* xxxiii. 55 ff.

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⁵ *La magie dans l’Inde antique*, p. 21.

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⁶ i. 4. 1. 10, 17.

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⁷ It is also widely diffused; cf. von Schroeder, *Arische Religion*, ii. 224 ff., 566, 586 f.

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One important fact regarding the early cult is practically certain: it is expressly recorded of the Persians, the Scyths, the Romans, and the Germans, and it is clear in the case of India, that no images or temples were used in the worship of their deities: the evidence of Greek religion in this case is plainly negligible, since we have the evidence of Aegean archaeology for the representation of deities long before the Greek invasion, and the fact that Homer in the main ignores images is an indication that the Indo-European religion was not in itself primarily iconic: the image and the temple alike are associated naturally with the city state which, it is certain, was not a primitive Indo-European form of society. On the other hand the gods were often revered in groves, a development of primitive tree worship which is recorded for India, Greece, Rome, Germany, Gaul, the Lithuanians and the Slavs, but we have no proof that the practice of treating first a dead tree, and then a shaped trunk, as the abode of the god, was Indo-European: it seems to have been a development in the separate peoples. The practice of paying worship on the mountain tops, which is recorded of Italians, Persians, and Bithynians, is also a usage which must have grown up severally among those parts of the Indo-European people who dwelt in lands of mountains.¹

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¹ Hirt, *Die Indogermanen*, pp. 513 ff.; Feist, *Kultur der Indogermanen*, pp. 353 ff.

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The question whether the Indo-European period knew a regular priesthood, or whether the householder was still his own priest, is impossible of decision, in the absence of any identity of name in the different speeches. The identity of the Indian Brahman with the Latin Flamen is not beyond reasonable doubt,² but the exact force of the terms is doubtful, and in any case the possibility of separate development is considerable in the case of so partial a similarity. The origin of the priesthood has been seen in the need of confederations of clans for those to care for the worship of the guardian deity of the federation, and in the Greek Selloi of Dodona, who with unwashed feet served Zeus, has been seen such a family; the name has also been compared with the Latin Salii, but without cogency. In Roman religion we find from a very early period groups of priests, and a strong priesthood—possibly not of Indo-European origin—existed among the Celts,³ and also among the Prussians. It is probable that Caesar⁴ is wrong in denying such a priesthood to the Germans: Tacitus,⁵ who was possessed of better information, records it, and that it developed in the period between the two writers is at the least not probable. The existence of an Aryan priesthood is of course certain from the close coincidence of Indian and Iranian names. But the evidence is clearly insufficient to decide anything for the state of the earliest Indo-European religion.

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² Kretschmer, *Gesch. d. Griech. Sprache*, p. 128; Feist, *op. cit.*, pp. 348, 572; contrast Carnoy, *Les Indo-Européens*, p. 236, who prefers kinship to Scandinavian *brag*; cf. Osthoff, *BB.* xxiv. 113.

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³ See MacCulloch, *Religion of the Ancient Celts*, pp. 293 ff.; Moulton (*Early Zoroastrianism*, pp. 88, 116) denies the Iranians a sacerdotal class, but his theory of the non-Iranian Magi cannot be accepted; Keith, JRAS. 1915, pp. 790 ff.

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⁴ *Bell. Gall.* vi. 21. Among the Slavs only those of the Elbe developed a priesthood, Machal, *Myth. of All Races*, iii. 305.

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⁵ *Germania*, 7, 10, 11, 40, 43. Cf. Helm, *Altgerm. Rel.* i. 289–91.

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The question of the primitive sacrifice is clearly insoluble, since among certain similarities there are great differences of view. The facts that victims were usually chosen from among edible animals, that other offerings were normally motived by some special end, as in the case of the horse sacrifice, that in choosing the victims efforts were made to assimilate the animal in sex, colour, and other characteristics to the deity, are common to most of the Indo-European peoples, but they are shared with many other peoples as well. Human sacrifices are recorded all over the world, and in some form or other among nearly all Indo-European peoples, but many different elements may have entered into these sacrifices, and any ascription of this form of religion to the early period must be purely conjectural. Offerings of cereals were doubtless made, as they are made by most peoples, but prognostication though widely attested in Europe—partly with clear indications of derivation from Babylon¹—is much less marked in Indian religion, and its separate development in the different nations is possible, although prognostication from the flight of birds has a strong claim to be considered Indo-European.

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¹ Meyer, *Gesch. des Alt.*³ I. ii. pp. 587, 588.

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The same negative result is obtained when the question of the employment of magic and the more humble beliefs of the people are concerned. All the Indo-European races practised magic, and curiously enough the Lithuanian and Old Slavonic preserve words precisely equivalent to the use of *kṛtyā* in India for magic: the formulae of some of the spells used have been traced in almost identic form in more than one language,² but these things are widespread and close parallels for magic rites can be found in the most distant parts of the earth. Similarly stories of the swan maidens and their mortal lovers occur in one form or another in all the Indo-European mythologies, but there is nothing distinctive about such tales. It is not in the slightest degree doubtful that the lesser mythology was strongly represented among the earliest peoples. The same consideration applies to the demonology: these obscure and but slightly individualized figures naturally leave no proof of their primitive identity. Nor in any strict sense can identity be postulated in such cases. These mythological figures have no history like the greater gods: they are in a sense ever new creations, and in no real way are they traditional.

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² Kuhn, *KZ.* xiii. 49 ff., 113 ff. For the numbers 70 and 73 found in India see Mahomedan parallels in Steinschneider, *ZDMG.* lvii. 474 ff.

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There is one further point of some interest. As we may have seen, the numbers of the gods as thirty-three are Indian and Iranian, but there is no similar grouping in any other of the religions, and the 12 of Greece which is not Homeric is only copied by Rome.³ On the other hand, in connexion both with groups of gods and with attributes of deities and cult actions the number 3 with its multiple 9 are found not rarely in all the religions.¹ In those of Europe the number 7 is rarely of specially sacred character until after the influence of the Christian religion had begun to be felt, or at least until the Jewish week had become familiar in the western world. On the other hand the number 7 is very often found in the Rigveda, and must be considered as distinctly a typical sacred number. It has been often suggested that this fact points to Semitic and specifically Babylonian influence,² but it must be noted that the week of seven days is not clearly proved for Babylonia,³ and there is therefore no obvious reason why the number should be denied as original in India.

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³ Wissowa, *Rel. und Kultus der Römer*², pp. 61 ff.

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¹ Warde Fowler, *Religious Experience of the Roman People*, pp. 98, 328, 441; A. Kaegi, *Die Neunzahl bei den Ostariern* (1891); Usener, RM. lviii. 1 ff., 161 ff., 321 ff.; Diels, *Sibyllinische Blätter*, pp. 40 ff.; G. Hüsing, *Die iranische Überlieferung und das arische System* (1909).

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² There is there, but only in the first millennium B.C., a group of 7 gods corresponding to the 7 planets: below, Part II, Chap. 8, § 2.

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³ The nearest approach to it is the fact that in certain months the 7th, 14th, 21st, and 28th were days of penance and sacred duties, perhaps based on a fourfold division of a lunar month; Zimmer, *Die Keilinschriften und das alte Testament*³, p. 592; Jastrow, AJT. ii. 312–52; E. Schürer, ZfNTW. 1905, pp. 1–71; Reinach, *Cultes*, ii. 443–6; Hehn, *Siebenzahl und Sabbat* (Leipziger Semit. Studien, ii), but see Meyer, *Gesch. des Alt.*³ I. ii. pp. 587, 588, who much more plausibly holds that the sacredness of seven is due to its own character; von Schroeder (*Arische Religion*, i. 426–9), following F. v. Andrian (*Mitteil. der Anthropol. Gesellschaft in Wien*, xxxi. 225–74), holds that in the Aryan period a set of nine gods was, under Babylonian influence, reduced to seven. On the Celtic nine-night week, see Rhys, *Celtic Heathendom*, pp. 360 ff. See also Güntert, *Der arische Weltkönig*, pp. 178 ff.

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In addition to the material presented by other religions of peoples of kindred speech and origin to the Indo-European element in the Indian people, there is available for consideration in dealing with the phenomena of Indian religion the vast mass of information as to religions of the different peoples, civilized and uncivilized, of the earth which has been brought to light by modern research. The use of this material, however, presents great difficulties, and opens the way to serious misunderstanding, unless it is remembered that the mere similarity of practice may often be due to very different causes, and that an explanation which may be perfectly reasonable, when viewed with regard to the other phenomena of a religion as a whole, may be wholly out of place when applied to a different religious system. It follows, therefore, that any explanation of a religious rite which is out of harmony with the general aspect of Vedic religion is *ipso facto* open to grave doubt, and that an explanation in itself less plausible may deserve preference, simply because it is consonant with the general tendency of Vedic religious thought. Moreover, it is precisely in the deepest beliefs of the people and in their original conceptions of religion that uniformity must be least expected: in the minor mythology there is much in all probability in common in every religion, but on the fundamental question of the nature of the great deities, their relations to their worshippers, and the form of sacrifice, there are clearly great distances between peoples, which should be recognized, not removed by efforts to trace to a common source things which are in essence different. It is undoubtedly the greatest defect of modern theories of religion that they seek a greater unity than it is possible to find and ignore fundamental discrepancies of mental organization.

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Moreover one serious charge must be brought against many of the theorists, and a charge which applies equally to Mannhardt, Sir J. Fraser, Ridgeway, Durkheim, and S. Reinach. These scholars assume that in the religious views of primitive savages are to be found the beginnings of religious belief, and that from their views must be reconstructed a scheme for the development of every form of religion. The fundamental absurdity of this view is the belief that savages of the nineteenth century are primitive man: it is logically wholly impossible to deny that the defects of the religions of these races may be precisely the cause why they have failed to develop and have remained in a savage state. Doubtless to prove this view is impossible, though many of the practices of savages are obviously open to serious disadvantages economic and social; but to disprove it is still more difficult, and, in view of this fact, to set up schemes of the development of religion based on the practices of the Australian aborigines is logically inexcusable, apart altogether from the fact that our knowledge of these customs is derived from students of ethnology, who observe peoples with whom they have no tie of blood or language and whose confidence they find as hard to win as their beliefs to understand. The mere controversy which has raged over the fact whether the Australian tribes or the Zulus have the conception of a supreme benevolent deity ¹ is a striking proof of the almost hopeless difficulties attending the path of those who seek to attain real understanding of the aboriginal mind.

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¹ Lang, *Magic and Religion*, pp. 8 ff., 224 ff.

§ 3. The Origin of Religion

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A further error engendered by the belief in the uniformity of religious development is the theory that it is possible on empirical grounds to determine the origin of religion. The mistake is again a logical one: the origin of religion is a question of philosophy,² and a fundamental one, the solution of which is far from probable. The hopelessness of any decision on empiric grounds may be seen from the diametrically opposite results which can be attained by arguing from the same facts. One theory, that of animism in one of its aspects,³ as expounded by Herbert Spencer, which was perhaps most interestingly developed by Hugo Elard Meyer, and which in recent times has found a most determined supporter in Prof. Ridgeway and S. Eitrem,¹ holds that all religion originates in the honour and respect shown to the spirits of the dead: from this belief and respect for these spirits is easily derived the view that there are potent spirits in natural phenomena, whence develops nature worship. It is, on the other hand, asserted with equal insistence that, while no doubt honour is paid to the spirits of the dead and this source has been a fruitful one in the development of religion, none the less religion is more than that and springs from a direct recognition in nature of powers akin to but superior to those of men.² Such a view can arise prior to any clear discrimination of spirit and body: that view is later in development and more reflective: prior perhaps to animism, and in any case independent of it, there is in fact a stage preanimistic or animatistic or naturalistic, when man conceives of natural objects as living powers, not as objects filled with souls *ab extra*.³ Logically⁴ the second view appears in itself the more plausible, but it is obvious that the reconstruction is purely hypothetical, and admits of no proof. We do not know of any religion existing at any time of which we could certainly and convincingly affirm that an idea of the deity had been framed when a knowledge of the difference between body and spirit was not known,⁵ and Dr. Marett’s own treatment⁶ of religion as including the whole field of the supernormal is so vague as to be of no positive value, a criticism equally applicable to Mr. Clodd’s⁷ conception of power, or rather many powers, as the basis of nature and spirit worship alike.

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² Cf. Dieterich, *Mutter Erde*, p. 4.

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³ Animism is often used merely as equivalent to the recognition of living powers in nature; for this sense some adopt animatism, reserving animism for specific connexion with the worship of the dead and beliefs therein derived; others distinguish naturalism from both animism and manism, perhaps better spiritism. On this view naturalism (animatism) denotes the recognition of external phenomena as identical with the powers revered, animism holds that objects are ensouled, and manism (spiritism) holds that they are ensouled by spirits of the dead. Animism in the second of these senses is accepted for Egyptian religion by W. Max Müller, *Egypt. Mythology*, pp. 10, 15 ff. In the view adopted in this work animatism and spiritism are accepted as sources of religion, animism is regarded as a secondary development. The wider use of animism to denote indwelling power is defended by Alexander, *Myth. of All Races*, x. 269.

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¹ *Opferritus und Voropfer der Griechen und Römer* (1915); cf. Keith, JHS. xxxvi. 107 ff.

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² Cf. Lang, *Modern Mythology*, pp. xi ff.; *Anthropological Essays presented to E. B. Tylor*, p. 10; Helm, *Altgerm. Rel.* i. 13 ff.; Hopkins, *Origin of Religion*, chap. i.

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³ Marett, *Threshold of Religion*, pp. 1–32; Ridgeway’s criticism (*Dramas and Dramatic Dances*, pp. 47 ff.) is in part merely captious and irrelevant. Feist (*Kultur der Indogermanen*, pp. 322, 334, 344) still seems to hold Tylor’s view that the process is from regarding a spirit as animating a tree to the worship of the tree (*e. g.*) *per se* and so with the sun. This is clearly open to grave objection.

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⁴ Cf. Keith, JRAS. 1916, pp. 335, 336.

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⁵ Cf. Marett, *Threshold of Religion*, p. x.

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⁶ *Op. cit.*, pp. 138 ff.

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⁷ *Trans. Third Int. Cong. Hist. Rel.* i. 33–5. Cf. the neo-vitalist theory of R. Dussaud, *Introduction à l'histoire des religions* (1914).

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It is clearly erroneous to ascribe to primitive religion the conception of *mana* as something universal of which part is possessed by the objects of his worship. Rather matter is sentient and has mentality, the whole forming a unity, not a spirit abiding in something not spiritual, and each object has a specific power of its own. In this as in other cases progress must be from the concrete and individual to the formulation of the universal, from individual powers to the belief in one power, *mana*, *manitou*, *brahman*, or whatever other name it bears, through sharing in which the individual objects possess their force.¹

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¹ Van Gennep (*L'état actuel du problème totémique*, pp. 47 f., 86 ff., 321) defends the universal aspect of *mana* as primitive, but, though his view is valid as against Ridgeway's effort (*Dramas and Dramatic Dances*, pp. 385 f.) to show that *mana* is later than spirit worship, it does not meet the obvious objection that so wide a conception cannot be treated as primitive. The conception is the basis of Indian philosophy, though it is primarily not philosophic, but popular, as among the North American Indians; Alexander, *Myth. of All Races*, x. 269.

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From these sources, naturalism and spiritism, it is easy to imagine the development of the spirits or demons whom Wundt² classifies in five groups. Thus we have ghosts or spooks, which have no connexion with any special object, and which, therefore, have a close resemblance to the spirits of the dead; not unlike in character, though of quite different origin, are those which express the tricky or sometimes terrifying aspects of nature, abiding in the house, the air, the waters, the forest or the waste, elves or cobolds, dwarfs or giants. There are also vegetation spirits, the simplest being those animating the individual tree or plant, while in more complex cases we have spirits of the wood or the corn field or more vaguely of the life of vegetation as a whole; sometimes these spirits may be derived from souls of the dead, as the spirit which ensouls the plant growing from the grave of the dead, but more often they are nature spirits proper. Further there are spirits of heaven, of the air, the clouds, the waters, and the earth, the external vegetation demons of Wundt,³ who emphasises by this name their relation to the growth of the crops. Akin to spirits of vegetation regarded as a whole, we have spirits entrusted with the care of whole fields of activity; spirits of the hunt, of seafaring, housebuilding, commerce and industry, war, marriage, government and law. Lastly there is the vast group of spirits of disease and madness, whose origin may be traced in part to spirits of nature and in part to the souls of the dead, and even more often to the creative imagination which extends indefinitely the number of such spirits.

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² *Völkerpsychologie*, IV. i. 457 ff.; Helm, *Altgerm. Rel.* i. 30 ff.

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³ *Ibid.* 515 ff.

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With external vegetation demons in Wundt's sense and the spirits which preside over departments of activity, we attain something approaching gods, and, bearing in mind the fact that the souls of the dead are not fettered by connexion with any definite aspect of nature, it is possible to believe that the idea of a god not merely as superhuman but also as supermundane could develop itself easily. A definite theory of this process is evolved by Usener,⁴ who postulates as the first stage momentary gods (Augenblickgötter), spirits which preside over any specific activity in the moment it takes place, and which, therefore, are real only for that moment and for him who then invokes their aid. The next stage is when, in lieu of these momentary deities, man advances to the conception of a single deity presiding over all similar activities, a Sondergott of sowing in general, for instance; deities of this kind are asserted to exist in Greek, Roman, and Lithuanian religion. The final step to give a god personality and permit him to be developed thus in myth, cult, poetry, and art is furnished by language; if the progress of phonetic change, or the disuse of a root in ordinary speech, leaves the proper appellation of the Sondergott isolated and no longer readily intelligible, then he can easily assume a wider character than can ever be his as long as his name betrays his real nature. So in India Dyaus never developed a real personality comparable to Zeus or Jupiter, because the word remained in living use to denote the sky in India, while it died out in Greek and Latin; hence also the reason why the names of gods are so often difficult to interpret etymologically.

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⁴ *Griechische Götternamen*, pp. 75 ff., 279 ff. Cf. Carnoy, *Les Indo-Européens*, pp. 216-18.

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Usener’s views are not wholly convincing; his momentary gods¹ are not established by any historical evidence of value, and can only be regarded as a possible, but not necessary, stage of imagination. His Sondergötter are more real, and some gods of this type may be traced in Vedic religion.² But he certainly much exaggerated the value of his evidence which has been severely criticized for Greek, Roman, and Lithuanian religion by Farnell,³ Wissowa,⁴ and Warde Fowler⁵ among others. It is in fact plain that the elaboration of the Sondergötter often represents the priestly working up of simpler ideas, and that they are later developments of naturalism under the influence of animism, and not really primitive. Nor can the argument from names be treated as of decisive importance; in fact the disuse of a word may often rather be because it had become a divine name and, therefore, was too sacred for indiscriminate ordinary use. Allowance in the development of personality must be made for several other factors, the cult certainly in high measure. Wundt⁶ again insists on the importance of the hero as suggesting the development of the personal god, though he clearly exaggerates the importance of this factor. The practice of making images of the deity, which is in part an outcome of personification, at the same time must have aided in the development of that feature. Importance also must be attached to the influence of ethical considerations, though precisely how these operated is by no means easy to decide.

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¹ Cf. Wundt, *op. cit.* IV. i. 560 f.

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² Below, Part II, Chap. 11, § 3.

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³ *Anthropological Essays presented to E. B. Tylor*, pp. 81 ff.; *Greek Hero Cults*, pp. 78 ff.

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⁴ *Gesam. Abhand.*, pp. 306 ff.

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⁵ *Religious Experience of the Roman People*, pp. 158 ff. For an attempt, not specially successful, to resuscitate the view of Sondergötter, see Rose, JRS. iii. 233–41.

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⁶ *Op. cit.* II. iii. 420 ff.

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While many authorities are content to hold that in the interworking of these two forces, nature- and spirit-worship, there may be found the explanation of the origin of religion, others, conspicuous among whom is von Schroeder,⁷ urge that a further source is essential, and that its existence is supported by an impartial examination of the account of observers of the religions of primitive tribes. This source is the belief in a highest being whose nature is goodness; the Australian tribes, the Andaman islanders, the savages of the Tierra del Fuego, among others, are held to believe in such a being, whose commands are the moral principles which they obey. In other cases this belief has become faint and blurred, but it reveals itself in the ordeal which is an appeal to the decision of such a power. In some cases the belief in this deity pictures him as creator of the world and of men. Religion involves essentially the recognition of the existence of such a being, of man's dependence on him, and the desire to enter into relations with him. The conception is obviously not primitive; it is due to reflection by man on the fact of the self-sacrificing instinct which is seen among animals in the love for offspring and which manifests itself in an increasing number of ways with the advance of man. The existence of this impulse can be explained by man only on the theory that there must be one whose will it is that men should so act, a view which easily is added to by the conception of that one as the creator. When, whether after a long period or possibly comparatively early through the effort of a specially gifted intellect, this idea came into being, it may be said that man was truly born as man, religion truly came into being and with it morality. Inevitably, of course, this conception blends with the other two sources of religion; thus in India Rudra, in von Schroeder's view a spirit in origin, assumes both the features of a god of nature and of the high god; similarly Viṣṇu, a god of nature, assumes the characteristics of the high god and of a spirit.

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⁷ *Arische Religion*, i. 81 ff., 106 ff., 139 ff. See also below, p. 51.

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Von Schroeder strengthens his case by his care not to attempt to claim for his source of religion as great antiquity as for the others, and it is clear that he emphasizes an extremely important element in religion, its connexion with ethical principles. Apart from questions of origins, it is plain that by the Indo-Iranian period, and very probably even in the Indo-European period, this element had come effectively into operation as powerfully affecting the nature of the gods, so that it is a question of minor importance, for practical purposes, whether we assume this belief as a third source of religion or hold that ethical motives have been introduced *ab extra* into a religious scheme which came into life independent of ethics. What is clear is that many of the gods have no original ethical character, and fear often seems to have been more prominent than love or friendship as regards the spirits of the dead.

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An instance of generalization on insufficient grounds is afforded by S. Reinach's¹ theory of totemism: he insists that the traces of the reverence paid to animals is always to be accounted for in one simple way: at one time the animal was the god: men revered animals by an excess of philanthropy, by a hypertrophy of the same instinct which made human society a possibility: but at stated intervals the animal god was devoured in order to renew the tie of blood between the clan and the animal, which was then replaced by another specimen of the species, the god being the species, not the mere individual. To this feeling of man for the animal he attributes the domestication of wild animals and the greatest possible help to the progress of civilization. In later times, as the process of religious development proceeded, the animal gods faded away and appeared as animals in the train of anthropomorphic deities, or enemies of these deities. There is some obscurity in the conception of the mode of the introduction of anthropomorphism, which in Greece¹ at least Reinach seems to regard as a new element introduced from without the original religion, but the real objection to the theory is that it ignores many other possibilities explaining reverence paid to animals. The hunter who pays a semblance of reverence to the animal which he has killed does so often to avoid the anger of the spirit of the dead beast, and the revenge of the relatives of the slain, and no sacramental relation is involved. Again there is an essential distinction to be drawn between theriomorphism and actual worship of animals for themselves. The early religious imagination, it is clear, was not capable of the distinctions between human and animal which we draw so sharply: the innumerable legends of the transmutation of men into animals and *vice versa* show a certain instability of view, and a god like Indra or like Dionysos may be conceived as bull shaped, as well as in human or mixed form. Closely allied with this thought is the conception that the god may take actual embodiment in the form of the animal, more especially when the animal is led up to be offered to him in sacrifice: the classical example of the Bouphonia,² the flight of the priest, and the condemnation of the weapon with which the fatal blow is given to the ox can thus best be explained. For the time being, and in a certain sense, the victim may be said to become a fetish, and like a fetish it is an object filled with the holy power, but not abidingly, and, what is more important, not in and for itself sacred. There is at least as little difficulty in understanding this aspect of religious belief as in accepting the theory that totemism is a universal stage of religious faith.

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