The Religion and Philosophy of the Veda and Upanishads v1.c11.s2: § 2. Comparative Mythology and Religion

The Religion and Philosophy of the Veda and Upanishads v1.c11.s2

Language: English

§ 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.

Linked texts (2)

Śatapathabrāhmaṇa — Yājñavalkya & Śāṇḍilya (Vedic teacher), Sanskrit
Ṛgvedasaṃhitā — Sanskrit