The Religion and Philosophy of the Veda and Upanishads v1.c11.s2.20

v1.c11.s2.20

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