The Religion and Philosophy of the Veda and Upanishads v1.c11.s4.4

v1.c11.s4.4

But, while in principle the theory of the effect of race mixture as producing religious phenomena is perfectly valid, it is of the utmost difficulty to make effective use of it in any examination of an actual religion. Prof. Ridgeway has laid stress on the failure of students of Vedic religion to emphasize the distinction between the faith of the invader as revealed in the Rigveda, and that of the aborigine as revealed in the Atharvaveda. A similar theory of the effect of the aboriginal population on the Aryan invaders has been in the development of the Sanskrit language: it has been urged that the development of Prākritie speeches is due entirely to the inability of the conquered population to reproduce precisely the speech of the invaders.² The theory in both cases is tempting, but the logical difficulties of applying it effectively are very great. In the first place we have no standard of comparison by which we can discriminate between the higher and lower elements in religion: what appears to us to be higher is and must be determined by our conceptions of religion, and as conceptions of religion vary as much to-day as ever, it is impossible for us confidently to hold that one form was higher than another. If, in the second place, we take the religion of Homer and set it up as a standard of true Indo-European religion, we are obviously making a completely unproved assumption, and one which can be rendered doubtful by reference to the poems themselves, which here and there contain hints of the lower side of religion, and more primitive beliefs, which can only purely arbitrarily be assigned to the subject population. Further difficulties manifest themselves, when it is sought to find out what was the racial character of this subject population: in the case of Rome, Prof. Ridgeway sees the Ligures,³ but Dr. Binder a Latin people,⁴ and the Latins cannot be denied the right to rank as Indo-Europeans. Similarly in the case of Greece: it is quite impossible to believe that the Achaeans were the first Indo-Europeans to enter Greece: the Ionians and many other tribes were doubtless there before them,⁵ and there must therefore have been mixture of race and religion before the Achaeans.