The Religion and Philosophy of the Veda and Upanishads v1.c11.s5.11

v1.c11.s5.11

The priests, in fact, instead of standing apart from ordinary life and developing their own views in indifference to those of the people, appear to have aimed, as time went on, at absorbing *en masse* the popular rites and decking them out with their own poetry and their ritual elaboration.³ If at one time they devoted themselves to certain cults only, they repaired this error in working up the whole field of domestic rites and magic, and it was by this fact that, preluding the process which has created Hinduism, they secured the firm hold on the people which enabled Brahmanism to defy the assaults of Buddhism and Jainism, neither of which ever succeeded in substituting anything effective for the ritual of the simple things of life, which was carried out by or under the directions of the priest. So far from the texts hinting at distaste for the popular ritual, they rather exhibit the priests determined to secure their participation in it to the fullest extent, at the expense of the field of action which at first lay open to the head of the family as his own domestic priest. If we are to understand aright the development of the Vedic priesthood we must think of the elaboration in certain families little by little of some outstanding sacrifices, especially that of Soma, and then the application of the new sacerdotalism to the religion of everyday life. Doubtless the application was not wholly complete; it is quite possible that the popular religion made more of tree worship than appears in our rituals, but it is by no means ignored. The truly popular nature of the ritual is seen in the case of agricultural offerings of which many are prescribed. Curiously enough a completely inaccurate view of these is taken by Arbman,¹ on the score of a failure to recognize the importance of the celestial deities in primitive religion. The ritual² provides an offering of the old Bali type to sky and earth at the eastern boundary of the field when the plough is being spanned. It is plainly absurd to assert that it is not to be assumed that this ancient divine pair had played any role in popular religion. No more natural deities can be imagined than the pair for a people which had advanced to the period of regular agriculture and separate fields, and it certainly did not require the priests to teach the peasant to what deities he should make offering. Similarly when it is desired to change the current of a stream an offering is made both in the fire and in the Bali form to Varuṇa;³ no more obvious god can be imagined, and, however far back we might seek to trace a rite of this sort, we would expect to find that sacrifice would be made to the lord of waters. Even when against pests which would injure crops we find Bali offerings⁴ to Āçā, ‘hope,’ Āçāpati, ‘the lord of hope’, Kṣetrapati and the Açvins, we should gravely err in setting the choice of deities down to the priests. The Açvins, as the legends show, were clearly the great popular helping gods, Kṣetrapati is the actual deity of the field to be protected, and, if Āçā and Āçāpati seem to us at first sight the work of the priests, we have only to remember that, apart from Greek and Roman religion, we have the Sondergötter of the Lithuanians, a people not dominated by priestly influence.⁵ Even in the case where rites are evidently or probably performed to deities different from those who primarily received them, we must exercise caution in ascribing even the change of deity, and still more the rite itself to priestly invention. The priests, we may be assured, were not required always to intervene to induce the peasant to regard a great god such as Rudra-Çiva, Viṣṇu, or even Brahman, as the recipient of an offering originally made to some minor and less personalized spirit.⁶