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The Religion and Philosophy of the Veda and Upanishads v1.c13.s1.t2: (b) Theriomorphism and the Worship of Animals

The Religion and Philosophy of the Veda and Upanishads v1.c13.s1.t2

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(b) Theriomorphism and the Worship of Animals

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While most of the Vedic nature deities are normally conceived as anthropomorphic, there did not prevail any rigid exclusion of theriomorphic conceptions of the deities. It is often asserted, even by Oldenberg,⁶ that in earlier periods of religion theriomorphic conceptions were more frequent than anthropomorphic, but the proof for such a theory seems to be wholly lacking.

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⁶ *Rel. des Veda*², pp. 39, 67. Cf. Helm, *Altgerm. Rel.* i. 202 ff., who also insists (p. 18) that the primitive apperception sees the soul in a beast form before a human form, following the views of Wundt (*Elemente der Völkerpsychologie*, pp. 173 ff.); for a good criticism, see van Gennep, *L'état actuel du problème totémique*, pp. 99 ff.

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That the storm god should be conceived in human form appears to be as natural and as primitive as that he should be ascribed an animal form, unless indeed we are to be asked to believe that religious conceptions of animal gods were formed before the development of man as such. Apart, however, from theories such as these, there can be no question of the predominance of anthropomorphism in the Rigveda, while at the same time theriomorphism is not unknown, a condition which accords well with the observed fact that the distinction of man and beast is never drawn by early peoples with the definite precision of modern feeling. Two deities are recorded for us in animal form only, the one-footed goat, Aja Ekapād, and the serpent of the deep, Ahi Budhnya: it is not likely that either is in origin an animal deity: the one-footed goat may be the lightning flash that descends to earth in a single streak: the serpent has clear mythological meaning in its application to Vṛtra, the demon who is defeated by Indra, and who holds back the waters of the clouds which are desired. The mother of the Maruts, gods of the storm wind, is called the dappled cow, which deems to have been felt as a description of the clouds whence sprang the rain. The Ādityas themselves, sons of Aditi, herself either a personification of freedom, or an abstraction derived from their name, are also cow-born, reflecting perhaps—not probably—a conception of the birth of the luminaries from a celestial cow.¹ The sacrificial food is personified as early in the Rigveda as a lady with hands full of butter, but she is also styled a cow, and in the ritual ² the cow is addressed with the words, ‘Come, o Iḍā, o Aditi.’ Agni is often conceived of as a horse, and Indra as a bull. The clouds when the rain is brought down are normally and usually styled the cows. Saraṇyū according to an old tradition becomes a mare and in that condition brings forth the two Açvins.

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¹ Cf. AV. viii. 9. 1, where the two calves of Virāj may be sun and moon, children of dawn.

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² Bergaigne, *Rel. Véd.* i. 325.

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Animals also figure in the entourage of the gods, and in this case it is only fair to allow for the natural tendency to assimilate gods to men and to give them animal followers. The goddess Saramā, who in dog shape finds for Indra the cows, and who has been explained as a wind-spirit, parallel to Hermes,³ need not be assumed to be more than a copy of the ordinary facts of life on earth. The horses of the gods are likewise transferred from the human to the divine sphere. In other cases, however, it is quite possible to suspect that there lies beneath an animal as companion of the god a trace of the god himself. The eagle brings the Soma down to Indra, but already in the Rigveda there is a variant form of the myth which indicates that the Soma was obtained by Indra in the form of an eagle,⁴ and, if we interpret the myth in the form of the bringing down to earth of the generous moisture by the action of the thunder storm and the descent of the rain amid lightning, it becomes tempting to assume that the eagle was none other throughout than the god Indra. Pūṣan, again, has a team of goats, but we find that in the Rigveda he is a knower of paths, while at the horse sacrifice a goat is killed to precede the horse, as it seems, to the world of death : ¹ a goat too is slaughtered at the ceremony of the burning of the dead : ² hence it is a conjecture not without plausibility that the goat was a form of Pūṣan, as the sure-footed animal which could wander with safety over distant and difficult ways. The Açvins, again, are horsemen as their name denotes, and they are never described as actual horses : yet their mother according to an old, though not Rigvedic, tradition,³ is a mare, and it is a legitimate hypothesis, though one wholly incapable of proof, that once they were conceived as in horse shape as well as in human shape ; in yet other religions they may have been conceived as in the shape of birds. In the case of Indra and the eagle some confirmation is lent by the Bahram Yašt ⁴ of the Avesta in which we learn of Verethraghna flying to Zoroaster in the form of the bird Vāraghna, swiftest of all birds. But these cases of theriomorphism must be sharply distinguished from those of the birds of omen, which are styled messengers of the Fathers or of Yama : ⁵ the birds themselves were, we need not doubt, quasi-deities in their own right before they were reduced to the rank of messengers, and we need not suppose that their position as givers of omens is due to their being regarded as embodiments of souls of the dead.⁶ The horse Açvins, if they ever existed, were not divine horses, but theriomorphic conceptions of nature powers.⁷

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³ Cf. Oertel, *Stud. zur vergl. Lit.* viii (1908), 124.

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⁴ RV. x. 99. 8; Bloomfield, JAOS. xvi. 8; Kuhn, *Herabkunft des Feuers*, p. 144. The view that the bird is Viṣṇu (Johannson, *Solfågeln i Indien*, p. 21; Charpentier, *Die Suparṇasage*, pp. 324 ff.) is less plausible. Sometimes the Soma is the eagle.

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¹ RV. i. 162. 2–4.

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² RV. x. 16. 4.

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³ RV. x. 17. 2 as rendered by Sāyaṇa with Yāska, Nir. xii. 10. Cf. Lanman, *Sanskrit Reader*, p. 381 ; Weber, *Ind. Stud.* xvii. 310 ; Oldenberg, *Ṛgveda-Noten*, ii. 217 ; Bloomfield, *JAOS.* xv. 185.

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⁴ Cf. Carnoy, *Iranian Mythology*, pp. 272 ff.

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⁵ RV. ii. 42. 2 ; x. 165 ; AV. vi. 27–9 ; xi. 2. 2, 11 ; TA. iv. 28 ; Kauç. cxxix; cf. the jackal, HGS. i. 16. 19.

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⁶ See Arbman, *Rudra*, pp. 255 ff.

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⁷ See Farnell's protest against prevalent errors as to animal forms (*Greece and Babylon*, pp. 55 ff., 70 ff. ; *Greek Hero Cults*, pp. 177, 214, 215).

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In comparison with the normal anthropomorphic conceptions of the deity and the less frequent theriomorphic, there are comparatively few instances in Vedic worship of the direct and wholly animatistic ⁸ veneration of natural objects. The most obvious is the cult of the snakes, which is not, however, Rigvedic, but probably borrowed from the aboriginal population, and occasional propitiation of ants, moles, &c.

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⁸ Marett, *Threshold of Religion*, pp. 15, 16, 20 ; Goblet d'Alviella, *Croyances*, ii. 120.

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