The Religion and Philosophy of the Veda and Upanishads v1.c13.s2.1

v1.c13.s2.1

The worship of natural objects, whether celestial, ethereal or terrestrial, is sharply to be distinguished from the reverence paid to earthly objects or animals, not as in themselves normally or continually divine, but because for a certain purpose and in certain conditions they are deemed to be filled with the divine spirit.¹ It is clear, however obvious the distinction is as a matter of theory, that in many cases it must be extremely difficult to distinguish the two phenomena. A simple example of the difficulty is afforded by the contrast which seems to exist between the reverence paid by the priest to his offering implements, such as the pressing stones and the offering post, and that paid by the warrior to his weapons. In both cases the reverence is that paid to the work of human hands, but it can hardly be held in the case of the warrior that his weapons are conceived as being filled by any external spirit for the time being: rather they have, though made by human hands, when made, a life and reality of their own, which renders it right on special occasions that they should receive due honour and veneration. For the whole time of their existence as such, before they are destroyed by the event of war or abandoned as outworn, they retain this character of their own. On the other hand, the reverence paid to the pressing stones and other implements of the sacrifice seems far more naturally to be attributed to the holy character of the sacrificial ground and of the surroundings through the presence of the god. The sacred strew on which the god is invited to take his seat and all the implements must surely be filled with the divine afflatus for the period of the offering. The offering post in the animal sacrifice is solemnly anointed, and surrounded with a girdle which acts in some measure as clothing. It has been suggested that in this action we are to see the bodily presence of the god, as in the case of the Semitic Ašera on one interpretation, and in the alternative Oldenberg¹ suggests that the treatment of the post is a relic of tree worship. Neither explanation is absolutely necessary; we need not suppose that the post was originally placed there for any other than its clear purpose to hold the sacrificial victim fast for sacrifice, but once there it was impossible that it should not be in some degree filled with the divine spirit, apart from its divine connexion with the tree spirit.