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The Religion and Philosophy of the Veda and Upanishads v1.c14: Chapter 6. Vedic Cosmology and Cosmogony

The Religion and Philosophy of the Veda and Upanishads v1.c14

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Chapter 6. Vedic Cosmology and Cosmogony

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THE cosmology of the Veda is simple and natural, and it shows little of the spirit of the cosmology which is characteristically Indian and which is first revealed to us in post-Vedic texts, though the source whence it is derived is unknown.¹ The simplest conception is that of sky and earth, which gives to mythology the idea of the dual deity Dyāvāpṛthivī, at first united, then parted; but this division is often supplanted by another which distinguishes earth on the one hand, the atmosphere or the air on the other, and places the heaven above the air. In that case the boundary of the visible sphere is the vault (*nāka*) of the sky. The triple division is the favourite one in the Rigveda, which loves triads, and, when it is accepted, the solar phenomena are assigned to the heaven, and those of lightning, rain, and wind to the atmosphere, while in the simpler twofold division all are ascribed to the sky. The triple division is, however, crossed by yet another; apparently from the use of the term the 'skies' or 'earth' to mean the three divisions—as in the case of *pitarau*, 'fathers', used for parents, there grew up the idea that there were three divisions of each of the main divisions. If the simpler dichotomy were kept, then the number of six divisions was arrived at. A further complication is introduced by the addition of the vault of the sky, not as the boundary between heaven and air, but as a separate entity; but this view is isolated and unimportant.

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¹ See W. Kirfel, *Die Kosmographie der Inder* (Bonn, 1920); Lukas, *Die Grundbegriffe in den Kosmogonien der alten Völker*, pp. 65 ff.; Geldner, *Zur Kosmogonie des Rigveda* (1908); *ERE.* iv. 155-61.

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The heaven is essentially the abode of the gods, the Fathers, who are also especially connected with the moon² where Yama, first of mortals, lives in hare shape, and the Soma, and when three divisions of heaven are conceived they are said to abide in the third and highest of them all. The constant endeavour to refine is reflected in phrases such as the ridge of the vault, or the summit of the vault, in place of the simple phrase, the vault, and even the third ridge in the luminous space of heaven is mentioned. When the sky and earth are conceived as including the whole universe, they are compared to two bowls turned towards each other: a different but allied conception is that they are the two wheels at the end of the axle of a chariot. From the heaven to the earth is a distance which no bird can fly, the Rigveda³ declares; but the Atharvaveda¹ states that the two wings of the sun bird flying to heaven are a thousand days’ journey apart, and the number is repeated by the Aitareya Brāhmaṇa,² which fixes the distance as a thousand days’ journey of a horse, while the affection of the priest for cows results in the truly remarkable view of the Pañcaviṁça Brāhmaṇa³ that the true measure of distance is that afforded by placing 1,000 cows on the top of one another.

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² JB. i. 28; cf. below, Chap. 23, § 2.

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³ i. 155. 5.

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¹ x. 8. 18.

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² ii. 17. 8.

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³ xvi. 8. 6; cf. xxi. 1. 9; Hopkins, *Trans. Conn. Acad.* xv. 31, n. 2.

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The atmosphere is described sometimes as watery or dark : it is most often conceived of as divided into the upper or heavenly and the lower or earthly region, but the threefold division is also found. In that case, however, there is confusion with the heavenly region : the third of the spaces is declared to be the place where are the waters, the Soma, and the birthplace of the celestial Agni, and again Viṣṇu is placed there : a similar confusion of the upper one of the regions, when but two are reckoned, with the heaven which is properly above it, can be noted. The presence of the waters of the sky in the air leads to its being conceived as an ocean, while from a different point of view the clouds are regarded as mountains, and the conception of seven rivers is transferred bodily from its original home on earth to the upper regions.

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The position of the different sub-divisions of the air appears to lie above the earth, though it has been suggested that the view was held that there was air above and below the earth,⁴ thus explaining the appearance and disappearance of the sun. No passage of the Rigveda proves this suggestion : if the sun, as Savitṛ, is said to go round night on both sides,⁵ this expression need mean, and probably does mean, nothing more than that night is enclosed between the two bounds of sunrise and sunset. On the other hand, there is one passage at least where the presence of the whole of the air above the earth is clearly asserted.⁶ Moreover, a passage in the Aitareya Brāhmaṇa⁷ suggests that the view taken of the motion of the sun was that, after it had travelled across the sky with light blazing upon the earth, during the period of the night it returned back by the same way as it had come, but with its light turned away from the earth. With this it is in perfect harmony if the Rigveda⁸ declares once that the light which the steeds of the sun bear is sometimes bright and sometimes dark, or the other statement⁹ that the *rajas*, which accompanies the sun to the east, is different from the light which rises with the sun. Elsewhere¹⁰ the question is raised, but not answered, Where in the daytime are the stars ?

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⁴ Zimmer, *Altind. Leben*, pp. 357–9. Contrast A. C. Das, *Rig-Vedic India*, i. 509 f.

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⁵ v. 81. 4.

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⁶ i. 81. 5.

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⁷ iii. 44. 4; Speyer, JRAS. 1906, pp. 723 ff.

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⁸ i. 115. 5.

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⁹ x. 37. 3.

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¹⁰ i. 24. 18.

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The earth is described as the great, the extended, even the boundless : no trace appears of the theory that the earth is bounded by an ocean, but in the Rigveda¹ its shape is compared to that of a wheel, and the Çatapatha Brāhmaṇa² directly calls it circular, a conception which, however, is varied in another view taken by the Rigveda of the heaven and the earth as bowls turned towards each other. The Rigveda reckons four points of the compass, or occasionally five, where the centre, the place of the speaker, is the fifth: the Atharvaveda adds the zenith as the sixth and sometimes also a seventh,³ an idea which may be found in the seven regions and seven places of earth mentioned in the Rigveda. The predilection of the Rigveda for the number seven is already marked, and there is no ground for the view that it is borrowed from Babylon.

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¹ x. 89. 4.

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² Weber, *Ind. Stud.* ix. 358 ff.

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³ Bloomfield, AJP. xii. 432.

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It is of importance for Vedic mythology that the knowledge of the heavenly bodies displayed is the most meagre possible. The sun and the moon are of course known, but there is no proof of the worship of any other constellation in the Rigveda, and the rudimentary knowledge of even the divisions of time is seen in the fact that a year of 360 days and 12 months is, apart from the occasional mention of a 10-month year of gestation, the only year clearly known to the whole of the Vedic literature prior to the later Sūtras. That the year of 12 months, which seems to have been a rough adaptation to the solar year of the synodic month of between 29 and 30 days, was not a perfect year seems, however, to have been recognized, for the Rigveda already contains the mention of a thirteenth supplementary month which must, we may assume, have been intercalated periodically, but there is no evidence worth serious consideration for the view that the Vedic period knew a period of five years as a unit for intercalation.⁴ The planets are not known to the Rigveda, nor apparently to any Vedic text which can claim to be early: the identification of Bṛhaspati with the planet Jupiter which has been accepted for the Rigveda by so high an authority as Thibaut⁵ is clearly untenable, and in the absence of the slightest evidence that the planets were known, it is wholly inadmissible to seek to interpret the number 34 which occurs in a Rigvedic riddle⁶ as denoting the sun and moon, the five planets, and the twenty-seven Nakṣatras. The Nakṣatras themselves are recognized in the Yajurveda Saṁhitās and in a late passage of the Atharvaveda as 27 or 28, but, as we have seen, they seem wholly unknown at any rate in the main body of the Rigveda, the only clear references occurring in a very late hymn.⁷ They mark the nightly stations of the periodic month, and reference has already been made to the uncertainty of their origin and the possibility that they are borrowed from some Semitic source. A similar hypothesis is, of course, as has already been pointed out, possible as regards the Vedic year, which is of the same length as that of Babylon, but for this suggestion there seems no solid ground whatever: traces of a sexagesimal form of reckoning which have been seen in Gothic and more faintly in Latin and Greek and assigned to a Babylonian origin cannot be found in India.¹ Moreover, if Babylon has been able to influence early India in any effective degree, it would have been natural that some trace of astral mythology should have been discoverable in India, and this is certainly not the case.

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⁴ Macdonell and Keith, *Vedic Index*, ii. 162, 412, 413.

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⁵ *Astronomie*, p. 6. See Keith, JRAS. 1911, pp. 794-800.

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⁶ i. 164. See also Oldenberg’s notes on RV. i. 105. 16; x. 55. 3; *Weltanschauung der Brāhmaṇatexte*, p. 36, n. 1, where he sees in Soma’s thirty-three wives (TS. ii. 3. 5. 1) the Nakṣatras, planets, and sun, but implausibly. If they were so well known as to be understood in such references, why are they never mentioned distinctly? The pole star, Dhruva, appears in the Gṛhya Sūtras only. Cf. below, Chap. 11, § 10.

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⁷ x. 85.

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¹ Hirt, *Die Indogermanen*, pp. 535, 536; Feist, *Kultur der Indogermanen*, pp. 490 ff.; J. Schmidt, *Die Urheimat der Indo-Germanen* (*Abh. Berl. Akad.* 1890); von Schroeder, *Arische Religion*, i. 225, 428; Carnoy, *JAOS.* xxxvi. 300 ff.

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No simple or consistent view is expressed as to the origin of the world. In one view the world is a thing which has been measured out and established by the gods: Indra measures out the six regions, makes the wide earth and the high heaven, but the feat is attributed to other gods such as Tvaṣṭṛ, or Varuṇa, or Viṣṇu, while the sun is made out to be the instrument used in the measuring. The stretching out of the earth is similarly attributed to Indra, Agni, the Maruts, and other gods, and, by another metaphor, the wood whence the house of the world was built is mentioned. Heaven and earth are supported by posts, but the air is rafterless and its steadfast condition raises wonder: again the air is placed in the doorway of heaven. Foundations are mentioned, Savitṛ makes fast the earth with bonds, Viṣṇu with pegs, and Bṛhaspati supports the ends. In the myth of the one-footed goat Oldenberg² has seen the conception of a goat which holds apart sky and earth, but this view is hardly likely, and there is no trace of any other similitude in Vedic religion to the legend of Atlas or Tantalos.

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² *Rel. des Veda*², p. 70. See below, Chap. 9, § 5.

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In other passages the relation of parentage³ is prominent, and this idea has the most varied forms. What is prior in time is the parent of the subsequent phenomenon: thus the Dawn is born of night, though she is also her greater sister, and yet generates the sun, and again the sacrifices of the Fathers are said to produce the Dawns, since they take place before the appearance of dawn. Spatial relations are similarly enough to explain paternity: the quiver is the father of the arrows, the steeds of the sun are the daughters of the car: the parent *par excellence* is Dyaus, and earth also is the mother of the many things she bears. Sky and earth too are universal parents: the sky fertilizes the earth, and again both produce life in the world, the one by the gift of rain, the other through providing food. But the parenthood of sky and earth leads to one of the contrasts in which the Vedic poet delights: the gods, as we have seen, constantly are represented by the seers as measuring out the sky and the earth, and thus the paradox arises that they produce their own parents, and it can be said of Indra that from his own body he produced his father and his mother. Agni, again, is the child of the waters, which contain the fire of lightning, and the rain cloud is the mother of the lightning and of the waters. In another application the chief of a group is its father, Vāyu of the storm gods, Rudra of the Rudras or Maruts, Sarasvatī of rivers, Soma of plants. Or again the quality in which a deity is pre-eminent is made to be his father: the gods are sons of immortality as well as of skill, Agni is son of strength or force, Indra son of truth, and also of might (*çavas*), whence his mother bears the name Çavasī, mighty. Pūṣan is son of setting free, Mitra and Varuṇa sons of great might. It is possible¹ that the goddess Aditi is no more than an example of a figure born of a misunderstanding of this usage, and it is certain that in the later religion, from the Jaiminīya Brāhmaṇa at least, the wife of Indra, Çacī, is merely a misunderstanding of the epithet *çacīpati*, ‘lord of strength’, applied to that god.

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³ This is earlier than the idea of letting go (*sṛj*), which is prominent in the Upaniṣads (Oldenberg, *Die Lehre der Upanishaden*, pp. 82 ff.).

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¹ Below, Part II, Chap. 12, § 5.

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In the late parts of the Rigveda and in the subsequent literature more serious attempts are made to solve the riddle of the production of the world, and Prajāpati appears as the creator god, though beside him there usually is to be found a primordial matter upon which he works. These ideas, however, belong not to the religion so much as to the philosophy of the Veda, and will more appropriately be treated later. One hymn,² the famous Puruṣasūkta, ‘hymn of man’, may contain in its very elaborate sacerdotal form traces of an early idea. It is there told how the world was produced by the gods from the sacrifice of a primeval giant: his head became the sky, his navel the air, and his feet the earth. The moon sprang from his mind, the sun from his eyes, Indra and Agni from his mouth, the wind from his breath, the four castes from his mouth, arms, thighs, and feet in order of dignity. The hymn itself is frankly pantheistic, declaring that Puruṣa is all that is, that has been, and that shall be, and the mere precision by which the four castes are equated with the appropriate parts of the giant is clear proof that the idea as found in the hymn has been completely worked over in the interest of the priests. But the recurrence of the exception in Norse mythology is an indication, though not a proof, that the idea may be also popular and old. In the Brāhmaṇas Puruṣa takes naturally upon himself the character of Prajāpati.³

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² RV. x. 90. For a quasi parallel in Babylon (Marduk and Tiāmat), cf. Farnell, *Greece and Babylon*, p. 181. Carnoy (JAOS. xxxvi. 320) suggests Babylonian influence, and Tilak (*Bhandarkar Comm. Vol.*, pp. 32 ff.) argues that in AV. v. 13. 6 *taimāta* is Tiāmat, Indra *apsujit* (RV. viii. 13. 2; 36. 1; ix. 106. 3) is a parallel to Marduk’s victory over Apsu, chaos (originally borrowed by Babylon), &c.; cf. A. C. Das, *Ṛig-Vedic India*, i. 226 ff. for further guesses. Rhys (*Celtic Heathendom*, pp. 111 ff., 561 ff.) tries to reconstruct an Indo-European myth (Ouranos’s mutilation).

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³ In RV. x. 72 we may have the idea of creation by a primitive Yogin, Uttānapad; Oldenberg, *Rel. des Veda*², p. 279; Hauer, *Die Anfänge der Yogapraxis im alten Indien*, pp. 28 ff. Possibly old is the idea of the throwing up of the earth by a primeval boar; ÇB. xiv. 1. 2. 11, and a cosmic tortoise is conceived as finding the earth in the ocean, JB. iii. 272 (Akūpāra Kaçyapa; cf. PB. xv. 5. 30; ÇB. vii. 5. 1. 5).

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Neither in the philosophical hymns nor in the mythology are the gods treated as existing from all eternity to all eternity. The philosophy of the Veda makes them born after the creation of the world, or derives their being from the non-existent or the element of water, while the mythology finds in them most often the children of sky and earth. In one late hymn¹ the gods are born from Aditi, from the waters, and from the earth, doubtless in accordance with the threefold division of the Universe. Aditi is the parent of the Ādityas, the Dawn is mother of all, and the function of paternity is assigned to Soma and Brahmaṇaspati. Hence there are recognized different generations of the gods, the older and the younger, and the Atharvaveda² speaks of ten gods as being before the rest, but the passage is not mythological and cannot support a theory³ that originally the Vedic Indians had ten great gods, whence, by inclusive reckoning and multiplication by the favourite number 3, the 33 of the normal reckoning are attained. Nor in origin were the gods immortal: they are said in the Rigveda to have been given this gift by Savitṛ⁴ or by Agni,⁵ or to have attained it by drinking the Soma.⁶ Indra is said to have attained it by austerity.⁷ The later literature agrees: the gods are expressly asserted to have been originally mortal, and this fact is asserted individually of such deities as Indra, Agni, and even Prajāpati. The Atharvaveda⁸ ascribes their attaining immortality to Rohita, or to their continence and austerity, while the prevailing view in the Brāhmaṇas ascribes their success to some performance of a ritual act in an accurate manner. That the immortality thus won was not, as in post-Vedic literature, merely for the space of a cosmic age may be regarded as certain, since the conception of the four ages of the world (Kṛta, Tretā, Dvāpara, and Kali) is wholly unknown⁹ to the Vedic literature and first makes its appearance in the epic and in the law-book of Manu.

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¹ RV. x. 63. 2.

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² xi. 8. 10.

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³ Hopkins, *Oriental Studies*, pp. 153, 154; see Keith, *JRAS.* 1916, pp. 353, 354.

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⁴ RV. iv. 54. 2.

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⁵ RV. vi. 7. 4.

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⁶ RV. ix. 106. 8.

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⁷ RV. x. 167. 1.

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⁸ xi. 5. 19; iv. 11. 6. So AB. iii. 4 (of Agni); viii. 14. 4 (Indra); ÇB. x. 1. 3. 1 (of Prajāpati); 4. 3. 3 (all the gods).

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⁹ Jacobi (GGA. 1895, p. 210) and Garbe (*Sāṃkhya und Yoga*, p. 16) see the germ of the cosmic ages in AV. x. 8. 39, 40, but this is clearly wrong; cf. Garbe, *Sâmkhya-Philosophie*², pp. 285 f. For the alleged occurrence of the four ages in the AB., see Macdonell and Keith, *Vedic Index*, ii. 193. Cf. *ERE.* i. 200 ff.; Keith, *Rigveda Brāhmaṇas*, p. 302. Certain mysterious Kalis occur as Gandharvas in JB. i. 154, and as friends of the (cosmic) tortoise, Akūpāra, in JB. iii. 272.

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Like the gods, men came into being by creation: seemingly they must be considered as included among the offspring of the universal parents, sky and earth. But there are other versions of their parentage: one account makes them the offspring of Manu, son of Vivasvant, the first of sacrificers and the first of men.¹⁰ Another and famous version makes them sprung from Yama, Vivasvant's son, and his sister Yamī, a legend of which the Avesta preserves a record also.¹ Yet in another passage² the Gandharva and the heavenly maiden are described as the parents of the twins, in place, we must assume, of Vivasvant. Agni is father of men and in particular the Aṅgirases claim descent from him, and other families likewise boast of origin from individual gods: Vasiṣṭha claims birth from Mitra and Varuṇa jointly through their love for the nymph Urvaçī.³ In the Puruṣasūkta, again, quite a different account is found in the derivation of the four castes as wholes from the offering of Puruṣa by the gods. Like the gods too, man was not originally immortal, but, when the gods learned by sacrifice the path to immortality, men would have followed it, had not it been ordained to please the lord of death that men should be forbidden immortality save through laying aside their own bodies.⁴ To this differentiation of gods from men corresponds the fact also recorded by a Brāhmaṇa that the gods at one time used to come in their bodily presence among men, but had ceased to do so.⁵

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¹⁰ RV. x. 63. 7.

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¹ RV. x. 10; JAOS. xxxvi. 315.

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² RV. x. 10. 4.

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³ RV. vii. 33. 11.

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⁴ ÇB. x. 4. 3. 9.

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⁵ Cf. TS. iii. 5. 2; KS. xxxvii. 17; PB. xv. 5. 24.

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In the physical world there rules a regular order, Ṛta, which is observed repeatedly, and which is clearly an inheritance from the Indo-Iranian period, since the term Aša (Urta) is found in the Avesta, and has there the same triple sense as in Vedic India, the physical order of the universe, the due order of the sacrifice, and the moral law in the world. We are doubtless justified in seeing in the word Arta as it appears in the names recorded in the Tell-el-Amarna correspondence the same word, and in inferring that the sense was somewhat the same at that early period about 1400 b. c.⁶ The identity of the Vedic and Avestan expressions is proved beyond possibility of doubt by the expression ‘spring of Ṛta’, which is verbally identical in the Avesta⁷ and the Rigveda.⁸ The Dawns arise in the morning according to the Ṛta, the Fathers have placed the sun in the heaven according to the Ṛta; the sun is the bright countenance of the Ṛta, and the darkness of the eclipse is contrary to law, Vrata. The year is the wheel of Ṛta with twelve spokes. The red raw milk, the product of the white uncooked cow, is the Ṛta of the cow under the guidance of the Ṛta. Agni, the fire, which, hidden in the waters and the plants, is produced for man from out the kindling sticks, becomes the shoot of Ṛta, born in the Ṛta. The streams flow in obedience to the law of Ṛta. From the physical it is an easy step to the conception of the Ṛta not merely in the moral world, of which we shall have cause to speak later,⁹ but also in the sphere of the sacrifice: the conception of Agni as performing his functions of carrying the offerings to the gods, or bringing the gods to the offerings, under the control and guidance of the holy power of order is at once natural and obvious. The stress laid on the conception of the Ṛta in the sphere of the sacrifice which furthers it and which it pervades¹ seems certainly to be no more than a reflex of its importance at once in the physical and the moral sphere.

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⁶ Bloomfield, *Religion of the Veda*, p. 12, who places the evidence about 1600 b. c., which is too early; Hall, *Anc. Hist. of Near East*, pp. 260 ff. Cf. Darmesteter, *Ormazd et Ahriman*, pp. 7 ff.; Oldenberg, *GN.* 1915, pp. 167 ff.; von Schroeder, *Arische Religion*, i. 348 ff., who insists that Ṛta is essentially Varuṇa's possession. Carnoy (JAOS. xxxvi. 307) suggests Babylonian influence.

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⁷ Yasna, x. 4; RV. ii. 28. 5.

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⁸ Derivation from *ar-*, ‘fit’ (*áram*, *ἀραρίσκω*, *ars*), or *er-*, ‘move’, is possible. Cf. Güntert, *Der arische Weltkönig*, pp. 141 ff.

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⁹ See below, Chap. 16.

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¹ For prayer and the Ṛta, see RV. ii. 32. 1; viii. 76. 12; 13. 26; x. 138. 2; the Sadas of Ṛta, iii. 7. 2; x. 111. 2; the Vedi, TS. i. 1. 9. 3; cf. RV. vi. 15. 14; vii. 39. 1.

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As a deity, however, the Ṛta does not obtain an established rank. The occurrence of such phrases as the idea of the Dawns coming forth from the place of the Ṛta, or of the place of sacrifice as the seat of the Ṛta, or of the charioteer or the wheel or the steeds or the vehicle or the ship of the Ṛta,² shows nothing more than the natural concreteness of expression of the Vedic age: there is no prayer to it, and in all the mass of deities invoked in the cult the Ṛta is not included. The deities, with whom the working of law in nature and in moral life was connected, were above all Varuṇa and Mitra, less often Agni and Savitṛ; the Dawns obey not only the Ṛta, but also the law of Varuṇa: the stars in the sky disappear by day by the rule of Varuṇa. In the moral sphere the gods naturally are more prominent than the paler figure of the Ṛta; but in the famous hymn³ in which Yamī, the sister of the first man, urges him to commit incest with her in order to produce the race of men, Yama, in rejecting her plea, appeals not merely to the principle of the Ṛta, but to the ordinances of Mitra and Varuṇa. Hence we have not merely cases in which the Ṛta appears as an independent authority,⁴ but also instances where it is treated as the possession of some god. The streams go on their way according to the Ṛta of Varuṇa; heaven and earth further the Ṛta of Mitra, and the two gods appear as the lords of the Ṛta, the right. Yet on the other hand they are reduced to a lesser grade in that they appear also as the charioteers of the Ṛta, the furtherers of the Ṛta, the guardians of the Ṛta, something which therefore exists apart from them. But the connexion of the gods and of Varuṇa with the Ṛta is always close and marked: so it is said of Agni who has some connexions also, as the god of the sacrificial order *par excellence*,⁵ ‘Thou dost become Varuṇa, when thou strivest for the Ṛta.’ No other god has any really constant connexion with it save the pair, Mitra and Varuṇa, and in the case of some gods like Indra, whose greatness makes them necessarily come into some degree of contact with the Ṛta, the superficiality of the connexion is obvious.¹

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² RV. i. 164. 11; iii. 6. 6; v. 7. 3; viii. 6. 2; ix. 89. 2; x. 5. 4.

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³ RV. x. 10. With this idea may be compared the suggestion of Hertel (VOJ. xxv. 135 ff.) that in Purūravas, son of Iḍa or Iḍā, we have the relic of tracing the origin of man to a bi-sexual being, a view which he supports by the use of passages where in the Brāhmaṇas Prajāpati appears as of bi-sexual nature—later Çiva is of course sometimes androgynous. But the evidence is wholly unable to bear out this hypothesis; see Keith, *JRAS.* 1913, pp. 412–17; below, Appendix B.

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⁴ So Ṛta is said to have ordinances (*vrata*) followed by the gods (RV. i. 65. 3); Soma flows under the law (*dharman*) of Ṛta (RV. ix. 7. 1); Mitra and Varuṇa rule by law and Ṛta (RV. v. 63. 7). Cf. RV. i. 105. 6; viii. 100. 4; ix. 86. 32.

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⁵ RV. x. 8. 5.

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¹ Bergaigne, *Rel. Véd.* iii. 220 ff.

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It is characteristic of the nature of the Vedic gods that the various ideas regarding the relation of the Ṛta and the gods remain side by side without feeling of contradiction or possible collision. The fascinating relation of Moira and the gods, especially Zeus, of the world of Homer is not to be expected, as it certainly is not found in the religion of the Veda.²

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² For Hertel’s views as to the Indo-Iranian conception of the heaven, see Appendix C.

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