The Religion and Philosophy of the Veda and Upanishads v1.c15.14

v1.c15.14

The result was that the tendency was certainly steadily growing throughout the period of the Rigveda to regard the gods as closely related, rather than as in Greece to devise from time to time individual characteristics. Thus a poet¹ can say: ‘Thou, at birth, O Agni, art Varuṇa: when kindled thou dost become Mitra; in thee, O son of strength, all gods are centred; to the worshipper thou dost become Indra.’ From this view a further step is taken in the express assertion,² which carries us from Vedic religion to the beginnings of philosophy, ‘In many ways the priests speak of that which is but one; they call it Agni, Yama, Mātariçvan’, or ‘The bird that is one priest and poets with words make into many’.³ The reduction to unity of the divine nature carries with it as a consequence the further conception of the unity of the whole universe: thus Aditi is declared to be identical with all the gods, with men, with all that has been and is to be,⁴ and Prajāpati is given the same position.⁵ But this is characteristic of the latest stage of the poetry of the Rigveda.