The Religion and Philosophy of the Veda and Upanishads v1.c15.20

v1.c15.20

It is a question of some interest to ascertain exactly what was the view of the poets in their exaggerated invocations of the minor deities with declarations of their power which would make them the greatest of gods. Are we to suppose that the poet actually for the time being dismissed from his mind the other gods, and as a psychological fact felt his heart go out to the god, to whom his hymn was directed, in an outpouring of admiration and belief in him as really the supreme deity? This is the theory which has been called Henotheism or Kathenotheism,¹ and which, invented by Max Müller, has in this form hardly survived criticism. The key to the view of the poets is perhaps more surely provided by the fact that in the Atharvaveda ² a late poet, celebrating the mystic virtues of Darbha grass for magical purposes, attributes to it the properties of having extended the earth and supported the sky and the heaven. The idea that a Vedic poet could for a moment even shut from his mind the other figures of the pantheon seems incredible: apart from the hymns to the All-gods which were frequently used at the sacrifice, and in which the various gods find mention in close conjunction, the majority of the hymns even of the Rigveda were composed, without doubt, for definite use at the Soma ritual, in which a large number of gods found their definite allotted places, so that the poet knew precisely for what point in the ritual his poem was composed. Moreover, the practice of the invocation of pairs of gods or groups of gods was constant, and naïve statements ³ like ‘Agni alone, like Varuṇa, is lord of wealth’ show clearly enough the real value to be put upon assertions of unique authority or power. If, therefore, we add to the natural tendency of the poet to magnify the god to whom for the moment his worship was addressed—just as the panegyrist magnified the king whose bounty he was celebrating above all other kings—the indefiniteness of the outlines of the Vedic gods, and the constant tendency to confuse the characteristic nature of the deities, there is provided a satisfactory explanation of the facts of the Rigveda. For this stage of view the term Henotheism may survive, though it cannot be accepted in the precise interpretation given to it by its author.⁴