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The Religion and Philosophy of the Veda and Upanishads v1.c16.s4: § 4. Viṣṇu

The Religion and Philosophy of the Veda and Upanishads v1.c16.s4

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§ 4. Viṣṇu

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In the Rigveda Viṣṇu can claim but five whole hymns, and his name occurs not more than a hundred times in all. He is said to be young, but vast in body, not a child, and his one action is the taking of three strides: hence he is called the wide strider. Of these strides two are visible, the third is beyond the ken even of the birds, or, as it is also put, his third name is in the bright region of the heaven. But again it is said that the liberal see the highest place of Viṣṇu like an eye in the sky. The highest place is Viṣṇu's favourite dwelling, there also are the gods and pious men, there is Indra and the many-horned swiftly moving cows, doubtless the clouds. There can be little doubt as to what the three steps are: the later Saṁhitās, the Brāhmaṇas, and Çākapūṇi,⁴ a predecessor of Yāska, agree in equating them with the three divisions of the universe, and the alternative view of Aurṇavābha that they correspond with the rising sun, the zenith, and the setting is in flat contradiction with the references of the Vedas to the nature of the highest place. The motive for the strides is variously given as for men in distress, to bestow the earth upon man as a dwelling, to obtain wide-stepping existence or the existence of men. Again Viṣṇu is essentially the swift of motion and an ordainer: he measures out the earthly spaces. He sets in motion his ninety steeds with the four names, an allusion clearly to the 360 days of the year, divided into four seasons. He is a dweller on the mountains, and in the Yajurveda¹ he is called the lord of mountains.

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⁴ Nir. xii. 19. Rarely they are on earth, RV. i. 155. 4; vii. 100. 3; hence Hopkins (JAOS. xvi. p. cxlviii) makes them from horizon to horizon. Veneration of the footstep appears in i. 22 and 154; there is use in cult of the hoof of the horse in the piling of the fire, and of the footprint of the Soma cow; Hillebrandt, *Ved. Myth.* ii. 80; i. 73; iii. 353. Localization of Viṣṇu's step in Nir. xii. 19 (IA. xlvii. 84) is speculative. BDS. ii. 5. 9. 10, where an extended list of Viṣṇu's names is given, is an obvious late interpolation as are the planets preceding. Cf. A. C. Das, *Rig-Vedic India*, i. 544 ff., against Tilak, *Arctic Home in the Vedas*, p. 328, who both drag Çipiviṣṭa into the connexion.

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¹ TS. iii. 4. 5. 1.

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Viṣṇu is closely associated with Indra: one hymn is devoted to the pair of gods, and, when Viṣṇu is celebrated by himself, Indra is the only other god who is given a place; when about to perform his supreme feat of slaying Vṛtra, Indra implores Viṣṇu to step out more widely. Through his association with Indra, Viṣṇu becomes a drinker of Soma, and he cooks for Indra 100 buffaloes and a brew of milk. Through his connexion with Indra Viṣṇu also is associated with the Maruts, with whom he shares honour in one hymn.

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Another side of Viṣṇu appears in the statement that he is a protector of embryos, and in his invocation with other deities to promote conception.² Moreover, in one obscure allusion, reference is made to the fact that in battle he assumed a strange form.³

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² RV. vii. 36. 9; x. 184.

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³ RV. vii. 100. 6. The epithet Çipiviṣṭa, there found and then in TS. ii. 4. 5; iv. 4. 9; vii. 3. 15; MS. ii. 2. 13, is very uncertain in sense; Hillebrandt, *Ved. Myth.* iii. 356, n. 2; Keith, *Taittirīya Saṁhitā*, ii. 622; Hopkins, *Epic Myth.* pp. 211, 274. On the etymology, cf. Bloomfield, AJP. xvii. 427; Oldenberg, GN. 1915, p. 374. Bloch (*Wörter und Sachen*, i. 80) sees *vi* with suffix *snu*, the name designating the sun-bird directly.

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There can really be little doubt as to the nature of the god. The name can be diversely explained as ‘the active one’ from the root *viṣ*, or as ‘crossing the back of the world or the earthly regions’ from *vi* and *snu* (akin to *sānu*), but the solar nature of the deity is reasonably plain. In the Atharvaveda⁴ he is asked to bestow heat: in the Brāhmaṇas⁵ his head cut off becomes the sun; in post-Vedic literature his weapon is a rolling-wheel, his vehicle Garuḍa, the sun-bird, and the breast jewel which he wears is clearly the sun. His dwelling in the mountains may be either derived from the conception of the sun on the cloud mountains, or, more simply, from the idea that he who dwells in the farthest distance must be on a mountain peak. The only alternative theory which requires mention is that of Oldenberg⁶ that he is merely the wide-stepping god, and this has no such probability as to displace the obvious meaning put upon his nature by Vedic India.

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⁴ v. 26. 7.

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⁵ ÇB. xiv. 1. 1. 1 ff.

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⁶ *Rel. des Veda*², pp. 229–34. He is clearly right in negativing the idea of Viṣṇu as connected with the souls of the dead (K. F. Johansson, *Solfågeln i Indien* (1916), pp. 8 ff.). Güntert (pp. 305 ff.) makes him an ithyphallic (*çipi-viṣṭa*) sun-god.

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It would be impossible to deny to Viṣṇu the position of a great god in the period of the Rigveda, for that would be to forget that the comparative prominence of the gods is not necessarily brought out fully in that collection, which is mainly concerned with the Soma sacrifice, and which does not, therefore, take great account of those deities who are not of much consequence in that sacrifice. Of course, that the god is not a great god of that sacrifice is to a certain extent a proof that he is not a god regarded with the highest importance by many of the priests.¹ But his interest in human life as a protector of embryos is a sign of his importance in ordinary life, which should not be overlooked. It is quite impossible to make such a detail the ground of the attribution to the god of any other than a solar character, for, as we have seen in the case of Pūṣan, the connexion of the sun with the increase of the animal world is too obvious an idea not to be found in religion.

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¹ RV. i. 22. 16 ff.; 154–6; vii. 100 show that to some he ranked higher.

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In the later Saṁhitās and the Brāhmaṇas we find that Viṣṇu is assuming an importance and prominence in the minds of the priests which give him, along with Rudra, undoubtedly the leading place in the living faith of the Brāhmaṇas. His three strides are now definitely located in the earth, air, and heaven, and in imitation of them the sacrificer strides in the ritual the steps of Viṣṇu,² which result in placing him in the world of heaven: by this simple act he thus puts himself in the closest connexion with the deity, for in the imitation he doubtless in some measure and degree assimilated himself to the deity. It is of interest that in the Avesta the three steps of the Ameša Spenta from the earth to the sun are similarly imitated, but there is no reason to assume that the two acts are historically derived from an earlier Indo-Iranian usage: such parallels may as easily rise independently. Moreover the three strides become a matter of great importance in the preservation of the world from the Asuras, who, in the imagination of the Brāhmaṇas, are no longer individual enemies of the gods, but a strong band before whose onslaught the gods are often compelled to yield. The Indian imagination, however, never contemplates the idea of any final victory of the Asuras, but the gods are bound to repel them often by guile and still more often by knowledge of some special rite. Thus in the Aitareya Brāhmaṇa³ it is agreed by the Asuras with Indra and Viṣṇu that so much of the earth should be assigned to the latter as Viṣṇu could step over with three strides: Viṣṇu then proceeds to appropriate by his strides the worlds, the Vedas, and speech. The Çatapatha Brāhmaṇa⁴ declares that Viṣṇu by his strides acquired for the gods the all-prevading power which they possess, and the Taittirīya Saṁhitā⁵ states that by taking the form of a dwarf, whom he had seen, Viṣṇu conquered the three worlds. The dwarf form, which is the germ of the post-Vedic story of the dwarf incarnation of Viṣṇu, is found, though not with express mention of the three steps, in the Çatapatha.⁶ It is there recorded that the Asuras overcame the gods and began to divide the earth: the gods with Viṣṇu, the sacrifice, at their head demanded a share, and the Asuras seeing that Viṣṇu was but a dwarf consented to grant them so much as Viṣṇu could lie on. The gods then sacrificed with Viṣṇu, and won the whole earth to themselves. In this account is to be seen the most important factor in the elevation of Viṣṇu to his rank of a most high god, his constant identification with the sacrifice. The precise train of thought by which this identification was reached cannot be reconstructed with certainty: it is not to be supposed that Viṣṇu's importance is accidental, or due merely to this identification: he must have been a great god both for the people and the priests before he was given the similitude to the sacrifice, the greatest of all things in the estimation of the priesthood, but his identification undoubtedly aided in the increase of that greatness, and made it permanent and abiding.

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² Keith, *Taittirīya Saṁhitā*, i. p. cxxvii.

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³ vi. 15.

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⁴ i. 9. 39.

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⁵ TS. ii. 1. 3. 1. The PB. makes in Hopkins’ view (*Trans. Conn. Acad.* xv. 41) little of Viṣṇu.

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⁶ i. 2. 5. 1 ff. For the later views, see Keith, *Ind. Mythology*, pp. 121 ff.; Macdonell, *JRAS.* 1895, pp. 168 ff.

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In the dwarf form¹ thus assumed by Viṣṇu there is no reason to see more than the natural adoption of a cunning device to deceive the Asuras, an idea perhaps prompted not only by the appropriateness of the form in question for the purpose aimed at, but by the common view of men that the misshapen form of the dwarf is accompanied by inhuman cleverness or power, an idea so widespread in the world that there need be no hesitation in believing it to have existed in Vedic India, despite the fact that, naturally enough in view of the scanty knowledge we have of many sides of Indian thought, we have no direct proof of the existence of such a view in Vedic times regarding dwarfs.

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¹ The victim or sacrificial fee is often a dwarf animal; TS. i. 8. 8; ii. 1. 3. 1; MS. ii. 5. 3, &c. The thumb at an offering to the Manes is pushed into the food with verses to Viṣṇu in certain cases (Caland, *Altind. Ahnenkult*, p. 188), possibly to drive away the Rakṣases; any real connexion with Viṣṇu is implausible; Oldenberg, *Rel. des Veda*², p. 232.

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The germ of a further incarnation of Viṣṇu is found in the Brāhmaṇas in the transformation of a myth, which is found in the Rigveda itself. In that text² it is recounted that, having drunk the Soma, Viṣṇu carried off a hundred buffaloes and a brew of milk, which belonged to the boar, and Vṛtra, shooting across the mountain, slew the boar. There can be no doubt that this is merely a version of the slaying of Vṛtra, the great work of Indra in the world, and the mountain must be the cloud mountain. In the Taittirīya Saṁhitā³ the boar keeps the wealth of the Asuras concealed on the far side of seven hills: Indra picks up a bunch of Kuça grass and pierces the hills and slays the boar. Viṣṇu, the sacrifice, then carried off the boar as a sacrifice for the gods, and thus the gods attained the goods of the Asuras. Now this boar, which is called Emūṣa from its epithet *emuṣa*, fierce, in the Rigveda, is stated in the Çatapatha Brāhmaṇa⁴ to have raised up the earth from the waters, and the Taittirīya Saṁhitā⁵ further identifies the cosmogonic boar which raises up the earth with a form of Prajāpati. From this new aspect of the tale it is an easy step to the making of the boar an incarnation of Viṣṇu himself, and this step is actually taken in the Rāmāyaṇa and the Purāṇas. The transfer of myths from Prajāpati to Viṣṇu is illustrated in an interesting way in the case of two other of his incarnations in post-Vedic literature. The fish, which according to the Çatapatha Brāhmaṇa⁶ in the flood legend saved Manu, is identified in the Mahābhārata with Prajāpati, but in the Purāṇas becomes Viṣṇu, and, while in the Brāhmaṇas¹ Prajāpati is stated to have become a tortoise, moving in the primeval waters, when about to create offspring, the Purāṇas turn the tortoise into an incarnation of Viṣṇu, devised in order to recover various objects which were lost in the deluge.

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² RV. i. 61. 7; viii. 77. 10.

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³ vi. 2. 4. 2, 3.

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⁴ xiv. 1. 2. 11.

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⁵ vii. 1. 5. 1.

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⁶ i. 8. 1. 1.

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¹ ÇB. vii. 5. 1. 5; JB. iii. 272 (Akūpāra Kaçyapa).

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As the sacrifice Viṣṇu is the subject of a strange myth:² through comprehending the issue of the sacrifice, Viṣṇu became the highest of the gods: but this result caused Viṣṇu to be unduly puffed up with glory, and yet his greatness was such that no god dared attack him. He was apart from them all with his bow and three arrows, leaning his head on the end of his bow. The ants then undertook, on the promise of the reward of being able to find water even in the desert, to bring him to ruin, and this they accomplished by gnawing the bow string, so that the bow sprang asunder with great vehemence, and the head of Viṣṇu was cut off, becoming the sun. The Taittirīya Āraṇyaka adds that the Açvins as physicians replaced the head of the sacrifice, and, as the gods were now able to sacrifice with it in its complete form, they conquered heaven. The myth is an odd and curious one, but to ascribe to it any symbolic sense would doubtless be a mistake.

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² ÇB. xiv. 1. 1. 1 ff.; TA. v. 1. 1 ff. Cf. the same tale of Makha (= sacrifice), PB. vii. 5. 6-16. Agni, Indra, and Rudra are slayers of Makha.

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In the Aitareya Brāhmaṇa³ Viṣṇu is declared to be the highest of the gods and Agni the lowest, but the declaration has no possible reference to the place of the two gods in the hierarchy, but is rather due to the physical situation of the gods, the terrestrial fire, and the sun. It accords also, somewhat artificially, with the fact of the arrangement of the litanies of the two gods in the Soma sacrifice, but it is not probable that originally that was its sense. The Aitareya also declares that Viṣṇu is the doorkeeper of the gods, an idea which it supports very ineffectively by the Rigvedic verse,⁴ Viṣṇu with his friend opened the stall.

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³ i. 1. Viṣṇu's connexion with Varuṇa is slight and artificial; TS. ii. 1. 4. 4; AB. iii. 38. 3; PB. viii. 8. 6; AV. vii. 25.

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⁴ i. 156. 4.

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