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The Religion and Philosophy of the Veda and Upanishads v1.c17.s10: § 10. Rudra

The Religion and Philosophy of the Veda and Upanishads v1.c17.s10

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§ 10. Rudra

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Still less than Viṣṇu has Rudra the greatness which in the later literature attends him. He is the subject of but three hymns in the Rigveda, shares one with Soma, and is mentioned in all only about seventy-five times. In the Rigveda he has braided hair, like Pūṣan, beautiful lips, firm limbs; his colour is brown, and he is multiform. He is essentially radiant (*çuci*), bright as the sun or gold, resplendent, the Asura of heaven; he wears golden ornaments and sits on a chariot seat. The Yajurveda and the Atharvaveda have much more to tell of his appearance: the latter⁶ calls his belly blue, his back red, his neck blue, and mentions his mouth and his teeth. The Yajurveda⁷ calls him copper coloured and red, and his neck is blue-black (*nīlagrīva*), though his throat is white (*çitikaṇṭha*);¹ it mentions that he is clothed in a skin and dwells in the mountains.

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⁶ AV. xv. 1. 7, 8; xi. 2. 6.

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⁷ VS. xvi. 7, 51, 2–4.

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¹ TS. iv. 5. 5; cf. iv. 5. 1; Arbman (*Rudra*, pp. 274 ff.) insists that red and blue-black are connected with the dead and thus prove this as a primitive feature of Rudra’s character, but it is clear that primarily he is merely bright (RV. viii. 29. 5) and brown rather than red, and the epithets are best explained as referring to fire, Jacobi, ERE. ii. 803 f.

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The character of Rudra in the Rigveda is distinctly formidable: he wields the lightning and the thunderbolt and is an archer, but his fierce character is not manifested as that of Indra in his onslaughts on demons, for that is no part of his nature. He is as destructive as a terrible beast, the ruddy boar of heaven. He is unassailable, rapid, young, unaging, ruler of the world, and its father. From this side of his nature may be derived his aspect as wise, beneficent, bountiful, easily invoked and auspicious (*çiva*), but the last epithet,² which furnishes the late Vedic name of the god, is not appropriated to him even in the Atharvaveda. He is also a god of healing; he has healing remedies, the chief being Jalāṣa,³ which is explained variously as the Soma or as the rain, whose property as healing is recognized freely in the Rigveda. Nor is this element in his nature a minor one: it is given as one of his characteristic in a hymn, where the gods are named only by their epithets, and both the Rudras and the Maruts are mentioned with him in this connexion.

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² Connexion with Tamil *çivan*, ‘red-man’, is neither proved nor plausible, despite BSOS. II. iv. 810.

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³ Bloomfield, AJP. xii. 425–9 (*rain* = *mūtra*); Bergaigne, *Rel. Véd.* iii. 32 (= Soma). His rain is denoted by *mīḍhvāṁs*, and is referred to RV. i. 64. 6; 85. 5. Arbman’s (*Rudra*, pp. 19 f.) objections are clearly invalid.

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On the other hand the majority of the passages of the hymns, which deal with him, are concerned with deprecating his wrath, and praying that his shaft may not fall upon his worshippers, their parents, children, men, cattle, or horses; he is besought to avert his great malevolence and his bolt from his worshippers, to avert from them his cow- and man-slaying weapon. He is even once directly called manslaying.⁴

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⁴ RV. iv. 3. 6.

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Rudra is in the Rigveda closely associated with the Maruts, whose father he is and who are often spoken of as the Rudras or the Rudriyas. He bears also once the epithet Tryambaka, which appears to mean ‘having three sisters’ or ‘mothers’; the interpretation of the reference as an allusion to the three divisions of the universe is possible enough, as the allusion is not made in an early hymn. In one passage of the Rigveda he is identified, among other gods, with Agni.⁵

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⁵ RV. ii. 1. 6.

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In the later Saṁhitās and in the Brāhmaṇas Rudra has become, like Viṣṇu, and with him, one of the two great gods of the Brahmans. Some of his aspect as a god of healing is still remembered: the Sūtras⁶ prescribe offerings to him for the sake of the cattle, and he is lord of cattle; doubtless in part this attribution of cattle to his care may be due to the anxiety of their owners to induce him to spare them from his wrath, but the other side of his figure may also be a factor in producing the result. On the other hand his malevolence is very prominent: his wrath is continually deprecated, he is invoked not to assail his worshippers with celestial fire, and to make his lightning fall elsewhere. He is said in the Atharvaveda¹ to attack with fever, cough, and poison, and that Veda² also conjures up the image of his wide-mouthed howling dogs, who swallow unchewed their prey. In the Çatarudriya litany³ he bears the most remarkable epithets, which designate him as the patron of robbers, highwaymen, cheats, swindlers, and other similar people.

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⁶ AGS. iv. 8. 40; Kauç. li. 7. Cf. PB. vii. 9. 18; xxi. 14. 13; Mahādeva slays cattle, PB. vi. 9. 7–9.

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¹ xi. 2. 22, 26; vi. 90.

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² x. 1. 30. Cf. Wodan’s corpse-eating wolves; Helm, *Altgerm. Rel.* i. 208, n. 92.

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³ VS. xvi; TS. iv. 4.

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The express and complete identification of Rudra with Agni, which is first found only incidentally in the Rigveda, is now a received feature of his nature and the principle is widely extended. In the Yajurveda⁴ the names of Çarva and Bhava are ascribed to him, while in the Atharvaveda⁵ these two seem still to be separate gods, who, however, have destructive arrows and lightnings. In a later passage⁶ they are called his sons, as Mahādeva, and compared with wolves. A late part of the Vājasaneyi Saṁhitā⁷ enumerates as forms of the one god Agni, Açani, Paçupati, Bhava, Çarva, Mahādeva, Içāna, and Ugradeva with others. In the Brāhmaṇas⁸ is found a list of names of Agni as Rudra, Çarva, Paçupati, Ugra, Açani, Bhava, and Mahān Deva, while Çarva, Bhava, Paçupati and Rudra are said to be names of Agni.⁹ Açani obviously means lightning, and is so explained by the Çatapatha Brāhmaṇa, but according to the Kauṣītaki Brāhmaṇa it is equivalent to Indra. The Vājasaneyi Saṁhitā¹⁰ also gives Ambikā as the sister of Rudra: she seems to be derived from the epithet Tryambaka: later on she appears as his mother; his wife, Umā Haimavatī or Pārvatī, appears first in the Taittirīya Āraṇyaka¹¹ and the Kena Upaniṣad.¹²

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⁴ VS. xvi. 18, 28, from *çarāva* in a legend in JB. iii. 261. Here he appears as Akhala (cf. Çiva); as Içāna akhala, ii. 254 (Agni in PB. xxi. 2. 9); cf. JUB. i. 5; Içāna alone in JB. ii. 222.

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⁵ AV. ii. 27. 6; v. 93. 1; x. 1. 23; xi. 2. 1. 12.

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⁶ ÇÇS. iv. 20. 1. Arbman (*Rudra*, p. 29) most arbitrarily asserts that these gods were originally identical with Rudra, worshipped outside Vedic circles.

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⁷ xxxix. 8. For the identity of Agni and Rudra, cf. Hopkins, *Trans. Conn. Acad.* xv. 36 f.; JB. iii. 261.

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⁸ ÇB. vi. 1. 3. 7; KB. vi. 1 ff.; AGS. iv. 8. 19 has Hara, Mṛḍa, Çarva, Çiva, Bhava, Mahādeva, Ugra, Bhīma, Paçupati, Rudra, Çaṅkara, and Içāna. Cf. PGS. iii. 8. 6; HGS. ii. 3. 8. 6 ff.

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⁹ ÇB. i. 7. 3. 8.

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¹⁰ iii. 5; MS. i. 10. 20; TB. i. 6. 10.

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¹¹ Cf. Weber, *Ind. Stud.* i. 78; ii. 186 ff.; Arbman, *Rudra*, p. 305.

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¹² iii. 15.

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In the Brāhmaṇas we find the power of Rudra at its height. The gods even are afraid lest they be killed by the god. Under the name of Mahādeva he is essentially the slayer of cattle, and he is said to be prone to slay men.¹³ His origin is traced in the Aitareya Brāhmaṇa,¹ to the evil deed of Prajāpati in consorting with his own daughter; the gods in their anger make up the most appalling of beings, who pierces the father god and thus asserts outraged morality. Another story in the same Brāhmaṇa² reveals him as a great black³ being who appears on the place of sacrifice, and claims all that is over as his own, a claim which Nābhānediṣṭha is told by his father must be recognized as being valid. In the ritual we find that he is marked out emphatically from the other gods: at the end of the sacrifice a handful of the strew is offered to him to propitiate him,⁴ at the end of a meal any food left over is placed in a spot to the north for him to take;⁵ his abode is in the north, while the other gods abide in the east, the place of the rising of the sun. The bloody entrails of the victim are made over to his hosts, which attack men and beast with disease and death, in order to avert their anger;⁶ the red colour of the god is the colour of fire and of blood. Moreover, the snakes⁷ are clearly conceived as being among his servants. When the gods reached heaven, it is said, Rudra was left behind.⁸ Still more important is the tendency seen to generalize the operations of Rudra: in the Çatarudriya litany of the Yajurveda he is credited with activity in almost every aspect of nature, in the mountains, the woods, the paths, and the streams. So in the ritual it is prescribed that offerings should be made to Rudra in the most manifold places and on varied occasions.⁹ In a place infested by snakes one should offer to Rudra who lives among the snakes, at a mound of manure to Rudra who is lord of cattle, in a river to Rudra who lives in the waters, at a cross way to Rudra of the roads, at sacred trees, at the place of sacrifice and so on.¹⁰ A verse in the Yajurveda reveals to us Rudra as a god haunting the lonely woods; the cowherds, and the maidens, who are drawing water, catch a glimpse of him.¹¹ He haunts the hills and is closely related to the trees, on which he deposits his weapons when he lays them aside.¹² It is clear that this wide extension of his power, which applies to the waters and to the fish in them and to the whole animal and vegetable kingdom, is due to a deliberate tendency to see in him a god with a comprehensive control over all nature.

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¹³ AGS. iv. 8. 32. In PB. xiv. 9. 12 he appears as *mṛgayu*; Vāyu (PB. xxiii. 13. 2) is overlord of forest cattle.

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¹ iii. 33. 1; a later variant in JB. iii. 221-3; cf. ÇB. i. 7. 4.

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² v. 14.

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³ Cf. AV. ii. 27. 6 (black hair); xi. 2. 18.

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⁴ GGS. i. 8. 28.

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⁵ ApDS. ii. 24. 23.

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⁶ ÇÇS. iv. 19. 8; cf. AB. ii. 7. 1.

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⁷ AGS. iv. 8. 28. Cf. Arbman, *Rudra*, p. 252.

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⁸ ÇB. i. 7. 3. 1.

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⁹ If he is the *akhalā devatā* in JUB. i. 5 (Caland, *Over en uit het Jaiminīya-brāhmaṇa*, p. 47, n. 69), then he is credited with repelling (from heaven) the man who does evil.

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¹⁰ HGS. i. 16. 8 ff.; PGS. iii. 15. 7 ff.

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¹¹ TS. iv. 5. 1. 3.

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¹² TS. iv. 5. 10. 4.

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Another sign of the greatness of Rudra is found in the Aitareya Brāhmaṇa:¹³ it is prescribed that a formula must be altered from the form in which it occurs in the Rigveda in order to avoid the direct mention of the name of the god: this is clear proof of advance in the conception of him since the Rigveda. In another passage of the same text he is never named, but is referred to as ‘the god here’, and the same avoidance of direct use of the name is to be seen elsewhere.¹

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¹³ iii. 34. 7.

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¹ iii. 33. Cf. Hirzel, *Der Name*, pp. 15 ff.

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In the late Sūtra literature we find ascribed to him the names of Hara, Mṛḍa, Çiva and Çaṅkara;² the last three at least are evidently intended to be euphemistic: the great and dread god must be treated as auspicious in order to make him so in point of fact. The specific account of him as the lord, or the great god, shows a development of his character even within the period of the later Saṁhitās, for these epithets are not found in the earlier books of the Vājasaneyi Saṁhitā, but only in the later portion of that text.³

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² AGS. iv. 8. 19.

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³ xxxix. 8.

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The original nature of Rudra is far from clear. The name itself is clearly derived from the word *rud*, which India tradition takes as having the normal meaning of cry: the suggestion of Pischel⁴ that *rud* means to be ruddy or, as Grassmann suggests, to shine, must be regarded as too hypothetical to found any theory upon. From the etymology Weber⁵ derives the view that the deity was originally the howling of the storm, the plural therefore denoting the Maruts, but that the deity as known to the Yajurveda is essentially a compound of the two gods of fire and storm, both being alike in their sound. The view of Hillebrandt⁶ insists that Rudra is the deity of the hot season in India from the advent of summer to the autumn, and he points out that it is possible that this idea was associated with some constellation as in the conception *saevus Orion*. He also points out that Rudra appears in conjunction with the archer Kṛçānu and with Tiṣya, who is generally regarded as a constellation, and that the Aitareya Brāhmaṇa⁷ makes the myth of the slaying of Prajāpati to have an astronomical signification, Prajāpati in his form as a deer becoming the Mṛga, which the commentary explains as the constellation Mṛgaçiras, Rudra the Mṛgavyādha, Prajāpati’s daughter in antelope form the constellation Rohiṇī, and the arrow with which Prajāpati was pierced the Iṣu Trikāṇḍā in the sky. But he recognizes that any precise identification is not to be obtained by the material available. L. v. Schroeder,⁸ on the other hand, insists that Rudra is nothing more than the elevation to the rank of a high god of the chief of the souls of the dead: it is an idea, for which almost an indefinite amount of evidence is forthcoming, that the souls of the dead rush along in the storm winds and that besides being terrible they bring with them blessings to cattle. Oldenberg,⁹ while noting this as a possible source of the character of the god, prefers to point out the similarity of the nature of Rudra in its essence to such figures as the mountain and wood gods or demons, like Mars Silvanus, the Fauni,¹ and so on, and he also points out that it is a common idea that disease comes from the mountains. Moreover, this view suits the connexion of Rudra with the north, since in India the mountains of importance to the Vedic Indians were in the north.² Umā, who is given in late texts to Rudra as wife, is styled Haimavatī, from the Himavant.

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⁴ ZDMG. xl. 120. Other suggestions make Rudra or Çiva, or both, Dravidian words. Cf. Segerstedt, RHR. lvii. 298, who emphasizes his connexion with the un-Aryan Niṣādas.

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⁵ *Ind. Stud.* ii. 19–22.

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⁶ *Ved. Myth.* ii. 179–208; (Kl. Ausg.), pp. 164–5.

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⁷ iii. 33. For an implausible guess at the sense, cf. Arbman, *Rudra*, pp. 30 ff.

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⁸ VOJ. ix. 233–52; *Mysterium und Mimus*, pp. 19, 21 ff.; Charpentier, VOJ. xxiii. 151 ff.; Johansson, *Ueber die altind. Göttin Dhiṣaṇā*, pp. 88, 92. The views of Tilak in his *Orion* are unacceptable; see Whitney, JAOS. xvi. pp. lxxxii ff.

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⁹ *Rel. des Veda*², pp. 215–24; Winternitz, IF. Anz. viii. 38; Pischel, GGA. 1895, pp. 150 f.

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¹ Warde Fowler, *Roman Festivals*, pp. 258 ff.; *Roman Ideas of Deity*, pp. 93, 94.

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² Hillebrandt (*Ved. Myth.* ii. 207) finds the connexion with the north in the fact that the sun is to the north during the period of the most dangerous season of the year.

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The chief defect of these views is that they are based too exclusively upon the later accounts of the nature of the god, which really represent a time when he is ceasing to be connected with the original natural basis, on which the conception rests. There is nothing in the conception of the god as he is found in the Rigveda, which cannot be explained by the idea of a storm god considered mainly in the form of lightning, the tempest being viewed on its destructive rather than its healing aspect.³ From this could be derived easily the god's character as father of the Maruts, while from the beneficent rains loosened by the storm comes the aspect of him as a healing god, which is an essential feature of his character in the Rigveda and without which indeed he could hardly have been accepted as a god by the religion of the Rigveda. This theory explains in a satisfactory manner his connexion with Agni, which is close and obvious. Moreover, the theory of the original relation of Rudra with the dead is contradicted by the fact that he never appears in any close connexion with the dead: he is not their king, nor does he lead them to, or receive them in, his realm; his is the Svāhā not Svadhā call in the offering; his place is the north, not the south, which is essentially that of the dead, and, though in certain aspects the ritual of the dead has analogies with that for Rudra, that point is adequately and naturally explained by the fact that both the dead and Rudra have terrible characteristics. The clear connexion of Rudra with the sky is fatal to Oldenberg's theory, for the period of the Rigveda at any rate.

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³ Hopkins, JAOS. xvi. pp. cl. ff.; Bloomfield, AJP. xii. 429; Macdonell, *Ved. Myth.*, pp. 76 ff.; JRAS. 1895, p. 956; 1900, pp. 383 ff.; Hardy, *Ved.-brahm. Periode*, p. 83. Ludwig (*Rigveda*, iii. 320 ff.) holds that Dyaus develops on the moral side into Varuṇa and on the physical to Rudra. Bergaigne (*Rel. Véd.* iii. 31 ff.) treats him as 'le père céleste'; Siecke (*Archiv für Rel.* i. 113 ff., 209 ff.) as the moon.

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The Çatapatha Brāhmaṇa⁴ tells us that Çarva was a name of Agni among the eastern people and that Bhava was used among the Bāhīkas, which suggests that in Rudra there have combined the forms of different but kindred gods. A reference to the cult of Rudra by the Vrātyas has been seen as the explanation of the curious Vrātya hymn of the Atharvaveda⁵ and of the ceremonies which are used for the introduction into the Vedic religious life of the non-Brahmanical Aryans. The evidence for this view, however, must be regarded as quite insufficient to make it even plausible.¹ The question, however, does arise whether in the late Rudra we have not the syncretism of more than one deity, and possibly the influence of the aboriginal worship on the Aryan. It is certainly possible that a forest and mountain deity or some kindred god, such as a vegetation spirit, and even a god of the dead may be united with the Vedic lightning god to form the composite figure of the Yajurveda: the view preferred by Oldenberg, that the god is really the same throughout the whole period, and that it is the nature of the tradition which obscures the fact, cannot be accepted in face of the obvious probability of development of religion, and the admitted ease with which deities absorb foreign elements into their character. In the later Çiva there are many traces of conceptions commonly associated with vegetation spirits, and his phallic cult is one which is condemned by the Rigveda, but which doubtless remained as popular among the aborigines as it now is among Çiva worshippers throughout India.

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⁴ i. 7. 3. 8.

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⁵ xv. 1; Charpentier, VOJ. xxiii. 151 ff.; xxv. 355 ff.

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¹ Keith, JRAS. 1913, pp. 155–60. A different but implausible view of the Vrātyas as Kṣatriya Yogins is developed by Hauer, *Die Anfänge der Yogapraxis im alten Indien*, pp. 172 ff. The epic does not encourage these vagaries (Hopkins, *Epic Myth.*, p. 231, n. 2), nor need we see in them Indo-Europeans of uncertain connexion.

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A very elaborate effort to show that the Rigveda presents a later and priestly conception of Rudra as a celestial deity, a priestly refinement from an ancient cannibalistic death demon, is made by Arbman.² He contends that the nature of the post-Vedic Rudra is already indicated very clearly in the later Vedic texts, suggesting that the popular god of the Rigvedic period was very much the same as the post-Vedic deity, and that it is more probable that the priests of the Rigveda transmuted a popular god than that a god such as that of the Rigveda developed by any means into the later Rudra-Çiva. It appears unnatural and unreasonable to accept this suggestion, as opposed to the simple and plausible hypothesis that the later Çiva represents the fusion of more than one deity. We have for such fusion the increasing number of distinct names, which are allotted by the texts to Çiva, as seen both in the Çatapatha Brāhmaṇa and the Kauṣītaki Brāhmaṇa, and syncretism of deities is so common and notorious that it seems strange to find so much reluctance to accept what is notoriously a trait of the post-Vedic Çiva, whose cosmopolitan character enables him to absorb local god after god. Moreover, in order to bolster up the view of the primitive chthonic character of Rudra, it is necessary to make the Maruts chthonic also, which is a decidedly implausible view. Further, it is difficult not to recognize the strong differences between Yama, a real death god, and Rudra, which indicate an original difference of origin; they belong to different regions, Yama to the south, Rudra to the north. Everything in the ritual goes to support the view of Rudra as a complex figure at the time when it was recorded; he combines clear traits of divine and chthonic character, as is natural in a god formed by the syncretism of different beliefs.

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² *Rudra. Untersuchungen zum altindischen Glauben und Kultus* (1922).

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Stress is laid by Arbman on the term Tryambaka which is accorded to Rudra in the Rigveda, and which he interprets as referring to the god as having three mothers, a fact which connects him in Arbman’s view with the cult of mothers, i. e. demonesses as patron goddesses in medieval and modern India.¹ If the connexion were real, we might then see in the Rudra of the Rigveda a figure already complicated by contamination with an aboriginal deity, for there is little evidence or probability of mother worship as Aryan or Indo-European,² and every sign that it was dear to the Dravidian or other aboriginal population. But the suggested interpretation is wholly dubious; we do not hear later of Çiva as having three mothers, though Skanda has seven, and our only early tradition asserts that Ambikā is the sister of Rudra, not his wife, and that she is the autumn.³ It is, therefore, much more probable that the epithet refers to the god either as connected with three seasons, or as connected with the three worlds, heaven, air, and earth, as is the case with the Maruts and is natural in a god of igneous connexions. It is admitted that with Agni Rudra is most intimately connected, and of Agni nothing is more assured than his triple nature. Nor is it possible to find any support for the view of Tryambaka suggested by Arbman in the Traiyambaka offering of the Çrauta ritual,⁴ in which nothing whatever appears to explain the name in this sense, apart altogether from the fact that we have no evidence whatever that the rite in question was known to the Rigveda, and later rites frequently stand in no vital connexion with the original nature of the deities to whom they are addressed or who are invoked in them.⁵

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¹ Arbman, *Rudra*, pp. 296 f.; Hopkins, *Epic Myth.*, p. 226; Monier Williams, *Brāhmanism and Hindūism*, pp. 222 ff.

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² In Germanic mythology they seem to be Celtic borrowings, and Celtic deities are rather European than Indo-European; cf. Helm, *Altgerm. Rel.* i. 391 ff. (guardian deities of the family, later of places); Carnoy, *Les Indo-Européens*, p. 68. Triads are, of course, ethnic, thus denoting completeness; Hopkins, *Origin of Religion*, pp. 291 ff.

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³ TB. i. 6. 10. ÇB. ii. 6. 2. 9 explains as *strī-ambakā*. Hillebrandt (*Ved. Myth.* ii. 188, n. 2) suggests that *tri* is equal to *str*, ‘star’.

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⁴ *Rudra*, pp. 48 ff.

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⁵ The suspension on trees of the offerings at the Tryambaka offering and the Baudhyavihāra (below, Chap. 20, § 5) suggests a vegetation or tree ritual, but by no means necessarily. It may be merely a natural mode of offering to the god whose lightning strikes the tree, or to a spirit of the air (Helm, *op. cit.* i. 245).

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Arbman’s theory leads to a curious and unnatural result in the case of the intimate connexion with Agni which the texts admittedly reveal, and which is shown by the interchange of Rudra’s names with Agni. The obvious explanation afforded by the Rigveda is that Rudra is in a sense fire, for he is a lightning god; to Arbman it is necessary to hold that Rudra’s dangerous nature was expressed in the minds of his votaries by the term fire, a conception bizarre and implausible. Moreover we have on every hand evidence of the syncretism of gods in Rudra; Arbman seems to feel doubt over his desperate suggestion that in the Çatarudrīya the term Rudra means ‘the demon’, and not Rudra at all, and gives it up for Rudra Vāstoṣpati. What is obvious is that the great god absorbs, as other great gods have done, a mass of Sondergötter, though in the Çatarudrīya form we have priestly ingenuity extending and amplifying Sondergötter in the best manner of the Roman Indigitamenta. It is probably to syncretism again that we owe the connexion of Rudra¹ with thieves, robbers, and highwaymen, whose patron he seems to have been, and from whom, therefore, he is expected to protect his votaries, and we need not press the suggestion that he was regarded himself as tricky,² or connect this aspect with the uncertain character of the lightning. Nor in the Vedic texts does he ever become a snake god; his connexion with snakes is only incipient,³ and it becomes much more marked in the epic, showing us clearly the process of identification in its advance. On the other hand, it is probable that some of his characteristics in the later Vedic period come from a god of death; this may primarily be due to identification with Çarva and Bhava, and it is suggested in his connexion with birds of evil omen⁴ and howling dogs,⁵ for such birds and dogs are closely connected with Yama as a god of the dead.

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¹ Cf. Durgā’s later patronage of Thugs (Garbe, *Beiträge zur ind. Kulturgeschichte*, pp. 185 ff.), Hermes, patron of thieves, and Laverna in Rome (Roscher, *Lex.* I. ii. 2372; II. i. 1917).

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² Dhūrta is an epithet in MS. i. 8. 5; KS. vi. 7; ĀpÇS. vi. 11. 3; HÇS. iii. 18, but more usually of Skanda, AV. Par. xx; BG. Par. iv. 2.

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³ Cf. AGS. iv. 8. 22 ff. The Anukramaṇī treatment of AV. iii. 26, 27; vi. 56. 2, 3; xii. 1. 46 as connected with Rudra (cf. Vait. xxix. 10) is very late evidence.

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⁴ Cf. AV. xi. 2. 2, 11; iv. 28. 4; TA. iv. 28. Cf. the euphemistic Çiva as name of the jackal, the omen of death; HGS. i. 16. 19.

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⁵ AV. xi. 2. 30; cf. VS. xvi. 28.

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Nor is any useful light shed on Rudra’s nature by the endeavour to deduce from the account of the mad Muni in the Rigveda⁶ the picture of Rudra as the god of an orgiastic cult, whose epithet of *vyuptakeça*, ‘with disordered hair’, in the Yajurveda⁷ hints at his exploits as a lord of the orgiastic dance. The fact is that the Rigveda tells us merely that the Muni drinks poison from a cup with Rudra, and the rest of the hypothesis is as baseless as the suggestion that the cup was really a skull. The orgiastic traits of Çiva in the later mythology are doubtless due to the amalgamation with Rudra of a vegetation deity, an Indian Dionysos.

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⁶ x. 136; Arbman, *Rudra*, pp. 297 ff. Cf. below, Chap. 22, § 9.

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⁷ TS. iv. 5. 5. That the Çūla was a Vedic weapon of Rudra is certainly not proved by AV. vi. 90; Kauç. xxxi. 7 (Arbman, p. 113, n.).

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