The Religion and Philosophy of the Veda and Upanishads v1.c17.s10.47

v1.c17.s10.47

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.