The Religion and Philosophy of the Veda and Upanishads v1.c17.s10.62

v1.c17.s10.62

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.