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The Religion and Philosophy of the Veda and Upanishads v1.c18.s6: § 6. The Sea

The Religion and Philosophy of the Veda and Upanishads v1.c18.s6

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§ 6. The Sea

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All the available evidence points to the fact that the Vedic Indians had little accurate knowledge of the sea, and that none of the tribes were actually settled by the banks of the ocean, but at the same time the legend of the Açvins and their ships and of the saving of Bhujyu must be allowed, when taken in connexion with a few passages where the sea seems clearly a real sea, and not the sea of the sky, to prove that the Indians had heard of the sea, and knew by hearsay, if not by experience, of undertakings directed towards obtaining wealth by sea commerce. But the conception of the sea as a deity, Samudra, is most rudimentary, whether we are to apply it to the ocean proper or merely to the lower course of the Indus, where it assumes a breadth which prevents the other bank being seen.¹ He is invoked with Aja Ekapād, Ahi Budhnya, and Pṛthivī, and occurs once or twice in other enumerations, once with Sindhu: a personification of Arṇava, who in one case occurs beside him, is still more feeble. The ritual agrees with the Rigveda: occasionally offerings are made as at the horse sacrifice to the god,² and even in the Gṛhya ritual³ he is not unknown, as, for instance, at the Baliharaṇa he is given an offering along with beings like Dhanvantari and Oṣadhi, ‘the plant’, but in the main these offerings occur in enumerations of many deities, and emphasize the unreal character of the god. The same rule applies in the later literature: the ocean is often poetically described,⁴ but a real god of the ocean seems not to have been created in India except under Mahommedan influences. In the Rigveda there is no hint that the realm of Varuṇa lies in any special connexion with the ocean, and it is not until the Brāhmaṇas begin their speculations that the identity of the ocean and Varuṇa is asserted, but still at a time when Varuṇa is lord of all waters, and not those of the ocean merely. The same point is made clear by the ritual, for the only specifically sea offering which is made to Varuṇa is that of a *nakra*,⁵ which may have been a crocodile, and which is given in the lists of victims at the Açvamedha, and it must be remembered that the aim of the compilers of the lists of victims was evidently not to trouble regarding real offerings, but to multiply as much as possible the number of victims to be offered, in theory not in fact.

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¹ Macdonell and Keith, *Vedic Index*, ii. 431, 432; Weber, *Skizzen*, p. 135; Hillebrandt, *Ved. Myth.* iii. 15 ff. Contrast A. C. Das, *Rig-Vedic India*, pp. 32 ff., 44–6.

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² TS. iv. 6. 2; v. 7. 16; MS. iv. 9. 8; TA. iv. 9. 1.

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³ Kauç. lxxiv. 6.

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⁴ Hopkins, AJP. xxi. 378 ff.

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⁵ TS. v. 5. 13. 1; MS. iii. 14. 2; VS. xxiv. 21.

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