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The Religion and Philosophy of the Veda and Upanishads v1.c19: Chapter 11. The Minor Gods of Nature

The Religion and Philosophy of the Veda and Upanishads v1.c19

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Chapter 11. The Minor Gods of Nature

§ 1. The Ṛbhus and the Ṛtus

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THE minor figures of the Vedic mythology are distinguished as a rule by the obscurity of their outlines: even when they are freely mentioned, as in the case of the Ṛbhus, it is a matter of the utmost difficulty to decide their precise character: it is probable indeed that in many cases the nature of the gods was little better understood by their worshippers than it is by us. Of this there is an excellent example in the Ṛbhus: they occur in eleven hymns in the Rigveda, being special favourites of the Bharadvāja family, and they are mentioned over a hundred times, but their mythical nature is very doubtful, and the Atharvaveda mentions them but eight times in seven hymns, and adds nothing to their character, indicating that in the popular side of the Vedic religion they had little hold.

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It appears that there are strictly three Ṛbhus, named Ṛbhukṣan, 'lord' or 'chief of the Ṛbhus', which is also an epithet of Indra, Vāja, and Vibhvan. It was, however, natural that the number should be increased, and we hear of all the Ṛbhus, or Ṛbhu with the Ṛbhus, or Vibhvan with the Vibhus, and, it may be added, the Praiṣa for the god Indra at the evening pressing in one version adds Prabhus. They are called Saudhanvanas, offspring of Sudhanvan, 'the good archer', or sons of Indra, and by a play on Indra's epithet, 'son of strength', they appear as 'descendants of strength'. On the other hand they are also sons of Manu, and claim Agni as brother. They are bright deities, who ride on a car drawn by fat steeds; they have metal helmets and fair necklaces.

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The essential features of the Ṛbhus is their connexion with Indra, through whom they are also connected with the Maruts and obtain a share of the Soma drink, which, however, in the ritual is whittled down to a share in an invocation to Indra. With other gods they have but slight connexion such as the Mountains, Rivers, the Ādityas, Savitṛ, and Tvaṣṭṛ. Their chief distinction is their skill, which wins them the favour of Indra and immortality, for they are distinctly regarded as men of the air, who earned for themselves immortality by their deeds, not as from the beginning divine. The Aitareya Brāhmaṇa¹ states they obtained their position by means of austerities, a view which of course entirely agrees with the priestly estimate of the due means of securing divine rank, but which ignores the older and simpler conception of their skill as the adequate cause. Having attained that position, they are addressed as gods, and are besought to bestow boons on their worshippers, including the dexterity which is theirs specially: they also aid in battle.

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¹ iii. 30. 2.

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Five great feats of skill are enumerated as performed by the Ṛbhus, the making of a car which, horseless, reinless, with three wheels, travels space, for the Açvins; the fashioning for Indra of two bay steeds; the making out of a hide of a cow, seemingly for Bṛhaspati, to milk nectar, of which a variant seems to be the uniting of the mother with her calf; the rejuvenating of their ancient and frail parents, doubtless heaven and earth; and, last but not least, the making of Tvaṣṭṛ’s one cup into four. This they did on the bidding of the gods through Agni, and the promise of immortality was the bait: Tvaṣṭṛ seems to have approved the proposal,¹ but in one place² he is said to have been fain to slay them for this desecration of the cup of the gods, while they deny the desecration. Other feats are more commonplace: they fashion the sacrifice or the two worlds.

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¹ RV. iv. 33. 5, 6.

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² RV. i. 161. 4, 5.

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In a curious myth they are connected with Savitṛ. It seems that they went round the sky in swift flight, and came to the house of Savitṛ, who bestowed immortality upon them, when they came to Agohya. When after twelve days of slumber they had enjoyed Agohya’s hospitality, they made the fields to flourish and the streams to flow over the earth. They after a year looked around: they asked Agohya who had wakened them. When they slumbered in his house, they made grass on the heights and water in the depths.³

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³ RV. iv. 33. 1, 7; i. 140. 2; i. 161. 11, 13.

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An elaborate theory of their nature has been proposed by Hillebrandt.⁴ He lays stress on the fact that, when they pleased the gods by their work, they became the artificers of the gods, Ṛbhukṣan of Indra, Vibhvan of Varuṇa, and Vāja of the gods generally.⁵ Now the four-month offerings are the Vaiçvadeva, the Varuṇapraghāsas, and the Sākamedhas, and he puts the three Ṛbhus in contact with the three sets of offerings, and sees, therefore, in them the three seasons. Further, he holds that the twelve days’ slumber must refer to the period of twelve nights at the winter solstice known in German folklore and mythology:⁶ in this still period of the year when the sun is at a standstill, the geniuses of the seasons exert their creative power. In the ritual this is the Dvādaçāha, ‘the twelve day rite’, which is of the utmost importance for the ritual as it serves as a model for all Sattras, and it is in this rite that most of the Ṛbhu hymns are used. Moreover, he adds that at the end of the year the Ṛtus,⁷ ‘the seasons’, are offered to in the Gṛhya ritual of the Aṣṭakās, and also occur in the Çrauta ritual. But all this is mere conjecture, as is the suggestion which has been made that the cup of Tvaṣṭṛ is the moon, the four parts being either replicas of the four months of each of the seasons, or four moon phases.¹ The attempt to bring the four-month offerings into conjunction with the Ṛbhus is a very forced one and is not supported by anything save the vague connexion of names, by which almost anything could be established; the belief that the Indians and the Germans preserve a tradition of twelve days' rest of nature at the winter solstice is a most improbable idea,² and the Dvādaçāha obviously connects with the number of the months. Nor is it in the slightest degree intelligible how, if that were the case, the three seasons by sleeping then would procure grass and water in abundance. Nor is the assertion that the Ṛbhus are really the Ṛtus in the slightest degree plausible: the seasonal cups of the Soma sacrifice have no real relation to Ṛbhus at all. Finally he makes the ingenious suggestion that the contemned position of the Ṛbhus is due to the fact that these are the gods of a particular clan, who took to the work of chariot making, were not admitted for a long time to the Brahmanical circle, but eventually found admission through their skill in this useful art, a fact which may stand in relation to the name Ṛbhu, which he equates not with the German ‘Elbe’, but with the root *arb* seen in ‘Arbeit’.³ The evidence for this theory consists simply in the fact that at the laying of the fire a Rathakṛt according to some Sūtras⁴ should mention as his forefathers the Ṛbhus, and the name Saudhanvana is stated in late texts to denote a caste. The case is an interesting one, not because it makes the theory of Hillebrandt at all tenable, but because it shows how the Rathakṛt, being a skilled chariot maker, was advised to claim as his forefathers the Ṛbhus, the chariot makers *par excellence*.

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⁴ *Ved. Myth.* iii. 135–54; (Kl. Ausg.), pp. 144–8; cf. Ludwig, *Rigveda*, iv. 160; v. 510. But see Oldenberg, *Rel. des Veda*,² pp. 239 ff.; ZDMG. lix. 262 ff., who refutes Hillebrandt's view that in RV. i. 110. 3 Agohya appears as Savitṛ; Thibaut, *Indian Thought*, i. 107.

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⁵ RV. iv. 33. 9.

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⁶ This view is accepted by J. H. Moulton, *Essays and Studies presented to W. Ridgeway*, p. 259, n. 1.

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⁷ RV. i. 15; ii. 37; ÇÇS. vii. 8; ApÇS. xii. 268 ff.; GGS. iii. 10; ĀÇS. ii. 4. 12.

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¹ Macdonell, *Ved. Myth.*, p. 133; Henry, *Journal des Savants*, 1903, p. 496.

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² Keith, *JRAS.* 1915, pp. 131-3.

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³ On the etymology cf. Kluge, *Etym. Wörterbuch der deutschen Sprache, s. v.* Alp.

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⁴ ĀpÇS. v. 11. 7; KÇS. iv. 9. 5.; Weber, *Ind. Stud.* xvii. 196.

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Other theories are even less plausible: Weber⁵ sees in them the geniuses of the past, present, and future, and in Agohya the sun who may not be concealed, i. e. driven from his course even by the winter solstice; Bergaigne⁶ takes them as three ancient skilful sacrificers who attained immortality, and whose number three stands in connexion with the three fires. The evidence forbids any certainty or even probability: it is, however, most probable that they are identical with the German ‘Elbe’, and that they are elves of the air or the earth who have won their way to a divine greatness.⁷ By an extraordinary freak we find them in the Mahābhārata elevated to the stature of the greatest of gods imaginable.⁸

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⁵ *Ved. Beitr.* 1894, p. 37.

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⁶ *Rel. Véd.* ii. 412.

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⁷ Macdonell, *op. cit.*, p. 134; Carnoy, *Les Indo-Européens*, p. 219.

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⁸ iii. 261. 19 ff.

§ 2. The Gandharvas and the Apsarases

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In the Rigveda the word Gandharva occurs twenty times, but only thrice in the plural, from which it is fair to deduce that the nature of the spirit was originally conceived as one. What is still more important is that it occurs but once in book ii–vii, and is found twice in the eighth book as a being hostile to Indra. The epithet *viçvāvasu*, ‘possessing all good things’, which accompanies it, appears once in the Rigveda¹ itself, and often later, to denote a definite individual. The Gandharva of that text is a high being of the air of the sky, a measurer of space who stands erect on the vault of heaven. He is brought into relation with the sun, the sun-bird, the sun-steed, and Soma likened to the sun. He is also connected with the rainbow in a late hymn.² He is, however, especially connected with Soma, whose place he guards, standing on the vault of heaven. Kṛçānu, the archer, who shoots at the eagle which steals the Soma, is expressly said in a later text³ to be a Gandharva. But the Gandharva is also connected with the waters: Soma in the waters is said to be the Gandharva of the waters: the parents of Yama and Yamī are the Gandharva and the maiden of the waters: the Gandharva is the lover of the Apsaras. The Gandharva is further found in the marriage ceremony: the bride is claimed by him, and he is in the beginning of the marriage a rival of the husband.⁴ Further the Gandharva has a fragrant garment,⁵ and is wind-haired.⁶

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¹ x. 85. 21, 22.

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² RV. x. 123, a hymn however very differently interpreted; Oldenberg, *Ṛgveda-Noten*, ii. 342.

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³ TA. i. 9. 3; RV. iv. 27. 3.

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⁴ RV. x. 85. 22.

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⁵ RV. x. 123. 7; cf. AV. xii. 1. 23.

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⁶ RV. iii. 38. 6.

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In the later Saṁhitās the account of the Gandharvas is fuller, but not essentially different: there is now a class which can be mentioned beside the gods, Fathers, and Asuras; they have a definite world of their own like the gods or the Fathers, to which a man may attain;⁷ the number is sometimes twenty-seven, which is the number of the Nakṣatras, or even 6333.⁸ Celestial traits are still numerous:⁹ his abode is in heaven, Rohiṇī and the stars of the moon's orbit are brought into connexion with the Gandharva; he is mentioned with such deities as Agni, sun, moon, and wind, and in the post-Vedic literature the Fata Morgana are connected with the Gandharva.¹⁰ But the Soma myth is especially developed. We learn that the Gandharvas kept Soma for the gods, but, allowing it to be stolen, were punished by exclusion from drinking it.¹¹ Viçvāvasu has to be eluded by Soma in eagle form, a fact which no doubt explains the hostility of Indra to the Gandharva in the eighth book of the Rigveda.¹ Soma is stated to have been stolen by Viçvāvasu or at least to have lived among the Gandharvas, but the gods by the bribe of Vāc, ‘speech’, were able to induce them to give him up,² the Gandharvas being fond of women, while Vāc agreed to come back when her former owners called her, a fact which is an interesting parallel to the legend which makes the Soma seller lose the price paid to him for the Soma. The connexion with the waters appears in the mention of his abode with the Apsarases in the waters in the Atharvaveda.³ That text also states that the Gandharva knows plants, doubtless the Soma, and that the odour of the earth arises to him, probably an idea due to folk etymology with *gandha*, odour.

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⁷ JB. i. 166; cf. 259 (yonder world, Gandharva-, Deva-, Svarga-loka); ÇB. xi. 5. 1. 17. Hence perhaps the Kali Gandharvas in JB. i. 154 f.

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⁸ AV. xi. 5. 2.

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⁹ BAU. iii. 6 places the Gandharva world between the atmosphere and the sun, but cf. ÇB. xiv. 6. 6. 1. See also AV. ii. 2. 1, 2; xiv. 2. 36; VS. ix. 7; xviii. 38 ff.

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¹⁰ *Epic Myth.*, p. 157. The alleged Iranian parallel is dubious; E. H. Meyer, *Indog. Myth.* i. 99 f.

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¹¹ MS. iii. 8. 10.

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¹ viii. 77. 5; l. 11. Carnoy (JAOS. xxxvi. 312) suggests contamination of an Indo-European storm myth and a Semitic monster of the abyss.

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² TS. vi. 1. 6. 5; MS. iii. 7. 3; AB. i. 27; ÇB. iii. 2. 4. 3–6.

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³ ii. 2. 3; iv. 37. 12.

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In the Brāhmaṇa texts and in the ritual the connexion between the Apsarases and the Gandharvas is especially close: the Gandharva Ūrṇāyu sits among the Apsarases, who swing themselves, and is beloved by them:⁴ in a rite the priest can point to the young men and the young maidens present, when he means to indicate the Gandharvas and Apsarases.⁵ They are besought to bestow progeny,⁶ and in the Buddhist texts the being, which by the law of transmigration enters the womb at the time of conception, is called a Gandhabba.⁷ For the nights immediately after the marriage, when the newly wedded couple are not allowed to consummate the marriage, a staff which represents the Gandharva Viçvāvasu is placed between them, and not until it is formally dismissed to the highest region is the marriage completed.⁸ A different and lower view of the Gandharvas is also found in the Atharvaveda⁹ where the plant goat’s horn is used to drive off the Gandharvas, who are regarded as shaggy with half animal forms, and are said to seek to ruin women in the guise of an ape, a dog, a hairy child, or a friend.

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⁴ PB. xii. 11. 10.

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⁵ ÇB. xiii. 4. 3. 7, 8.

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⁶ PB. xix. 3. 2; cf. ÇGS. i. 19, 2.

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⁷ Oldenberg, *Rel. des Veda*², p. 253, n. 1; contra, Hillebrandt, *Ved. Myth.* i. 427; *Zur Bedeutung von Gandharva* (1906); cf. Garbe, *Sâṃkhya-Philosophie*², p. 306.

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⁸ RV. x. 85. 22.

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⁹ AV. iv. 37; cf. viii. 6. 19. Their assimilation to Piçācas is seen in iv. 37. 8–10, and we find in Saṁyutta Nikāya, i. 33, Piçācas beside Apsarases as infesting a wood.

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In the Avesta there is a being, a Gandarewa, who dwells in the sea Vourukaša and is defeated by the heroic Keresāspa. He is also a lord of the bays, who dwells in the waters, and his identity with the Gandharva is clearly undeniable. The further comparison of Kentauros¹⁰ is certainly untenable phonetically, unless it be assumed that both are loan words, and is open to the gravest objections on the grounds of the nature of the two conceptions: the few points of similarity cannot be traced in the Rigvedic conception at all.

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¹⁰ Feist, *Kultur der Indogermanen*, p. 343, n. 1.

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The nature of the Gandharva cannot well be expressly defined: there can be no doubt whatever that he is in his origin a creature of the heaven: the light side of his nature is obvious and persistent despite other traits. The connexion with water can be traced to various sources: either the waters of the sky are the basis on which his activity has been transferred to the waters of earth, or his association with the Apsarases has led to his connexion with the waters, or as is quite possible the obscuration of his original nature has rendered it possible to associate him with elements not originally his own. It is more difficult to see how the demons of the Atharvaveda who are no better than Piçācas—indeed in a Buddhist text¹ Piçācas replace Gandharvas in conjunction with the Apsarases—can be developed from the Gandharva of the Rigveda. It is most probable that this is simply a case where demons have been allowed to obtain a name which is not theirs by right, the point of contact being found in the connexion of the Gandharva with marriage, which leads to the doubtless secondary connexion of the Gandharva with the embryo. The Gandharva, therefore, is not in the secondary period of the Vedic religion any longer a single concept: he is compounded of different and in essence disparate ideas.

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¹ *Saṁyutta Nikāya*, i. 33.

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What the original nature of the Rigvedic Gandharva was, cannot, as has been said, be precisely elucidated: to Kuhn² he is a cloud spirit, to Wallis³ the rising sun, to Bergaigne⁴ Soma, to Hopkins⁵ a genius of the moon, and to Roth⁶ the rainbow. To a different idea belongs the view taken by Mannhardt,⁷ E. H. Meyer,⁸ and von Schroeder,⁹ which sees in him a wind spirit developed out of the conception of the spirits of the dead as riding in the wind and passing therefore into wind spirits. Hillebrandt¹⁰ thinks that the real meaning of the name Gandharva is giant, and that the name is applied to different potencies, now and then to wind spirits, in other cases to the sun, since he finds that it is mentioned of Viçvāvasu that he kept Soma hidden for three nights: as Soma is the moon in the view of Hillebrandt, this can refer only to the obscuration of the moon for three nights by the sun, and therefore of course the Gandharva must be the sun. This form of argument is by no means convincing, and, as against the theory of wind gods, it must be pointed out that only once in the Rigveda is there any possible mention of wind in connexion with the Gandharva, and from such an incidental idea no conclusion can ever be drawn to the nature of a Vedic deity.

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² *Herabkunft des Feuers*, p. 153.

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³ *Cosmology*, pp. 34, 36.

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⁴ *Rel. Véd.* iii. 64-7.

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⁵ *Rel. of India*, p. 157.

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⁶ *Nirukta*, p. 142, and cf. *St. Petersburg Dict.*, s. v.

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⁷ *Wald- und Feldkulte*, i. 201.

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⁸ *Indog. Myth.* i. 219 ff.

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⁹ *Griech. Götter*, i. 71. Cf. *Mysterium und Mimus*, pp. 57 ff.; Arbman (*Rudra*, p. 309) argues that the Rigvedic conception is a priestly refinement, ignoring the much more plausible view of 'contamination' of deities.

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¹⁰ *Ved. Myth.* i. 426-49; (Kl. Ausg.), pp. 72 101.

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Of the Apsaras in the Rigveda is mentioned her connexion with the Gandharva upon whom she smiles in the highest heaven. Vasiṣṭha also claims birth from an Apsaras, and the Vasiṣṭhas are said to have sat close to the Apsarases.¹¹ The long-haired Muni, or ascetic with magic powers, moves on the path of the Gandharvas and the Apsarases.¹ The water nymph who is the spouse of the Gandharva is clearly the Apsaras. The connexion with water is brought out still more clearly in its most primitive form when the Apsarases of the sea are described as flowing to the Soma, a mythic description of the mixing of water with the Soma. The description of the Apsarases, therefore, agrees entirely and completely with the meaning of their name : ² they are ‘ the goers in the water ’, water nymphs, and already in the Rigveda they are not confined to the waters of the earth, though they were perhaps there first located.

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¹¹ RV. vii. 33. 9.

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¹ RV. x. 136. 6.

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² Not as Wackernagel (*Festschrift Kuhn*, pp. 159 f.), ‘ shameless ’, or ‘ formless ’ ; see Oldenberg, GGA. 1915, p. 131.

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In the Atharvaveda and the Yajurveda the connexion of the Apsarases with the waters is frequently expressed : they abide in the waters, they are often asked to depart from men to the river and the bank of the waters, possibly a hint at the dangerous quality of the nymphs.³ The Apsarases who accompany the Gandharva Viçvāvasu are connected with clouds, lightning, and stars, and all the later Saṁhitās agree in calling them the wives of the Gandharvas. In the Çatapatha Brāhmaṇa ⁴ they appear as swimming about in a lake in the form of birds (*ātī*), and the later literature often treats them as water spirits, in forest lakes, in rivers, even in Varuṇa’s palace in the ocean. But they have also a further field of activity ; they dwell in the banyan and the fig-tree, according to the Atharvaveda,⁵ where their cymbals and their lutes resound. The Gandharvas and Apsarases in these trees are begged to be propitious to a passing wedding party.⁶ They are also said to be engaged in dance and song and play, but the Atharvaveda ⁷ mentions some sinister characteristics : if they are fond of dice, and bestow good luck in gambling, they are also liable to cause madness, and magic has to be employed against them in this regard. The post-Vedic literature also finds them with the Gandharvas in trees, and adds mountains ⁸ to their places of habitation. It is perhaps from them that the Gandharva attains his power of causing derangement or at least mental excitement, which is attested for the Brāhmaṇa period by the phrase ‘ seized by a Gandharva ’, used of a lady who is inspired or demented.⁹

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³ Cf. Mannhardt, *Wald- und Feldkulte*, ii. 36 ff.

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⁴ xi. 5. 1. 4.

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⁵ iv. 37. 4 ; Mannhardt, *Wald- und Feldkulte*, i. 99 f.

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⁶ AV. xiv. 2. 9 ; Kauç. lxxvii. 7 ; TS. iii. 4. 8. 4.

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⁷ ii. 2. 3 ; 3. 3.

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⁸ Holtzmann, ZDMG. xxxiii. 640 f. ; Hopkins, *Epic Myth.*, pp. 156, 160.

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⁹ A Gandharva, in conjunction with an Apsaras (appearing identical with a mortal woman), brings about the madness and death of the Brahman Yavakrī ; see JB. ii. 269–72.

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One Apsaras only is named in the Rigveda, the famous Urvaçī. She was the mother of Vasiṣṭha,¹⁰ who claimed also descent from Mitra and Varuṇa, and she is invoked with the streams. But the chief reference to her is in a hymn¹ of considerable interest and obscurity, in which she is loved by Purūravas. She is there connected with water, filling the atmosphere and traversing space. It is said that she spends four autumns among mortals, and she is invoked to return, but that request she refuses, promising, however, Purūravas that his offspring will worship the gods, and he himself will enjoy happiness in heaven. The hymn clearly refers to one of those alliances of nymphs and men, which are common in all literatures as in the stories of Thetis and of the German swan maidens, who often for as long as seven years are allowed to stay with mortal men. In the Çatapatha Brāhmaṇa² several interesting details are given, which, however, cannot be read into the Rigvedic account, and, therefore, may rest on later alteration and embellishment of the narative. Purūravas is united to Urvaçī, but only on condition that she shall never see him naked: the Gandharvas envying their union, which subtracts her from their midst, devise a plan by which the sheep which Urvaçī keeps with her is stolen away: Purūravas leaps from his couch to prevent the theft: he forgets to put on his garment, 'for he thought it long that he should do so,' and he is revealed in a flash of light to the nymph who departs forthwith. Purūravas seeks desperately for her over the earth, until he comes upon her swimming in a lotus lake along with other Apsarases in the shape of aquatic birds. Urvaçī reveals herself to him and consents to receive him on a night a year later, when the Gandharvas enable him to become one of themselves by producing the sacrificial fire in a certain way. The tale has, of course, in any case been remodelled to suit the purpose of advocating the special mode proposed of producing the fire, but the episode of the taboo of seeing the hero naked is of interest and primitive in nature. It may be, as von Schroeder³ suggests, an inversion of the same rule applied to the maiden, since the German legends of swan maidens lay always stress on the absolute necessity of the maiden not being seen in her true nature, but the transfer need not be certainly assumed. Purūravas is only once elsewhere mentioned in the Rigveda,⁴ where it is said that Agni caused the sky to thunder for the righteous Purūravas, though, as the name means 'he who calls aloud', it is possible that in that passage the word is merely an epithet. In any case the view of Weber⁵ and Max Müller⁶ that Purūravas is the sun and Urvaçī the dawn is quite unnecessary, while Siecke's⁷ attempt to show that Urvaçī is the moon is based on the same curious reasoning as all his efforts to fill the Rigveda with moon deities. Purūravas is simply a hero, not necessarily ever a real man, but conceived as one: later tradition derives the lunar race of kings from him.

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¹⁰ RV. vii. 33. 11, 12. Possibly an idea due to mystic visions at the Dīkṣā ; cf. Hauer, *Die Anfänge der Yogapraxis im alten Indien*, pp. 72 f.

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¹ RV. x. 95. 10, 17.

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² xi. 5. 1; Geldner, *Ved. Stud.* i. 243–95; Oldenberg's notes. For a revised version, Çāntanu and Gaṅgā, see MBh. i. 3888 ff.; cf. Mannhardt, *Wald- und Feldkulte*, i. 69, 103 f., 152.

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³ *Griech. Götter*, i. 53 ff.

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⁴ i. 31. 4.

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⁵ *Ind. Stud.* i. 196.

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⁶ *Chips*, iv.² 109.

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⁷ *Die Liebesgeschichte des Himmels.*

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Other names of Apsarases are given in the later Saṁhitās: the Atharvaveda¹ mentions Ugrajit, Ugrampaçyā, and Rāṣṭrabhṛt, and the Yajurveda² names among many others Menakā and Urvaçī. The Çatapatha Brāhmaṇa³ mentions also a nymph, who is famous in later story, Çakuntalā, as the mother of the king Bharata.

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¹ vi. 118. 1, 2.

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² VS. xv. 15 ff.

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³ xiii. 5. 4. 13; cf. Holtzmann, ZDMG. xxxiii. 635 ff.; Leumann, xl. 80–82; v. Bradke, *ibid.* 498 ff.

§ 3. Spirits of the Forest, the Trees, and the Plants

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The references to the worship of the tree and the plants are very scanty in the Vedic ritual and mythology alike, but they are quite adequate to show that as among all other peoples these objects were not without their share of reverence.⁴ A long hymn in the last book of the Rigveda⁵ is devoted to the deification of the plants with special reference to their healing properties, and plants also appear in the Atharvaveda,⁶ where they are used in spells for healing, and for driving away demons of all kinds : the plant is even besought to bestow a horse, a sheep, a garment, and the life of the patient, who doubtless was to be the instrument by which the prayer of the medicine man was to be made good if the spell succeeded in attaining its purpose. In the Rigveda⁷ Soma is already the king of the plants, and they are called mothers and goddesses : the Atharvaveda⁸ poetically describes a plant as a goddess born of the goddess earth. On the other hand plants have power to hinder child-birth, and in that case the offering of an animal victim to them is prescribed by the Taittirīya Saṁhitā⁹ in order to procure their favour.

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⁴ Meyer (*Gesch. des Alt.*³ I. ii. p. 915) lays stress on the fact that Aryan religion pictures the deities as only faintly localized, and so, unlike other faiths, could not develop any strong belief in tree worship. This may be explained by migrations.

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⁵ x. 97; Roth, ZDMG. xxv. 645–8.

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⁶ Bloomfield, *Atharvaveda*, p. 67.

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⁷ x. 97. 18.

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⁸ vi. 136. 1.

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⁹ ii. 1. 5. 3.

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The cult of trees, and above all of forest trees, Vanaspati, is recognized by the Rigveda,¹⁰ which in a few passages invokes either one or many along with the Waters and the Mountains. In the later Saṁhitās, as we have seen, trees are the favourite homes of the Apsarases and also of the Gandharvas. The Taittirīya Saṁhitā¹¹ assigns to them as their homes the trees Açvattha, Nyagrodha, Udumbara, and Plakṣa. When the wedding procession passes by large trees, these deities are to be besought to afford their favour. More directly, in the same ceremony, in some accounts the tree is solemnly honoured on the fifth day after marriage with gifts of flowers, of food and clothing, and the part of trees in the marriage ritual is one of the commonest features of Indian marriage among the less advanced tribes.¹² There is, however, no trace in the Vedic literature of the marriage to a tree, which in modern India often precedes certain classes of marriages. Again, if a man is driving out on a new car, and he comes across a good tree, he should go round it from left to right, the way of the sun, and take from it branches with fruit.¹

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¹⁰ vii. 34. 23; x. 64. 8.

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¹¹ TS. iii. 4. 8. 4.

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¹² Winternitz, *Altind. Hochzeitsrituell*, pp. 101, 102; BhGS. i. 13. Viçvāvasu can hardly be a relic of tree marriage.

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¹ AGS. ii. 6. 9.

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The belief in the life of the tree is very clearly seen in the treatment of the tree from which the sacrificial post is to be taken.² The necessary cutting is performed after a blade of grass has been put over the place where the blow is to be inflicted, and the blade is hidden to protect the tree, while the axe is expressly ordered to harm not the tree: the prescription is precisely the same as that adopted in the domestic ritual when the hair is cut, and in the ordinary cult when the victim is slain: the aim is clearly to avoid injury to the life in the tree by pretending that it is not being injured. The tree is also, when made into the form of a post, adorned with a band placed round it and is anointed, and this doubtless proves its living character, while it is possible that the verse in the Āprī litany of the animal sacrifice, addressed to the forest tree, is really an adjuration to the sacrificial post. The evidence must not be unduly pressed, as in this case, owing to the presence of the god at the place of sacrifice, it is beyond doubt that the surroundings of the sacrifice are filled with his presence, and that, therefore, they may attain a sanctity not their own; but the conception of the life of the tree is clear, even if its divinity is not so certain in this special instance.

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² The ritual seems implied in RV. iii. 8.

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The belief in the presence of spirits in trees is, of course, ethnic and the Buddhist literature has many traces of it, showing the different sets of conceptions which are easily formed; the tree is primarily the spirit, then the spirit with or without its children lives in the tree, and, if it perishes, has to go away to seek a new abode, while at a further stage the tree becomes more and more remotely connected with the deity. This literature is also instructive in the fact that it mentions other than tree spirits, spirits of terrible form and uncanny and hostile nature, who may well be of double origin, arising from a direct or animatistic conception of the darkness and hostility of the woods,³ and also from the conception of unfriendly spirits which develops from the belief in the hostile spirits of the dead.⁴ The Rigveda⁵ preserves one hymn in its last book, describing the forest goddess, Araṇyānī, in a poetical and graphic manner which brings out clearly the uncanny sounds heard in the solitudes, the many beasts which abound, and the food which is raised without tillage. It is easy from this hymn alone to realize how spirits of dangerous character could, independently of any connexion with spirits of the dead, be deemed to abound in the forest.

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³ Cf. Wundt, *Völkerpsychologie*, IV. i. 462 ff.; cf. the evil spirits of the woods, Hopkins, *Epic Myth.*, pp. 40, 57.

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⁴ Oldenberg, *Rel. des Veda*², pp. 264 ff.

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⁵ x. 146.

§ 4. Spirits of Agriculture, Pasture, and the Mountains

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The deity of the field as Kṣetrasya Pati, ‘lord of the field’, in the Rigveda¹ is invoked to grant cattle and horses, and with sweetness to fill heaven and earth, the plants, and the waters. In another hymn² he is asked, along with Savitṛ, the Dawns, and Parjanya to bestow prosperity, and elsewhere it is said that worshippers are fain to have him as a neighbour. The full nature of the deity is made clear in the Gṛhya ritual,³ which prescribes offerings to him when the field is ploughed, and he is, it is clear, no more than the deity believed to be in the ploughed land.⁴ Similarly the Rigveda contains an invocation of Sītā, the furrow, to grant rich blessings and crops.⁵ The figure of this goddess naturally has more life in the Sūtras,⁶ which deal with the operations of agriculture: she appears as the wife of Indra, which may be due to the fact that in the Rigveda⁷ the god is once called Urvarāpati, ‘lord of the plough field,’ and her existence is manifested in the four Sondergötter, the deities Sītā, Āçā, Araḍā, and Anaghā, who are to be worshipped at the furrow sacrifice, the threshing-floor sacrifice, the sowing of the crop, and the reaping and the putting the crop into the barn.⁸ In another Sūtra⁹ we have, beside the offering to Sītā and to three other deities, Yajā, Çamā, and Bhūti, who are less concrete than is she, offerings to the guardians of the furrow on the four sides;

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these guardians are called various names which are hardly more than epithets, ‘having good bows and quivers’, on the east, ‘not winking the eyes’ and ‘wearing armour’, on the south, ‘prosperity’, ‘earth’, Pārṣṇi, Çunaṁkuri, on the west, and ‘those that are terrible’ and ‘like Vāyu in swiftness’, on the north.¹⁰ These figures are interesting: they cannot properly in any sense be classified with abstract deities, even if that class of deities can properly be set up: they are not personifications of human activities or feelings, but they are the deities involved in the operations of nature, Sondergötter, who live in the growth of the crop and may best perhaps be called animatistic spirits of vegetation, whose precise differentiation of character may plausibly be ascribed as in the case of the Roman Indigitamenta to the work of the priests. On the other hand Sītā has always a more elevated character than the rest of such spirits: she is called Sāvitrī in the Taittirīya Brāhmaṇa,¹¹ and she becomes the heroine of the Rāmāyaṇa, and the model of wifely truth and chastity, preserving none the less here and there traces of her connexion with the furrow and the fruitful earth.

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Urvarā, the plough field, is also a goddess in the Sūtra literature, and is described as having a garland of threshing floors.¹ It would of course be absurd to suppose that these scanty remnants of worship represent the whole of the agricultural side of Vedic religion, and as a matter of fact in the ritual there are abundant traces of other ceremonies having to do with agriculture, but the deities of the field were evidently as such not of great importance in Vedic religion, the care of the prosperity of men in these respects having been taken over by the great gods. When agricultural and vegetation spirits as such have great honour among and importance in the ideas of a people, then their figures are elevated to the rank of the great deities, as is the case with Attis, Adonis, or perhaps even Osiris in the lands of Asia Minor and of Egypt,² and the fact that other deities are the great gods of Vedic religion cannot be explained on any other hypothesis than that the specific religious instinct of the Vedic people chose these forms as the favourite objects of its devotions. Curiously enough, the later religion of India gives a picture of the differences of religious predilection: the young Kṛṣṇa is represented as opposed to the worship of Indra by the pastoral world:³ he prefers instead that they should worship the mountains, their cattle, and the woods, just as ploughmen worship the furrow.

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In cases like these it is impossible not to observe a definite cleavage of religious sentiment, which it is perfectly legitimate to apply as a principle to Vedic religion. The theory which seems sometimes to be held that the Vedic literature does not really give us the popular religion of the time cannot be supported, when it is applied to the literature as a whole, including the Sūtras of the domestic ritual, which are packed with popular ideas and magic practices of every kind.

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¹ iv. 57.

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² RV. vii. 35. 10.

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³ AGS. ii. 10. 4; ÇGS. iv. 13. 5; BhGS. ii. 10.

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⁴ Cf. Warde Fowler’s view (*Religious Experience of the Roman People*, pp. 77, 78) of the primitive nature of the *Lar familiaris* in Roman religion.

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⁵ RV. iv. 57. 6.

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⁶ PGS. ii. 17. 9.

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⁷ viii. 21. 3.

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⁸ GGS. iv. 4. 27.

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⁹ PGS. ii. 17. 13 ff.

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¹⁰ Hillebrandt, *Ved. Myth.* iii. 407.

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¹¹ ii. 3. 10. 1. For the Rāmāyaṇa see Jacobi, *Das Rāmāyaṇa*, p. 130; Hopkins, *Epic Myth.*, pp. 78 f.

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¹ PGS. ii. 17. 9.

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² Cf. Meyer, *Gesch. des Alt.*³ I. ii. pp. 76, 728 ff.; Frazer, *Adonis, Attis, Osiris*; Max Müller, *Egypt. Myth.*, pp. 92 ff.

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³ Harivaṅça, ii. 16. 2 ff.; Viṣṇu Purāṇa, v. 10. 29 ff.

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The mountains are according to the young Kṛṣṇa essentially the deities of pastoral folk: the Rigveda,⁴ which shows no trace of the old belief of mountains as the home of the gods generally,⁵ also invokes here and there the mountains, nearly twenty times in the plural, and four times in the singular. They never, however, occur alone, but only with other deities such as Indra or Savitṛ, or with the waters, trees, plants, heaven and earth. They are described as rejoicing in the sacrificial offering and abiding securely. Parvata, ‘the mountain’, is once found invoked as a companion of Indra in the dual compound Indrāparvatā, and asked to come to the offering. In the ritual the mountains make but little appearance, but we hear in the Brāhmaṇas⁶ a good deal of a salve from the mountain Trikakubh which has wonderful powers, and in the late Hiraṇyakeçi Gṛhya Sūtra¹ there occurs an obscure phrase, which suggests that it was thought in applying the salve to the eyes that the spirit of the mountain entered into the performer of the rite. The idea is of course perfectly in harmony with primitive ideas.

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⁴ vi. 49. 14; vii. 34. 23, &c. For seven mountains, as doors of heaven, see TS. iii. 12. 2. 9; vi. 2. 4. 3; Viṣṇu is lord of mountains, TS. iii. 4. 5. 1; Kauç. li. 8.

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⁵ Cf. Arbman, *Rudra*, pp. 40 ff., who seeks to find Rudra on Mūjavant (cf. TS. i. 8. 6).

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⁶ Macdonell and Keith, *Vedic Index*, i. 329; ii. 62. For the *mountains in the epic* see Hopkins, *Epic Mythology*, pp. 6 ff.

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¹ i. 11. 5; Oldenberg, *Rel. des Veda*¹, p. 255, n. 3.

§ 5. Deities of the House

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The deity of the house and the home is Vāstoṣpati, 'lord of the dwelling', who is invoked in one short hymn of the Rigveda² to bless man and beast, to remove diseases, to make cattle and horses prosper, to afford protection, and to grant a favourable entry. He is elsewhere described as destroyer of diseases, is identified with Soma, brought into close connexion with Tvaṣṭṛ as an artificer, or again he is likened to Indra as a cuirass of Soma pressers. In the late tenth book³ he appears as an observer of ordinances, who was fashioned by the gods along with prayer. His character is made more clear by the fact that the Gṛhya Sūtras⁴ prescribe that offerings are to be made to him when a new house is entered. There is no possible ground for supposing that either Pūṣan,⁵ or Rudra,⁶ or Agni,⁷ or any other god is designated by the title, though Rudra actually bears the style in one passage.⁸ The god is clearly the god of the house, who when a new house is built comes and abides in it. In the Sūtras⁹ we hear more generally of deities of the house.

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² vii. 54. 1–3.

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³ RV. x. 61. 7.

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⁴ AGS. ii. 9. 9; ÇGS. iii. 4; PGS. iii. 4. 7.

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⁵ Perry, *Drisler Memorial*, p. 241.

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⁶ *Festgruss an Weber*, p. 21.

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⁷ Wallis, *Cosmology*, p. 22.

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⁸ TS. iii. 4. 10. 3.

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⁹ AGS. i. 2. 4; MGS. ii. 12. 6; PGS. ii. 9. 2; Kauç. lxxiv. 10; so in the epic, Hopkins, *Epic Myth.*, pp. 41, 57.

§ 6. Divine Implements

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There is no very essential distinction between the worship of natural objects conceived as living and the worship of objects made by human hands, but it is obvious that the worship of such objects tends to be restricted in effect and importance. This is borne out by the evidence of Vedic religion where such religion is of very minor importance, despite the fact that it receives further attention in the Rigveda than might a priori have been expected. Thus we find there¹⁰ that two implements of the ploughman, Çuna and Sīra, which may be the ploughshare and the plough, are invoked, and that in the Çatapatha Brāhmaṇa a cake is assigned to them in the sacrifice. The warrior invokes his arrow as divine,¹¹ and begs it to protect him and assail his foes: his armour, his bow and quiver, are also celebrated, and the drum is invoked to drive away the demons and the danger: in the Atharvaveda¹² a whole hymn is devoted to its praises. But the priest naturally is more prominent in the Rigveda, where not only the sacrificial post is deified, perhaps as a remnant of tree worship, is called divine, and is asked to allow the sacrifice to go to the gods, but the sacrificial grass ¹ and the divine doors ² are celebrated. The pressing stones have three hymns ³ given up to them: they are unaging, immortal, more powerful than the heaven itself. They are compared to steeds or bulls, their sound in the pressing reaches the sky. They bestow wealth and offspring, driving away the demons. The mortar and pestle ⁴ were deified also, and the Atharvaveda ⁵ adds to the category various ladles and invents a great deity in the remnant of the sacrifice, the Ucchiṣṭa.

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¹⁰ RV. iv. 57. 5–8: ÇB. ii. 6. 3. 5; they are taken as constellations by Hillebrandt, *Ved. Myth.* iii. 221–4.

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¹¹ RV. vi. 75. 11, 15, 16; 47. 26 ff.

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¹² v. 20.

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¹ RV. ii. 3. 4; x. 70. 4.

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² RV. i. 142. 6.

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³ RV. x. 76, 94, 175.

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⁴ RV. i. 28. 5, 6; so the 2 carts, RV. x. 13.

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⁵ xi. 7.

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It is possible to draw a distinction between the cases of the deities of the plougher and the warrior, and those of the priest. In his case the presence of the deity at the sacrifice may be held to be the cause why the instruments of the sacrifice are treated with so much reverence, while in the former cases the reverence is not due to anything save the essentially valuable character of the objects, and the mystic powers which are deemed by man to lie within them. It is particularly easy to understand how the arrow or even the plough can be regarded as animate: the worship of the priestly implements would thus be rather more fetishistic in origin than real and direct worship of the implements for themselves, and this is perhaps the more accurate manner of considering the question.⁶

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⁶ See Part II, Chap. 5, § 2. That the millstone on which offerings are deposited in the Bhūtayajña and which figures in the marriage ritual was the recipient of direct worship is conceivable (Arbman, *Rudra*, p. 203, n. 1), but not proved.

§ 7. Divine Animals

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The place of animals in the Veda is restricted and of comparatively little importance so far as it concerns direct worship of animals, whether individuals or species, as distinct from the theriomorphism of gods who are not animal gods, and the use of animal fetishes. But the existence of these different ways, in which an animal may seem to be divine, renders it difficult in each case to say whether or not direct worship of animal is to be detected.

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Dadhikrā or Dadhikrāvan is the most famous of horses in the Rigveda where he is praised in four rather late hymns.⁷ He was, it is clear, especially famous among the Pūrus: his speed is extolled, he is compared to, and even directly identified with, the eagle. He is even described with epithets appropriate to Agni as the swan dwelling in light, the Vasu in the air, the priest at the altar, the guest in the home.⁸ He is a hero who wins booty, and who pervades the five tribes with his might, as Sūrya the waters with his light. He is a gift to the Pūrus of Mitra and Varuṇa, and is invoked with Agni, with the Dawn, with the Açvins, Sūrya, and other gods, but in such invocations he has the first place.

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⁷ iv. 38–40; vii. 44.

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⁸ iv. 40. 5.

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The name appears to mean 'he who scatters the curd', and from the name and his general divine appearance Roth¹ holds that he is none other than the sun in the form of a swift steed. With this agrees the fact that the sun is constantly associated with Uṣas, that it is compared to or identified with a steed, and that it is said to be a bird. Bergaigne's² view that lightning is specially referred to may be supported by the swiftness ascribed to the steed, but it is not clear that the conception could possibly be explained, unless the sun were taken as meant. The alternative view of Ludwig,³ Pischel,⁴ and Oldenberg⁵ sees in the steed a real horse, a famous race-horse, which won its fame by its swift pace, but this is to exaggerate beyond all possible measure the value attached by the Vedic Indians to the sport of horse-racing.

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¹ *St. Petersburg Dict.*, *s.v.*

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² *Rel. Véd.* ii. 456, 457.

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³ *Rigveda*, iv. 79.

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⁴ *Ved. Stud.* i. 124; cf. von Bradke, ZDMG. xlvi. 447.

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⁵ *Rel. des Veda*², p. 69; SBE. xlvi. 282.

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Hillebrandt,⁶ therefore, suggests, with much more plausibility, that the steed is divine as being the horse which was to be sacrificed at the end of the period of a year, during which the sacrificial horse for the horse sacrifice of the king was allowed to wander at pleasure, guarded by the king's sons and warriors, as a sign that his sovereignty was acknowledged on all sides. The suggestion is interesting and is correct, in so far as it is clear that the horse at the horse sacrifice was addressed in terms appropriate to divinity: it cannot seriously be doubted that for the time being the horse was considered as being in a sense divine, nor that in the offering the horse represented the embodiment of the sun. It is, therefore, probable that we have in the horse of the sacrifice a sun fetish,⁷ and this being so we have support for the theory that Dadhikrāvan is the sun in horse shape, but we need not suppose that Dadhikrāvan in the hymns in question was actually the horse of the horse sacrifice: he is instead the theriomorphic form of the sun, which in the horse sacrifice is represented by a real horse.

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⁶ *Ved. Myth.* iii. 401, 402; (Kl. Ausg.), pp. 170 f.

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⁷ Totemistic suggestions (J. v. Negelein, *Zeitschrift für Ethnologie*, 1901, p. 78; E. Monseur, RHR. li. 16) are refuted by van Gennep, *L'état actuel du problème totémique*, pp. 291 f. The ceremonial lying of the queen beside the dead horse is doubtless intended to secure her fertility through contact with the divine.

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The nature of Tārkṣya seems to be similar to that of Dadhikrāvan: he is described in part in the same terms, as pervading the five tribes with his power, and his character as a steed is shown by his bearing the name Ariṣṭanemi, 'whose fellies are uninjured.' From this epithet in the Yajurveda⁸ a new entity Ariṣṭanemi is created and invoked along with Tārkṣya. He is in later Vedic texts once or twice called a bird, and this may be compared with the bird character of Garuḍa, who is beyond question the sun bird. It is difficult, therefore, to doubt that Tārkṣya is merely a form of the sun, conceived as a bird or horse: his name is possibly derived from the prince Tṛkṣi Trāsadasyava who is mentioned in the Rigveda,¹ and naturally it has been suggested that he is a real horse deified.²

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⁸ VS. xv. 19. Garuḍa appears in TA. x. 1. 6, and in the Suparṇādhyāya; see Charpentier, *Die Suparṇasage*, chap. v.

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¹ viii. 22. 7.

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² Foy, *KZ.* xxxiv. 366, 367.

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Another horse is Paidva, who was given by the Açvins to Pedu, is white, praiseworthy, and is compared to Indra and Bhaga, and called slayer of the dragon, conqueror invincible.³ All this will pass as a description of the sun horse. Even more certain is the sun nature of Etaça : in the plural the word denotes often the horses of the sun, and in the singular it denotes the sun horse who draws the sun : in a curious legend Indra is said to have aided Etaça in contest with the sun, perhaps by causing a wheel of the sun car to fall off : Etaça picks it up and gives it to the sun, but now is able to take the lead of the sun, who finally, moved by the nobility of Etaça, concedes to him the front place in his chariot.⁴ It would probably be idle to see in this more than a mythological fancy, but the nature of Etaça is quite certain.

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³ Bergaigne, *Rel. Véd.* ii. 51, 52. For a possible Daurgaha, cf. Hillebrandt, *GGA.* 1903, pp. 243 f.

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⁴ Bergaigne, *Rel. Véd.* ii. 330-3; Oldenberg, *Rel. des Veda*², p. 155; Geldner, *Ved. Stud.* ii. 161 f. Hillebrandt (*Ved. Myth.* iii. 278-84) takes the myth as Indra aiding the charioteer (= Aruṇa) of the sun at the critical moment of the winter solstice : this is fanciful.

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In these cases, and in those which have been noted above, there is no trace of direct worship of the horse as such, whether as an individual of special qualities or as a species. Nor is any such worship of the bull to be found : as the sun and Agni are represented in the ritual by horse fetishes, so also in the ritual Indra and Rudra are represented rarely by bulls, and a bull plays an obscure part in the legend of Mudgala and his wife,⁵ which has been interpreted in the most diverse ways and which is clearly without value for mythology : the bull is the theriomorphic form of Indra, Dyaus, and more rarely of other gods. The cow is often the theriomorphic form of the rain cloud or the beams of dawn : hence the many-coloured cows which yield all desires in heaven mentioned in the Atharvaveda,⁶ and the post-Vedic Kāmaduh, a wish-milking cow who dwells in the heaven of Indra. Iḍā and Aditi are also addressed as cows, and the gods are born of cows. But the actual worship of the cow as such is not found in the Rigveda : the most that can be said is that perhaps from her connexion with the Iḍā and Aditi the cow was becoming invested with sacred character : the term *aghnyā*, which is addressed to her, or used of her, sixteen times, denotes that she should not be killed, an idea which was not, however, the early idea. One great Vedic hero, Atithigva, has his name from his hospitable habit of slaying oxen or cows for guests; the tradition that beef was the proper food for guests prevailed throughout the Vedic age, and the eating of meat was never a general taboo, seeing that the great Vedic ritual authority Yājñavalkya was credited with the dictum that he ate meat if it was in a certain condition, variously interpreted as coming from the shoulder, or firm.¹ The opposite doctrine of Ahiṅsā which forbade the taking of life, even animal, is however reflected in many passages such as the declaration that he who eats beef is born again in earth as a man of evil fame,² and the warnings of retribution in the next world which are offered to eaters of meat³ in this. Moreover, in the Atharvaveda⁴ we find the express assertion of the sacred character of the cow, which points to that animal having become in itself an object of worship.

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⁵ RV. x. 102; cf. Bloomfield, ZDMG. xlviii. 541 ff.; Keith, *JRAS.* 1911, p. 1005.

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⁶ AV. iv. 34. 8. Cf. the Çabalī offering of the domestic ritual; PB. xxi. 1. 5; Hopkins, *Trans. Conn. Acad.* xv. 27, n. 2; Güntert, *Weltkönig*, p. 368.

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¹ Macdonell and Keith, *Vedic Index*, ii. 145-7.

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² ÇB. iii. 1. 2. 21.

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³ KB. xii. 3.

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⁴ xii. 4, 5. Cf. RV. viii. 101. 15, 16.

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The goat is the animal which draws the car of Pūṣan, and it may be that in some cases Pūṣan was conceived in goat shape: it is also the name of the 'one-footed goat', Aja Ekapād, which seems to be the lightning: here and there it is conceived as Agni. The ass draws the car of the Açvins. The boar is the theriomorphic form of the Maruts, Rudra, and Vṛtra: in the Brāhmaṇas it also occurs as the form assumed by Prajāpati when he raises the earth from the waters,⁵ which is the beginning of the boar incarnation of Viṣṇu of the post-Vedic literature. The dog occurs in the two brindled dogs, Çabala, reminiscent of Kerberos, and Çyāma of Yama, the god of the dead, who are called Sārameya, a name denoting descent from Saramā.⁶ This indicates, though it does not conclusively prove, that Saramā, who figures as the messenger of Indra in the myth of the Paṇis, was treated as a dog, and this tradition, which is not expressly set out in the Rigveda, is the account of the later texts and of Yāska, who calls her the bitch of the gods. In all these cases there is clearly either theriomorphism, or the natural association of animals with the gods on the model of the relation of man and the animals. This last fact explains in all probability the figure of the male ape Vṛṣākapi who causes trouble between Indra and Indrāṇī:⁷ the effort to find some deity behind the ape is of doubtful validity, though it has naturally been thought possible to connect him with the monkey god Hanumant, who has been explained plausibly as a god of the monsoon, rather than as a case of direct zoolatry.

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