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The Religion and Philosophy of the Veda and Upanishads v1.c19.s9: § 9. The Lesser Nature Goddesses

The Religion and Philosophy of the Veda and Upanishads v1.c19.s9

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§ 9. The Lesser Nature Goddesses

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Not one of the goddesses of the Rigveda, with the doubtful exception of the Dawn, can be said to be of any real importance. Sarasvatī and Pṛthivī have already been mentioned: in the Sūtras Bhūmi also appears, but with little character of any kind, doubtless as a direct expression for the earth goddess. The Rigveda ¹ also celebrates Rātri, 'night', as the sister of the Dawn, and the daughter of heaven. But night is here conceived as the bright starlit night, which fills the valleys and the hills and drives away the darkness, keeping away the wolf and the thief. Night is also a few times invoked together with the dawn as joint goddesses, and their importance such as it is seems derived from her connexion with that goddess.

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¹ RV. x. 127.

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Another goddess who is clearly connected with nature is Pṛçni, the mother of the Maruts, who is doubtless the storm cloud:² the word is properly an adjective 'speckled', used of the bull, or the cow, and in the plural of the cows, which milk Soma for Indra. More interesting is the figure of Saraṇyū ³ who occurs in a curious legend in the Rigveda, in which it is narrated that Tvaṣṭr made a wedding for his daughter, that at the news all the world came together, that during the wedding Saraṇyū disappeared, but not it seems until she had been married to Vivasvant, that the gods hid the immortal from mortals, and making one of like form they gave her to Vivasvant: it is added that Saraṇyū bore the two Açvins when this happened and left two pairs behind her. Yāska tells us that she first bore the pair Yama and Yamī, and then changed her form to that of a mare and ran away: Vivasvant in the form of a horse pursued, and then were born the Açvins, while on the female of like form was born Manu Sāvarṇi. The tale is a strange one, and may be compared with the legend of the Tilphossian Erinys,⁴ who bore in horse form the steed Areion; the two myths probably belong to the same order of ideas, but it is difficult to say what the origin of the conception should be taken to have been. The horse form of Saraṇyū does not occur in the Rigveda: it can only be inferred and we do not know from what source Yāska obtained the details of the legend: it may have been an old tradition or merely a speculation: moreover the idea may have been caused by nothing more than the conception of the Açvins who may have been thought to have been in horse form, and not merely lords of horses, in which case the comparison with the Erinys must probably be given up. On the other hand, especially if the comparison is held to be valid, the figure of Saraṇyū may be brought into connexion with the Dawn, or the sun-maiden, whose swift nature her name would then be a good expression, since it is essentially derived from the root, *sṛ*, 'run'. The verbal correspondence with Erinys cannot however be accepted as proved, as it is clearly contrary to the phonology. Such a view, which is defended by Bloomfield, is more plausible than the suggestion which connects Saraṇyū with the storm, and which, accepting the identity with Erinys, seeks to trace the character of the Erinyes to this conception. S. Reinach ⁵ again has traced in Europe an old horse goddess (originally totemistic), found in Arcadia, in the legend of Cloelia, and as Epona in Gaul.

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² Roth, *Nir.*, p. 145.

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³ x. 17. 2; Bloomfield, JAOS. xv. 172–88; Hillebrandt, *Ved. Myth.* i. 503 (Yama's mother = night, Saraṇyū = dawn).

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⁴ Lang, *Modern Mythology*, pp. 65 ff. Feist (*Kultur der Indogermanen*, p. 343, n. 1) suggests connexion between Saraṇyū and Erinys as loan words from another tongue. The conjecture is possible that the term Erinys did not originally belong to the horse goddess at all, but that she bore a name really corresponding to Saraṇyū, but later confused with Erinys.

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⁵ *Cultes, Mythes et Religions*, iv. 54–68. See also Farnell, *Cults of the Greek States*, iii. 50 ff. Cf. E. Monseur, RHR. li. 16 f.

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There is another group of goddesses of whom it can safely be said that in the later Saṁhitās they are the deities of natural objects, though the Rigveda leaves their character wholly uncertain and unexplained. These are Rākā, who twice appears in the Rigveda¹ as a rich and bountiful goddess, with which her name, probably containing the root *rā*, ‘give’, accords; and Sinīvālī, described as a sister of the gods, with broad hips, fair arms and fingers, who is begged to give children. She is invoked with Rākā, Sarasvatī, and with Guṅgū, who only occurs in this place.² These later Saṁhitās, however, have a scheme under which Rākā is the full moon day, Anumati the day before full moon, Kuhū new moon, and Sinīvālī the day before new moon. Sinīvālī is also said by the Atharvaveda³ to be the wife of Viṣṇu. While it is true that the explanations are not given in the Rigveda and that, in the case of Anumati, the position given seems to be secondary, it is difficult to be certain as to the others, with whom may be connected the otherwise unknown Guṅgū.⁴

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¹ ii. 32. 7; v. 42. 12.

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² ii. 32; x. 184.

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³ viii. 46. 3; *ZDMG.* ix. p. lviii.

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⁴ Cf. Weber, *Ind. Stud.* v. 228 ff.; Hopkins, *Epic Myth.*, p. 70.

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Possibly another deity who plays some part in the development of Vedic thought may be traced to a natural origin, namely Vāc, ‘speech’. In the Rigveda⁵ she has a hymn in which she describes herself as accompanying all the gods, and supporting Mitra and Varuṇa, Indra and Agni, and the Açvins, and as bending the bow of Rudra against the unbeliever: she claims to have a place in the waters, in the sea, and to encompass all beings, while in another hymn she is styled the queen of the gods. In the Brāhmaṇas⁶ she is specially famed in the legend of the purchase of the Soma from the Gandharvas by means of a woman, Vāc taking that form to tempt the Gandharvas, as lovers of the sex, to surrender the Soma which they guard: she agrees,⁷ however, with the gods, before the transaction takes place, to return to them and does so when called upon. The goddess seems to have too much life and reality in the Rigveda to be a mere abstraction, and it is important perhaps that in the Naighaṇṭuka⁸ she is ranked among the gods of the atmosphere. Therefore it is possible that thunder, which in the Nirukta appears as the Vāc of the middle region, may be the starting-point of the goddess who naturally develops in connexion with human speech.

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⁵ x. 125; cf. x. 71.

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

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⁷ AB. 27. She also figures in the strife of Ādityas and Aṅgirases, assuming the shape of a mare or lioness, JB. iii. 187 f.; AB. vi. 34 f., &c.

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⁸ v. 5; Nir. xi. 27. From a very different root has sprung the Babylonian doctrine of the word; Farnell, *Greece and Babylon*, pp. 176–9. Cf. below, Chap. 29.

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It is also possible that in Umā, who appears at the very end of the Vedic period proper⁹ as the wife of Rudra, we have a goddess of the mountain, as she is given the epithet Haimavatī, and is recognized in the later mythology as the daughter of the mountain Himavant. On the other hand it must be remembered that, as Rudra is essentially a god of the mountains in the Vedic texts, it was only natural that his wife should be made out to be from the mountains, and that, therefore, we may have to do here simply with the same principle of setting a female beside the god which gives us Indrāṇī, and the other wives of the gods, though it is tempting to see in Umā a form of the mother goddess of the Dravidians.

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⁹ Kena Up. iii. 12. Cf. Oppert, *Orig. Inhab. of India*, p. 421 (Umā = Ammā); Hopkins, *Epic Myth.*, pp. 224 ff.

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A goddess who owes her nature to the actual sacrificial food is Iḍā,¹ the offering of milk and butter which occurs several times in the Rigveda, and more often later. Like Aditi and more naturally, she is brought into connexion with the cow, and a cow is used in the ritual to represent her and Aditi, and addressed with her name. She bears the names butter-handed and butter-footed, which express clearly her nature, and she normally appears with the goddesses Sarasvatī and Bhāratī. Agni is said to be her son, because of his birth from the place of the Iḍā, and a mortal man Purūravas is called Aiḷa,² which seems to denote him as an offshoot from Iḍā. She is also connected in the Rigveda with Urvaçī,³ with Dadhikrāvan, and with the Açvins. She figures in the legend of Manu, who after the flood through her generated the human race, Iḍā being called his daughter.⁴ She is styled also the daughter of Mitra and Varuṇa.⁵ Bhāratī, who occurs with Iḍā, is clearly the offering (*hotrā*) of the Bharatas, a fact which accords with the importance of the Bharatas in cult.⁶ Iḍā, Sarasvatī, and Bhāratī are called in the Yajurveda the wives of Indra,⁷ and in the Rigveda a goddess Bṛhaddivā, 'of the broad sky', is mentioned with Iḍā, Sarasvatī, and Rākā, but of her nature nothing more is known.⁸

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¹ RV. vii. 16. 8; x. 70. 8 and often in the Āprī hymns.

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² RV. x. 95. 18; see Keith, JRAS. 1913, pp. 412–17.

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³ RV. v. 41. 19.

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⁴ ÇB. i. 8. 1. 8; xi. 5. 3. 5.

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⁵ ÇB. i. 8. 1. 27; xiv. 9. 4. 27; ĀÇS. i. 7. 7.

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⁶ Hillebrandt, *Ved. Myth.* iii. 377, n. 6.

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⁷ VS. xxviii. 8.

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⁸ ii. 31. 4; v. 41. 19; 42. 1; x. 64. 10.

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