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The Religion and Philosophy of the Veda and Upanishads v1.c20: Chapter 12. Abstract Deities and Sondergötter

The Religion and Philosophy of the Veda and Upanishads v1.c20

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Chapter 12. Abstract Deities and Sondergötter

§ 1. The Nature of Abstract Deities

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It is unfortunate that no term has yet been found which can be used to describe the gods, who do not rest on the basis of some natural phenomenon or some activity which is taking place in external nature, without conveying the false impression which is created by the adoption of the current term 'abstract'.¹ The idea of the deification of an abstraction inevitably suggest that the god was the production of priestly speculation; that he, therefore, could never be a really popular god; and that it could not be felt that the god was active and powerful to help in the same way as a god based on some phenomenon of nature. This is clearly far from being the case: whatever the origin of the gods which are called abstract, many of them attained in India to genuine and real popular belief, and were every whit as much living to the popular mind as gods for whom we can see a basis in nature.

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¹ Cf. Hillebrandt, *Ved. Myth.* iii. 403, 404. 'Special deities' or 'Sondergötter' expresses a different side of development; 'symbolic' also is inadequate.

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The nature of some of the abstract gods is perfectly plain; they are human faculties made divine, such as wrath or faith. There seems no distinction of principle between the act of mind which makes these passions divine, and that which makes external things or rather activities into gods: that the latter process comes before the former is only in keeping with the development of the self-consciousness of man, which appears to be at first directed on the external world, and then to be reflected upon the internal world in the normal sense of these terms. But deification of this sort seems to have been practised into the Indo-Iranian period, and, therefore, is not a new feature of the Vedic religion.

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A second class of gods who may be called abstract is afforded by the agent gods, such as Dhātṛ, whose name expresses a function which they perform, so that they can be called functional gods. In all the cases which are to be found in the Vedic literature we are able to say with a fair degree of plausibility that the conception formed itself from the use of the epithet in question in the first place of some concrete god, and then, after denoting that deity in the special field of action, it was gradually made into a separate deity concerned merely with the sphere of action in question. This, however, cannot be proved beyond doubt: it will for instance always be open to question whether Savitṛ is really an aspect of the sun, or whether he is god of stimulation who by reason of similarity of nature has been made like to the sun. In other cases there can be less doubt: the god Viṣṇu cannot really be explained as a god of wide stepping: he is a sun god, who happens to have a special sphere of activity.

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A third class of deities is closely allied to the preceding as far as the Vedic religion is concerned. While the agent gods are concerned each with some special aspect of activity, these gods take upon themselves the whole of activity and are therefore creator gods, and universal gods. In the Veda all of them seem to be traceable to epithets of other gods regarded as creators and universal lords, which have been chosen to be the designation of the supreme lord, to the conception of whom the religious and philosophic impulses of the Vedic poets inclined.

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As a fourth class we may reckon those deities who express a state, activity, or condition such as wealth, or destruction and misfortune, good fortune, greatness, fame, strength, or almost any other idea. It is often difficult in the extreme to decide what deities must be placed among the abstract deities as opposed to those which may be held to be concrete: the two classes flow into one another, and no absolute bases of distinction exist or can exist. Nor again in many cases can we know to what extent in personifications we have to do with real recognition of divine powers, nor what conceptions exactly attached to the personifications. It is clear that these ideas grew up in a period when the conception of evil spirits which threatened injury was well known, and this conception may have been matched with one which recognized good spirits which would afford help,¹ and these spirits could be conceived in the most varied and unsystematic forms. The enumerations of divine personages who are asked to aid in many cases seem simply devices to secure the utmost degree of protection for the suppliant: the Sūtras in particular seem often determined to invoke as many and as curiously varied deities as possible, reviving for the purpose gods² who would otherwise be held to be of no possible consequence, as well as providing us with deities elsewhere unknown and unheard of.³

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¹ This phase of belief is that currently termed Animism or Polydaemonism. To trace to it the origin of all religion is unscientific: it naturally connects with other forms as in early Babylonian religion (Farnell, *Greece and Babylon*, pp. 42, 43); it is not earlier than the animatistic worship of natural powers, and it has a different psychological aspect; cf. Carnoy, *Les Indo-Européens*, p. 217. See above, pp. 71 ff.

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² Such as Ahi Budhnya or Apāṁ Napāt.

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³ e.g. Ākāça, ‘ether’; PGS. i. 12. 2; KhGS. i. 5. 31; GGS. i. 4. 9.

§ 2. Tvaṣṭṛ and other Agent Gods

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By far the most important of the agent gods is Tvaṣṭṛ, who is mentioned some sixty-five times in the Rigveda, most often in the late first and tenth books, but also in the family books, though rarely in the seventh of the Vasiṣṭha family, and in the eighth. Like the other gods of the Rigveda he goes to the heaven, and bestows blessings,⁴ but his characteristic feature is the iron axe, which he bears in his hand, and which marks him out as the skilled artificer. He forges the bolt of Indra, and the axe of Brahmaṇaspati, and especially the cup out of which the gods drink. He is, further, the power which shapes the germ in the womb for men and animals alike: he fashions husband and wife for each other from the womb, and presides over generation: so in the later Vedic texts¹ he is constantly mentioned in connexion with the making of forms, and the pairing of men and animals. These texts also ascribe to him the production of the horse.

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⁴ RV. x. 10. 5; AV. vi. 78. 3.

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¹ TB. i. 4. 7. 1; ÇB. xi. 4. 3. 3.

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Tvaṣṭṛ stands in special relation to the human race in that his daughter Saraṇyū, wife of Vivasvant, produced the twins, Yama and Yamī, whence came the human race. He is also father of Bṛhaspati, of Agni, and even of Indra, who, however, seems to have slain him for withholding from him the Soma. Indra also was hostile to Viçvarūpa, the three-headed son of Tvaṣṭṛ, from whom he sought to win the cows: he slew Viçvarūpa, and, when Tvaṣṭṛ in anger refused to allow him to take part in his Soma sacrifice, Indra came and drank the Soma by force.² As Tvaṣṭṛ is himself called more often than any other god Viçvarūpa, it is difficult not to suspect that the connexion of Tvaṣṭṛ with Viçvarūpa of the three heads is due to the similarity of name, and it is perhaps hence that there arises the hostility between Tvaṣṭṛ and Indra: the old character of the Viçvarūpa myth is vouched for by its Indo-European parallels. As son in law of Tvaṣṭṛ Vāyu once is mentioned.

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² TS. ii. 4. 12. 1; ÇB. i. 6. 3. 6.

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In the Rigveda Tvaṣṭṛ is normally mentioned along with gods of similar character, such as Savitṛ, Dhātṛ, Prajāpati, and, less naturally, Pūṣan. With Savitṛ he is twice³ indeed, it seems, identified in the phrase ‘god Tvaṣṭṛ, the stimulator, omniform,’ and the identification with Savitṛ and Prajāpati is asserted in the Kauçika Sūtra.⁴ In the ritual⁵ his most prominent feature is his combination with the divine ladies, who seem to be the wives of the gods, presumably because of his connexion with generation. We hear also of his daughters who cure Indra’s ophthalmic sleeplessness, and evoke him from a cow in which he takes refuge from Vṛtra, thus becoming his mothers.⁶

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³ RV. iii. 55. 19; x. 10. 5.

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⁴ Weber, *Omina und Portenta*, pp. 391, 392.

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⁵ As in RV. i. 22. 9, &c.

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⁶ PB. xii. 5. 19 ff. For the eye motif Hopkins (*Trans. Conn. Acad.* xv. 49) compares the legend in TS. vi. 1. 1. 5; ÇB. iii. 1. 3. 13.

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It results also from the special position of Tvaṣṭṛ with regard to generation that, when in the Soma ritual at a certain point in the rite the wife of the sacrificer comes up to perform an act intended to be symbolic, and productive of the process of generation, she is brought up by the Neṣṭṛ, the priest who stands in the closest relations to the god.⁷

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⁷ TS. vi. 5. 8. 6; ÇB. iv. 4. 2. 18.

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The etymological sense of Tvaṣṭṛ seems clear: it is formed from a root *tvakṣ*, which has a parallel in the Avesta, and which has the sense of fashion, like the normal *takṣ*. Oldenberg⁸ considers that the god is no more than the personification of creative activity, and so far as the Rigveda goes it seems difficult to deny that this theory is adequate. On the other hand Hillebrandt,¹ who, for no adequate reason, suggests that the etymology may be really from some aboriginal word, is strongly of opinion that the mythical conception is the concrete one of the sun, his son Viçvarūpa being the moon. The theory is open as regards Viçvarūpa to fatal difficulty, but there is no objection, having regard to the case of Savitṛ, to see in Tvaṣṭṛ another case of an agent god, who has come into separate existence from being at first merely an epithet of a more concrete divinity. The post-Vedic mythology indeed regards him as an Āditya, but this fact is of very little consequence. Ludwig ² takes him to be a god of the year, but this is obviously much less likely than the suggestion of the sun as a great creative power.

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⁸ *Rel. des Veda*², p. 237. Cf. the German Wie-land, E. H. Meyer, *Germ. Myth.*, pp. 300 f.

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¹ *Ved. Myth.* i. 517; Hardy, *Ved.-brahm. Periode*, pp. 30, 31. Hillebrandt holds that Agni (RV. i. 95. 2; x. 2. 7) as son of Tvaṣṭṛ is the moon.

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² *Rigveda*, iii. 333–5.

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Tvaṣṭṛ figures also in the myth of the Ṛbhus making his cup into four; even if the cup be the moon, as is possible, it does not shed any light either on the original nature of Tvaṣṭṛ or on his connexion with the moon.

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The other agent gods are of very minor importance. Dhātṛ, the creator, is a development, only found about a dozen times, and only once outside the tenth book, of the epithet creator, applied to Indra or Viçvakarman, and often used of the priests as establishers of the sacrifice. He is the creator of the heaven, air, earth, sun and moon, is besought to grant offspring, a clear eye, and length of days, and in the post-Vedic period is a synonym of Brahman or Prajāpati as the all-god. Vidhātṛ, ‘disposer’, is used with Dhātṛ as an epithet of Indra and Viçvakarman once each: it in two enumerations ³ attains a slight existence. With Dhātṛ in its solitary occurrence in book vii is found Dhartṛ,⁴ ‘supporter’, elsewhere an epithet of Indra and other gods. The god Trātṛ, ‘protector’, is found five times ⁵ with other deities, referring perhaps to Savitṛ and Bhaga: the word is usually an epithet of Indra, Agni or the Ādityas. A leader god, Netṛ, is invoked in one hymn only, and asked to lead to prosperity in life.⁶ Of goddesses we have Deṣṭrī, who is invoked with Dhātṛ and Mātariçvan in the marriage hymn, and the class of protectors, Varūtrī, known from the Rigveda onwards.

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³ RV. vi. 50. 12; ix. 81. 5.

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⁴ vii. 35. 3.

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⁵ RV. i. 106. 7; iv. 45. 5, 7; viii. 18. 20; x. 128. 7.

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⁶ RV. v. 50.

§ 3. The Creator Gods

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Two hymns ⁷ of the Rigveda are devoted to the honour of Viçvakarman, who is described as all-seeing, with eyes, face, arms, feet, on every side, a trait which is preserved in the post-Vedic representations of the god Brahman. But he is also said to have wings, and stress is laid on his being lord of speech, and the source of all prosperity. He is styled Dhātṛ, and Vidhātṛ, the establisher of earth and the disposer of the sky, and also the highest apparition.

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⁷ RV. x. 81, 82; 87. 2; x. 170. 4.

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The name is applied as an epithet to Indra, and to the sun as all-creating, and probably it was from the latter god that it developed into a name for the creator active god: in the Brāhmaṇas¹ Viçvakarman is identic with Prajāpati, and in post-Vedic literature he sinks to the humble level of the artificer of the gods. A class of Viçvasṛj gods, all-creators, is just alluded to in the Brāhmaṇas.²

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¹ ÇB. viii. 2. 1. 10; 3. 13; AB. iv. 22.

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² PB. xxv. 18. 2; verse in TB. iii. 12. 9. 7.

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Prajāpati is even a slighter figure than Viçvakarman in the Rigveda, and his name as a distinct deity occurs only four times, one late hymn being given to him.³ In that hymn, however, as it now stands, in an appended verse his supremacy is clearly asserted, and in more effective manner than in the older hymns, when they assert the greatness of one of the popular gods. He is there said to have created and established the heaven and the earth, to be the lord of all that is, the king of all that breathes and moves about, god above the gods, whose ordinances the gods and all beings obey, and who embraces all creatures. The deliberate intention to set out the nature of a creator god is expressed in the fact that the hymn is put in interrogative form, and the answer is given in the last verse. The form of the hymn is of importance as it gave rise to the most weird of the gods created by the Indian imagination in the Vedic age, the god Ka, ‘Who?’ He is in the Brāhmaṇa literature expressly identified with Prajāpati,⁴ but he is also in the ritual and in the Mantras distinguished from that god, separate offerings to this abstraction from a pronoun being duly provided for.

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³ RV. x. 121; 85. 43; 169. 4; 184. 1. For his later history see below, Part V.

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⁴ TS. i. 7. 6. 6.

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The name, Prajāpati, means lord of offspring, and is applied once in the Rigveda⁵ to Savitṛ, who is described as the Prajāpati of the world, and the supporter of heaven, and also to Soma as compared with Tvaṣṭṛ and Indra. As a distinct deity Prajāpati is naturally invoked to bestow offspring, in one case along with Viṣṇu, Tvaṣṭṛ, and Dhātṛ; he is said to make cows prolific, and in the Atharvaveda and the other texts of the later literature his connexion with offspring is regularly referred to. But Prajāpati is essentially in the later Saṁhitās and the Brāhmaṇas regarded as the chief of the gods, and in special the father god, who produces everything, who is the father of the gods⁶ on the one hand, but also of the Asuras,⁷ and who is of course the first sacrificer.⁸ Prajāpati is the hero of the cosmogonic myths of the whole of the Brāhmaṇa period; he creates the worlds and the Vedas,⁹ and the castes.¹⁰ In the Sūtras he is specifically identified with Brahman,¹¹ the god, the masculine of the idea of Brahman, ‘holy prayer,’ or the ‘holy power’. The predominance of Prajāpati, however, is not in the slightest affected by the development of this god in the Brāhmaṇas.

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⁵ iv. 53. 2.

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⁶ TB. iii. 1. 3. 4; ÇB. xi. 1. 6. 14.

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⁷ TB. ii. 2. 2. 3.

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⁸ ÇB. ii. 4. 4. 1; vi. 2. 3. 1.

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⁹ AB. v. 32 f.; JB. i. 357 f.; ÇB. xi. 5. 8; JUB. iii. 15. 4–17. 10; CU. iv. 17; ṢB. i. 5. 6–8. Cf. Geldner, *Ved. Stud.* ii. 139 (RV. vii. 33. 7); Oertel, *Trans. Conn. Acad.* xv. 155 ff.

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¹⁰ TS. vii. 1. 1. 4–6; PB. vi. 1. 6–13; JB. i. 68 f.; Oertel, *Trans. Conn. Acad.* xv. 196 ff.

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¹¹ AGS. iii. 4.

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Of the myths in which Prajāpati figures, the most interesting by far is that of his incest with his daughter Uṣas,¹ who changed herself into a gazelle, whereupon he assumed the form of the male animal corresponding to it. In the version of the Maitrāyaṇī Saṁhitā² Rudra aimed an arrow at him, but was induced to lay it aside by a promise of Prajāpati to make him the lord of beasts, if he did not shoot him. In the Aitareya Brāhmaṇa³ the gods in anger at the incest of Prajāpati make from the most terrible substances the form of Rudra, who shoots Prajāpati in the form of a deer, the myth being transferred to the sky, where the deer, Mṛga, the archer Mṛgavyādha, and the three-pointed arrow, Iṣu Trikāṇḍā, are pointed out. It is apparently a transfer to the god Prajāpati as creator god of a legend which seems in the Rigveda⁴ to be told, though in the most obscure terms of a father, who is probably to be taken as Dyaus with his daughter, presumably meant to be the earth, for an archer is alluded to in that legend. Elsewhere Prajāpati is recorded to have given Uṣas in marriage to Bṛhaspati or Soma,⁵ or to have married all his daughters, the Nakṣatras, to Soma.⁶

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¹ Oldenberg, SBE. xlvi. 78 ff.

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² iv. 2. 12.

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³ iii. 33. Cf. ÇB. i. 7. 4. 1 (Dyaus or Uṣas); PB. viii. 2. 10.

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⁴ i. 71. 5; x. 61. 5–7; Hillebrandt, *Ved. Myth.* ii. 52 f.

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⁵ JB. i. 213; AB. iv. 7; KB. xviii. 1; Oertel, *Trans. Conn. Acad.* xv. 174; Bloomfield, JAOS. xv. 181.

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⁶ TS. ii. 2. 5. 1; KS. xi. 3; MS. ii. 2. 7.

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Prajāpati also appears in other animal forms, which is in keeping with his position as the great generator: his eye swells, and, because it did so (*açvayat*), the horse came into being; he assumes the form of a boar in order to raise the earth out of the waters, a legend which is recounted in the Taittirīya Saṁhitā⁷ and which is the starting-point of the boar incarnation of Viṣṇu, and he also assumed the form of a tortoise to produce all creatures according to the Çatapatha Brāhmaṇa,⁸ whence arises the view that all men are the children of the tortoise. He is also identified with the primeval Puruṣa or giant from whom by the sacrifice the gods created the whole of the world, and also men and the gods.

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⁷ Macdonell, JRAS. xxvii. 178 ff.

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⁸ vii. 5. 1. 5.

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In the hymn⁹ addressed to him Prajāpati bears the title of Hiraṇyagarbha, the golden germ, and this mention of him is itself elevated by the Atharvaveda¹⁰ and by the later literature¹¹ to the rank of a supreme deity. In the Atharvaveda he appears as the embryo, which is produced in the waters on the process of creation. His position is definitely identified with that of Prajāpati in the Taittirīya Saṁhitā, and in the post-Vedic literature he becomes the expression of the nature of the personal god, Brahman, as opposed to the impersonal Brahman.

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⁹ RV. x. 121. 1.

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¹⁰ iv. 2. 8.

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¹¹ TS. v. 5. 1. 2.

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The Atharvaveda,¹² which combines theosophy with magic in the most curious way, is fond of inventing new expressions for the supreme deity. Thus it looks upon Kāla,¹ ‘time’, as the one existing thing in the universe, and again it invents Skambha,² ‘support’, as the necessary substratum on which the structure of the universe must rest, and exalts it to the position of a supreme god. Prāṇa,³ ‘the breath’, is also deified and identified with Prajāpati. Another god, Rohita,⁴ is doubtless really an epithet of the sun as ‘ruddy’, but it becomes identified by the Atharvaveda with Prajāpati: the alternative theory presented by Bloomfield⁵ that it is the development of the abstraction of red as advantageous for all those suffering from jaundice is not indeed inconceivable, but it is not necessary and, therefore, should not be preferred to the more obvious explanation which presents itself.⁶ Even in that text the Vrātya,⁷ who is the un-brahmanical Aryan when induced to enter the Brahmanical fold by a performance of some complication, the Vrātya Stomas, is celebrated as a universal god, a fact which has erroneously been interpreted as an allusion to the worship of the god Çiva by a special section of the population. The remains of the sacrificial offering⁸ are also celebrated as being the supreme god, and naturally so also the Brahmacārin or Brahman student,⁹ as well as other figures. To these aberrations of the Atharvaveda no attention is paid subsequently.

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¹² Deussen, *Gesch. der Phil.* I. i. 209 ff., 264 ff.; Edgerton, *Studies in honor of Bloomfield*, pp. 117 ff.

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¹ AV. xix. 53, 54.

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² AV. x. 8.

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³ AV. xi. 4.

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⁴ AV. xiii. 1–3; TB. ii. 5. 2. 1–8.

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⁵ *The Symbolic Gods*, pp. 42 ff.

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⁶ Hillebrandt, *Ved. Myth.* iii. 407.

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⁷ AV. xv. 1; above, Part II, Chap. 9, § 10.

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⁸ AV. xi. 7.

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⁹ AV. x. 2; xi. 8.

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On the other hand the god Brahman is not found even in the Atharvaveda and still less in the other Saṁhitās. He may be traced merely in such later texts¹⁰ as the Taittirīya¹¹ and the Kauṣītaki Brāhmaṇas.¹² The earlier conception in this case is unquestionably the neuter, Brahman, which denotes the prayer, the spell, and also more widely the holy power, whether embodied in the prayer or spell or manifested in the universe. The transition to the personal god is to be seen in the phrase, the world of Brahman: in its earliest occurrences that phrase may mean no more than the place of the Brahman, but it was inevitable, even if this is the case, that the idea of a personal god, whose world was meant, should have superseded the older idea. But it must be recognized that in the Vedic period there is no trace whatever of Brahman becoming a god of such importance as to supersede Prajāpati. The importance of the god Brahman can be shown only for a period during the development of Buddhism, since in the Buddhist texts we find many references to Brahman as apparently a very great and popular god among the Brahmans. He bears there an epithet Sahampati, which cannot be explained by anything known in the Brāhmaṇa literature, and this suggests that he may have been specially in honour among the eastern tribes of the Indians, and have received among them an epithet which is not recorded in our texts, which are essentially of the middle country lying further to the west than the home of the earliest Buddhism. It is of importance to note that in the Upaniṣads, where, if anywhere, the mention of Brahman as the creator god would be expected to be frequently found, it is comparatively rare, and Prajāpati is the normal name of the creator, and so in the Sūtra texts also.

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¹⁰ Keith, *Aitareya Āraṇyaka*, pp. 304, n. 23; 367; *JRAS.* 1910, p. 216; Windisch, *Buddha's Geburt*, p. 33; Deussen, *Phil. of Up.*, p. 199, who wrongly sees the god in AU. iii. 3. He occurs in BAU. iv. 4. 4; CU. iii. 11. 4; KU. i. 7, often in the Sūtras.

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¹¹ ii. 7. 17. 1.

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¹² xxv. 1.

§ 4. Subjective Deities

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The clearest example of what may be called physical or subjective deities in the Rigveda is Manyu, ‘wrath’, who is invoked in two hymns.¹ He is described as self-existent, irresistible. He slays Vṛtra, bestows wealth, grants victory like Indra, and is accompanied by the Maruts: doubtless the conception is deduced from that of the wrath of Indra as a destructive force. Tapas, mentioned along with him, denotes ardour: the conception plays a part of the utmost importance in Vedic cosmogony, as a refined form of physical heat, but it is hardly directly deified. The Rigveda² also deifies Çraddhā, ‘faith,’ through which the fire of sacrifice is kindled, ghee offered, and wealth obtained, and which is invoked at morning, midday, and night. The Brāhmaṇas³ make her out to be the daughter of the sun, or of Prajāpati. The conception clearly means belief in the existence and the generosity of the gods in its first appearance: its decay in the process of the religion will be dealt with later.

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¹ x. 83, 84. So in the Sūtras Balis are offered, KhGS. i. 5. 31; GGS. i. 4. 10; ApDS. i. 9. 26. 13.

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² x. 151; Oldenberg, *ZDMG.* l. 450 ff.; Bloomfield, *Rel. of Veda*, pp. 186 ff.

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³ TB. ii. 3. 10. 1; ÇB. xii. 7. 3. 11.

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In the Atharvaveda⁴ is found the conception of Kāma, ‘desire’ or ‘love’. He is described as the first to be born, and he has arrows⁵ which pierce all hearts. He is not, however, as far as appears from the scanty notices we have of him a god primarily of human love, though that side of his character may have existed from the first or have been soon attributed to him. In his cosmic aspect, which is in accordance with the theosophic tone of the Atharvaveda the one in which he is described in it, he is probably derived from the mention of Kāma in one of the most important cosmogonic hymns of the Rigveda⁶ as the first seed of mind, regarded also as cosmic. It is not until the later literature in the last strata of the epic that we meet with the Indian Cupid with his arrows, who is described as the disturber of the hearts of men whom he vexes with the pangs of love.⁷

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⁴ ix. 2; xix. 52. For Balis in the Sūtras, see KhGS. i. 5. 31; GGS. i. 4. 10; other offerings, ApDS. i. 9. 26. 13; PGS. iii. 12. 9; GDS. xxv. 4; BDS. ii. 1. 34; iv. 2. 10.

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⁵ AV. iii. 25. 1. Eros in Boeotia is a probable parallel; Farnell, *Greece and Babylon*, p. 181.

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⁶ RV. x. 129. 4.

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⁷ Hopkins, *Rel. of India*, p. 416, n. 3.

§ 5. Deified States or Conditions

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Of these divine figures special interest attaches to Aramati, ‘devotion’, who is also described as the great one: in the Avesta Aramaiti is a genius of the earth and also of wisdom, and there seems no real reason for objection to the view that the personification goes back to the Indo-Iranian period,¹ though it is doubtful whether we can see in the Rigvedic epithet ‘great’ a suggestion that the earth which often bears this epithet was placed under the care of this spirit, and still more whether we can believe Sāyaṇa’s assertion that Aramati is the earth. Another spirit who may with propriety be referred to the Indo-Iranian period is Puramdhi,² whose name occurs some nine times in the Rigveda: she is usually mentioned along with Bhaga, who himself is a representative of this class of gods, but who has become an Āditya, twice or thrice with Pūṣan and Savitṛ, and once with Agni and Viṣṇu. She clearly corresponds to the Avestan Pārendi, who is normally ranked as goddess of plenty and abundance: the view of Hillebrandt³ sees in her and in the Vedic Puramdhi a goddess of activity: the scanty evidence leaves us with no conclusive means of testing either version, especially as the two ideas can be made by a little ingenuity almost synonymous. A goddess Dhiṣaṇā⁴ who is mentioned about a dozen times in the Rigveda⁵ may also be a goddess of abundance or of impulsion. Anumati, ‘favour of the gods’, is twice personified in the Rigveda,⁶ and is besought to be propitious and to grant long life. In the Yajurveda and in the Atharvaveda she appears as a goddess who presides over propagation and favours love, and in the Sūtras she is clearly understood as connected with the moon, denoting the day before full moon.⁷ It is difficult to suppose that this view of the deity is anything but a later conception, for there is nothing to support it in the early mention of the deity. Sūnṛtā,⁸ ‘bounty’, is here and there personified in the Rigveda, while on the contrary the spirit of niggardliness, Arāti,⁹ ‘avarice’, is represented as a demon in the Atharvaveda. Asunīti,¹⁰ ‘spirit leading’, is besought in the Rigveda in one hymn to grant long life.

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¹ Hopkins, *op. cit.*, p. 136; Hillebrandt, *Ved. Myth.* iii. 405; Moulton, *Early Zoroastrianism*, p. 98; Carnoy, *Muséon*, xiii. 127 ff.; Sāyaṇa, RV. vii. 36. 8; viii. 42. 3. That Ara is connected with ἔραζε is improbable.

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² Pischel, *Ved. Stud.* ii. 202–16; Bloomfield, *JAOS.* xvi. 19.

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³ *VOJ.* iii. 188–94, 259–73.

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⁴ Johannson (*Über die altindische Göttin Dhiṣaṇā und Verwandtes*) has based on this deity speculations on sexual elements in Vedic conceptions of deity, which to me as to Oldenberg carry no conviction (GGA. 1919, pp. 357–9).

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⁵ Pischel, *Ved. Stud.* ii. 82 ff.; Oldenberg, *SBE.* xlvi. 120 ff.

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⁶ x. 59. 6; 167. 3.

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⁷ Weber, *Ind. Stud.* v. 229; see above, p. 199.

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⁸ RV. i. 40. 3; x. 140. 2.

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⁹ AV. v. 7.

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¹⁰ x. 59. 5, 6.

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Most of these abstractions are clearly rather thin and feeble, and some at least seem more poetic than living realities. This is not, however, the case with the goddess Nirṛti, dissolution, or misfortune, who is found in the Rigveda¹¹ as a personification presiding over death. In the ritual the reality of Nirṛti appears in the many rites, which are mentioned in connexion with her, and which display certain marked peculiarities. The Maitrāyaṇī Saṁhitā¹ connects with her specifically dice, women, and sleep as the three most evil things. Her ceremonies are performed with black grain or with nail parings. The sacrificial fee in such cases is a black cow with imperfect horns. In the piling of the fire altar, black bricks are built in for her. In the consecration of the king the wife of the king who has failed to give him a child is brought into connexion with Nirṛti, and the oblations to that deity are offered in her house.² Other points in the ritual affecting her will be noted later on.

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¹¹ Macdonell, *Ved. Myth.*, p. 120.

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¹ iii. 6. 3.

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² Hillebrandt, *Ved. Myth.* iii. 406. Following Speyer, Henry (*La magie dans l’Inde antique*, pp. 160 ff.) sees in her a goddess of earth; see TS. iv. 2. 5; KS. xvi. 12; VS. xii. 64. Cf. Arbman, *Rudra*, p. 261. Connexion with Nerthus is most dubious.

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Another deity which is of importance in the popular thought, but which is very late in appearing in the literature, is the goddess Çrī, first definitely recorded in literature in the Çatapatha Brāhmaṇa.³ She was, however, as we know from representations of her which are found among the early records of Buddhist art,⁴ really a concrete goddess in the eyes of her votaries, though there is no reason to doubt her abstract origin. It is very possible, however, that she was assimilated to the goddess of the earth, which as Bhūmi is not rarely mentioned in the Sūtra literature. Çrī appears in the Sūtra literature, where we find at the offering to the All-gods that it is prescribed to make offerings at the end of the bed to Çrī, at the foot to Bhadrakālī, and in the privy to Sarvānnabhūti.⁵ Bhadrakālī suggests of course the name of Çiva’s fierce wife Kālī, and carries us to the very end of Vedic ideas, since Kālī does not occur in any Vedic text: the other two though localized cannot be regarded as in origin other than abstract deities, Sondergötter,⁶ having regard to the somewhat unimportant and artificial character of the place allotted to Çrī, and to the consideration that the names occur only in a list of oblations to the All-gods, and not in a separate list. In post-Vedic mythology Çrī or Lakṣmī is the wife of Viṣṇu, but of these conceptions the Veda save at the close is ignorant.⁷

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³ xi. 4. 3. 1; Saṁhitā references seen by Scheftelowitz (ZDMG. lxxv. 37–50) for both Çrī and Lakṣmī are dubious; VS. xxxi. 22; xxxix. 4; TS. ii. 1. 5. 2; TB. ii. 4. 6. 6; ÇB. xiv. 3. 2. 19 f.; BDS. ii. 5. 9. 10; Mahānār. Up. xxxv. 2; HGS. i. 11. 1.

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⁴ E. g. Rhys Davids, *Buddhist India*, p. 217.

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⁵ ÇGS. ii. 14. 10 ff.

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⁶ PGS. ii. 17. 13 ff.; GGS. iv. 2. 27.

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⁷ Thus such a Sūtra as the Bhāradvāja ignores both.

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Other examples of these abstract deities of the Sondergötter type are to be found in the Sūtras. Thus in the worship of the furrow, Sītā, which is itself concrete, we find that in addition to her there should be invoked the goddess Yajā, who is nothing else than the action of sacrificing, Çamā, which is exertion, and Bhūti which is prosperity: the guardians of the furrow there invoked are probably to be taken as personifications of nature, but conceivably may be treated as mere abstractions. But this constant mention of these kinds of deities with the most concrete is proof that they were not felt to be any different in essence by the people, for whom the Sūtras were composed. Thus in the ceremony of handing over the pupil¹ by the teacher to the charge of various powers the list includes besides Sarasvatī and the Açvins, Kaṣaka elsewhere unknown, perhaps Kṛçana or Karçana is meant, Antaka, Aghora, diseases, Yama, Makha, the sacrifice personified as often, Vāçinī, ‘the ruling lady,’ earth with Vaiçvānara, waters, herbs, trees, heaven and earth, welfare, holy lustre, the All-gods, all beings, and all deities, where the distinction between the older group of the All-gods² and the later conception of all the gods is noteworthy. A very remarkable list is given in the formula of the Tarpaṇa recorded in the Gṛhya ritual as accompanying the close of Vedic study.

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The deities honoured, all in the same manner, are Agni, Vāyu, Sūrya, Viṣṇu, Prajāpati, Virūpākṣa, Sahasrākṣa, Soma, Brahman, the Vedas, the gods, the seers, the metres, the Om, Vaṣaṭ and Mahāvyāhṛti calls, the Sāvitrī, which is treated with great respect in the Jaiminīya Upaniṣad, the sacrifice, heaven and earth, the Nakṣatras, the atmosphere, day and night, the numbers, the twilights, the oceans, the rivers, the mountains, fields, herbs, trees, Gandharvas and Apsarases, serpents, birds, Siddhas, Sādhyas, Vipras, Yakṣas, Rakṣases—all classed as Bhūtas, beings—Çruti, Smṛti, firmness, delight, success, thought, belief, insight, memory, cows, Brahmans, movable and immovable things, and all beings, as well as various teachers and ancestors, paternal and maternal.³ In the list of offerings of the human sacrifice, a pure piece as we have it of priestly imagination, there is ample room for abstractions;

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a Brahman is offered to the Brahman class, a warrior to the royal power, a Çūdra to asceticism, a thief to night, a murderer to hell.⁴ More real are offerings at the Pravargya to glory, fame, strength, and prosperity, and at the Vājapeya to rivalry and desire to succeed.⁵ It is impossible to discern any distinction between such offerings and those prescribed for such more apparently concrete deities as the asterisms, Çravaṇa, Mṛgaçiras or Açvayuj, the full moon in the months Çrāvaṇa, Mārgaçīrṣa, or Açvayuja, the autumn, the winter, the quarters, &c.⁶ At the opening of Vedic study Pāraskara⁷ lays down offerings to the earth and Agni for a student of the Rigveda, the atmosphere and Vāyu for one of the Yajurveda, the heaven and the sun in the case of the Sāmaveda, and the quarters and the moon in the case of the Atharvaveda. In all cases offering is also to be made to Brahman, the metres, Prajāpati, the gods, the seers, faith, insight, Sadasaspati, and Anumati. Āçvalāyana’s list⁸ for this occasion includes besides faith and insight, knowledge, memory, and the Sāvitrī. In the Bali offerings⁹ of the householder we find the curious admixture of concrete and abstract deities; thus Pāraskara gives as recipients Brahman, Prajāpati, the deities of the house, Kaçyapa, Anumati, these offerings being made in the fire; in the water-pot offerings are made to Parjanya, the waters, and earth;

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to Dhātṛ and Vidhātṛ at the doorposts, and further offerings are prescribed for the deities of the quarters, Vāyu, Brahman, the atmosphere, the sun, the Viçve Devās and all beings, Uṣas, and the lord of beings. At the harnessing of the plough we find offerings made to Indra, Parjanya, the Açvins, the Maruts, Udalā-kaçyapa, Svātikāri—perhaps Sphātimkārī, ‘she who gives abundance’—Sītā, and Anumati. The Yava, barley, is invoked to ward off enemies, possibly an idea evoked by the apparent connexion of the word with the root *yu*.¹

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¹ HGS. i. 6. 5.

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² *Viçve* and *Sarve devāḥ*. Cf. AV. xi. 6. 19 f.; Kauç. lvi. 13.

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³ ÇGS. iv. 9; AGS. iii. 4; PGS. ii. 12.

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⁴ VS. xxx; TB. iii. 4. 1 ff.

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⁵ Hillebrandt, *Rituallitteratur*, pp. 135, 141.

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⁶ *Ibid.* pp. 77 f.

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⁷ ii. 10. 3 ff.

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⁸ iii. 5. 4.

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⁹ PGS. ii. 9; ÇGS. ii. 14. 5 ff.; GGS. i. 4. 5 ff.

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¹ Hillebrandt, *Ved. Myth.* iii. 407.

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We hear also in the Kauçika Sūtra² of an enumeration such as Agni, Brahman, Udaṅkya, Çūlvāṇa, Çatruṁjaya, Kṣātrāṇa, Mārtyuṁjaya, Mārtyava, Aghora, Takṣaka, Vaiçāleya, Hāhāhūhū, &c. Of these some have obviously reality of some kind or another: Takṣaka is a famous snake, and Hāhāhūhū seem to be two Gandharvas. We learn also³ of goddesses who weave, spin, spread out, and draw the threads of a garment, of night walkers and day walkers,⁴ of divine hosts and hosts not divine;⁵ in the funeral ritual⁶ Khyātṛ, Apākhyātṛ, Abhilālapant, and Apalālapant are addressed;⁷ and the list of some more or less abstract figures which are addressed as in some degree sacred might be considerably lengthened both from Vedic times and later on, such as the Ghoṣiṇī, who guards the cattle at pasture,⁸ or Dhanvantari, who in the epic becomes the physician of the gods,⁹ and who is possibly¹⁰ an old cloud deity, ‘whose boat is the cloud island’.

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² Kauç. lvi. 13.

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³ PGS. i. 4. 13. Cf. AV. xiv. 1. 45.

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⁴ AGS. i. 2. 7, 8.

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⁵ GGS. iv. 8. 4.

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⁶ Hillebrandt, *Ved. Myth.* iii. 407.

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⁷ Caland, *Todten- und Bestattungsgebräuche*, p. 62.

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⁸ ÇGS. iii. 9. 1.

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⁹ Kauç. lxxiv. 6; AGS. i. 2. 2; 3. 6; 12. 7; ÇGS. ii. 14. 2 (Bharadvāja Dhanvantari).

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¹⁰ Louis H. Gray, JAOS. xlii. 323 ff.

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One collective class is found early, the Bhūtas, beings, whence Rudra derives his style of Bhūtapati, lord of beings. The generality of the term is certain for the Vedic literature; the Bhūtayajña, offering to beings, is generic in character,¹¹ and there is not the slightest reason to doubt that this was its early sense. The theory¹² that there was originally a Bhūtayajña confined to certain inferior divine figures, which, owing to the ambiguity of the term, and the tendency of the priests to idealize the popular religion, came to be made into a sacrifice for all beings, is wholly unsupported and most implausible. The term Bhūt in modern usage has come to denote a malevolent spirit of the dead, one who has existed, and has ceased to exist, but this is palpably not its early meaning; indeed even in modern usage it is applied to nature spirits as well as to ghosts,¹³ and it is impossible to show that in the Vedic period it had any specific sense¹ referring to inferior or hostile demons. The wide sense of beings is natural enough for a religion which saw divinity readily on every side, and is probably merely a recognition of popular belief. It is a striking fact that in the medical literature² the Bhūtavidyā is by no means confined to evils brought about by evil spirits, but includes those caused by the gods. The tendency of the term to become narrowed down to hostile beings in later literature³ is interesting, but not surprising in view of the much more remarkable history of Asura. The origin of the limitation can be traced to the domestic ritual, in which the Bhūtayajña was artifically differentiated so as to create a distinct Devayajña, with the result that there seemed to be some opposition between Bhūtas and Devas, though the original Bhūtayajña covered all those beings to whom it was deemed wise to make offering when man partook of food.

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¹¹ ÇGS. ii. 14; AGS. i. 2. 3; PGS. ii. 9; GGS. i. 4; KhGS. i. 5. 20 ff.; also decisively ÇGS. iv. 9; ĀÇS. iii. 4. 1.

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¹² Arbman, *Rudra*, pp. 193 ff. His rendering of TS. vi. 2. 8. 3; MS. iii. 8. 5; KS. xxv. 6 (p. 213) is impossible.

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¹³ Arbman, pp. 168 ff.

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¹ Arbman, p. 180, suggests Gespenster.

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² Suçruta, i. 3. 10.

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³ Possibly in CU. vii. 1. 2, 4; 7. 1, but this is quite unproved. The wide sense occurs later, e. g. Manu, iii. 93.

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We have traces of classes of Sondergötter in the long enumerations in the Çatarudriya, whether we assume that these classes are assimilated to Rudra or treated as independent objects of devotion.⁴ In either case we have, as in the Roman Indigitamenta, priestly ingenuity working on primitive conceptions. A similar spirit is seen in the elaborate discrimination of aspects of gods, as when the Maruts are separately invoked as Svatavas, Sāṁtapana, Gṛhamedhin and Krīḍin, differences which are obviously rather hieratic than popular.⁵

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⁴ Arbman, pp. 230 ff.

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⁵ Hillebrandt, *Ved. Myth.* iii. 325 f.

§ 6. Aditi and Diti

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The place of Aditi in the Vedic pantheon is very remarkable, if, as is on the whole most probable, she is to be regarded as an abstract deity. She has, indeed, no entire hymn in the Rigveda, but she is mentioned not less than eighty times, and in the great majority of these with her sons, the Ādityas. Of her personality little is said beyond the fact that she is intact, extended, bright, and luminous, a supporter of creatures, an epithet enjoyed by Mitra and Varuṇa, and belonging to all men. She is invoked at morning, noon, and evening. While the Ādityas are normally her sons, she is once said to be their sister, and to be the daughter of the Vasus.⁶ She appears in the Yajurveda⁷ once as the wife of Viṣṇu: in the post-Vedic mythology she is especially the daughter of Dakṣa and the mother of Vivasvant, and of Viṣṇu, but also of all the gods.

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⁶ RV. viii. 101. 15; cf. AV. vi. 4. 1.

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⁷ TS. vii. 5. 4; VS. xxix. 60.

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Aditi is constantly invoked to release from sin: in this respect she stands in the closest connexion with Varuṇa, who fetters the sinners. Varuṇa, Agni, Savitṛ, and other gods are besought to release from sin before her. But in some cases the goddess cannot be distinguished from the primitive sense of the name, which denotes unbinding, or freedom from bonds. The Ādityas are besought to place the offering in sinlessness and freedom from bonds,¹ and a worshipper seeks to be given back to great Aditi to seek his father and mother again.² Aditi thus is asked to release her worshippers like bound thieves.

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¹ RV. vii. 51. 1.

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² RV. i. 24. 1; cf. i. 185. 3.

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Aditi, however, appears in other connexions than the freeing from sin. Not only the Ādityas, but all the gods are said to be born from her : as the sky she supplies them with honied milk. But the Taittirīya Saṁhitā ³ and other texts expressly assert her identity with the earth, and by the time of the Naighaṇṭuka this is so much the accepted version that the word is placed as a synonym for earth. But she often in the Rigveda ⁴ is clearly differentiated from both. Again she is identified pantheistically with sky, air, mother, father, son, the five tribes, what has been or shall be.⁵ Dakṣa, who is her son, is also her father,⁶ and she appears as celebrating Savitṛ and producing a hymn for Indra.

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³ Apparently also in RV. i. 72. 9; AV. xiii. 1. 38.

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⁴ x. 63. 10.

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⁵ RV. i. 89. 10.

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⁶ RV. x. 72. 4, 5.

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More important is the fact that Aditi is sometimes at least conceived as theriomorphic, a fact which is clearly shown by the fact that in the ritual ⁷ a cow is addressed by her name. It is also to be seen, however, in the Rigveda itself : where not only is she occasionally spoken of as a cow,⁸ but Soma is compared to her milk, and milk must be meant in the daughter of Aditi, who yields to Soma as he flows to the vat.

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⁷ Bergaigne, *Rel. Véd.* i. 325.

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⁸ i. 153. 3; viii. 101. 15; x. 11. 1; ix. 96. 15; 69. 3.

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Though rarely, Aditi is credited with the usual powers of the gods, and is prayed to for wealth and other boons : the special gift of light which she bestows may be due to her connexion with the Ādityas.

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The explanations of Aditi differ widely, according as she is treated as an abstract or a concrete deity. Pischel ⁹ holds that she is the earth, but this is not borne out by anything save the view of the later Vedic texts, and does not suit at all the picture of the goddess presented in the Rigveda. Hillebrandt,¹⁰ in fairly close agreement with one view of Roth's,¹¹ that she is the eternal principle underlying the celestial light, urges that she is essentially connected with light and the highest heaven, and explains her as the light of day in its imperishable aspect, a view which agrees in substance with that of Colinet ¹² that she is the light of the sky, thus in essence a sort of feminine form of Dyaus. This in some measure agrees with the theory of Bergaigne ¹³ that the goddess is a development from the phrase Dyaus Aditi, supplying the gods with milk as the boundless sky, but in his view stress is laid on the imperishable nature of the light, not on the boundless space of the sky. Max Müller ¹⁴ takes the view that the boundless sky as the expression of visible infinity is the phenomenon meant. Wallis¹ and Oldenberg,² on the other hand, acquiesce in the view that Aditi denotes simply freedom from bondage. Oldenberg, however, lays stress also on the fact that Aditi is regarded as a cow, and that the gods appear as cow-born and suggest that there may have been a tradition according to which the celestial gods are the offspring of a celestial cow,³ or cow fetish. It is difficult to understand exactly how he considers this concept related to that of Aditi, and in point of fact it is very doubtful whether the stress laid upon the idea of the cow is to be justified by the appearance of the cow in the mythology. It seems rather that the cow is not a primitive conception, but a secondary view.

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⁹ *Ved. Stud.* ii. 86.

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¹⁰ *Ved. Myth.* iii. 408 ff. Cf. RV. i. 115. 5.

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¹¹ *ZDMG.* vi. 68 ff.

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¹² *Trans. 9th Or. Congress*, i. 396–410; *Muséon*, xii. 81–90.

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¹³ SBE. xxxii. 241.

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¹⁴ *Rel. Véd.* iii. 88–98.

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¹ *Cosmology*, pp. 45 ff. Cf. von Schroeder, *Arische Religion*, ii. 400.

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² *Rel. des Veda*², pp. 202 ff.; SBE. xlvi. 329. Geldner (*Zur Kosmogonie des RV.*, p. 5) holds that Aditi is ‘undividedness’, ‘completeness’.

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³ RV. vi. 50. 10; vii. 35. 14. In Greece we have a cow-headed figure in Arcadia (BCH. 1899, p. 635) and Here’s epithet Boōpis (Farnell, *Greece and Babylon*, pp. 76–80).

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An interesting suggestion of the origin of Aditi is due to Macdonell,⁴ and on the whole it has more to say for it than any other explanation of the deity. The Ādityas are here and there called sons of Aditi, and he suggests that, just as Çavasī is found in the Rigveda itself as the name of Indra’s mother, arising from the phrase ‘son of strength (*çavas*)’, applied to Indra as the most strong one, so Aditi was conjured up from a phrase meaning sons of freedom or rather perhaps guiltlessness. The personification would then by a most natural and simple process be invested with the leading characteristics of her sons, as the mother of the Ādityas she would be brought into conjunction with heaven and earth, the universal parents, while she would retain her special connexion with the idea of freedom. In that case Āditya would be a term produced and applied to Mitra, Varuṇa, and the other gods after Aditi had been created, and the original gods, who were called sons of freedom or guiltlessness, would probably be Mitra and Varuṇa, and perhaps some others. It must be assumed that these others had already been formed into a close group before the separation of the Indo-Iranian stems as the connexion of the group of Ādityas with the Ameša Spentas is obviously probable if it cannot be proved, but there is no objection to this view to be raised on the ground of the theory of Aditi here accepted, since it is clear in any case that the name Āditya is an invention of India.

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⁴ *Ved. Myth.*, p. 122. Bloomfield’s suggestion (*The Symbolic Gods*, p. 45) that Āditya means ‘from of old’ is opposed to the usage of the language, and in *Rel. of India*, p. 131, it is not pressed.

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Compared with Aditi the goddess Diti is merely a name. She occurs thrice in the Rigveda,⁵ twice with Aditi, who with Diti is said to be seen by Mitra and Varuṇa from their car. Agni is also begged to grant Diti, and preserve from Aditi. Finally Diti is said to give what is desirable. In the later Saṁhitās⁶ she appears as a colourless deity beside Aditi, except that in the Atharvaveda¹ we find already mentioned the Daityas as her sons : in the post-Vedic mythology the gods and the Daityas are the sons of Aditi and Diti respectively, the common father being Dakṣa Prajāpati. It is obvious that, even assuming that the second of these passages is not to be explained as having no connexion with deities at all, and as merely referring to giving and not-giving, regarded perhaps as powers, just as Arāti in the Atharvaveda is deified, the existence of Diti is merely derived from Aditi, and that it is idle to give any real meaning to such a personality.²

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⁵ v. 62. 8; iv. 2. 11 (both with Aditi); vii. 15. 12.

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⁶ AV. xv. 18. 4; xvi. 6. 7; VS. xviii. 22.

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¹ vii. 7. 1.

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² Bergaigne, *Rel. Véd.* iii. 97; Max Müller, SBE. xxxii. 256.

§ 7. The Wives of the Gods

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In some cases the wives of the gods are obviously based on natural phenomena, the relation of two such phenomena presenting for some reason or other traits which suggest their close connexion : the primeval pair is that of heaven and earth, and on this doubtless the other accounts of the marriages of the gods are in part based. Other examples are also obviously suggested by natural events : thus the wedding of Soma the king as the moon to the twenty-seven or twenty-eight Nakṣatras is a mythical account of the obvious relation of the moon to the constellations in question. Again, the wedding of Soma as the moon with the sun-maiden may conceivably be due to some primitive astronomical views. The making of the Dawn the wife of the Açvins is also explicable on mythological grounds. The wedding of the same goddess to Pūṣan, the sun-god, is also not unnatural.

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On the other hand, there are clearly cases in which the wife of the god is to be classed as an abstraction in the sense that she owes her existence not to any natural phenomenon at all, but merely to the application to the gods of the rule of human life which, in Vedic India, gave the man normally one wife, though it also allowed polygamy,³ a fact which is reflected perhaps in the relation of the Gandharva with the Apsarases as well as in Soma's many brides. Thus, Vedic religion sets beside the god Indra the goddess Indrāṇī, who is merely his wife : the legend which makes them quarrel over an ape, Vṛṣākapi, has been alluded to. Varuṇānī also occurs in the Rigveda, and the wife of Agni, Agnāyī, the names of the deities being fashioned from those of their husbands precisely in the same way as feminine nouns are occasionally made from masculine stems. Rudrāṇī,⁴ on the other hand, is not found until the Sūtras, and, though she plays in the ritual a much more real part than that played by any of these other abstractions, still it is perfectly obvious that she is only a mere copy of her husband. Indrāṇī occasionally receives offerings, and she has borrowed a trait or two from Uṣas, as for instance she is credited with the thirty leagues which that goddess traverses in the day.¹ The Aitareya Brāhmaṇa mentions Senā and Prāsahā as Indra’s wives, obvious abstractions of his nature, and the later mythology gives him Çacī from his epithet, ‘lord of strength’.² As a body the wives of the gods are given a certain place in the ritual in connexion with Tvaṣṭṛ, receiving offerings especially at the new and full moon offerings. Mention is also made of protecting deities who are the feminine counterpart of the agent gods, but who are rarely mentioned.³

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³ Macdonell and Keith, *Vedic Index*, i. 478, 479.

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⁴ Oldenberg, *Rel. des Veda*², p. 218. Çrī and Lakṣmī as wives of Viṣṇu, and Umā as wife of Çiva, have already been mentioned as of more independent origin.

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