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The Religion and Philosophy of the Veda and Upanishads v1.c20.s1: § 1. The Nature of Abstract Deities

The Religion and Philosophy of the Veda and Upanishads v1.c20.s1

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English

§ 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.

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