The Religion and Philosophy of the Veda and Upanishads v1.c20.s7: § 7. The Wives of the Gods
The Religion and Philosophy of the Veda and Upanishads v1.c20.s7
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§ 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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¹ MS. iii. 8. 4; she receives a libation, e. g. TS. ii. 2. 8. 1.
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² Bloomfield, ZDMG. xlviii. 548 ff.
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³ TS. iv. 1. 6; VS. xi. 61.
Linked texts (3)
- Taittirīyasaṃhitā — Sanskrit
- Maitrāyaṇīsaṃhitā — Sanskrit
- Vājasaneyisaṃhitā — Sanskrit