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The Religion and Philosophy of the Veda and Upanishads v1.c21: Chapter 13. Groups of Deities

The Religion and Philosophy of the Veda and Upanishads v1.c21

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Chapter 13. Groups of Deities

§ 1. The Dual Deities

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THE type of the dual deities, who form quite a marked feature of the Rigveda in which some sixty hymns are addressed to such gods, is given by the pair Dyāvāpṛthivī, heaven and earth, the primeval parents. The two individual gods are comparatively little mentioned in comparison with the pair: Dyaus has no hymn, Pṛthivī one only, and the pair have six. Other names are Dyāvākṣāmā, Dyāvābhūmī or Rodasī, in which the male character of Dyaus, never perfectly established, has yielded to the prevailing femininity of Pṛthivī. The pair are two fathers, two mothers. They are the makers of all creatures, but also they are made by many individual gods, Indra, Viçvakarman, Tvaṣṭṛ, or even produced from the sacrifice of the giant Puruṣa. One is a bull, the other a cow: they are unaging, they grant wealth, and are also wise and promote righteousness. They are also conceived as coming to the sacrifice or taking the sacrifice to the gods, but they are not of much importance in the ritual.¹ They have, however, a hymn addressed to them in the Vaiçvadeva Çastra of the Agniṣṭoma, and an offering is made to them by the plougher, with the result that Parjanya sends him rain. The priests liken the two to the oblation holders or the earth to the altar, and the sky to the sacrificial fee.²

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¹ TS. iii. 4. 3. 3.

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² AB. i. 29. 4; AV. xiii. 1. 46, 52.

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Mitra and Varuṇa have twenty-three hymns addressed to them as dual deities: the mythology is practically all borrowed from that of Varuṇa, and the chief point of interest is that the same phenomenon of double invocation can be seen in this case already in the Avesta. The priority of Mitra in the compound name has been argued³ to indicate the superior importance at one time of that god, but the order accords also with the preference of the language for the placing of the shorter word in such a compound in the first place.⁴

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³ Oldenberg, *Rel. des Veda*¹, p. 193.

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⁴ Wackernagel, *Altind. Gramm.* II. i. 168.

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With Indra Varuṇa shares nine hymns: the characteristics of both gods are ascribed to the pair, but also they are found with the warlike deeds given to Indra, and Varuṇa's wisdom is celebrated. Indra appears with Agni in eleven hymns,⁵ as sharing in the Soma, as slayers of Vṛtra and the Dāsas, and also as skilled priests and offerers: once they are called—presumably because of their close connexion with each other—the Açvins. Indra and Vāyu are seven times invoked in hymns together, and practically always in connexion with the drinking of the Soma; the same feature is to be found in the two hymns given to Indra and Bṛhaspati. Indra and Soma have two hymns: the deeds attributed are those of Indra. Indra and Pūṣan in their one hymn are described as the one drinking Soma, the other eating gruel or mush: elsewhere mention is made of their abode, to which the goat convoys the steed at the horse sacrifice. With Viṣṇu, Indra in one hymn divides Soma-drinking and wide-stepping.

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⁵ They are the gods of the new moon offerings, a curious connexion; Hillebrandt, *Ved. Myth.* iii. 294–300.

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Soma shares one hymn each with Pūṣan, Rudra, and Agni. For Soma and Pūṣan, Agni is invoked to put the ripe milk in the raw cows: Soma and Rudra are asked to set free from the fetter of Varuṇa. Agni and Soma are said to have released the stream, obtained the light: one is brought from heaven by Mātariçvan, the other by the eagle from the rock. Except in this one hymn they appear only twice as a pair in the whole of the Rigveda, showing that the close connexion which existed in the ritual and in the later Saṁhitās was not primitive.¹ They appear several times in the Atharvaveda, and still oftener in the Yajurveda, where they are called the two eyes, or brothers, the sun being ascribed to Agni, the moon to Soma. In the ritual the victim which is offered before the main portion of the rite, or in the rite itself, is offered to Agni and Soma, and they also receive cakes, but not a share in the Soma, which certainly suggests that the Soma ritual had been fairly definitely settled before they were united as a joint deity.

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¹ Oldenberg, *Rel. des Veda*², p. 95, n. 3, correcting Hillebrandt, *Ved. Myth.* i. 461; that they denote sun and moon is as improbable as that Indra and Agni are sun and moon. The connexion may be due to a Gautama (cf. RV. i. 93). The two gods were naturally enough connected as sacrificial, and hence the animal victim preceding the Soma offering is given to them.

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In isolated verses a few more pairs occur, Agni and Parjanya as producing the oblation and offspring respectively, and apparently as connected with Dyaus, Parjanya, and Vāta. Dawn and Night appear as sisters, daughters of Dyaus, mothers of order, weaving the web of sacrifice, and the sun and moon appear as Sūryāmāsā or Sūryācandramasā, who are little personified, but who are doubtless meant by the two bright eyes of Varuṇa or the two eyes of heaven.

§ 2. Groups of Gods

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It is a characteristic trait of the Rigveda that some forty hymns are devoted to the group of gods called All-gods, Viçve Devās, and the impression given by the Rigveda is borne out by the ritual in which the All-gods receive frequent attention.² The fact must be carefully borne in mind in framing any theory as to the feeling of the poets as to the rank of the several gods: they must have known of these joint invocations, in which as many gods as possible are propitiated, and the same tendency to be catholic in the reverence paid to the gods is to be noted in the Sūtras where offerings are prescribed to all the gods, including even unknown gods. The Rigveda already shows the tendency to set up individual gods as outside the number of All-gods: in the Sūtras there is perfectly obvious the distinction between all the gods and the older All-gods.¹ The religious conception which lies at the back of it is one which can be paralleled from many religions. By inventing a comprehensive group no deity at any rate could justly complain that it had been passed over altogether.

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² Arbman (*Rudra*, p. 154, n. 3) suggests that the term includes all the gods as opposed to the heavenly gods of the Vedic sacrifice; but this clearly is wrong, the term denoting the whole of the gods of the sacrifice taken collectively.

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¹ Kauç. lvi. 6.

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Of the other groups of gods the Maruts are the most important: they also in the Rigveda bear the name of Rudras. This group is, however, distinguished from the Maruts in the later texts, and its number is placed at 11, though 33, which is the traditional number of all the gods, is given in the Taittirīya Saṁhitā.² The Ādityas, who are seven or eight in the Rigveda, become 12 in the Brāhmaṇas, and are often mentioned especially in contrast with the Aṅgirases, who are rather a priestly family than actual deities.³ With the Ādityas and Rudras the Vasus are invoked in the Rigveda:⁴ it is clear that there they are connected with Indra. But in the later texts they are connected with Agni, not Indra, and their number, not defined in the Rigveda, is fixed at 8, though the Taittirīya Saṁhitā,⁵ by a freak gives 333. In the Chāndogya Upaniṣad⁶ we find five groups, Indra with the Rudras, Agni with the Vasus, Varuṇa with the Ādityas, Soma with the Maruts, and Brahman with the Sādhyas. The last group is a set of gods of whom practically nothing can be said: they are mentioned occasionally from the Rigveda⁷ onwards, occurring in the usual way even in the Sūtras, but except that they are ancient, nothing more is to be learned of their nature.⁸

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² i. 4. 11. 1.

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³ Levi, *La doctrine du sacrifice*, pp. 65, 66.

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⁴ vii. 10. 4; 35. 6.

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⁵ v. 5. 2. 5.

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⁶ iii. 6-10.

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⁷ x. 90. 7 (with gods and seers); i. 164. 50; TS. vi. 3. 4. 8; 5. 1; 5. 6. 1; PB. viii. 3. 5; xxv. 8. 2 (before the gods); AB. viii. 12. 4 (with Āptyas); 14. 3; HGS. ii. 19. 1; ÇGS. iv. 9. 3; BhGS. iii. 9.

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⁸ A triad of gods associated in worship or by connexion of descent is not known in Vedic religion, nor practically in Greek or Babylonian belief; Farnell, *Greece and Babylon*, pp. 180 ff. The current view which finds triads in the Greek mysteries is given in Legge, *Forerunners and Rivals of Christianity*, i. ch. ii. We have only the three forms of Agni, and his three names and casual triads like Varuṇa, Mitra, Aryaman, for which we need not seek any prototype in the Semitic Anu, Enlil, Ea, or Sin, Ramman, Šamaš; the later Brahman, Rudra, Viṣṇu appear only in Maitr. iv. 5; v. 1, preluded by Mahānār. Up. xi. 12. See Hopkins, *Origin of Religion*, pp. 294 ff. Cf., on Trita, Güntert, *Der arische Weltkönig*, pp. 30 ff.

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