The Religion and Philosophy of the Veda and Upanishads v1.c23.s2.63

v1.c23.s2.63

The great gods of the Vedic period are not reduced to demons, nor do they approximate to them: it is true that their names are invoked in very trivial occasions such as that of Indra in an idiotic spell to induce a slave not to run away from his master,⁸ or to secure connexion,⁹ but that merely denotes that the gods were familiar enough to their votaries not to despise aiding them in all their actions. Hillebrandt¹⁰ indeed sees in some passages the tendency to reduce Rudra to the rank of little more than a demon, but, while Rudra is a terrible god and is in some ways akin to the demons, the evidence adduced by Hillebrandt is not altogether in point. Rudra is to be addressed when a man is on a path, at cross-roads, crossing a river, at a mountain, a forest, a burial-ground and a stable, but the fact that he is so to be invoked is expressly explained by his omnipresence,¹¹ and we have here not so much a primitive idea as the extension to every sphere of activity of the great god Rudra, the sign of an advanced theistic view of the god rather than a degradation of his nature. More kinship to legends of demons is to be seen in such a legend as that of Indra becoming a horse's tail;¹² the gods are able to change form at will, a fact of which Indra makes free use in his amourettes, but it is rarely that they adopt anything but a noble form such as the eagle form of Indra, but that god has a tendency to assume popular traits. Kubera, later the god of wealth, is a Rakṣas and lord of robbers and evil-doers in the Çatapatha Brāhmaṇa;¹ in the Sūtras² he is invoked with Īçāna for the husband in the marriage ritual, and his hosts plague children. Comparison³ with Greek Kabeiros and explanation as a mountain spirit of hiding propensities are most doubtful.