The Religion and Philosophy of the Veda and Upanishads v1.c24.68

v1.c24.68

It must, however, be admitted that this pride of creation was unhappily united with the feeling of rivalry: the gods are not conceived as able to be present at every offering at one and the same moment: they are too like to man to have true omniscience and therefore the sacrificers may compete. It is natural enough to find this idea in the late texts, where we hear often of competing of sacrifices, and devices to undo the ill results of the mingling of sacrificial fires with one another, or the interference of one invocation with another. But it is somewhat of a shock to find that these views are expressed in the earliest hymns preserved to us, that the Vasiṣṭhas complacently plume themselves on having induced Indra to prefer their oblations of the Soma to those of Pāçadyumna Vāyata, though the latter had gone to the trouble of recalling the god from far away.¹ It is a lower and more vulgar thought which pictures Kutsa tying Indra² up to keep him beside him, and the god being induced by Luça to extricate himself from his shameful bondage, but the conception is the same, and it is an essential part of the Vedic conception of the deity.