The Religion and Philosophy of the Veda and Upanishads v2.c38.3

v2.c38.3

Philosophy in India shows its beginnings as often in the expression of scepticism: the normal belief in the gods here and there seems to have been questioned, and it is not unnatural that the questioning should have arisen in the case of the most human of the gods, him whom the seers most closely fashioned in their own likeness, the vehement Indra. We have not indeed any certain case of a seer who himself doubted the truth of Indra's greatness:¹ no open attack on the god would, we may be sure, have been allowed to come down to us in the Saṁhitā. But we are distinctly told that there were men who asked, ‘Who is Indra, who ever saw him?’ or asserted that he did not exist at all.² There were, we learn, faithless men, who did not believe in the gods of the Brahmans and did not—perhaps a worse thing—give the priests their fees for sacrifice, men who did not believe in Indra, *anindrāḥ*. The pious poets denounce these men and assert in opposition the truth³ of the greatness of the god, but it is improbable that their hymns had the effect of convincing the impious.