Vedic Mythology c5.5

c5.5

In the older parts of the RV. individual gods are often invoked as the highest, but this notion is not carried out to its logical conclusion. The fact that the Vedic poets frequently seem to be engrossed in the praise of the particular deity they happen to be invoking, that they exaggerate his attributes to the point of inconsistency, has given rise to the much discussed theory which MAX MÜLLER originated and to which he has given the name of Henotheism or Kathenotheism³. According to this theory, ‘the belief in individual gods alternately regarded as the highest’, the Vedic poets attribute to the god they happen to be addressing all the highest traits of divinity, treating him for the moment as if he were an absolutely independent and supreme deity, alone present to the mind. Against this theory it has been urged⁴ that Vedic deities are not represented ‘as independent of all the rest’, since no religion brings its gods into more frequent and varied juxtaposition and combination, and that even the mightiest gods of the Veda are made dependent on others. Thus Varuṇa and Sūrya are subordinate to Indra (1, 101³), Varuṇa and the Aśvins submit to the power of Viṣṇu (1, 156⁴), and Indra, Mitra-Varuṇa, Aryaman, Rudra cannot resist the ordinances of Savitṛ (2, 38⁹). It has been further pointed out that in the frequent hymns addressed to the *viśvedevāḥ*, or All-gods, all the deities, even the lesser ones, are praised in succession, and that as the great mass of the Vedic hymns was composed for the ritual of the Soma offering, which included the worship of almost the entire pantheon, the technical priest could not but know the exact relative position of each god in that ritual. Even when a god is spoken of as unique or chief (*eka*), as is natural enough in laudations, such statements lose their temporarily monotheistic force through the modifications or corrections supplied by the context or even by the same verse. Thus a poet says that 'Agni alone, like Varuṇa, is lord of wealth'. It should also be remembered that gods are constantly invoked in pairs, triads, and larger groups, even the exalted Varuṇa being mostly addressed in conjunction with one other god (as in 6, 67) or with several other gods (as in 2, 28). Henotheism is therefore an appearance rather than a reality, an appearance produced by the indefiniteness due to undeveloped anthropomorphism, by the lack of any Vedic god occupying the position of a Zeus as the constant head of the pantheon, by the natural tendency of the priest or singer in extolling a particular god to exaggerate his greatness and to ignore other gods, and by the growing belief in the unity of the gods (cf. the refrain of 3, 55), each of whom might be regarded as a type of the divine. Henotheism might, however, be justified as a term to express the tendency of the RV. towards a kind of monotheism.