V. THE RIG VEDA (CONTINUED).--THE LOWER GODS…

V. THE RIG VEDA (CONTINUED).--THE LOWER GODS

AGNI.

Great are the heavenly gods, but greater is Indra, god of the atmosphere. Greatest are Agni and Soma, the gods of earth.

Agni is the altar-fire. Originally fire, Agni, in distinction from sun and lightning, is the fire of sacrifice; and as such is he great. One reads in v. 3. 1-2, that this Agni is Varuna, Indra; that in him are all the gods. This is, indeed, formally a late view, and can be paralleled only by a few passages of a comparatively recent period. Thus, in the late hymn i. 164. 46: "Indra, Mitra, Varuna, Agni, they say; he is the sun (the bird in the sky); that which is but one they call variously," etc. So x. 114. 5 and the late passage iii. 38. 7, have reference to various forms of Agni.

Indra had a twofold nature in producing the union of lightning and Agni; and this made him mysteriously great. But in Agni is found the first triality, which, philosophically, is interpreted as a trinity. The fire of the altar is one with the lightning, and, again, one with the sun. This is Agni's threefold birth; and all the holy character of three is exhausted in application where he is concerned. It is the highest mystery until the very end of the Vedic age. This Agni it is that is the real Agni of the Rig Veda--the new Agni; for there was probably an Agni cult (as simple fire) long before the soma cult. Indra and Agni are one, and both are called the slayers of the demons[1]. They are both united as an indissoluble pair (iii. 12, etc.). Agni, with, perhaps, the exception of Soma, is the most important god in the Rig Veda; and it is no chance that gives him the first place in each family hymn-book; for in him are found, only in more fortunate circumstances, exactly the same conditions as obtain in the case of Indra. He appealed to man as the best friend among divine beings; he was not far off, to be wondered at; if terrible, to be propitiated. He was near and kind to friends. And as he seemed to the vulgar so he appealed to the theosophy which permeates the spirit of the poets; for he is mysterious; a mediator between god and man (in carrying to heaven the offerings); a threefold unity, typical of earth, atmosphere, and heaven. From this point of view, as in the case of Indra, so in the case of Agni, only to a greater extent, it becomes impossible to interpret Agni as one element, one phenomenon. There is, when a distinction is made, an agni which is single, the altar-fire, separate from other fires; but it is seldom that Agni is not felt as the threefold one.

And now for the interpretation of the modern ritualists. The Hindu ritual had 'the three fires,' which every orthodox believer was taught to keep up. The later literature of the Hindus themselves very correctly took these three fires as types of the three forms of Agni known in the Rig Veda. But to the ritualists the historical precedence is inverted, and they would show that the whole Vedic mythological view of an Agni triad is the result of identifying Agni with the three fires of the ritual. From this crass method of interpretation it would result that all Vedic mythology was the child of the liturgy[2].

As earthly fire Agni is first ignis:[3] "Driven by the wind, he hastens through the forest with roaring tongues.... black is thy path, O bright immortal!" "He mows down, as no herd can do, the green fields; bright his tooth, and golden his beard." "He devours like a steer that one has tied up." This is common fire, divine, but not of the altar. The latter Agni is of every hymn. For instance, the first stanza of the Rig Veda: "Agni, the family priest, I worship; the divine priest of sacrifice; the oblation priest, who bestows riches," where he is invoked under the names of different priests. But Agni is even more than this; he is the fire (heat) that causes production and reproduction, visibly manifest in the sun. This dual Agni, it is to be noticed, is at times the only Agni recognized. The third form is then added, lightning, and therewith Agni is begotten of Indra, and is, therefore, one with Indra: "There is only one fire lighted in many places" (V[=a]l. 10. 2). As a poetical expression, Agni in the last form is the 'Son of Waters,' an epithet not without significance in philosophical speculation; for water, through all periods, was regarded as the material origin of the universe.

Agni is one with the sun, with lightning (and thunder), and descends into the plants.[4] To man he is house-priest and friend. It is he that has "grouped men in dwelling-places" (iii. 1. 17) like Prometheus, in whose dialectic name, Promantheus, lingers still the fire-creator, the twirling (math) sticks which make fire in the wood. He is man's guest and best friend (Mitra, iv. 1. 9; above).

An hymn or two entire will show what was Agni to the Vedic poet. In the following, the Rig Veda's first hymn, he is addressed, in the opening stanza, under the names of house-priest, the chief sacrificial priest, and the priest that pours oblations. In the second stanza he is extolled as the messenger who brings the gods to the sacrifice, himself rising up in sacrificial flames, and forming a link between earth and heaven. In a later stanza he is called the Messenger (Angiras =[Greek: aggelos]),--one of his ordinary titles:

To AGNI (i. 1).

I worship Agni; house-priest, he, And priest divine of sacrifice, Th' oblation priest, who giveth wealth.

Agni, by seers of old adored, To be adored by those to-day-- May he the gods bring here to us.

Through Agni can one wealth acquire, Prosperity from day to day, And fame of heroes excellent.

O, Agni! whatsoe'er the rite That thou surround'st on every side, That sacrifice attains the gods.

May Agni, who oblation gives-- The wisest, true, most famous priest-- This god with (all) the gods approach I

Thou doest good to every man That serves thee, Agni; even this Is thy true virtue, Angiras.

To thee, O Agni, day by day, Do we with prayer at eve and dawn, Come, bringing lowly reverence;

To thee, the lord of sacrifice, And shining guardian of the rite,[5] In thine own dwelling magnified.

As if a father to his son, Be easy of access to us, And lead us onward to our weal.

This is mechanical enough to have been made for an established ritual, as doubtless it was. But it is significant that the ritualistic gods are such that to give their true character hymns of this sort must be cited. Such is not the case with the older gods of the pantheon. Ritualistic as it is, however, it is simple. Over against it may be set the following (vi. 8): "Now will I praise the strength of the variegated red bull (Agni), the feasts of the Knower-of-beings[6] (Agni); to Agni, the friend of all men, is poured out a new song, sweet to him as clear soma. As soon as he was born in highest heaven, Agni began to protect laws, for he is a guardian of law (or order). Great in strength, he, the friend of all men, measured out the space between heaven and earth, and in greatness touched the zenith; he, the marvellous friend, placed apart heaven and earth; with light removed darkness; separated the two worlds like skins. Friend of all men, he took all might to himself.... In the waters' lap the mighty ones (gods) took him, and people established him king. M[=a]tariçvan, messenger of the all-shining one, bore him from afar, friend of all men. Age by age, O Agni, give to poets new glorious wealth for feasts. O ever-youthful king, as if with a ploughshare, rend the sinner; destroy him with thy flame, like a tree! But among our lords bring, O Agni, power unbent, endless strength of heroes; and may we, through thy assistance, conquer wealth an hundredfold, a thousandfold, O Agni, thou friend of all; with thy sure protection protect our royal lords, O helper, thou who hast three habitations; guard for us the host of them that have been generous, and let them live on, friend of all, now that thou art lauded."

Aryan, as Kuhn[7] has shown, is at least the conception if not the particular form of the legend alluded to in this hymn, of fire brought from the sky to earth, which Promethean act is attributed elsewhere to the fire-priest.[8] Agni is here Mitra, the friend, as sun-god, and as such takes all the celestials' activities on himself. Like Indra he also gives personal strength: "Fair is thy face, O Agni, to the mortal that desires strength;--they whom thou dost assist overcome their enemies all their lives" (vi. 16. 25, 27). Agni is drawn down to earth by means of the twirling-sticks, one the father, one the mother[9]. "The bountiful wood bore the fair variegated son of waters and plants;[10] the gods united in mind, and payed homage to the glorious mighty child when he was born" (iii. 1. 13). As the son of waters, Agni loves wood but retreats to water, and he is so identified with Indra that he 'thunders' and 'gives rain' (as lightning; ii. 6. 5; iii. 9. 2).

The deeper significance of Agni-worship is found not alone in the fact that he is the god in whom are the other gods, nor in that he is the sun alone, but that "I am Agni, immortality is in my mouth; threefold my light, eternal fire, my name the oblation (fire)," iii. 26. 7. He is felt as a mysterious trinity. As a sun he lights earth; and gives life, sustenance, children, and wealth (iii. 3. 7); as lightning he destroys, as fire he befriends; like Indra he gives victory (iii. 16. 1); like Varuna he releases the bonds of sin; he is Varuna's brother (v. 2. 7; vi. 3. 1; iv. 1. 2); his 'many names' are often alluded to (iii. 20. 3, and above). The ritualistic interpretation of the priest is that the sun is only a sacrificial fire above lighted by the gods as soon as the corresponding fire is lighted on earth by men (vi. 2. 3). He is all threefold; three his tongues, his births, his places; thrice led about the sacrifice given thrice a day (iii. 2. 9; 17. 1; 20. 2; iv, 15. 2; 1. 7; 12. 1). He is the upholder of the religious order, the guest of mortals, found by the gods in the heavenly waters; he is near and dear; but he also becomes dreadful to the foe (iii. 1. 3-6; 6. 5; vi. 7. 1; 8. 2; iii. 1. 23; 22. 5; vi. 3. 7; iii. 18. 1; iv. 4. 4; 1. 6).

It is easy to see that in such a conception of a triune god, who is fearful yet kind, whose real name is unknown, while his visible manifestations are in earth, air, and heaven, whose being contains all the gods, there is an idea destined to overthrow, as it surpasses, the simpler conceptions of the naturalism that precedes it. Agni as the one divine power of creation is in fact the origin of the human race: "From thee come singers and heroes" (vi. 7. 3). The less weight is, therefore, to be laid on Bergaigne's 'fire origin of man'; it is not as simple fire, but as universal creator that Agni creates man; it is not the 'fire-principle'[11] philosophically elicited from connection of fire and water, but as god-principle, all-creative, that Agni gets this praise.

Several hymns are dedicated to Indr[=a]gni, Indra united with Agni; and the latter even is identified with Dyaus (iv. 1. 10), this obsolescent god reviving merely to be absorbed into Agni. As water purifies from dirt and sin (Varuna), so fire purifies (iv. 12. 4). It has been suggested on account of v. 12. 5: 'Those that were yours have spoken lies and left thee,' that there is a decrease in Agni worship. As this never really happened, and as the words are merely those of a penitent who has lied and seeks forgiveness at the hands of the god of truth, the suggestion is not very acceptable. Agni comprehends not only all naturalistic gods, but such later femininities as Reverence, Mercy, and other abstractions, including Boundlessness.

Of how great importance was the triune god Agni may be seen by comparing his three lights with the later sectarian trinity, where Vishnu, originally the sun, and (Rudra) Çiva, the lightning, are the preserver and destroyer.

We fear the reader may have thought that we were developing rather a system of mythology than a history of religion. With the close of the Vedic period we shall have less to say from a mythological point of view, but we think that it will have become patent now for what purpose was intended the mythological basis of our study. Without this it would have been impossible to trace the gradual growth in the higher metaphysical interpretation of nature which goes hand in hand with the deeper religious sense. With this object we have proceeded from the simpler to the more complex divinities. We have now to take up a side of religion which lies more apart from speculation, but it is concerned very closely with man's religious instincts--the worship of Bacchic character, the reverence for and fear of the death-god, and the eschatological fancies of the poets, together with those first attempts at creating a new theosophy which close the period of the Rig Veda.

SOMA.

Inseparably connected with the worship of Indra and Agni is that of the 'moon-plant,' soma, the intoxicating personified drink to whose deification must be assigned a date earlier than that of the Vedas themselves. For the soma of the Hindus is etymologically identified with the haoma of the Persians (the [Greek: omomi] of Plutarch[12]), and the cultus at least was begun before the separation of the two nations, since in each the plant is regarded as a god. The inspiring effect of intoxication seemed to be due to the inherent divinity of the plant that produced it; the plant was, therefore, regarded as divine, and the preparation of the draught was looked upon as a sacred ceremony[13].

This offering of the juice of the soma-plant in India was performed thrice daily. It is said in the Rig Veda that soma grows upon the mountain M[=u]javat, that its or his father is Parjanya, the rain-god, and that the waters are his sisters[14]. From this mountain, or from the sky, accounts differ, soma was brought by a hawk[15]. He is himself represented in other places as a bird; and as a divinity he shares in the praise given to Indra, "who helped Indra to slay Vritra," the demon that keeps back the rain. Indra, intoxicated by soma, does his great deeds, and indeed all the gods depend on soma for immortality. Divine, a weapon-bearing god, he often simply takes the place of Indra and other gods in Vedic eulogy. It is the god Soma himself who slays Vritra, Soma who overthrows cities, Soma who begets the gods, creates the sun, upholds the sky, prolongs life, sees all things, and is the one best friend of god and man, the divine drop (índu), the friend of Indra[16].

As a god he is associated not only with Indra, but also with Agni, Rudra, and P[=u]shan. A few passages in the later portion of the Rig Veda show that soma already was identified with the moon before the end of this period. After this the lunar yellow god regularly was regarded as the visible and divine Soma of heaven, represented on earth by the plant[17].

From the fact that Soma is the moon in later literature, and undoubtedly is recognized as such in a small number of the latest passages of the Rig Veda, the not unnatural inference has been drawn by some Vedic scholars that Soma, in hymns still earlier, means the moon; wherever, in fact, epithets hitherto supposed to refer to the plant may be looked upon as not incompatible with a description of the moon, there these epithets are to be referred directly to Soma as the moon-god, not to soma, the mere plant. Thus, with Rig Veda, X. 85 (a late hymn, which speaks of Soma as the moon "in the lap of the stars," and as "the days' banner") is to be compared VI. 39. 3, where it is said that the drop (soma) lights up the dark nights, and is the day's banner. Although this expression, at first view, would seem to refer to the moon alone, yet it may possibly be regarded as on a par with the extravagant praise given elsewhere to the soma-plant, and not be so significant of the moon as it appears to be. Thus, in another passage of the same book, the soma, in similar language, is said to "lay light in the sun," a phrase scarcely compatible with the moon's sphere of activity[18].

The decision in regard to this question of interpretation is not to be reached so easily as one might suppose, considering that a whole book, the ninth, of the Rig Veda is dedicated to Soma, and that in addition to this there are many hymns addressed to him in the other books. For in the greater number of passages which may be cited for and against this theory the objector may argue that the generally extravagant praise bestowed upon Soma through the Veda is in any one case merely particularized, and that it is not incongruous to say of the divine soma-plant, "he lights the dark nights," when one reads in general that he creates all things, including the gods. On the other hand, the advocate of the theory may reply that everything which does not apply to the moon-god Soma may be used metaphorically of him. Thus, where it is said, "Soma goes through the purifying sieve," by analogy with the drink of the plant soma passing through the sieve the poet may be supposed to imagine the moon passing through the sieve-like clouds; and even when this sieve is expressly called the 'sheep's-tail sieve' and 'wool-sieve,' this may still be, metaphorically, the cloud-sieve (as, without the analogy, one speaks to-day of woolly clouds and the 'mare's tail').

So it happens that, with an hundred hymns addressed to Soma, it remains still a matter of discussion whether the soma addressed be the plant or the moon. Alfred Hillebrandt, to whom is due the problem in its present form, declares that everywhere[19] in the Rig Veda Soma means the moon. No better hymn can be found to illustrate the difficulty under which labors the soma-exegete than IX. 15, from which Hillebrandt takes the fourth verse as conclusive evidence that by soma only the moon is meant. In that case, as will be seen from the 'pails,' it must be supposed that the poet leaps from Soma to soma without warning. Hillebrandt does not include the mention of the pails in his citation; but in this, as in other doubtful cases, it seems to us better to give a whole passage than to argue on one or two verses torn from their proper position:

HYMN TO SOMA (IX. 15).

QUERY: Is the hymn addressed to the plant as it is pressed out into the pails, or to the moon?

1. This one, by means of prayer (or intelligence), comes through the fine (sieve), the hero, with swift car, going to the meeting with Indra.

2. This one thinks much for the sublime assembly of gods, where sit immortals.

3. This one is despatched and led upon a shining path, when the active ones urge (him).[20]

4. This one, shaking his horns, sharpens (them), the bull of the herd, doing heroic deeds forcibly.

5. This one hastens, the strong steed, with bright golden beams, becoming of streams the lord.

6. This one, pressing surely through the knotty (sieve?) to good things, comes down into the vessels.

7. This one, fit to be prepared, the active ones prepare in the pails, as he creates great food.

8. Him, this one, who has good weapons, who is most intoxicating, ten fingers and seven (or many) prayers prepare.

Here, as in IX. 70, Hillebrandt assumes that the poet turns suddenly from the moon to the plant. Against this might be urged the use of the same pronoun throughout the hymn. It must be confessed that at first sight it is almost as difficult to have the plant, undoubtedly meant in verses 7 and 8, represented by the moon in the preceding verses, as it is not to see the moon in the expression 'shaking his horns.' This phrase occurs in another hymn, where Hillebrandt, with the same certainty as he does here, claims it for the moon, though the first part of this hymn as plainly refers to the plant, IX. 70. 1, 4. Here the plant is a steer roaring like the noise of the Maruts (5-6), and then (as above, after the term steer is applied to the plant), it is said that he 'sharpens his horns,' and is 'sightly,' and further, 'he sits down in the fair place ... on the wooly back,' etc., which bring one to still another hymn where are to be found like expressions, used, evidently, not of the moon, but of the plant, viz. to IX. 37, a hymn not cited by Hillebrandt:

This strong (virile) soma, pressed for drink, flows into the purifying vessel; this sightly (as above, where Hillebrandt says it is epithet of the moon), yellow, fiery one, is flowing into the purifying vessel; roaring into its own place (as above). This strong one, clear, shining (or purifying itself), runs through the shining places of the sky, slaying evil demons, through the sheep-hair-sieve. On the back of Trita this one shining (or purifying itself) made bright the sun with (his) sisters.[21] This one, slaying Vritra, strong, pressed out, finding good things (as above), uninjured, soma, went as if for booty. This god, sent forth by seers, runs into the vessels, the drop (indu) for Indra, quickly (or willingly).

So far as we can judge, after comparing these and the other passages that are cited by Hillebrandt as decisive for a lunar interpretation of soma, it seems quite as probable that the epithets and expressions used are employed of the plant metaphorically as that the poet leaps thus lightly from plant to moon. And there is a number of cases which plainly enough are indicative of the plant alone to make it improbable that Hillebrandt is correct in taking Soma as the moon 'everywhere in the Rig Veda.' It may be that the moon-cult is somewhat older than has been supposed, and that the language is consciously veiled in the ninth book to cover the worship of a deity as yet only partly acknowledged as such. But it is almost inconceivable that an hundred hymns should praise the moon; and all the native commentators, bred as they were in the belief of their day that soma and the moon were one, should not know that soma in the Rig Veda (as well as later) means the lunar deity. It seems, therefore, safer to abide by the belief that soma usually means what it was understood to mean, and what the general descriptions in the soma-hymns more or less clearly indicate, viz., the intoxicating plant, conceived of as itself divine, stimulating Indra, and, therefore, the causa movens of the demon's death, Indra being the causa efficiens. Even the allusions to soma being in the sky is not incompatible with this. For he is carried thence from the place of sacrifice. Thus too in 83. 1-2: "O lord of prayer[22], thy purifier (the sieve) is extended. Prevailing thou enterest its limbs on all sides. Raw (soma), that has not been cooked (with milk) does not enter into it. Only the cooked (soma), going through, enters it. The sieve of the hot drink is extended in the place of the sky. Its gleaming threads extend on all sides. This (soma's) swift (streams) preserve the man that purifies them, and wisely ascend to the back of the sky." In this, as in many hymns, the drink soma is clearly addressed; yet expressions are used which, if detached, easily might be thought to imply the moon (or the sun, as with Bergaigne)--a fact that should make one employ other expressions of the same sort with great circumspection.

Or, let one compare, with the preparation by the ten fingers, 85. 7: "Ten fingers rub clean (prepare) the steed in the vessels; uprise the songs of the priests. The intoxicating drops, as they purify themselves, meet the song of praise and enter Indra." Exactly the same images as are found above may be noted in IX. 87, where not the moon, but the plant, is conspicuously the subject of the hymn: "Run into the pail, purified by men go unto booty. They lead thee like a swift horse with reins to the sacrificial straw, preparing (or rubbing) thee. With good weapons shines the divine (shining) drop (Indu), slaying evil-doers, guarding the assembly; the father of the gods, the clever begetter, the support of the sky, the holder of earth.... This one, the soma (plant) on being pressed out, ran swiftly into the purifier like a stream let out, sharpening his two sharp horns like a buffalo; like a true hero hunting for cows; he is come from the highest press-stone," etc. It is the noise of soma dropping that is compared with 'roaring.' The strength given by (him) the drink, makes him appear as the 'virile one,' of which force is the activity, and the bull the type. Given, therefore, the image of the bull, the rest follows easily to elaborate the metaphor. If one add that soma is luminous (yellow), and that all luminous divinities are 'horned bulls[23],' then it will be unnecessary to see the crescent moon in soma. Moreover, if soma be the same with Brihaspati, as thinks Hillebrandt, why are there three horns in V. 43. 13? Again, that the expression 'sharpening his horns' does not refer necessarily to the moon may be concluded from x. 86. 15, where it is stated expressly that the drink is a sharp-horned steer: "Like a sharp-horned steer is thy brewed drink, O Indra," probably referring to the taste. The sun, Agni, and Indra are all, to the Vedic poet, 'sharp-horned steers[24],' and the soma plant, being luminous and strong (bull-like), gets the same epithet.

The identity is rather with Indra than with the moon, if one be content to give up brilliant theorizing, and simply follow the poets: "The one that purifies himself yoked the sun's swift steed over man that he might go through the atmosphere, and these ten steeds of the sun he yoked to go, saying Indra is the drop (Indu)." When had ever the moon the power to start the sun? What part in the pantheon is played by the moon when it is called by its natural name (not by the priestly name, soma)? Is m[=a]s or candramas (moon) a power of strength, a great god? The words scarcely occur, except in late hymns, and the moon, by his own folk-name, is hardly praised except in mechanical conjunction with the sun. The floods of which soma is lord are explained in IX. 86. 24-25: "The hawk (or eagle) brought thee from the sky, O drop (Indu[25]), ... seven milk-streams sing to the yellow one as he purifies himself with the wave in the sieve of sheep's wool. The active strong ones have sent forth the wise seer in the lap of the waters." If one wishes to clear his mind in respect of what the Hindu attributes to the divine drink (expressly drink, and not moon), let him read IX. 104, where he will find that "the twice powerful god-rejoicing intoxicating drink" finds goods, finds a path for his friends, puts away every harmful spirit and every devouring spirit, averts the false godless one and all oppression; and read also ix. 21. I-4: "These soma-drops for Indra flow rejoicing, maddening, light-(or heaven-) finding, averting attackers, finding desirable things for the presser, making life for the singer. Like waves the drops flow into one vessel, playing as they will. These soma-drops, let out like steeds (attached) to a car, as they purify themselves, attain all desirable things." According to IX. 97. 41^2 and ib. 37. 4 (and other like passages, too lightly explained, p. 387, by Hillebrandt), it is soma that "produced the light in the sun" and "makes the sun rise," statements incompatible with the (lunar) Soma's functions, but quite in accordance with the magic power which the poets attribute to the divine drink. Soma is 'king over treasure.' Soma is brought by the eagle that all may "see light" (IX. 48. 3-4). He traverses the sky, and guards order--but not necessarily is he here the moon, for soma, the drink, as a "galloping steed," "a brilliant steer," a "stream of pressed soma," "a dear sweet," "a helper of gods," is here poured forth; after him "flow great water-floods"; and he "purifies himself in the sieve, he the supporter, holder of the sky"; he "shines with the sun," "roars," and "looks like Mitra"; being here both "the intoxicating draught," and at the same time "the giver of kine, giver of men, giver of horses, giver of strength, the soul of sacrifice" (IX. 2).

Soma is even older than the Vedic Indra as slayer of Vritra and snakes. Several Indo-Iranian epithets survive (of soma and haoma, respectively), and among those of Iran is the title 'Vritra-slayer,' applied to haoma, the others being 'strong' and 'heaven-winning,' just as in the Veda[26]. All three of them are contained in one of the most lunar-like of the hymns to Soma, which, for this reason, and because it is one of the few to this deity that seem to be not entirely mechanical, is given here nearly in full, with the original shift of metre in the middle of the hymn (which may possibly indicate that two hymns have been united).

To SOMA (I. 91).

Thou, Soma, wisest art in understanding; Thou guidest (us) along the straightest pathway; 'Tis through thy guidance that our pious[27] fathers Among the gods got happiness, O Indu.

Thou, Soma, didst become in wisdom wisest; In skill[28] most skilful, thou, obtaining all things. A bull in virile strength, thou, and in greatness; In splendor wast thou splendid, man-beholder.

Thine, now, the laws of kingly Varuna[29]; Both high and deep the place of thee, O Soma. Thou brilliant art as Mitra, the belovèd[30], Like Aryaman, deserving service, art thou.

Whate'er thy places be in earth or heaven, Whate'er in mountains, or in plants and waters, In all of these, well-minded, not injurious, King Soma, our oblations meeting, take thou.

Thou, Soma, art the real lord, Thou king and Vritra-slayer, too; Thou art the strength that gives success.

And, Soma, let it be thy will For us to live, nor let us die[31]; Thou lord of plants[32], who lovest praise.

Thou, Soma, bliss upon the old, And on the young and pious man Ability to live, bestowest.

Do thou, O Soma, on all sides Protect us, king, from him that sins, No harm touch friend of such as thou.

Whatever the enjoyments be Thou hast, to help thy worshipper, With these our benefactor be.

This sacrifice, this song, do thou, Well-pleased, accept; come unto us; Make for our weal, O Soma, thou.

In songs we, conversant with words, O Soma, thee do magnify; Be merciful and come to us.

* * *[33]

All saps unite in thee and all strong powers, All virile force that overcomes detraction; Filled full, for immortality, O Soma, Take to thyself the highest praise in heaven. The sacrifice shall all embrace--whatever Places thou hast, revered with poured oblations. Home-aider, Soma, furtherer with good heroes, Not hurting heroes, to our houses come thou. Soma the cow gives; Soma, the swift charger; Soma, the hero that can much accomplish (Useful at home, in feast, and in assembly His father's glory)--gives, to him that worships.

In war unharmed; in battle still a saviour; Winner of heaven and waters, town-defender, Born mid loud joy, and fair of home and glory, A conqueror, thou; in thee may we be happy. Thou hast, O Soma, every plant begotten; The waters, thou; and thou, the cows; and thou hast Woven the wide space 'twixt the earth and heaven; Thou hast with light put far away the darkness. With mind divine, O Soma, thou divine[34] one, A share of riches win for us, O hero; Let none restrain thee, thou art lord of valor; Show thyself foremost to both sides in battle[35].

Of more popular songs, Hillebrandt cites as sung to Soma (!) VIII. 69. 8-10:

Sing loud to him, sing loud to him; Priyamedhas, oh, sing to him, And sing to him the children, too; Extol him as a sure defence.... To Indra is the prayer up-raised.

The three daily soma-oblations are made chiefly to Indra and V[=a]yu; to Indra at mid-day; to the Ribhus, artisans of the gods, at evening; and to Agni in the morning.

Unmistakable references to Soma as the moon, as, for instance, in X. 85. 3: "No one eats of that soma which the priests know," seem rather to indicate that the identification of moon and Soma was something esoteric and new rather than the received belief of pre-Vedic times, as will Hillebrandt. This moon-soma is distinguished from the "soma-plant which they crush."

The floods of soma are likened to, or, rather, identified with, the rain-floods which the lightning frees, and, as it were, brings to earth with him. A whole series of myths depending on this natural phenomenon has been evolved, wherein the lightning-fire as an eagle brings down soma to man, that is, the heavenly drink. Since Agni is threefold and the G[=a]yatri metre is threefold, they interchange, and in the legends it is again the metre which brings the soma, or an archer, as is stated in one doubtful passage[36].

What stands out most clearly in soma-laudations is that the soma-hymns are not only quite mechanical, but that they presuppose a very complete and elaborate ritual, with the employment of a number of priests, of whom the hotars (one of the various sets of priests) alone number five in the early and seven in the late books; with a complicated service; with certain divinities honored at certain hours; and other paraphernalia of sacerdotal ceremony; while Indra, most honored with Soma, and Agni, most closely connected with the execution of sacrifice, not only receive the most hymns, but these hymns are, for the most part, palpably made for ritualistic purposes. It is this truth that the ritualists have seized upon and too sweepingly applied. For in every family book, besides this baksheesh verse, occur the older, purer hymns that have been retained after the worship for which they were composed had become changed into a trite making of phrases.

Hillebrandt has failed to show that the Iranian haoma is the moon, so that as a starting-point there still is plant and drink-worship, not moon-worship. At what precise time, therefore, the soma was referred to the moon is not so important. Since drink-worship stands at one end of the series, and moon-worship at the other, it is antecedently probable that here and there there may be a doubt as to which of the two was intended. Some of the examples cited by Hillebrandt may indeed be referable to the latter end of the series rather than to the former; but that the author, despite the learning and ingenuity of his work, has proved his point definitively, we are far from believing. It is just like the later Hindu speculation to think out a subtle connection between moon and soma-plant because each was yellow, and swelled, and went through a sieve (cloud), etc. But there is a further connecting link in that the divinity ascribed to the intoxicant led to a supposition that it was brought from the sky, the home of the gods; above all, of the luminous gods, which the yellow soma resembled. Such was the Hindu belief, and from this as a starting-point appears to have come the gradual identification of soma with the moon, now called Soma. For the moon, even under the name of Gandharva, is not the object of especial worship.

The question so ably discussed by Hillebrandt is, however, one of considerable importance from the point of view of the religious development. If soma from the beginning was the moon, then there is only one more god of nature to add to the pantheon. But if, as we believe in the light of the Avesta and Veda itself, soma like haoma, was originally the drink-plant (the root su press, from which comes soma, implies the plant), then two important facts follow. First, in the identification of yellow soma-plant with yellow moon in the latter stage of the Rig Veda (which coincides with the beginning of the Brahmanic period) there is a striking illustration of the gradual mystical elevation of religion at the hands of the priests, to whom it appeared indecent that mere drink should be exalted thus; and secondly, there is the significant fact that in the Indic and Iranian cult there was a direct worship of deified liquor, analogous to Dionysiac rites, a worship which is not unparalleled in other communities. Again, the surprising identity of worship in Avesta and Veda, and the fact that hymns to the earlier deities, Dawn, Parjanya, etc, are frequently devoid of any relation to the soma-cult not only show that Bergaigne's opinion that the whole Rig Veda is but a collection of hymns for soma-worship as handed down in different families must be modified; but also that, as we have explained apropos of Varuna, the Iranian cult must have branched off from the Vedic cult (whether, as Haug thought, on account of a religious schism or not); that the hymns to the less popular deities (as we have defined the word) make the first period of Vedic cult; and that the special liquor-cult, common to Iran and India, arose after the first period of Vedic worship, when, for example, Wind, Parjanya, and Varuna were at their height, and before the priests had exalted mystically Agni or Soma, and even Indra was as yet undeveloped.

* * * * *

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 1: viii. 38. 4; i. 108. 3; Bergaigne, ii. 293.]

[Footnote 2: On this point Bergaigne deprecates the application of the ritualistic method, and says in words that cannot be too emphasized: "Mais qui ne voit que de telles exptications n'expliquent rien, ou plutôt que le détail du rituel ne peut trouver son explication que dans le mythe, bien loin de pouvoir servir lui-mêmes à expliquer le mythe?... Ni le ciel seul ni la terre seule, mais la terre et le ciel étroitement unis et presque confondus, voilà le vrai domaine de la mythologie védique, mythologie dont le rituel n'est que la reproduction" (i. p. 24).]

[Footnote 3: i. 58. 4; v. 7. 7; vi. 3. 4.]

[Footnote 4: iii. 14. 4; i. 71. 9; vi. 3. 7; 6. 2; iv. 1. 9.]

[Footnote 5: Or of time or order.]

[Footnote 6: Or 'Finder-of-beings.']

[Footnote 7: Herabkunft des Feuers und des Göttertrankes.]

[Footnote 8: RV. vi. 16. 13: "Thee, Agni, from out the sky Atharvan twirled," nir amanthata (cf. Promantheus). In x. 462 the Bhrigus, [Greek: phleghyai], discover fire.]

[Footnote 9: Compare v. 2. 1. Sometimes Agni is "born with the fingers," which twirl the sticks (iii. 26. 3; iv. 6. 8).]

[Footnote 10: Compare ii. 1: "born in flame from water, cloud, and plants ... thou art the creator."]

[Footnote 11: Bergaigne, i. p. 32 ff. The question of priestly names (loc. cit. pp. 47-50), should start with Bharata as [Greek: purphoros], a common title of Agni (ii. 7; vi. 16. 19-21). So Bhrigu is the 'shining' one; and Vasishtha is the 'most shining' (compare Vasus, not good but shining gods). The priests got their names from their god, like Jesuits. Compare Gritsamada in the Bhrigu family (book ii.); Viçv[=a]-mitra, 'friend of all,' in the Bharata family (book iii.); Gautama V[=a]madeva belonging to Angirasas (book iv.); Atri 'Eater,' epithet of Agni in RV. (book v.); Bharadv[=a]ja 'bearing food' (book vi.); Vasishtha (book vii.); and besides these Jamadagni and Kaçyapa, black-toothed (Agni).']

[Footnote 12: De Isid. et Osir. 46. Compare Windischmann, Ueber den Somacultus der Arier (1846), and Muir, _Original Sanskrit Texts_, vol. ii. p. 471. Hillebrandt, _Vedische Mythologie_, i. p. 450, believes haoma to mean the moon, as does soma in some hymns of the Rig Veda (see below).]

[Footnote 13: Compare Kuhn, _Herabkunft des Feuers und des Göttertrankes_ (1859); Bergaigne, La Religion Védique, i. 148 ff.; Haug's [=A]itareya Br[=a]hmana, Introduction, p. 62; Whitney in Jour. Am. Or. Soc. III. 299; Muir, Original Sanskrit Texts, vol. V. p. 258 ff., where other literature is cited.]

[Footnote 14: RV. X. 34. 1; IX. 98. 9; 82.3. The Vedic plant is unknown (not the sarcostemma viminale).]

[Footnote 15: RV. III. 43. 7; IV. 26.6 (other references in Muir, loc. cit. p. 262.) Perhaps rain as soma released by lightning as a hawk (Bloomfield).]

[Footnote 16: See the passages cited in Muir, loc. cit.]

[Footnote 17: A complete account of soma was given by the Vedic texts will be found in Hillebrandt's Vedische Mythologie, vol. I., where are described the different ways of fermenting the juice of the plant.]

[Footnote 18: Although so interpreted by Hillebrandt, loc. cit. p. 312. The passage is found in RV. VI. 44. 23.]

[Footnote 19: Loc. cit. pp. 340, 450.]

[Footnote 20: Compare IX. 79. 5, where the same verb is used of striking, urging out the soma-juice, r[=a]sa.]

[Footnote 21: Compare IX. 32. 2, where "Trita's maidens urge on the golden steed with the press-stones, índu as a drink for Indra."]

[Footnote 22: On account of the position and content of this hymn, Hillebrandt regards it as addressed to Soma-Brihaspati.]

[Footnote 23: So the sun in I. 163. 9, II. 'Sharpening his horns' is used of fire in i. 140. 6; v. 2. 9.]

[Footnote 24: VI. 16. 39; vii. 19. I; VIII. 60. 13.]

[Footnote 25 3: IX. 63. 8-9; 5. 9. Soma is identified with lightning in ix. 47. 3.]

[Footnote 26: Hukhratus, verethrajao, hvaresa.]

[Footnote 27: Or: wise.]

[Footnote 28 3: Or: strength. Above, 'shared riches,' perhaps, for 'got happiness.']

[Footnote 29: Or: thine, indeed, are the laws of King Varuna.]

[Footnote 30: Or: brilliant and beloved as Mitra (Mitra means friend); Aryaman is translated 'bosom-friend'--both are [=A]dityas.]

[Footnote 31: Or: an thou willest for us to live we shall not die.]

[Footnote 32: Or: lordly plant, but not the moon.]

[Footnote 33: Some unessential verses in the above metre are here omitted.]

[Footnote 34: Or: shining.]

[Footnote 35: The same ideas are prominent in viii. 48, where Soma is invoked as 'soma that has been drunk,' i.e., the juice of the ('three days fermented') plant.]

[Footnote 36: In the fourth book, iv. 27. 3. On this myth, with its reasonable explanation as deduced from the ritual, see Bloomfield, JAOS. xvi. I ff. Compare also Muir and Hillebrandt, loc. cit.]

* * * * *

Spotted a typo or a problem in this chapter? Tell us

Chapter VI

THE RIG VEDA (CONCLUDED).--YAMA AND OTHER GODS, VEDIC PANTHEISM, ESCHATOLOGY.

In the last chapter we have traced the character of two great gods of earth, the altar-fire and the personified kind of beer which was the Vedic poets' chief drink till the end of this period. With the discovery of sur[=a], humor ex hordeo (oryzaque; Weber, V[=a]japeya, p. 19), and the difficulty of obtaining the original soma-plant (for the plant used later for soma, the asclepias acida, or sarcostemma viminale, does not grow in the Punj[=a]b region, and cannot have been the original soma), the status of soma became changed. While sur[=a] became the drink of the people, soma, despite the fact that it was not now so agreeable a liquor, became reserved, from its old associations, as the priests' (gods') drink, a sacrosanct beverage, not for the vulgar, and not esteemed by the priest, except as it kept up the rite.

It has been shown that these gods, earthly in habitation, absorbed the powers of the older and physically higher divinities. The ideas that clustered about the latter were transferred to the former. The altar-fire, Agni, is at once earth-fire, lightning, and sun. The drink soma is identified with the heavenly drink that refreshes the earth, and from its color is taken at last to be the terrestrial form of its aqueous prototype, the moon, which is not only yellow, but even goes through cloud-meshes just as soma goes through the sieve, with all the other points of comparison that priestly ingenuity can devise.

Of different sort altogether from these gods is the ancient Indo-Iranian figure that now claims attention. The older religion had at least one object of devotion very difficult to reduce to terms of a nature-religion.

YAMA

Exactly as the Hindu had a half-divine ancestor, Manu, who by the later priests is regarded as of solar origin, while more probably he is only the abstract Adam (man), the progenitor of the race; so in Yama the Hindu saw the primitive "first of mortals." While, however, Mitra, Dyaus, and other older nature-gods, pass into a state of negative or almost forgotten activity, Yama, even in the later epic period, still remains a potent sovereign--the king of the dead.

In the Avesta Yima is the son of the 'wide-gleaming' Vivanghvant, the sun, and here it is the sun that first prepares the soma (haoma) for man. And so, too, in the Rig Veda it is Yama the son of Vivasvant (X. 58. 1; 60. 10) who first "extends the web" of (soma) sacrifice (VII. 33. 9, 12). The Vedic poet, not influenced by later methods of interpretation, saw in Yama neither sun nor moon, nor any other natural phenomenon, for thus he sings, differentiating Yama from them all: "I praise with a song Agni, P[=u]shan, Sun and Moon, Yama in heaven, Trita, Wind, Dawn, the Ray of Light, the Twin Horsemen" (X. 64. 3); and again: "Deserving of laudation are Heaven and Earth, the four-limbed Agni, Yama, Aditi," etc. (X. 92. 11).

Yama is regarded as a god, although in the Rig Veda he is called only 'king' (X. 14. 1, 11); but later he is expressly a god, and this is implied, as Ehni shows, even in the Rig Veda: 'a god found Agni' and 'Yama found Agni' (X. 51. 1 ff.). His primitive nature was that of the 'first mortal that died,' in the words of the Atharva Veda. It is true, indeed, that at a later period even gods are spoken of as originally 'mortal,'[1] but this is a conception alien from the early notions of the Veda, where 'mortal' signifies no more than 'man.' Yama was the first mortal, and he lives in the sky, in the home that "holds heroes," i.e., his abode is where dead heroes congregate (I. 35. 6; X. 64. 3)[2]. The fathers that died of old are cared for by him as he sits drinking with the gods beneath a fair tree (X. 135. 1-7). The fire that devours the corpse is invoked to depart thither (X. 16. 9). This place is not very definitely located, but since, according to one prevalent view, the saints guard the sun, and since Yama's abode in the sky is comparable with the sun in one or two passages, it is probable that the general idea was that the departed entered the sun and there Yama received him (I. 105. 9, 'my home is there where are the sun's rays'; X. 154. 4-5, 'the dead shall go, O Yama, to the fathers, the seers that guard the sun'). 'Yama's abode' is the same with 'sky' (X. 123. 6); and when it is said, 'may the fathers hold up the pillar (in the grave), and may Yama build a seat for thee there' (X. 18. 13), this refers, not to the grave, but to heaven. And it is said that 'Yama's seat is what is called the gods' home' (X. 135. 7)[3]. But Yama does not remain in the sky. He comes, as do other Powers, to the sacrifice, and is invited to seat himself 'with Angirasas and the fathers' at the feast, where he rejoices with them (X. 14. 3-4; 15. 8). And either because Agni devours corpses for Yama, or because of Agni's part in the sacrifice which Yama so joyfully attends, therefore Agni is especially mentioned as Yama's friend (X. 21. 5), or even his priest (ib. 52. 3). Yama stands in his relation to the dead so near to death that 'to go on Yama's path' is to go on the path of death; and battle is called 'Yama's strife.' It is even possible that in one passage Yama is directly identified with death (X. 165. 4, 'to Yama be reverence, to death'; I. 38. 5; ib. 116. 2)[4]. There is always a close connection between Varuna and Yama, and perhaps it is owing to this that parallel to 'Varuna's fetters' is found also 'Yama's fetter,' i.e., death (x. 97. 16).

As Yama was the first to die, so was he the first to teach man the road to immortality, which lies through sacrifice, whereby man attains to heaven and to immortality. Hence the poet says, 'we revere the immortality born of Yama' (i. 83. 5). This, too, is the meaning of the mystic verse which speaks of the sun as the heavenly courser 'given by Yama,' for, in giving the way to immortality, Yama gives also the sun-abode to them that become immortal. In the same hymn the sun is identified with Yama as he is with Trita (i. 163. 3). This particular identification is due, however, rather to the developed pantheistic idea which obtains in the later hymns. A parallel is found in the next hymn: "They speak of Indra, Mitra, Varuna, Agni ... that which is one, the priests speak of in many ways, and call him Agni, Yama, Fire" (or Wind, i. 164. 46).

Despite the fact that one Vedic poet speaks of Yama's name as 'easy to understand' (x. 12. 6), no little ingenuity has been spent on it, as well as on the primitive conception underlying his personality. Etymologically, his name means Twin, and this is probably the real meaning, for his twin sister Yami is also a Vedic personage. The later age, regarding Yama as a restrainer and punisher of the wicked, derived the name from yam the restrainer or punisher, but such an idea is quite out of place in the province of Vedic thought. The Iranian Yima also has a sister of like name, although she does not appear till late in the literature.

That Yama's father is the sun, Vivasvant (Savitar, 'the artificer,' Tvashtar, x. 10. 4-5),[5] is clearly enough stated in the Rik; and that he was the first mortal, in the Atharvan. Men come from Yama, and Yama comes from the sun as 'creator,' just as men elsewhere come from Adam and Adam comes from the Creator. But instead of an Hebraic Adam and Eve there are in India a Yama and Yam[=i], brother and sister (wife), who, in the one hymn in which the latter is introduced (loc. cit.), indulge in a moral conversation on the propriety of wedlock between brother and sister. This hymn is evidently a protest against a union that was unobjectionable to an older generation. In the Yajur Veda Yami is wife and sister both. But sometimes, in the varying fancies of the Vedic poets, the artificer Tvashtar is differentiated from Vivasvant, the sun; as he is in another passage, where Tvashtar gives to Vivasvant his daughter, and she is the mother of Yama[6].

That men are the children of Yama is seen in X. 13. 4, where it is said, 'Yama averted death for the gods; he did not avert death for (his) posterity.' In the Brahmanic tradition men derive from the sun (T[=a]itt. S. VI. 5. 6. 2[7]) So, in the Iranian belief, Yima is looked upon, according to some scholars, as the first man. The funeral hymn to Yama is as follows:

Him who once went over the great mountains[8] and spied out a path for many, the son of Vivasvant, who collects men, King Yama, revere ye with oblations. Yama the first found us a way ... There where our old fathers are departed.... Yama is magnified with the Angirasas.... Sit here, O Yama, with the Angirasas and with the fathers.... Rejoice, O king, in this oblation. Come, O Yama, with the venerable Angirasas. I call thy father, Vivasvant, sit down at this sacrifice.

And then, turning to the departed soul:

Go forth, go forth on the old paths where are gone our old fathers; thou shalt see both joyous kings, Yama and God Varuna. Unite with the fathers, with Yama, with the satisfaction of desires, in highest heaven.... Yama will give a resting place to this spirit. Run past, on a good path, the two dogs of Saram[=a], the four-eyed, spotted ones; go unto the fathers who rejoice with Yama.

Several things are here noteworthy. In the first place, the Atharva Veda reads, "who first of mortals died[9]," and this is the meaning of the Rig Veda version, although, as was said above, the mere fact that Varuna is called a god and Yama a king proves nothing[10]. But it is clearly implied here that he who crossed the mountains and 'collected men,' as does Yima in the Iranian legend, is an ancient king, as it is also implied that he led the way to heaven. The dogs of Yama are described in such a way as to remind one of the dogs that guard the path the dead have to pass in the Iranian legend, and of Kerberus, with whose very name the adjective 'spotted' has been compared[11]. The dogs are elsewhere described as white and brown and as barking (VII. 55. 2), and in further verses of the hymn just quoted (X. 14) they are called "thy guardian dogs, O Yama, the four-eyed ones who guard the path, who look on men ... broad-nosed, dark messengers of Yama, who run among the people."

These dogs are due to the same fantasy that creates a Kerberus, the Iranian dogs[12], or other guardians of the road that leads to heaven. The description is too minute to make it probable that the Vedic poet understood them to be 'sun and moon,' as the later Brahmanical ingenuity explains them, and as they have been explained by modern scholarship. It is not possible that the poet, had he had in mind any connection between the dogs and the sun and moon (or 'night and day'), would have described them as 'barking' or as 'broad-nosed and dark'; and all interpretation of Yama's dogs must rest on the interpretation of Yama himself[13].

Yama is not mentioned elsewhere[14] in the Rig Veda, except in the statement that 'metres rest on Yama,' and in the closing verses of the burial hymn: "For Yama press the soma, for Yama pour oblation; the sacrifice goes to Yama; he shall extend for us a long life among the gods," where the pun on Yama (yamad á), in the sense of 'stretch out,' shows that as yet no thought of 'restrainer' was in the poet's mind, although the sense of 'twin' is lost from the name.

In recent years Hillebrandt argues that because the Manes are connected with Soma (as the moon), and because Yama was the first to die, therefore Yama was the moon. Ehni, on the other hand, together with Bergaigne and some other scholars, takes Yama to be the sun. Müller calls him the 'setting-sun[15].' The argument from the Manes applies better to the sun than to the moon, but it is not conclusive. The Hindus in the Vedic age, as later, thought of the Manes living in stars, moon, sun, and air; and, if they were not good Manes but dead sinners, in the outer edge of the universe or under ground. In short, they are located in every conceivable place[17].

The Yama, 'who collects people,' has been rightly compared with the Yima, who 'made a gathering of the people,' but it is doubtful whether one should see in this an Aryan trait; for [Greek: Aidaes Agaesilaos] is not early and popular, but late (Aeschylean), and the expression may easily have arisen independently in the mind of the Greek poet. From a comparative point of view, in the reconstruction of Yama there is no conclusive evidence which will permit one to identify his original character either with sun or moon. Much rather he appears to be as he is in the Rig Veda, a primitive king, not historically so, but poetically, the first man, fathered of the sun, to whom he returns, and in whose abode he collects his offspring after their inevitable death on earth. In fact, in Yama there is the ideal side of ancestor-worship. He is a poetic image, the first of all fathers, and hence their type and king. Yama's name is unknown outside of the Indo-Iranian circle, and though Ehni seeks to find traces of him in Greece and elsewhere,[18] this scholar's identifications fail, because he fails to note that similar ideas in myths are no proof of their common origin.

It has been suggested that in the paradise of Yama over the mountains there is a companion-piece to the hyperboreans, whose felicity is described by Pindar. The nations that came from the north still kept in legend a recollection of the land from whence they came. This suggestion cannot, of course, be proved, but it is the most probable explanation yet given of the first paradise to which the dead revert. In the late Vedic period, when the souls of the dead were not supposed to linger on earth with such pleasure as in the sky, Yama's abode is raised to heaven. Later still, when to the Hindu the south was the land of death, Yama's hall of judgment is again brought down to earth and transferred to the 'southern district.'

The careful investigation of Scherman[19] leads essentially to the same conception of Yama as that we have advocated. Scherman believes that Yama was first a human figure, and was then elevated to, if not identified with, the sun. Scherman's only error is in disputing the generally-received opinion, one that is on the whole correct, that Yama in the early period is a kindly sovereign, and in later times becomes the dread king of horrible hells. Despite some testimony to the contrary, part of which is late interpolation in the epic, this is the antithesis which exists in the works of the respective periods.

The most important gods of the era of the Rig Veda we now have reviewed. But before passing on to the next period it should be noticed that no small number of beings remains who are of the air, devilish, or of the earth, earthy. Like the demons that injure man by restraining the rain in the clouds, so there are bh[=u]ts, ghosts, spooks, and other lower powers, some malevolent, some good-natured, who inhabit earth; whence demonology. There is, furthermore, a certain chrematheism, as we have elsewhere[20] ventured to call it, which pervades the Rig Veda, the worship of more or less personified things, differing from pantheism in this,[21] that whereas pantheism assumes a like divinity in all things, this kind of theism assumes that everything (or anything) has a separate divinity, usually that which is useful to the worshipper, as, the plough, the furrow, etc. In later hymns these objects are generally of sacrificial nature, and the stones with which soma is pressed are divine like the plant. Yet often there is no sacrificial observance to cause this veneration. Hymns are addressed to weapons, to the war-car, as to divine beings. Sorcery and incantation is not looked upon favorably, but nevertheless it is found.

Another class of divinities includes abstractions, generally female, such as Infinity, Piety, Abundance, with the barely-mentioned Gung[=u], R[=a]k[=a], etc. (which may be moon-phases). The most important of these abstractions[22] is 'the lord of strength,' a priestly interpretation of Indra, interpreted as religious strength or prayer, to whom are accredited all of Indra's special acts. Hillebrandt interprets this god, Brahmanaspati or Brihaspati, as the moon; Müller, somewhat doubtfully, as fire; while Roth will not allow that Brihaspati has anything to do with natural phenomena, but considers him to have been from the beginning 'lord of prayer.' With this view we partly concur, but we would make the important modification that the god was lord of prayer only as priestly abstraction Indra in his higher development. It is from this god is come probably the head of the later trinity, Brahm[=a], through personified brahma, power; prayer, with its philosophical development into the Absolute. Noteworthy is the fact that some of the Vedic Aryans, despite his high pretensions, do not quite like Brihaspati, and look on him as a suspicious novelty. If one study Brihaspati in the hymns, it will be difficult not to see in him simply a sacerdotal Indra. He breaks the demon's power; crushes the foes of man; consumes the demons with a sharp bolt; disperses darkness; drives forth the 'cows'; gives offspring and riches; helps in battle; discovers Dawn and Agni; has a band (like Maruts) singing about him; he is red and golden, and is identified with fire. Although 'father of gods,' he is begotten of Tvashtar, the artificer.[23]

Weber has suggested (V[=a]japeya Sacrifice, p. 15), that Brihaspati takes Indra's place, and this seems to be the true solution, Indra as interpreted mystically by priests. In RV. i. 190, Brihaspati is looked upon by 'sinners' as a new god of little value. Other minor deities can be mentioned only briefly, chiefly that the extent of the pantheon may be seen. For the history of religion they are of only collective importance. The All-gods play an important part in the sacrifice, a group of 'all the gods,' a priestly manufacture to the end that no god may be omitted in laudations that would embrace all the gods. The later priests attempt to identify these gods with the clans, 'the All-gods are the clans' (Çat. Br. v. 5. 1.10), on the basis of a theological pun, the clans, viças, being equated with the word for all, viçve. Some modern scholars follow these later priests, but without reason. Had these been special clan-gods, they would have had special names, and would not have appeared in a group alone.

The later epic has a good deal to say about some lovely nymphs called the Apsarasas, of whom it mentions six as chief (Urvaç[=i], Menak[=a], etc.).[24] They fall somewhat in the epic from their Vedic estate, but they are never more than secondary figures, love-goddesses, beloved of the Gandharvas who later are the singing guardians of the moon, and, like the lunar stations, twenty-seven in number. The Rik knows at first but one Gandharva (an inferior genius, mentioned in but one family-book), who guards Soma's path, and, when Soma becomes the moon, is identified with him, ix. 86. 36. As in the Avesta, Gandharva is (the moon as) an evil spirit also; but always as a second-rate power, to whom are ascribed magic (and madness, later). He has virtually no cult except in soma-hymns, and shows clearly the first Aryan conception of the moon as a demoniac power, potent over women, and associated with waters.

Mountains, and especially rivers, are holy, and of course are deified. Primitive belief generally deifies rivers. But in the great river-hymn in the Rig Veda there is probably as much pure poetry as prayer. The Vedic poet half believed in the rivers' divinity, and sings how they 'rush forth like armies,' but it will not do to inquire too strictly in regard to his belief.

He was a poet, and did not expect to be catechized. Of female divinities there are several of which the nature is doubtful. As Dawn or Storm have been interpreted Saram[=a] and Sarany[=u], both meaning 'runner.' The former is Indra's dog, and her litter is the dogs of Yama. One little poem, rather than hymn, celebrates the 'wood-goddess' in pretty verses of playful and descriptive character.

Long before there was any formal recognition of the dogma that all gods are one, various gods had been identified by the Vedic poets. Especially, as most naturally, was this the case when diverse gods having different names were similar in any way, such as Indra and Agni, whose glory is fire; or Varuna and Mitra, whose seat is the sky. From this casual union of like pairs comes the peculiar custom of invoking two gods as one. But even in the case of gods not so radically connected, if their functions were mutually approximate, each in turn became credited with his neighbor's acts. If the traits were similar which characterized each, if the circles of activity overlapped at all, then those divinities that originally were tangent to each other gradually became concentric, and eventually were united. And so the lines between the gods were wiped out, as it were, by their conceptions crowding upon one another. There was another factor, however, in the development of this unconscious, or, at least, unacknowledged, pantheism. Aided by the likeness or identity of attributes in Indra, Savitar, Agni, Mitra, and other gods, many of which were virtually the same under a different designation, the priests, ever prone to extravagance of word, soon began to attribute, regardless of strict propriety, every power to every god. With the exception of some of the older divinities, whose forms, as they are less complex, retain throughout the simplicity of their primitive character, few gods escaped this adoration, which tended to make them all universally supreme, each being endowed with all the attributes of godhead. One might think that no better fate could happen to a god than thus to be magnified. But when each god in the pantheon was equally glorified, the effect on the whole was disastrous. In fact, it was the death of the gods whom it was the intention of the seers to exalt. And the reason is plain. From this universal praise it resulted that the individuality of each god became less distinct; every god was become, so to speak, any god, so far as his peculiar attributes made him a god at all, so that out of the very praise that was given to him and his confreres alike there arose the idea of the abstract godhead, the god who was all the gods, the one god. As a pure abstraction one finds thus Aditi, as equivalent to 'all the gods,'[25] and then the more personal idea of the god that is father of all, which soon becomes the purely personal All-god. It is at this stage where begins conscious premeditated pantheism, which in its first beginnings is more like monotheism, although in India there is no monotheism which does not include devout polytheism, as will be seen in the review of the formal philosophical systems of religion.

It is thus that we have attempted elsewhere[26] to explain that phase of Hindu religion which Müller calls henotheism.

Müller, indeed, would make of henotheism a new religion, but this, the worshipping of each divinity in turn as if it were the greatest and even the only god recognized, is rather the result of the general tendency to exaltation, united with pantheistic beginnings. Granting that pure polytheism is found in a few hymns, one may yet say that this polytheism, with an accompaniment of half-acknowledged chrematheism, passed soon into the belief that several divinities were ultimately and essentially but one, which may be described as homoiotheism; and that the poets of the Rig Veda were unquestionably esoterically unitarians to a much greater extent and in an earlier period than has generally been acknowledged. Most of the hymns of the Rig Veda were composed under the influence of that unification of deities and tendency to a quasi-monotheism, which eventually results both in philosophical pantheism, and in the recognition at the same time of a personal first cause. To express the difference between Hellenic polytheism and the polytheism of the Rig Veda the latter should be called, if by any new term, rather by a name like pantheistic polytheism, than by the somewhat misleading word henotheism. What is novel in it is that it represents the fading of pure polytheism and the engrafting, upon a polytheistic stock, of a speculative homoiousian tendency soon to bud out as philosophic pantheism.

The admission that other gods exist does not nullify the attitude of tentative monotheism. "Who is like unto thee, O Lord, among the gods?" asks Moses, and his father-in-law, when converted to the new belief, says: "Now I know that the Lord is greater than all gods."[27] But this is not the quasi-monotheism of the Hindu, to whom the other gods were real and potent factors, individually distinct from the one supreme god, who represents the All-god, but is at once abstract and concrete.

Pantheism in the Rig Veda comes out clearly only in one or two passages: "The priests represent in many ways the (sun) bird that is one"; and (cited above) "They speak of him as Indra, Mitra, Varuna, Agni, ... that which is but one they call variously." So, too, in the Atharvan it is said that Varuna (here a pantheistic god) is "in the little drop of water,"[28] as in the Rik the spark of material fire is identified with the sun.

The new belief is voiced chiefly in that portion of the Rig Veda which appears to be latest and most Brahmanic in tone.

Here a supreme god is described under the name of "Lord of Beings," the "All-maker," "The Golden Germ," the "God over gods, the spirit of their being" (x. 121). The last, a famous hymn, Müller entitles "To the Unknown God." It may have been intended, as has been suggested, for a theological puzzle,[29] but its language evinces that in whatever form it is couched--each verse ends with the refrain, 'To what god shall we offer sacrifice?' till the last verse answers the question, saying, 'the Lord of beings'--it is meant to raise the question of a supreme deity and leave it unanswered in terms of a nature-religion, though the germ is at bottom fire: "In the beginning arose the Golden Germ; as soon as born he became the Lord of All. He established earth and heaven--to what god shall we offer sacrifice? He who gives breath, strength, whose command the shining gods obey; whose shadow is life and death.... When the great waters went everywhere holding the germ and generating light, then arose from them the one spirit (breath) of the gods.... May he not hurt us, he the begetter of earth, the holy one who begot heaven ... Lord of beings, thou alone embracest all things ..."

In this closing period of the Rig Veda--a period which in many ways, the sudden completeness of caste, the recognition of several Vedas, etc., is much farther removed from the beginning of the work than it is from the period of Brahmanic speculation--philosophy is hard at work upon the problems of the origin of gods and of being. As in the last hymn, water is the origin of all things; out of this springs fire, and the wind which is the breath of god. So in the great hymn of creation: "There was then neither not-being nor being; there was no atmosphere, no sky. What hid (it)? Where and in the protection of what? Was it water, deep darkness? There was no death nor immortality. There was no difference between night and day. That One breathed ... nothing other than this or above it existed. Darkness was concealed in darkness in the beginning. Undifferentiated water was all this (universe)." Creation is then declared to have arisen by virtue of desire, which, in the beginning was the origin of mind;[30] and "the gods," it is said further, "were created after this." Whether entity springs from non-entity or vice versa is discussed in another hymn of the same book.[31] The most celebrated of the pantheistic hymns is that in which the universe is regarded as portions of the deity conceived as the primal Person: "Purusha (the Male Person) is this all, what has been and will be ... all created things are a fourth of him; that which is immortal in the sky is three-fourths of him." The hymn is too well known to be quoted entire. All the castes, all gods, all animals, and the three (or four) Vedas are parts of him.[32]

Such is the mental height to which the seers have raised themselves before the end of the Rig Veda. The figure of the Father-god, Praj[=a]pati, 'lord of beings,' begins here; at first an epithet of Savitar, and finally the type of the head of a pantheon, such as one finds him to be in the Br[=a]hmanas. In one hymn only (x. 121) is Praj[=a]pati found as the personal Father-god and All-god. At a time when philosophy created the one Universal Male Person, the popular religion, keeping pace, as far as it could, with philosophy, invented the more anthropomorphized, more human, Father-god--whose name is ultimately interpreted as an interrogation, God Who? This trait lasts from now on through all speculation. The philosopher conceived of a first source. The vulgar made it a personal god.

One of the most remarkable hymns of this epoch is that on V[=a]c, Speech, or The Word. Weber has sought in this the prototype of the Logos doctrine (below). The Word, V[=a]c (feminine) is introduced as speaking (x. 125):

I wander with the Rudras, with the Vasus,[33] with the [=A]dityas, and with all the gods; I support Mitra, Va['r]una, Indra-Agni, and the twin Açvins ... I give wealth to him that gives sacrifice, to him that presses the soma. I am the queen, the best of those worthy of sacrifice ... The gods have put me in many places ... I am that through which one eats, breathes, sees, and hears ... Him that I love I make strong, to be a priest, a seer, a wise man. 'Tis I bend Rudra's bow to hit the unbeliever; I prepare war for the people; I am entered into heaven and earth. I beget the father of this (all) on the height; my place is in the waters, the sea; thence I extend myself among all creatures and touch heaven with my crown. Even I blow like the wind, encompassing all creatures. Above heaven and above earth, so great am I grown in majesty.

This is almost Vedantic pantheism with the Vishnuite doctrine of 'special grace' included.

The moral tone of this period--if period it may be called--may best be examined after one has studied the idea which the Vedic Hindu has formed of the life hereafter. The happiness of heaven will be typical of what he regards as best here. Bliss beyond the grave depends in turn upon the existence of the spirit after death, and, that the reader may understand this, we must say a few words in regard to the Manes, or fathers dead. "Father Manu," as he is called,[34] was the first 'Man.' Subsequently he is the secondary parent as a kind of Noah; but Yama, in later tradition his brother, has taken his place as norm of the departed fathers, Pitaras.

These Fathers (Manes), although of different sort than the gods, are yet divine and have many godly powers, granting prayers and lending aid, as may be seen from this invocation: "O Fathers, may the sky-people grant us life; may we follow the course of the living" (x. 57. 5). One whole hymn is addressed to these quasi-divinities (x. 15):

Arise may the lowest, the highest, the middlemost Fathers, those worthy of the soma, who without harm have entered into the spirit (-world); may these Fathers, knowing the seasons, aid us at our call. This reverence be to-day to the Fathers, who of old and afterwards departed; those who have settled in an earthly sphere,[35] or among peoples living in fair places (the gods?). I have found the gracious Fathers, the descendant(s) and the wide-step[36] of Vishnu; those who, sitting on the sacrificial straw, willingly partake of the pressed drink, these are most apt to come hither.... Come hither with blessings, O Fathers; may they come hither, hear us, address and bless us.... May ye not injure us for whatever impiety we have as men committed.... With those who are our former Fathers, those worthy of soma, who are come to the soma drink, the best (fathers), may Yama rejoicing, willingly with them that are willing, eat the oblations as much as is agreeable (to them). Come running, O Agni, with these (fathers), who thirsted among the gods and hastened hither, finding oblations and praised with songs. These gracious ones, the real poets, the Fathers that seat themselves at the sacrificial heat; who are real eaters of oblation; drinkers of oblation; and are set together on one chariot with Indra and the gods. Come, O Agni, with these, a thousand, honored like gods, the ancient, the original Fathers who seat themselves at the sacrificial heat.... Thou, Agni, didst give the oblations to the Fathers, that eat according to their custom; do thou (too) eat, O god, the oblation offered (to thee). Thou knowest, O thou knower (or finder) of beings, how many are the Fathers--those who are here, and who are not here, of whom we know, and of whom we know not. According to custom eat thou the well-made sacrifice. With those who, burned in fire or not burned, (now) enjoy themselves according to custom in the middle of the sky, do thou, being the lord, form (for us) a spirit life, a body according to (our) wishes.[37]

Often the Fathers are invoked in similar language in the hymn to the "All-gods" mentioned above, and occasionally no distinction is to be noticed between the powers and attributes of the Fathers and those of the gods. The Fathers, like the luminous gods, "give light" (x. 107. 1). Exactly like the gods, they are called upon to aid the living, and even 'not to harm' (iii. 55. 2; x. 15. 6). According to one verse, the Fathers have not attained the greatness of the gods, who impart strength only to the gods.[38]

The Fathers are kept distinct from the gods. When the laudations bestowed upon the former are of unequivocal character there is no confusion between the two.[39]

The good dead, to get to the paradise awaiting them, pass over water (X. 63. 10), and a bridge (ix. 41. 2). Here, by the gift of the gods, not by inherent capacity, they obtain immortality. He that believes on Agni, sings: "Thou puttest the mortal in highest immortality, O Agni"; and, accordingly, there is no suggestion that heavenly joys may cease; nor is there in this age any notion of a Götterdämmerung. Immortality is described as "continuing life in the highest sky," another proof that when formulated the doctrine was that the soul of the dead lives in heaven or in the sun.[40]

Other cases of immortality granted by different gods are recorded by Muir and Zimmer. Yet in one passage the words, "two paths I have heard of the Fathers (exist), of the gods and of mortals," may mean that the Fathers go the way of mortals or that of gods, rather than, as is the usual interpretation, that mortals have two paths, one of the Fathers and one of the gods,[41] for the dead may live on earth or in the air as well as in heaven. When a good man dies his breath, it is said, goes to the wind, his eye to the sun, etc.[42]--each part to its appropriate prototype--while the "unborn part" is carried "to the world of the righteous," after having been burned and heated by the funeral fire. All these parts are restored to the soul, however, and Agni and Soma return to it what has been injured. With this Muir compares a passage in the Atharva Veda where it is said that the Manes in heaven rejoice with all their limbs.[43] We dissent, therefore, wholly from Barth, who declares that the dead are conceived of as "resting forever in the tomb, the narrow house of clay." The only passage cited to prove this is X. 18. 10-13, where are the words (addressed to the dead man at the burial): "Go now to mother earth ... she shall guard thee from destruction's lap ... Open wide, O earth, be easy of access; as a mother her son cover this man, O earth," etc. Ending with the verse quoted above: "May the Fathers hold the pillar and Yama there build thee a seat."[44] The following is also found in the Rig Veda bearing on this point: the prayer that one may meet his parents after death; the statement that a generous man goes to the gods; and a suggestion of the later belief that one wins immortality by means of a son.[45]

The joys of paradise are those of earth; and heaven is thus described, albeit in a late hymn:[46] "Where is light inexhaustible; in the world where is placed the shining sky; set me in this immortal, unending world, O thou that purifiest thyself (Soma); where is king (Yama), the son of Vivasvant, and the paradise of the sky;[47] where are the flowing waters; there make me immortal. Where one can go as he will; in the third heaven, the third vault of the sky; where are worlds full of light, there make me immortal; where are wishes and desires and the red (sun)'s highest place; where one can follow his own habits [48] and have satisfaction; there make me immortal; where exist delight, joy, rejoicing, and joyance; where wishes are obtained, there make me immortal."[49] Here, as above, the saints join the Fathers, 'who guard the sun.'

There is a 'bottomless darkness' occasionally referred to as a place where evil spirits are to be sent by the gods; and a 'deep place' is mentioned as the portion of 'evil, false, untruthful men'; while Soma casts into 'a hole' (abyss) those that are irreligious.[50]

As darkness is hell to the Hindu, and as in all later time the demons are spirits of darkness, it is rather forced not to see in these allusions a misty hell, without torture indeed, but a place for the bad either 'far away,' as it is sometimes said (par[=a]váti), or 'deep down,' 'under three earths,' exactly as the Greek has a hell below and one on the edge of the earth. Ordinarily, however, the gods are requested simply to annihilate offenders. It is plain, as Zimmer says, from the office of Yama's dogs, that they kept out of paradise unworthy souls; so that the annihilation cannot have been imagined to be purely corporeal. But heaven is not often described, and hell never, in this period. Yet, when the paradise desired is described, it is a place where earthly joys are prolonged and intensified. Zimmer argues that a race which believes in good for the good hereafter must logically believe in punishment for the wicked, and Scherman, strangely enough, agrees with this pedantic opinion.[51] If either of these scholars had looked away from India to the western Indians he would have seen that, whereas almost all American Indians believe in a happy hereafter for good warriors, only a very few tribes have any belief in punishment for the bad. At most a Niflheim awaits the coward. Weber thinks the Aryans already believed in a personal immortality, and we agree with him. Whitney's belief that hell was not known before the Upanishad period (in his translations of the Katha Upanishad) is correct only if by hell torture is meant, and if the Atharvan is later than this Upanishad, which is improbable.

The good dead in the Rig Veda return with Yama to the sacrifice to enjoy the soma and viands prepared for them by their descendants. Hence the whole belief in the necessity of a son in order to the obtaining of a joyful hereafter. What the rite of burial was to the Greek, a son was to the Hindu, a means of bliss in heaven. Roth apparently thinks that the Rig Veda's heaven is one that can best be described in Dr. Watt's hymn:

There is a land of pure delight Where saints immortal reign, Eternal day excludes the night, And pleasures banish pain;

and that especial stress should be laid on the word 'pure.' But there is very little teaching of personal purity in the Veda, and the poet who hopes for a heaven where he is to find 'longing women,' 'desire and its fulfillment' has in mind, in all probability, purely impure delights. It is not to be assumed that the earlier morality surpassed that of the later day, when, even in the epic, the hero's really desired heaven is one of drunkenness and women ad libitum. Of the 'good man' in the Rig Veda are demanded piety toward gods and manes and liberality to priests; truthfulness and courage; and in the end of the work there is a suggestion of ascetic 'goodness' by means of tapas, austerity.[52] Grassman cites one hymn as dedicated to

'Mercy.' It is really (not a hymn and) not on mercy, but a poem praising generosity. This generosity, however (and in general this is true of the whole people), is not general generosity, but liberality to the priests.[53] The blessings asked for are wealth (cattle, horses, gold, etc.), virile power, male children ('heroic offspring') and immortality, with its accompanying joys. Once there is a tirade against the friend that is false to his friend (truth in act as well as in word);[54] once only, a poem on concord, which seems to partake of the nature of an incantation.

Incantations are rare in the Rig Veda, and appear to be looked upon as objectionable. So in VII. 104 the charge of a 'magician' is furiously repudiated; yet do an incantation against a rival wife, a mocking hymn of exultation after subduing rivals, and a few other hymns of like sort show that magical practices were well known.[55]

The sacrifice occupies a high place in the religion of the Rig Veda, but it is not all-important, as it is later. Nevertheless, the same presumptuous assumption that the gods depend on earthly sacrifice is often made; the result of which, even before the collection was complete (IV. 50), was to teach that gods and men depended on the will of the wise men who knew how properly to conduct a sacrifice, the key-note of religious pride in the Brahmanic period.

Indra depends on the sacrificial soma to accomplish his great works. The gods first got power through the sacrificial fire and soma.[56] That images of the gods were supposed to be powerful may be inferred from the late verses, "who buys this Indra," etc. (above), but allusions to idolatry are elsewhere extremely doubtful.[57]

* * * * *

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 1: Compare T[=a]itt. S. VII. 4.2.1. The gods win immortality by means of 'sacrifice' in this later priest-ridden period.]

[Footnote 2: Ludwig (IV. p. 134) wrongly understands a hell here.]

[Footnote 3: 'Yama's seat' is here what it is in the epic, not a chapel (Pischel), but a home.]

[Footnote 4: This may mean 'to Yama (and) to death.' In the Atharva Veda, V. 24. 13-14, it is said that Death is the lord of men; Yama, of the Manes.]

[Footnote 5: It is here said, also, that the 'Gandharva in the waters and the water-woman' are the ties of consanguinity between Yama and Yam[=i], which means, apparently, that their parents were Moon and Water; a late idea, as in viii. 48. 13 (unique).]

[Footnote 6: The passage, X. 17, 1-2, is perhaps meant as a riddle, as Bloomfield suggests (JAOS. XV. p. 172). At any rate, it is still a dubious passage. Compare Hillebrandt, Vedische Mythologie, I. p. 503.]

[Footnote 7: Cited by Scherman, Visionslitteratur, p. 147.]

[Footnote 8: Possibly, 'streams.']

[Footnote 9: AV. XVIII. 3. 13.]

[Footnote 10: Compare AV. VI. 88. 2: "King Varuna and God Brihaspati," where both are gods.]

[Footnote 11: [Greek: Kerberos](=Çabala)=Ç[=a]rvara. Saram[=a] is storm or dawn, or something else that means 'runner.']

[Footnote 12: Here the fiend is expelled by a four-eyed dog or a white one which has yellow ears. See the Sacred Books of the East, IV. p. IXXXVII.]

[Footnote 13: Scherman proposes an easy solution, namely to cut the description in two, and make only part of it refer to the dogs! (loc. cit. p. 130).]

[Footnote 14: The dogs may be meant in I. 29. 3, but compare II. 31. 5. Doubtful is I. 66. 8, according to Bergaigne, applied to Yama as fire.]

[Footnote 15: India, p. 224.]

[Footnote 17: Barth, p. 23, cites I. 123. 6; X. 107. 2; 82. 2, to prove that stars are souls of dead men. These passages do not prove the point, but it may be inferred from X. 68. 11. Later on it is a received belief. A moon-heaven is found only in VIII. 48.]

[Footnote 18: Especially with Ymir in Scandinavian mythology.]

[Footnote 19: Visionslitteratur, 1892.]

[Footnote 20: Henotheism in the Rig Veda, p. 81.]

[Footnote 21: This religious phase is often confounded loosely with pantheism, but the distinction should be observed. Parkman speaks of (American) Indian 'pantheism'; and Barth speaks of ritualistic 'pantheism,' meaning thereby the deification of different objects used in sacrifice (p. 37, note). But chrematheism is as distinct from pantheism as it is from fetishism.]

[Footnote 22: Some seem to be old; thus Aramati, piety, has an Iranian representative, [=A]rma[=i]t[=i]. As masculine abstractions are to be added Anger, Death, etc.]

[Footnote 23: Compare iv. 50; ii. 23 and 24; v. 43. 12; x. 68. 9; ii. 26. 3; 23. 17; x. 97. 15. For interpretation compare Hillebrandt, Ved. Myth. i. 409-420; Bergaigne, La Rel, Vèd. i. 304; Muir, OST, v. 272 ff. (with previous literature).]

[Footnote 24: Mbh[=a].i. 74. 68. Compare Holtzmann, ZDMG. xxxiii. 631 ff.]

[Footnote 25: i. 89. 10: "Aditi is all the gods and men; Aditi is whatever has been born; Aditi is whatever will be born."]

[Footnote 26: Henotheism in the Rig Veda (Drisler Memorial).]

[Footnote 27: Ex. xv. 11; xviii. 11.]

[Footnote 28: RV. x. 114. 5; i. 164. 46; AV. iv. 16. 3.]

[Footnote 29: Bloomfield, JAOS. xv. 184.]

[Footnote 30: "Desire, the primal seed of mind," x. 129. 4.]

[Footnote 31: x. 72 (contains also the origin of the gods from Aditi).]

[Footnote 32: x. 90, Here chand[=a][.m]si, carmina, is probably the Atharvan.]

[Footnote 33: Rudras, Vasus, and [=A]dityas, the three famous groups of gods. The Vasus are in Indra's train, the 'shining,' or, perhaps, 'good' gods.]

[Footnote 34: ii. 33. 13; x. 100. 5, etc. If the idea of manus=bonus be rejected, the Latin manes may be referred to m[=a]navas, the children of Manu.]

[Footnote 35: Or: "in an earthly place, in the atmosphere, or," etc.]

[Footnote 36: That is where the Fathers live. This is the only place where the Fathers are said to be náp[=a]t (descendants) of Vishnu, and here the sense may be "I have discovered Náp[=a]t (fire?)" But in i. 154. 5 Vishnu's worshippers rejoice in his home.]

[Footnote 37: Or: "form as thou wilt this body (of a corpse) to spirit life."]

[Footnote 38: x. 56. 4; otherwise, Grassmann.]

[Footnote 39: vi. 73. 9 refers to ancestors on earth, not in heaven.]

[Footnote 40: Compare Muir, OST. v. 285, where i. 125. 5 is compared with x. 107. 2: "The gift-giver becomes immortal; the gift-giver lives in the sky; he that gives horses lives in the sun." Compare Zimmer, Altind. Leben p. 409; Geiger, Ostiran. Cultur, p. 290.]

[Footnote 41: x. 88. 15, word for word: "two paths heard of the Fathers I, of the gods and of mortals." Cited as a mystery, Brih. [=A]ran. Up. vi. 2. 2.]

[Footnote 42: x. 16. 3: "if thou wilt go to the waters or to the plants," is added after this (in addressing the soul of the dead man). Plant-souls occur again in x. 58. 7.]

[Footnote 43: A V. XVIII.4.64; Muir, Av. loc. cit. p. 298. A passage of the Atharvan suggests that the dead may have been exposed as in Iran, but there is no trace of this in the Rig Veda (Zimmer, loc. cit. p. 402).]

[Footnote 44: Barth, Vedic Religions, p. 23; ib., the narrow 'house of clay,' RV. VII. 89. 1.]

[Footnote 45: I. 24. 1; I. 125.6; VII. 56.24; cited by Müller, Chips, I. p. 45.]

[Footnote 46: IX. 113. 7 ff.]

[Footnote 47: Avar[=o]dhana[.m] divás, 'enclosure of the sky.']

[Footnote 48: Literally, 'where custom' (obtains), i.e., where the old usages still hold.]

[Footnote 49: The last words are to be understood as of sensual pleasures (Muir, loc. cit. p. 307, notes 462, 463).]

[Footnote 50: RV. II. 29. 6; VII. 104. 3, 17; IV. 5. 5; IX. 73. 8. Compare Mulr, loc. cit. pp. 311-312; and Zimmer, loc. cit. pp. 408, 418. Yama's 'hero-holding abode' is not a hell, as Ludwig thinks, but, as usual, the top vault of heaven.]

[Footnote 51: loc. cit. p. 123.]

[Footnote 52: X. 154. 2; 107. 2. Compare the mad ascetic, múni, VIII. 17. 14.]

[Footnote 53: X. 117. This is clearly seen in the seventh verse, where is praised the 'Brahman who talks,' i.e., can speak in behalf of the giver to the gods (compare verse three).]

[Footnote 54: X. 71. 6.]

[Footnote 55: Compare X. 145; 159. In X. 184 there is a prayer addressed to the goddesses Sin[=i]v[=a]l[=i] and Sarasvat[=i] (in conjunction with Vishnu, Tvashtar, the Creator, Praj[=a]pati, and the Horsemen) to make a woman fruitful.]

[Footnote 56: II. 15. 2; X. 6. 7 (Barth, loc. cit. p. 36). The sacrifice of animals, cattle, horses, goats, is customary; that of man, legendary; but it is implied in X. 18.8 (Hillebrandt, ZDMG. Xl p. 708), and is ritualized in the next period (below).]

[Footnote 57: Phallic worship may be alluded to in that of the 'tail-gods,' as Garbe thinks, but it is deprecated. One verse, however, which seems to have crept in by mistake, is apparently due to phallic influence (VIII. 1. 34), though such a cult was not openly acknowledged till Çiva-worship began, and is no part of Brahmanism.]

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Spotted a typo or a problem in this chapter? Tell us

VII. THE RELIGION OF THE ATHARVA VEDA

The hymns of the Rig Veda inextricably confused; the deities of an earlier era confounded, and again merged together in a pantheism now complete; the introduction of strange gods; recognition of a hell of torture; instead of many divinities the One that represents all the gods, and nature as well; incantations for evil purposes and charms for a worthy purpose; formulae of malediction to be directed against 'those whom I hate and who hate me'; magical verses to obtain children, to prolong life, to dispel 'evil magic,' to guard against poison and other ills; the paralyzing extreme of ritualistic reverence indicated by the exaltation to godhead of the 'remnant' of sacrifice; hymns to snakes, to diseases, to sleep, time, and the stars; curses on the 'priest-plaguer'--such, in general outline, is the impression produced by a perusal of the Atharvan after that of the Rig Veda. How much of this is new?

The Rig Veda is not lacking in incantations, in witchcraft practices, in hymns to inanimate things, in indications of pantheism. But the general impression is produced, both by the tone of such hymns as these and by their place in the collection, that they are an addition to the original work. On the other hand, in reading the Atharvan hymns the collective impression is decidedly this, that what to the Rig is adventitious is essential to the Atharvan.

It has often been pointed out, however, that not only the practices involved, but the hymns themselves, in the Atharvan, may have existed long before they were collected, and that, while the Atharvan collection, as a whole, takes historical place after the Rig Veda, there yet may be comprised in the former much which is as old as any part of the latter work. It is also customary to assume that such hymns as betoken a lower worship (incantations, magical formulae, etc.) were omitted purposely from the Rig Veda to be collected in the Atharvan. That which eventually can neither be proved nor disproved is, perhaps, best left undiscussed, and it is vain to seek scientific proof where only historic probabilities are obtainable. Yet, if a closer approach to truth be attractive, even a greater probability will be a gain, and it becomes worth while to consider the problem a little with only this hope in view.

Those portions of the Rig Veda which seem to be Atharvan-like are, in general, to be found in the later books (or places) of the collection. But it would be presumptuous to conclude that a work, although almost entirely given up to what in the Rig Veda appears to be late, should itself be late in origin. By analogy, in a nature-religion such as was that of India, the practice of demonology, witchcraft, etc., must have been an early factor. But, while this is true, it is clearly impossible to postulate therefrom that the hymns recording all this array of cursing, deviltry, and witchcraft are themselves early. The further forward one advances into the labyrinth of Hindu religions the more superstitions, the more devils, demons, magic, witchcraft, and uncanny things generally, does he find. Hence, while any one superstitious practice may be antique, there is small probability for assuming a contemporaneous origin of the hymns of the two collections. The many verses cited, apparently pell-mell, from the Rig Veda, might, it is true, revert to a version older than that in which they are found in the Rig Veda, but there is nothing to show that they were not taken from the Rig Veda, and re-dressed in a form that rendered them in many cases more intelligible; so that often what is respectfully spoken of as a 'better varied reading' of the Atharvan may be better, as we have said in the introductory chapter, only in lucidity; and the lucidity be due to tampering with a text old and unintelligible. Classical examples abound in illustrations.

Nevertheless, although an antiquity equal to that of the whole Rig Veda can by no means be claimed for the Atharvan collection (which, at least in its tone, belongs to the Brahmanic period), yet is the mass represented by the latter, if not contemporaneous, at any rate so venerable, that it safely may be assigned to a period as old as that in which were composed the later hymns of the Rik itself. But in distinction from the hymns themselves the weird religion they represent is doubtless as old, if not older, than that of the Rig Veda. For, while the Rig Vedic _soma-_cult is Indo-Iranian, the original Atharvan (fire) cult is even more primitive, and the basis of the work, from this point of view, may have preceded the composition of Rik hymns. This Atharvan religion--if it may be called so--is, therefore, of exceeding importance. It opens wide the door which the Rik puts ajar, and shows a world of religious and mystical ideas which without it could scarcely have been suspected. Here magic eclipses Soma and reigns supreme. The wizard is greater than the gods; his herbs and amulets are sovereign remedies. Religion is seen on its lowest side. It is true that there is 'bad magic' and 'good magic' (the existence of the former is substantiated by the maledictions against it), but what has been received into the collection is apparently the best. To heal the sick and procure desirable things is the object of most of the charms and incantations--but some of the desirable things are disease and death of one's foes. On the higher side of religion, from a metaphysical point of view, the Atharvan is pantheistic. It knows also the importance of the 'breaths,'[1] the vital forces; it puts side by side the different gods and says that each 'is lord.' It does not lack philosophical speculation which, although most of it is puerile, sometimes raises questions of wider scope, as when the sage inquires who made the body with its wonderful parts--implying, but not stating the argument, from design, in its oldest form.[2]

Of magical verses there are many, but the content is seldom more than "do thou, O plant, preserve from harm," etc. Harmless enough, if somewhat weak, are also many other hymns calculated to procure blessings:

Blessings blow to us the wind, Blessings glow to us the sun, Blessings be to us the day, Blest to us the night appear, Blest to us the dawn shall shine,

is a fair specimen of this innocuous sort of verse.[3] Another example may be seen in this hymn to a king: "Firm is the sky; firm is the earth; firm, all creation; firm, these hills; firm the king of the people (shall be)," etc.[4] In another hymn there is an incantation to release from possible ill coming from a foe and from inherited ill or sin.[5] A free spirit of doubt and atheism, already foreshadowed in the Rig Veda, is implied in the prayer that the god will be merciful to the cattle of that man "whose creed is 'Gods exist.'"[6] Serpent-worship is not only known, but prevalent.[7] The old gods still hold, as always, their nominal places, albeit the system is pantheistic, so that Varuna is god of waters; and Mitra with Varuna, gods of rain.[8] As a starting-point of philosophy the dictum of the Rig Veda is repeated: 'Desire is the seed of mind,' and 'love, i.e., desire, was born first.' Here Aditi is defined anew as the one in whose lap is the wide atmosphere-- she is parent and child, gods and men, all in all--'may she extend to us a triple shelter.' As an example of curse against curse may be compared II. 7:

The sin-hated, god-born plant, that frees from the curse as waters (wash out) the spot, has washed away all curses, the curse of my rival and of my sister; (that) which the Brahman in anger cursed, all this lies under my feet ... With this plant protect this (wife), protect my child, protect our property ... May the curse return to the curser ... We smite even the ribs of the foe with the evil (mantra) eye.

A love-charm in the same book (II. 30) will remind the classical student of Theocritus' second idyl: 'As the wind twirls around grass upon the ground, so I twirl thy mind about, that thou mayst become loving, that thou mayst not depart from me,' etc. In the following verses the Horsemen gods are invoked to unite the lovers. Characteristic among bucolic passages is the cow-song in II. 26, the whole intent of which is to ensure a safe return to the cows on their wanderings: 'Hither may they come, the cattle that have wandered far away,' etc.

The view that there are different conditions of Manes is clearly taught in XVIII. 2. 48-49, where it is said that there are three heavens, in the highest of which reside the Manes; while a distinction is made at the same time between 'fathers' and 'grandfathers,' the fathers' fathers, 'who have entered air, who inhabit earth and heaven.' Here appears nascent the doctrine of 'elevating the Fathers,' which is expressly taught in the next era. The performance of rites in honor of the Manes causes them to ascend from a low state to a higher one. In fact, if the offerings are not given at all, the spirits do not go to heaven. In general the older generations of Manes go up highest and are happiest. The personal offering is only to the immediate fathers.

If, as was shown in the introductory chapter, the Atharvan represents a geographical advance on the part of the Vedic Aryans, this fact cannot be ignored in estimating the primitiveness of the collection. Geographical advance, acquaintance with other flora and fauna than those of the Rig Veda, means--although the argument of silence must not be exaggerated--a temporal advance also. And not less significant are the points of view to which one is led in the useful little work of Scherman on the philosophical hymns of the Atharvan. Scherman wishes to show the connection between the Upanishads and Vedas. But the bearing of his collection is toward a closer union of the two bodies of works, and especially of the Atharvan, not to the greater gain in age of the Upanishads so much as to the depreciation in venerableness of the former. If the Atharvan has much more in common with the Br[=a]hmanas and Upanishads than has the Rig Veda, it is because the Atharvan stands, in many respects, midway in time between the era of Vedic hymnology and the thought of the philosophical period. The terminology is that of the Br[=a]hmanas, rather than that of the Rig Veda. The latter knows the great person; the Atharvan, and the former know the original great person, i.e.., the tausa movens under the causa efficiens, etc. In the Atharvan appears first the worship of Time, Love, 'Support' (Skambha), and the 'highest brahma. The cult of the holy cow is fully recognized (XII. 4 and 5). The late ritualistic terms, as well as linguistic evidence, confirm the fact indicated by the geographical advance. The country is known from western Balkh to eastern Beh[=a]r, the latter familiarly.[9] In a word, one may conclude that on its higher side the Atharvan is later than the Rig Veda, while on its lower side of demonology one may recognize the religion of the lower classes as compared with that of the two upper classes--for the latter the Rig Veda, for the superstitious people at large the Atharvan, a collection of which the origin agrees with its application. For, if it at first was devoted to the unholy side of fire-cult, and if the fire-cult is older than the soma-cult, then this is the cult that one would expect to see most affected by the conservative vulgar, who in India hold fast to what the cultured have long dropped as superstition, or, at least, pretended to drop; though the house-ritual keeps some magic in its fire-cult.

In that case, it may be asked, why not begin the history of Hindu religion with the Atharvan, rather than with the Rig Veda? Because the Atharvan, as a whole, in its language, social conditions, geography, 'remnant' worship, etc., shows that this literary collection is posterior to the Rik collection. As to individual hymns, especially those imbued with the tone of fetishism and witchcraft, any one of them, either in its present or original form, may outrank the whole Rik in antiquity, as do its superstitions the religion of the Rik--if it is right to make a distinction between superstition and religion, meaning by the former a lower, and by the latter a more elevated form of belief in the supernatural.

The difference between the Rik-worshipper and Atharvan-worshipper is somewhat like that which existed at a later age between the philosophical Çivaite and Durg[=a]ite. The former revered Çiva, but did not deny the power of a host of lesser mights, whom he was ashamed to worship too much; the latter granted the all-god-head of Çiva, but paid attention almost exclusively to some demoniac divinity. Superstition, perhaps, always precedes theology; but as surely does superstition outlive any one form of its protean rival. And the simple reason is that a theology is the real belief of few, and varies with their changing intellectual point of view; while superstition is the belief unacknowledged of the few and acknowledged of the many, nor does it materially change from age to age. The rites employed among the clam-diggers on the New York coast, the witch-charms they use, the incantations, cutting of flesh, fire-oblations, meaningless formulae, united with sacrosanct expressions of the church, are all on a par with the religion of the lower classes as depicted in Theocritus and the Atharvan. If these mummeries and this hocus-pocus were collected into a volume, and set out with elegant extracts from the Bible, there would be a nineteenth century Atharva Veda. What are the necessary equipment of a Long Island witch? First, "a good hot fire," and then formulae such as this:[10]

"If a man is attacked by wicked people and how to banish them:

"Bedgoblin and all ye evil spirits, I, N.N., forbid you my bedstead, my couch; I, N.N., forbid you in the name of God my house and home; I forbid you in the name of the Holy Trinity my blood and flesh, my body and soul; I forbid you all the nail-holes in my house and home, till you have travelled over every hill, waded through every water, have counted all the leaves of every tree, and counted all the stars in the sky, until the day arrives when the mother of God shall bare her second son."

If this formula be repeated three times, with the baptismal name of the person, it will succeed!

"To make one's self invisible:

"Obtain the ear of a black cat, boil it in the milk of a black cow, wear it on the thumb, and no one will see you."

This is the Atharvan, or fire-and witch-craft of to-day--not differing much from the ancient. It is the unchanging foundation of the many lofty buildings of faith that are erected, removed, and rebuilt upon it--the belief in the supernatural at its lowest, a belief which, in its higher stages, is always level with the general intellect of those that abide in it.

The latest book of the Atharvan is especially for the warrior-caste, but the mass of it is for the folk at large. It was long before it was recognized as a legitimate Veda. It never stands, in the older period of Brahmanism, on a par with the S[=a]man and Rik. In the epic period good and bad magic are carefully differentiated, and even to-day the Atharvan is repudiated by southern Br[=a]hmans. But there is no doubt that sub rosa, the silliest practices inculcated and formulated in the Atharvan were the stronghold of a certain class of priests, or that such priests were feared and employed by the laity, openly by the low classes, secretly by the intelligent.

In respect of the name the magical cult was referred, historically with justice, to the fire-priests, Atharvan and Angiras, though little application to fire, other than in soma-worship, is apparent. Yet was this undoubtedly the source of the cult (the fire-cult is still distinctly associated with the Atharva Veda in the epic), and the name is due neither to accident nor to a desire to invoke the names of great seers, as will Weber.[11] The other name of Brahmaveda may have connection with the 'false science of Brihaspati,' alluded to in a Upanishad.[12] This seer is not over-orthodox, and later he is the patron of the unorthodox C[=a]rv[=a]kas. It was seen above that the god Brihaspati is also a novelty not altogether relished by the Vedic Aryans.

From an Aryan point of view how much weight is to be placed on comparisons of the formulae in the Atharvan of India with those of other Aryan nations? Kuhn has compared[13] an old German magic formula of healing with one in the Atharvan, and because each says 'limb to limb' he thinks that they are of the same origin, particularly since the formula is found in Russian. The comparison is interesting, but it is far from convincing. Such formulae spring up independently all over the earth.

Finally, it is to be observed that in this Veda first occurs the implication of the story of the flood (xix. 39. 8), and the saving of Father Manu, who, however, is known by this title in the Rik. The supposition that the story of the flood is derived from Babylon, seems, therefore, to be an unnecessary (although a permissible) hypothesis, as the tale is old enough in India to warrant a belief in its indigenous origin.[14]

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FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 1: XV. 15.]

[Footnote 2: X. 2.]

[Footnote 3: VII. 69. Compare RV. VII. 35, and the epic (below).]

[Footnote 4: X. 173.]

[Footnote 5: V. 30.]

[Footnote 6: XI. 2. 28.]

[Footnote 7: XI. 9; VIII. 6 and 7, with tree-worship.]

[Footnote 8: V. 24. 4-5. On 'the one god' compare X. 8. 28; XIII. 4. 15. Indra as S[=u]rya, in VII. 11; cf. xiii. 4; XVII. 1. 24. Pantheism in X. 7. 14. 25. Of charms, compare ii. 9, to restore life; III. 6, a curse against 'whom I hate'; III. 23, to obtain offspring. On the stars and night, see hymn at XIX. 8 and 47. In V. 13, a guard against poison; ib. a hymn to a drum; ib. 31, a charm to dispel evil magic; VI. 133, magic to produce long life; V. 23, against worms, etc., etc. Aditi, VII. 6. 1-4 (partly Rik).]

[Footnote 9: Compare Muir, OST. II. 447 ff.]

[Footnote 10: This old charm is still used among the clam-diggers of Canarsie, N.Y.]

[Footnote 11: Ind. Lit^2 p. 164.]

[Footnote 12: M[=a]it. Up.. vii. 9. He is 'the gods' Brahm[=a]' (Rik.)]

[Footnote 13: Indische und germanische Segenssprüche; KZ. xiii. 49.]

[Footnote 14: One long hymn, xii. 1, of the Atharvan is to earth and fire (19-20). In the Rik, átharvan is fire-priest and bringer of fire from heaven; while once the word may mean fire itself (viii. 9, 7). The name Brahmaveda is perhaps best referred to brahma as fire (whence 'fervor,' 'prayer,' and again 'energy,' 'force'). In distinction from the great soma-sacrifices, the fire-cult always remains the chief thing in the domestic ritual. The present Atharvan formulae have for the most part no visible application to fire, but the name still shows the original connection.]

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Spotted a typo or a problem in this chapter? Tell us

VIII. EARLY HINDU DIVINITIES COMPARED WITH THOSE OF OTHER ARYANS

Nothing is more usual than to attempt a reconstruction of Aryan ideas in manners, customs, laws, and religious conceptions, by placing side by side similar traits of individual Aryan nations, and stating or insinuating that the result of the comparison shows that one is handling primitive characteristics of the whole Aryan body. It is of special importance, therefore, to see in how far the views and practices of peoples not Aryan may be found to be identical with those of Aryans. The division of the army into clans, as in the Iliad and the Veda; the love of gambling, as shown by Greeks, Teutons, and Hindus; the separation of captains and princes, as is illustrated by Teuton and Hindu; the belief in a flood, common to Iranian, Greek, and Hindu; in the place of departed spirits, with the journey over a river (Iranian, Hindu, Scandinavian, Greek); in the after-felicity of warriors who die on the field of battle (Scandinavian, Greek, and Hindu); in the reverence paid to the wind-god (Hindu, Iranian, and Teutonic, V[=a]ta-Wotan); these and many other traits at different times, by various writers, have been united and compared to illustrate primitive Aryan belief and religion.

The traits of the Five Nations of the Veda for this reason may be compared very advantageously with the traits of the Five Nations of the Iroquois Indians, the most united and intelligent of American native tribes. Their institutions are not yet extinct, and they have been described by missionaries of the 17th century and by some modern writers, to whom can be imputed no hankering after Aryan primitive ideas.[1] It is but a few years back since the last avat[=a]r of the Iroquois' incarnate god lived in Onondaga, N.Y.

First, as an illustration of the extraordinary development of memory among rhapsodes, Vedic students, and other Aryans; among the Iroquois "memory was tasked to the utmost, and developed to an extraordinary degree," says Parkman, who adds that they could repeat point by point with precision any address made to them.[2] Murder was compromised for by Wehrgeld, as among the Vedic, Iranic, and Teutonic peoples. The Iroquois, like all Indians, was a great gambler, staking all his property[3] (like the Teutons and Hindus). In religion "A mysterious and inexplicable power resides in inanimate things ... Lakes, rivers, and waterfalls [as conspicuously in India] are sometimes the dwelling-place of spirits; but more frequently they are themselves living beings, to be propitiated by prayers and offerings."[4] The greatest spirit among the Algonquins is the descendant of the moon, and son of the west-wind (personified). After the deluge (thus the Hindus, etc.) this great spirit (Manabozho, mana is Manu?) restored the world; some asserting that he created the world out of water. But others say that the supreme spirit is the sun (Le Jeune, Relation, 1633). The Algonquins, besides a belief in a good spirit (manitou), had also a belief in a malignant manitou, in whom the missionaries recognized the devil (why not Ormuzd and Ahriman?). One tribe invokes the 'Maker of Heaven,' the 'god of waters,' and also the 'seven spirits of the wind' (so, too, seven is a holy number in the Veda, etc.).

The Iroquois, like the Hindu (later), believe that the earth rests on the back of a turtle or tortoise[5], and that this is ruled over by the sun and moon, the first being a good spirit; the second, malignant. The good spirit interposes between the malice of the moon and mankind, and it is he who makes rivers; for when the earth was parched, all the water being held back from earth under the armpit of a monster frog, he pierced the armpit and let out the water (exactly as Indra lets out the water held back by the demon). According to some, this great spirit created mankind, but in the third generation a deluge destroyed his posterity[6]. The good spirit among the Iroquois is the one that gives good luck (perhaps Bhaga). These Indians believe in the immortality of the soul. Skillful hunters, brave warriors, go, after death, to the happy hunting-grounds (as in India and Scandinavia); the cowardly and weak are doomed to live in dreary regions of mist and darkness (compare Niflheim and the Iranian eschatology?). To pass over other religious correspondences, the sacrifice of animals, use of amulets, love-charms, magic, and sorcery, which are all like those of Aryans (to compare, also, are the burying or exposing of the dead and the Hurons' funeral games), let one take this as a good illustration of the value of 'comparative Aryan mythology':

According to the Aryan belief the soul of the dead passes over a stream, across a bridge, past a dog or two, which guard the gate of paradise. The Hindu, Iranian, Greek, and Scandinavian, all have the dog, and much emphasis has been laid on the 'Aryan' character of this creed. The native Iroquois Indians believed that "the spirits on their journey (to heaven) were beset with difficulties and perils. There was a swift river to be crossed on a log that shook beneath the feet, while a ferocious dog opposed their passage[7]." Here is the Persians' narrow bridge, and even Kerberos himself!

It is also interesting to note that, as the Hindus identify with the sun so many of their great gods, so the Iroquois "sacrifices to some superior spirit, or to the sun, with which the superior spirits were constantly confounded by the primitive Indian[8]."

Weber holds that because Greek and Hindu gave the name 'bear' to a constellation, therefore this is the "primitive Indo-Germanic name of the star[9]." But the Massachusetts Indians "gave their own name for bear to the Ursa major" (Williams' 'Key,' cited Palfrey, I. p. 36; so Lafitau, further west).

Again, three, seven, and even 'thrice-seven,' are holy not only in India but in America.

In this new world are found, to go further, the analogues of Varuna in the monotheistic god Viracocha of the Peruvians, to whom is addressed this prayer: "Cause of all things! ever present, helper, creator, ever near, ever fortunate one! Thou incorporeal one above the sun, infinite, and beneficent[10]"; of the Vedic Snake of the Deep, in the Mexican Cloud-serpent; of the Vedic Lightning-bird, who brings fire from heaven, in the Indian Thunder-bird, who brings fire from heaven[11]; of the preservation of one individual from a flood (in the epic, Manu's 'Seven Seers') in the same American myth, even including the holy mountain, which is still shown[12]; of the belief that the sun is the home of departed spirits, in the same belief all over America;[13] of the belief that stars are the souls of the dead, in the same belief held by the Pampas;[14] and even of the late Brahmanic custom of sacrificing the widow (suttee), in the practice of the Natchez Indians, and in Guatemala, of burning the widow on the pyre of the dead husband.[15] The storm wind (Odin) as highest god is found among the Choctaws; while 'Master of Breath' is the Creeks' name for this divinity. Huraka (hurricane, ouragon, ourage) is the chief god in Hayti.[16] An exact parallel to the vague idea of hell at the close of the Vedic period, with the gradual increase of the idea, alternating with a theory of reincarnation, may be found in the fact that, in general, there is no notion of punishment after death among the Indians of the New World; but that, while the good are assisted and cared for after death by the 'Master of Breath,' the Creeks believe that the liar, the coward, and the niggard (Vedic sinners par excellence!) are left to shift for themselves in darkness; whereas the Aztecs believed in a hell surrounded by the water called 'Nine Rivers,' guarded by a dog and a dragon; and the great Eastern American tribes believe that after the soul has been for a while in heaven it can, if it chooses, return to earth and be born again as a man, utilizing its old bones (which are, therefore, carefully preserved by the surviving members of the family) as a basis for a new body.[17]

To turn to another foreign religion, how tempting would it be to see in Nutar the 'abstract power' of the Egyptian, an analogue of brahma and the other 'power' abstractions of India; to recognize Brahm[=a] in El; and in Nu, sky, and expanse of waters, to see Varuna; especially when one compares the boat-journey of the Vedic seer with R[=a]'s boat in Egypt. Or, again, in the twin children of R[=a] to see the Açvins; and to associate the mundane egg of the Egyptians with that of the Brahmans.[18] Certainly, had the Egyptians been one of the Aryan families, all these conceptions had been referred long ago to the category of 'primitive Aryan ideas.' But how primitive is a certain religious idea will not be shown by simple comparison of Aryan parallels. It will appear more often that it is not 'primitive,' but, so to speak, per-primitive, aboriginal with no one race, but with the race of man. When we come to describe the religions of the wild tribes of India it will be seen that among them also are found traits common, on the one hand, to the Hindu, and on the other to the wild tribes of America. With this warning in mind one may inquire at last in how far a conservative judgment can find among the Aryans themselves an identity of original conception in the different forms of divinities and religious rites. Foremost stand the universal chrematheism, worship of inanimate objects regarded as usefully divine, and the cult of the departed dead. This latter is almost universal, perhaps pan-Aryan, and Weber is probably right in assuming that the primitive Aryans believed in a future life. But Benfey's identification of Tartaras with the Sanskrit Tal[=a]tala, the name of a special hell in very late systems of cosmogony, is decidedly without the bearing he would put upon it. The Sanskrit word may be taken directly from the Greek, but of an Aryan source for both there is not the remotest historical probability.

When, however, one comes to the Lord of the Dead he finds himself already in a narrower circle. Yama is the Persian Yima, and the name of Kerberos may have been once an adjective applied to the dog that guarded the path to paradise; but other particular conceptions that gather about each god point only to a period of Indo-Iranian unity.

Of the great nature-gods the sun is more than Aryan, but doubtless was Aryan, for S[=u]rya is Helios, but Savitar is a development especially Indian. Dy[=a]ús-pitar is Zeús-pater, Jupiter.[19] Trita, scarcely Triton, is the Persian Thraetaona who conquers Vritra, as does Indra in India. The last, on the other hand, is to be referred only hesitatingly to the demon A[=n]dra of the Avesta. Varuna, despite phonetic difficulties, probably is Ouranos; but Asura (Asen?) is a title of many gods in India's first period, while the corresponding Ahura is restricted to the good spirit, [Greek: kat hexochên]. The seven [=A]dityas are reflected in the Amesha Çpentas of Zoroastrian Puritanism, but these are mere imitations, spiritualized and moralized into abstractions. Bhaga is Slavic Bogu and Persian Bagha; Mitra is Persian Mithra. The Açvins are all but in name the Greek gods Dioskouroi, and correspond closely in detail (riding on horses, healing and helping, originally twins of twilight). Tacitus gives a parallel Teutonic pair (Germ. 43). Ushas, on the other hand, while etymologically corresponding to Aurora, Eos, is a specially Indian development, as Eos has no cult. V[=a]ta, Wind, is an aboriginal god, and may perhaps be Wotan, Odin.[20] Parjanya, the rain-god, as Bühler has shown, is one with Lithuanian Perkúna, and with the northern Fiögyu. The 'fashioner,' Tvashtar (sun) is only Indo-Iranian; Thw[=a]sha probably being the same word.

Of lesser mights, Angiras, name of fire, may be Persian angaros, 'fire-messenger' (compare [Greek: haggelos]), perhaps originally one with Sk. ang[=a]ra, 'coal.'[21] Hebe has been identified with yavy[=a], young woman, but this word is enough to show that Hebe has naught to do with the Indian pantheon. The Gandharva, moon, is certainly one with the Persian Gandarewa, but can hardly be identical with the Centaur. Saram[=a] seems to have, together with S[=a]rameya, a Grecian parallel development in Helena (a goddess in Sparta), Selene, Hermes; and Sarany[=u] may be the same with Erinnys, but these are not Aryan figures in the form of their respective developments, though they appear to be so in origin. It is scarcely possible that Earth is an Aryan deity with a cult, though different Aryan (and un-Aryan) nations regarded her as divine. The Maruts are especially Indian and have no primitive identity as gods with Mars, though the names may be radically connected. The fire-priests, Bhrigus, are supposed to be one with the [Greek: phlegixu]. The fact that the fate of each in later myth is to visit hell would presuppose, however, an Aryan notion of a torture-hell, of which the Rig Veda has no conception. The Aryan identity of the two myths is thereby made uncertain, if not implausible. The special development in India of the fire-priest that brings down fire from heaven, when compared with the personification of the 'twirler' (Promantheus) in Greece, shows that no detailed myth was current in primitive times.[22] The name of the fire-priest, brahman = fla(g)men(?), is an indication of the primitive fire-cult in antithesis to the soma-cult, which latter belongs to the narrower circle of the Hindus and Persians. Here, however, in the identity of names for sacrifice (yajna, yaçna) and of barhis, the sacrificial straw, of soma = haoma, together with many other liturgical similarities, as in the case of the metres, one must recognize a fully developed soma-cult prior to the separation of the Hindus and Iranians.

Of demigods of evil type the Y[=a]tus are both Hindu and Iranian, but the priest-names of the one religion are evil names in the other, as the devas, gods, of one are the daevas, demons, of the other.[23] There are no other identifications that seem at all certain in the strict province of religion, although in myth the form of Manus, who is the Hindu Noah, has been associated with Teutonic Mannus, and Greek Minos, noted in Thucydides for his sea-faring. He is to Yama (later regarded as his brother) as is Noah to Adam.

We do not lay stress on lack of equation in proper names, but, as Schrader shows (p. 596 ff.), very few comparisons on this line have a solid phonetic foundation. Minos, Manu; Ouranos, Varuna; Wotan, V[=a]ta, are dubious; and some equate flamen with blôtan, sacrifice.

Other wider or narrower comparisons, such as Neptunus from náp[=a]t ap[=a]m, seem to us too daring to be believed. Apollo (sapary), Aphrodite (Apsaras), Artamis (non-existent [r.]tam[=a]l), P[=a]n (pavana), have been cleverly compared, but the identity of forms has scarcely been proved. Nor is it important for the comparative mythologist that Okeanus is 'lying around' ([=a]çáy[=a]na). More than that is necessary to connect Ocean mythologically with the demon that surrounds (swallows) the waters of the sky. The Vedic parallel is rather Ras[=a], the far-off great 'stream.' It is rarely that one finds Aryan equivalents in the land of fairies and fays. Yet are the Hindu clever artizan Ribhus[24] our 'elves,' who, even to this day, are distinct from fairies in their dexterity and cleverness, as every wise child knows.

But animism, as simple spiritism, fetishism, perhaps ancestor-worship, and polytheism, with the polydaemonism that may be called chrematheism, exists from the beginning of the religious history, undisturbed by the proximity of theism, pantheism, or atheism; exactly as to-day in the Occident, beside theism and atheism, exist spiritism and fetishism (with their inherent magic), and even ancestor-worship, as implied by the reputed after-effect of parental curses.

When the circle is narrowed to that of the Indo-Iranian connection the similarity in religion between the Veda and Avesta becomes much more striking than in any other group, as has been shown. It is here that the greatest discrepancy in opinion obtains among modern scholars. Some are inclined to refer all that smacks of Persia to a remote period of Indo-Iranian unity, and, in consequence, to connect all tokens of contact with the west with far-away regions out of India. It is scarcely possible that such can be the case. But, on the other hand, it is unhistorical to connect, as do some scholars, the worship of soma and Varuna with a remote period of unity, and then with a jump to admit a close connection between Veda and Avesta in the Vedic period. The Vedic Aryans appear to have lived, so to speak, hand in glove with the Iranians for a period long enough for the latter to share in that advance of Varuna-worship from polytheism to quasi-monotheism which is seen in the Rig Veda. This worship of Varuna as a superior god, with his former equals ranged under him in a group, chiefly obtains in that family (be it of priest or tribe, or be the two essentially one from a religious point of view) which has least to do with pure soma-worship, the inherited Indo-Iranian cult; and the Persian Ahura, with the six spiritualized equivalents of the old Vedic [=A]dityas, can have come into existence only as a direct transformation of the latter cult, which in turn is later than the cult that developed in one direction as chief of gods a Zeus; in another, a Bhaga; in a third, an Odin. On the other hand, in the gradual change in India of Iranic gods to devils, asuras, there is an exact counterpart to the Iranian change of meaning from deva to daeva. But if this be the connection, it is impossible to assume a long break between India and the west, and then such a sudden tie as is indicated by the allusions in the Rig Veda to the Persians and other western lands. The most reasonable view, therefore, appears to be that the Vedic and Iranian Aryans were for a long time in contact, that the contact began to cease as the two peoples separated to east and west, but that after the two peoples separated communication was sporadically kept up between them by individuals in the way of trade or otherwise. This explains the still surviving relationship as it is found in later hymns and in thank-offerings apparently involving Iranian personages.

They that believe in a monotheistic Varuna-cult preceding the Vedic polytheism must then ignore the following facts: The Slavic equivalent of Bhaga and the Teutonic equivalent of V[=a]ta are to these respective peoples their highest gods. They had no Varuna. Moreover, there is not the slightest proof that Ouranos in Greece[25] was ever a god worshipped as a great god before Zeus, nor is there any probability that to the Hindu Dyaus Pitar was ever a great god, in the sense that he ever had a special cult as supreme deity. He is physically great, and physically he is father, as is Earth mother, but he is religiously great only in the Hellenic-Italic circle, where exists no Uranos-cult[26]. Rather is it apparent that the Greek raised Zeus, as did the Slav Bhaga, to his first head of the pantheon. Now when one sees that in the Vedic period Varuna is the type of [=A]dityas, to which belong Bhaga and Mitra as distinctly less important personages, it is plain that this can mean only that Varuna has gradually been exalted to his position at the expense of the other gods. Nor is there perfect uniformity between Persian and Hindu conceptions. Asura in the Veda is not applied to Varuna alone. But in the Avesta, Ahura is the one great spirit, and his six spirits are plainly a protestant copy and modification of Varuna and his six underlings. This, then, can mean--which stands in concordance with the other parallels between the two religions--only that Zarathustra borrows the Ahura idea from the Vedic Aryans at a time when Varuna was become superior to the other gods, and when the Vedic cult is established in its second phase[27]. To this fact points also the evidence that shows how near together geographically were once the Hindus and Persians. Whether one puts the place of separation at the Kabul or further to the north-west is a matter of indifference. The Persians borrow the idea of Varuna Asura, whose eye is the sun. They spiritualize this, and create an Asura unknown to other nations.

Of von Bradke's attempt to prove an original Dyaus Asura we have said nothing, because the attempt has failed signally. He imagines that the epithet Asura was given to Dyaus in the Indo-Iranian period, and that from a Dyaus Pitar Asura the Iranians made an abstract Asura, while the Hindus raised the other gods and depressed Dyaus Pitar Asura; whereas it is quite certain that Varuna (Asura) grew up, out, and over the other Asuras, his former equals.

And yet it is almost a pity to spend time to demonstrate that Varuna-worship was not monotheistic originally. We gladly admit that, even if not a primitive monotheistic deity, Varuna yet is a god that belongs to a very old period of Hindu literature. And, for a worship so antique, how noble is the idea, how exalted is the completed conception of him! Truly, the Hindus and Persians alone of Aryans mount nearest to the high level of Hebraic thought. For Varuna beside the loftiest figure in the Hellenic pantheon stands like a god beside a man. The Greeks had, indeed, a surpassing aesthetic taste, but in grandeur of religious ideas even the daring of Aeschylus becomes but hesitating bravado when compared with the serene boldness of the Vedic seers, who, first of their race, out of many gods imagined God.

In regard to eschatology, as in regard to myths, it has been shown that the utmost caution in identification is called for. It may be surmised that such or such a belief or legend is in origin one with a like faith or tale of other peoples. But the question whether it be one in historical origin or in universal mythopoetic fancy, and this latter be the only common origin, must remain in almost every case unanswered[28]. This is by far not so entertaining, nor so picturesque a solution as is the explanation of a common historical basis for any two legends, with its inspiring 'open sesame' to the door of the locked past. But which is truer? Which accords more with the facts as they are collected from a wider field? As man in the process of development, in whatever quarter of earth he be located, makes for himself independently clothes, language, and gods, so he makes myths that are more or less like those of other peoples, and it is only when names coincide and traits that are unknown elsewhere are strikingly similar in any two mythologies that one has a right to argue a probable community of origin.

But even if the legend of the flood were Babylonian, and the Asuras as devils were due to Iranian influence--which can neither be proved nor disproved--the fact remains that the Indian religion in its main features is of a purely native character.

As the most prominent features of the Vedic religion must be regarded the worship of soma of nature-gods that are in part already more than this, of spirits, and of the Manes; the acknowledgment of a moral law and a belief in a life hereafter. There is also a vaguer nascent belief in a creator apart from any natural phenomenon, but the creed for the most part is poetically, indefinitely, stated: 'Most wonder-working of the wonder-working gods, who made heaven and earth'(as above). The corresponding Power is Cerus in Cerus-Creator (Kronos?), although when a name is given, the Maker, Dh[=a]tar, is employed; while Tvashtar, the artificer, is more an epithet of the sun than of the unknown creator. The personification of Dh[=a]tar as creator of the sun, etc., belongs to later Vedic times, and foreruns the Father-god of the last Vedic period. Not till the classical age (below) is found a formal identification of the Vedic nature-gods with the departed Fathers (Manes). Indra, for example, is invoked in the Rig Veda to 'be a friend, be a father, be more fatherly than the fathers';[29] but this implies no patristic side in Indra, who is called in the same hymn (vs. 4) the son of Dyaus (his father); and Dyaus Pitar no more implies, as say some sciolists, that Dyaus was regarded as a human ancestor than does 'Mother Earth' imply a belief that Earth is the ghost of a dead woman.

In the Veda there is a nature-religion and an ancestor-religion. These approach, but do not unite; they are felt as sundered beliefs. Sun-myths, though by some denied in toto, appear plainly in the Vedic hymns. Dead heroes may be gods, but gods, too, are natural phenomena, and, again, they are abstractions. He that denies any one of these sources of godhead is ignorant of India.

Müller, in his Ancient Sanskrit Literature, has divided Vedic literature into four periods, that of chandas, songs; mantras, texts; br[=a]hmanas; and s[=u]tras. The mantras are in distinction from chandas, the later hymns to the earlier gods.[30] The latter distinction can, however, be established only on subjective grounds, and, though generally unimpeachable, is sometimes liable to reversion. Thus, Müller looks upon RV. VIII. 30 as 'simple and primitive,' while others see in this hymn a late mantra. Between the Rig Veda and the Br[=a]hmanas, which are in prose, lies a period filled out in part by the present form of the Atharva Veda, which, as has been shown, is a Veda of the low cult that is almost ignored by the Rig Veda, while it contains at the same time much that is later than the Rig Veda, and consists of old and new together in a manner entirely conformable to the state of every other Hindu work of early times. After this epoch there is found in the liturgical period, into which extend the later portions of the Rig Veda (noticeably parts of the first, fourth, eighth, and tenth books), a religion which, in spiritual tone, in metaphysical speculation, and even in the interpretation of some of the natural divinities, differs not more from the bulk of the Rig Veda than does the social status of the time from that of the earlier text. Religion has become, in so far as the gods are concerned, a ritual. But, except in the building up of a Father-god, theology is at bottom not much altered, and the eschatological conceptions remain about as they were, despite a preliminary sign of the doctrine of metempsychosis. In the Atharva Veda, for the first time, hell is known by its later name (xii. 4. 36), and perhaps its tortures; but the idea of future punishment appears plainly first in the Brahmanic period. Both the doctrine of re-birth and that of hell appear in the earliest S[=u]tras, and consequently the assumption that these dogmas come from Buddhism does not appear to be well founded; for it is to be presumed whatever religious belief is established in legal literature will have preceded that literature by a considerable period, certainly by a greater length of time than that which divides the first Brahmanic law from Buddhism.

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FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 1: Compare the accounts of Lafitau; of the native Iroquois, baptized as Morgan; and the works of Schoolcraft and Parkman.]

[Footnote 2: Jesuits in North America, Introduction, p. lxi.]

[Footnote 3: "Like other Indians, the Hurons were desperate gamblers, staking their all,--ornaments, clothing, canoes, pipes, weapons, and wives," loc. cit. p. xxxvi. Compare Palfrey, of Massachusetts Indians. The same is true of all savages.]

[Footnote 4: Ib. p. lxvii.]

[Footnote 5: Compare Çat. Br. VI. 1. 1, 12; VII. 5. 1, 2 sq., for the Hindu tortoise in its first form. The totem-form of the tortoise is well known in America. (Brinton, Myths of the New World, p. 85.)]

[Footnote 6: Charlevoix ap. Parkman.]

[Footnote 7: Parkman, loc. cit. p. LXXII; Brinton, Myths of the New World, p. 248. A good instance of bad comparison in eschatology will be found in Geiger, Ostir. Cult. pp. 274-275.]

[Footnote 8: Parkman, loc. cit. p. LXXXVI.]

[Footnote 9: Sits. Berl. Akad. 1891, p. 15.]

[Footnote 10: Brinton, American Hero Myths, p. 174. The first worship was Sun-worship, then Viracocha-worship arose, which kept Sun-worship while it predicated a 'power beyond.]

[Footnote 11: Brinton, Myths of the New World, pp. 85, 203.]

[Footnote 12: Ib. pp. 86, 202.]

[Footnote 13: Brinton, Myths of the New World, p. 243. The American Indians "uniformly regard the sun as heaven, the soul goes to the sun."]

[Footnote 14: Ib. p. 245.]

[Footnote 15: Ib. p. 239-40.]

[Footnote 16: Ib. p. 50, 51.]

[Footnote 17: Ib. pp. 242, 248, 255; Schoolcraft, III. 229.]

[Footnote 18: Renouf, Religion of Ancient Egypt; pp. 103, 113 ff.]

[Footnote 19: Teutonic Tuisco is doubtful, as the identity with Dyaus has lately been contested on phonetic grounds.]

[Footnote 20: V[=a]ta, ventus, does not agree very well with Wotan.]

[Footnote 21: [=A]it. Br. III, 34. [Greek: haggaron pur] is really tautological, but beacon fires gave way to couriers and [Greek: haggaros] lost the sense of fire, as did [Greek: haggelos].]

[Footnote 22: But the general belief that fire (Agni, Ignis, Slavic ogni) was first brought to earth from heaven by a half-divine personality is (at least) Aryan, as Kuhn has shown.]

[Footnote 23: Compare the kavis and ugijs (poets and priests) of the Veda with the evil spirits of the same names in the Avesta, like daeva = deva. Compare, besides, the Indo-Iranian feasts, medha, that accompany this Bacchanalian liquor-worship.]

[Footnote 24: Ludwig interprets the three Ribhus as the three seasons personified. Etymologically connected is Orpheus, perhaps.]

[Footnote 25: [Greek: o de chalkeos asphales aien edos menei ouranos], Pind. N. vi. 5; compare Preller[4], p.40.]

[Footnote 26: Wahrscheinlich sind Uranos und Kronos erst aus dem Culte des Zeus abstrahirt worden. Preller[4], p. 43.]

[Footnote 27: When Aryan deities are decadent, Trita, Mitra, etc.]

[Footnote 28: Spiegel holds that the whole idea of future punishment is derived from Persia (Eranische Altherthumskunde, I. p. 458), but his point of view is naturally prejudiced. The allusion to the supposed Babylonian coin, man[=a], in RV. VIII. 78. 2, would indicate that the relation with Babylon is one of trade, as with Aegypt. The account of the flood may be drawn thence, so may the story of Deucalion, but both Hindu and Hellenic versions may be as native as is that of the American redskins.]

[Footnote 29: IV. 17. 17.]

[Footnote 30: loc. cit. pp. 70, 480.]

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Spotted a typo or a problem in this chapter? Tell us

IX. BRAHMANISM

Besides the Rig Veda and the Atharva Veda there are two others, called respectively the S[=a]ma Veda and the Yajur Veda.[1] The former consists of a small collection of verses, which are taken chiefly from the eighth and ninth books of the Rig Veda, and are arranged for singing. It has a few more verses than are contained in the corresponding parts of the Rik, but the whole is of no added importance from the present point of view. It is of course made entirely for the ritual. Also made for the ritual is the Yajur Veda, the Veda of sacrificial formulae. But this Veda is far more important. With it one is brought into a new land, and into a world of ideas that are strange to the Rik. The period represented by it is a sort of bridge between the Rik and the Br[=a]hmanas. The Yajus is later than Rik or Atharvan, belonging in its entirety more to the age of the liturgy than to the older Vedic era. With the Br[=a]hmanas not only is the tone changed from that of the Rig Veda; the whole moral atmosphere is now surcharged with hocus-pocus, mysticism, religiosity, instead of the cheerful, real religion which, however formal, is the soul of the Rik. In the Br[=a]hmanas there is no freshness, no poetry. There is in some regards a more scrupulous outward morality, but for the rest there is only cynicism, bigotry, and dullness. It is true that each of these traits may be found in certain parts of the Rig Veda, but it is not true that they represent there the spirit of the age, as they do in the Brahmanic period. Of this Brahmanic stoa, to which we now turn, the Yajur Veda forms the fitting entrance. Here the priest is as much lord as he is in the Br[=a]hmanas. Here the sacrifice is only the act, the sacrificial forms (yajus), without the spirit.

In distinction from the verse-Veda (the Rik), the Yajur Veda contains the special formulae which the priest that attends to the erection of the altar has to speak, with explanatory remarks added thereto. This of course stamps the collection as mechanical; but the wonder is that this collection, with the similar Br[=a]hmana scriptures that follow it, should be the only new literature which centuries have to show.[2] As explanatory of the sacrifice there is found, indeed, a good deal of legendary stuff, which sometimes has a literary character. But nothing is for itself; everything is for the correct performance of the sacrifice.[3]

The geographical centre is now changed, and instead of the Punj[=a]b, the 'middle district' becomes the seat of culture. Nor is there much difference between the district to which can be referred the rise of the Yajur Veda and that of the Br[=a]hmanas. No less altered is the religion. All is now symbolical, and the gods, though in general they are the gods of the Rig Veda, are not the same as of old. The priests have become gods. The old appellation of 'spirit,' asura, is confined to evil spirits. There is no longer any such 'henotheism' as that of the Rig Veda. The Father-god, 'lord of beings,' or simply 'the father,' is the chief god. The last thought of the Rig Veda is the first thought of the Yajur Veda. Other changes have taken place. The demigods of the older period, the water-nymphs of the Rik, here become seductive goddesses, whose increase of power in this art agrees with the decline of the warrior spirit that is shown too in the whole mode of thinking. Most important is the gradual rise of Vishnu and the first appearance of Çiva. Here brahma, which in the Rik has the meaning 'prayer' alone, is no longer mere prayer, but, as in later literature, holiness. In short, before the Br[=a]hmanas are reached they are perceptible in the near distance, in the Veda of Formulae, the Yajus;[4] for between the Yajur Veda and the Br[=a]hmanas there is no essential difference. The latter consist of explanations of the sacrificial liturgy, interspersed with legends, bits of history, philosophical explanations, and other matter more or less related to the subject. They are completed by the Forest Books, [=A]ranyakas, which contain the speculations of the later theosophy, the Upanishads (below). It is with the Yajur Veda and its nearly related literature, the Br[=a]hmanas, that Brahmanism really begins. Of these latter the most important in age and content are the Br[=a]hmanas (of the Rig Veda and Yajur Veda), called [=A]itareya and Çata-patha, the former representing the western district, the latter, in great part, a more eastern region.

Although the 'Northerners' are still respectfully referred to, yet, as we have just said, the people among whom arose the Br[=a]hmanas are not settled in the Punj[=a]b, but in the country called the 'middle district,' round about the modern Delhi. For the most part the Punj[=a]b is abandoned; or rather, the literature of this period does not emanate from the Aryans that remained in the Punj[=a]b, but from the still emigrating descendants of the old Vedic people that used to live there. Some stay behind and keep the older practices, not in all regards looked upon as orthodox by their more advanced brethren, who have pushed east and now live in the country called the land of the Kurus and Pa[.n]c[=a]las.[5] They are spread farther east, along the banks of the Jumna and Ganges, south of Nep[=a]l; while some are still about and south of the holy Kurukshetra or 'plain of Kurus.' East of the middle district the Kosalas and Videhas form, in opposition to the Kurus and Pa[.n]c[=a]las, the second great tribe (Tirh[=u]t). There are now two sets of 'Seven Rivers,' and the holiness of the western group is perceptibly lessened. Here for the first time are found the Vr[=a]tya-hymns, intended to initiate into the Brahmanic order Aryans who have not conformed to it, and speak a dialectic language.[6] From the point of view of language and geography, no less than from that of the social and spiritual conditions, it is evident that quite a period has elapsed since the body of the Rig Veda was composed. The revealed texts are now ancient storehouses of wisdom. Religion has apparently become a form; in some regards it is a farce.

"There are two kinds of gods; for the gods are gods, and priests that are learned in the Veda and teach it are human gods." This sentence, from one of the most important Hindu prose works,[7] is the key to the religion of the period which it represents; and it is fitly followed by the further statement, that like sacrifice to the gods are the fees paid to the human gods the priests.[8] Yet with this dictum, so important for the understanding of the religion of the age, must be joined another, if one would do that age full justice: 'The sacrifice is like a ship sailing heavenward; if there be a sinful priest in it, that one priest would make it sink' (Çat. Br. IV. 2. 5. 10). For although the time is one in which ritualism had, indeed, become more important than religion, and the priest more important than the gods, yet is there no lack of reverential feeling, nor is morality regarded as unimportant. The first impression, however, which is gained from the literature of this period is that the sacrifice is all in all; that the endless details of its course, and the petty questions in regard to its arrangement, are not only the principal objects of care and of chief moment, but even of so cardinal importance that the whole religious spirit swings upon them. But such is not altogether the case. It is the truth, yet is it not the whole truth, that in these Br[=a]hmanas religion is an appearance, not a reality. The sacrifice is indeed represented to be the only door to prosperity on earth and to future bliss; but there is a quiet yet persistent belief that at bottom a moral and religious life is quite as essential as are the ritualistic observances with which worship is accompanied.

To describe Brahmanism as implying a religion that is purely one of ceremonies, one composed entirely of observances, is therefore not altogether correct. In reading a liturgical work it must not be forgotten for what the work was intended. If its object be simply to inculcate a special rite, one cannot demand that it should show breadth of view or elevation of sentiment. Composed of observances every work must be of which the aim is to explain observances. In point of fact, religion (faith and moral behavior) is here assumed, and so entirely is it taken for granted that a statement emphasizing the necessity of godliness is seldom found.

Nevertheless, having called attention to the religious spirit that lies latent in the pedantic Br[=a]hmanas, we are willing to admit that the age is overcast, not only with a thick cloud of ritualism, but also with an unpleasant mask of phariseeism. There cannot have been quite so much attention paid to the outside of the platter without neglect of the inside. And it is true that the priests of this period strive more for the completion of their rites than for the perfection of themselves. It is true, also, that occasionally there is a revolting contempt for those people who are not of especial service to the priest. There are now two godlike aristocrats, the priest and the noble. The 'people' are regarded as only fit to be the "food of the nobility." In the symbolical language of the time the bricks of the altar, which are consecrated, are the warrior caste; the fillings, in the space between the bricks, are not consecrated; and these "fillers of space" are "the people" (Çat. Br. VI. 1. 2. 25). Yet is religion in these books not dead, but sleeping; to wake again in the Upanishads with a fuller spiritual life than is found in any other pre-Christian system. Although the subject matter of the Br[=a]hmanas is the cult, yet are there found in them numerous legends, moral teachings, philosophical fancies, historical items, etymologies and other adventitious matter, all of which are helpful in giving a better understanding of the intelligence of the people to whom is due all the extant literature of the period. Long citations from these ritualistic productions would have a certain value, in showing in native form the character of the works, but they would make unendurable reading; and we have thought it better to arrange the multifarious contents of the chief Br[=a]hmanas in a sort of order, although it is difficult always to decide where theology ends and moral teachings begin, the two are here so interwoven.

BRAHMANIC THEOLOGY AND THE SACRIFICE.

While in general the pantheon of the Rig Veda and Atharva Veda is that of the Br[=a]hmanas, some of the older gods are now reduced in importance, and, on the other hand, as in the Yajur Veda, some gods are seen to be growing in importance. 'Time,' deified in the Atharvan, is a great god, but beside him still stand the old rustic divinities; and chrematheism, which antedates even the Rig Veda, is still recognized. To the 'ploughshare' and the 'plough' the Rig Veda has an hymn (IV. 57. 5-8), and so the ritual gives them a cake at the sacrifice (Çun[=a]ç[=i]rya, Çat. Br. II. 6. 3. 5). The number of the gods, in the Rig Veda estimated as thirty-three, or, at the end of this period, as thousands, remains as doubtful as ever; but, in general, all groups of deities become greater in number. Thus, in TS. I. 4. 11. 1, the Rudras alone are counted as thirty-three instead of eleven; and, ib. V. 5. 2. 5, the eight Vasus become three hundred and thirty-three; but it is elsewhere hinted that the number of the gods stands in the same relation to that of men as that in which men stand to the beasts; that is, there are not quite so many gods as men (Çat. Br. II. 3. 2. 18).

Of more importance than the addition of new deities is the subdivision of the old. As one finds in Greece a [Greek: Zeus katachthonios] beside a [Greek: Zeus xenios], so in the Yajur Veda and Br[=a]hmanas are found (an extreme instance) hail 'to K[=a]ya,' and hail 'to Kasm[=a]i,' that is, the god Ka is differentiated into two divinities, according as he is declined as a noun or as a pronoun; for this is the god "Who?" as the dull Br[=a]hmanas interpreted that verse of the Rig Veda which asks 'to whom (which, as) god shall we offer sacrifice?' (M[=a]it. S. III. 12. 5.) But ordinarily one divinity like Agni is subdivided, according to his functions, as 'lord of food,' 'lord of prayer,' etc.[9]

In the Br[=a]hmanas different names are given to the chief god, but he is most often called the Father-god (Praj[=a]pati, 'lord of creatures,' or the Father, pit[=a]). His earlier Vedic type is Brihaspati, the lord of strength, and, from another point of view, the All-god.[10] The other gods fall into various groups, the most significant being the triad of Fire, Wind, and Sun.[11] Not much weight is to be laid on the theological speculations of the time as indicative of primitive conceptions, although they may occasionally hit true. For out of the number of inane fancies it is reasonable to suppose that some might coincide with historic facts. Thus the All-gods of the Rig Veda, by implication, are of later origin than the other gods, and this, very likely, was the case; but it is a mere guess on the part of the priest. The Çatapatha, III. 6. 1. 28, speaks of the All-gods as gods that gained immortality on a certain occasion, i.e., became immortal like other gods. So the [=A]dityas go to heaven before the Angirasas ([=A][=i]t. Br. IV. 17), but this has no such historical importance as some scholars are inclined to think. The lesser gods are in part carefully grouped and numbered, in a manner somewhat contradictory to what must have been the earlier belief. Thus the 'three kinds of gods' are now Vasus, of earth, Rudras, of air, and [=A]dityas, of sky, and the daily offerings are divided between them; the morning offering belonging only to the Vasus, the mid-day one only to (Indra and) the Rudras, the third to the [=A]dityas with the Vasus and Rudras together.[12] Again, the morning and mid-day pressing belong to the gods alone, and strict rule is observed in distinguishing their portion from that of the Manes (Çat. Br. IV. 4. 22). The difference of sex is quite ignored, so that the 'universal Agni' is identified with (mother) earth; as is also, once or twice, P[=u]shan (ib. III. 8. 5. 4; 2. 4. 19; II. 5. 4. 7). As the 'progenitor,' Agni facilitates connubial union, and is called "the head god, the progenitor among gods, the lord of beings" (ib. III. 4. 3. 4; III. 9. 1. 6). P[=u]shan is interpreted to mean cattle, and Brihaspati is the priestly caste (ib. III. 9. 1. 10 ff.). The base of comparison is usually easy to find. 'The earth nourishes,' and 'P[=u]shan nourishes,' hence Pushan is the earth; or 'the earth belongs to all' and Agni is called 'belonging to all' (universal), hence the two are identified. The All-gods, merely on account of their name, are now the All; Aditi is the 'unbounded' earth (ib. III. 9. 1. 13; IV. 1. 1. 23; i. 1. 4. 5; III. 2. 3. 6). Agni represents all the gods, and he is the dearest, the closest, and the surest of all the gods (ib. I. 6. 2. 8 ff.). It is said that man on earth fathers the fire (that is, protects it), and when he dies the fire that he has made his son on earth becomes his father, causing him to be reborn in heaven (ib. II. 3. 3. 3-5; VI. 1. 2. 26).

The wives of the gods (dev[=a]n[=a]m patn[=i]r yajati), occasionally mentioned in the Rig Veda, have now an established place and cult apart from that of the gods (ib. I. 9. 2. 11). The fire on the hearth is god Agni in person, and is not a divine or mystic type; but he is prayed to as a heavenly friend. Some of these traits are old, but they are exaggerated as compared with the more ancient theology. When one goes on a journey or returns from one, 'even if a king were in his house' he should not greet him till he makes homage to his hearth-fires, either with spoken words or with silent obeisance. For Agni and Praj[=a]pati are one, they are son and father (ib. II. 4. 1. 3, 10; VI. 1. 2. 26). The gods have mystic names, and these 'who will dare to speak?' Thus, Indra's mystic name is Arjuna (ib. II. 1. 2. 11). In the early period of the Rig Veda the priest dares to speak. The pantheism of the end of the Rig Veda is here decided and plain-spoken, as it is in the Atharvan. As it burns brightly or not the fire is in turn identified with different gods, Rudra, Varuna, Indra, and Mitra (ib. II. 3. 2. 9 ff.). Agni is all the gods and the gods are in men (ib. III. 1. 3. 1; 4. 1. 19; II. 3. 2. 1: Indra and King Yama dwell in men). And, again, the Father (Praj[=a]pati) is the All; he is the year of twelve months and five seasons(ib. I. 3. 5. 10). Then follows a characteristic bit. Seventeen verses are to be recited to correspond to the 'seventeenfold' Praj[=a]pati. But 'some say' twenty-one verses; and he may recite twenty-one, for if 'the three worlds' are added to the above seventeen one gets twenty, and the sun (ya esa tapati) makes the twenty-first! As to the number of worlds, it is said (ib. I. 2. 4. 11, 20-21) that there are three worlds, and possibly a fourth.

Soma is now the moon, but as being one half of Vritra, the evil demon. The other half became the belly of creatures (ib. I. 6. 3. 17). Slightly different is the statement that Soma was Vritra, IV. 2. 5. 15. In [=A]it. Br. I. 27, King Soma is bought of the Gandharvas by V[=a]c, 'speech,' as a cow.[13] With phases of the moon Indra and Agni are identified. One is the deity of the new; the other, of the full moon; while Mitra is the waning, and Varuna the waxing moon (Çat. Br. II. 4. 4. 17-18). This opposition of deities is more fully expressed in the attempt to make antithetic the relations of the gods and the Manes, thus: 'The gods are represented by spring, summer, and rains; the Fathers, by autumn, winter, and the dewy season; the gods, by the waxing; the Fathers, by the waning moon; the gods, by day; the Fathers, by night; the gods, by morning; the Fathers, by afternoon' (Çat. Br. II. 1.-31; ib. II. 4. 2. 1. ff.: 'The sun is the light of the gods; the moon, of the Fathers; fire, of men'). Between morning and afternoon, as representative of gods and Manes respectively, stands midday, which, according to the same authority (II. 4. 2. 8), represents men. The passage first cited continues thus: 'The seasons are gods and Fathers; gods are immortal; the Fathers are mortal.' In regard to the relation between spring and the other seasons, the fifth section of this passage may be compared: 'Spring is the priesthood; summer, the warrior-caste; the rains are the (viç) people.'[14]

Among the conspicuous divine forms of this period is the Queen of Serpents, whose verses are chanted over fire; but she is the earth, according to some passages ([=A]it. Br.. V. 23; Çat. Br. II. 1. 4. 30; IV. 6. 9. 17). In their divine origin there is, indeed, according to the theology now current, no difference between the powers of light and of darkness, between the gods and the 'spirits,' asuras, i.e., evil spirits. Many tales begin with the formula: 'The gods and evil spirits, both born of the Father-god' (Çat. Br. I. 2. 4. 8). Weber thinks that this implies close acquaintance with Persian worship, a sort of tit-for-tat; for the Hindu would in that case call the holy spirit, ahura, of the Persian a devil, just as the Persian makes an evil spirit, daeva, out of the Hindu god, deva. But the relations between Hindu and Persian in this period are still very uncertain. It is interesting to follow out some of the Brahmanic legends, if only to see what was the conception of the evil spirits. In one such theological legend the gods and the (evil) spirits, both being sons of the Father-god, inherited from him, respectively, mind and speech; hence the gods got the sacrifice and heaven, while the evil spirits got this earth. Again, the two entered on the inheritance of their father in time, and so the gods have the waxing moon, and the evil spirits, the waning moon (ib. III 2. 1. 18; I. 7. 2. 22).

But what these Asuras or (evil) spirits really are may be read easily from the texts. The gods are the spirits of light; the Asuras are the spirits of darkness. Therewith is indissolubly connected the idea that sin and darkness are of the same nature. So one reads that when the sun rises it frees itself 'from darkness, from sin,' as a snake from its slough (ib. II. 3. I. 6). And in another passage it is said that darkness and illusion were given to the Asuras as their portion by the Father-god (ib. II. 4. 2. 5). With this may be compared also the frequent grouping of The Asuras or Rakshas with darkness (e.g., ib. III. 8. 2. 15; IV. 3. 4. 21). As to the nature of the gods the evidence is contradictóry. Both gods and evil spirits were originally soulless and mortal. Agni (Fire) alone was immortal, and it was only through him that the others continued to live. They became immortal by putting in their inmost being the holy (immortal) fire (ib. II. 2. 2. 8). On the other hand, it is said that Agni was originally without brightness; and Indra, identified with the sun, was originally dark (ib. IV. 5.4.3; III. 4. 2. 15). The belief in an originally human condition of the gods (even the Father-god was originally mortal) is exemplified in a further passage, where it is said that the gods used to live on earth, but they grew tired of man's endless petitions and fled; also in another place, where it is stated that the gods used to drink together with men visibly, but now they do so invisibly (ib. II. 3. 4. 4; III. 6. 2. 26). How did such gods obtain their supremacy? The answer is simple, 'by sacrifice' (Çat. Br. III. 1. 4. 3; [=A]it. Br. II. I. I). So now they live by sacrifice: 'The sun would not rise if the priest did not make sacrifice' (Çat. Br. II. 3. 1. 5). Even the order of things would change if the order of ceremonial were varied: Night would be eternal if the priests did so and so; the months would not pass, one following the other, if the priests walked out or entered together, etc. (ib. IV. 3. 1. 9-10). It is by a knowledge of the Vedas that one conquers all things, and the sacrifice is part and application of this knowledge, which in one passage is thus reconditely subdivided: 'Threefold is knowledge, the Rig Veda, the Yajur Veda, and the S[=a]ma Veda.[15] The Rig Veda, i.e., the verses sung, are the earth; the Yajus is air; the S[=a]man is the sky. He conquers earth, air, and sky respectively by these three Vedas. The Rik and S[=a]man are Indra and are speech; the Yajus is Vishnu and mind' (ib. IV. 6. 7. 1 ff.). An item follows that touches on a modern philosophical question. Apropos of speech and mind: 'Where speech (alone) existed everything was accomplished and known; but where mind (alone) existed nothing was accomplished or known' (ib. I. 4. 4. 3-4, 7). Mind and speech are male and female, and as yoke-fellows bear sacrificed to the gods; to be compared is the interesting dispute between mind and speech (ib. 5. 8). As dependent as is man on what is given by the gods, so dependent are the gods on what is offered to them by men (T[=a]itt. Br. II. 2. 7. 3; Çat. Br. I. 2. 5. 24). Even the gods are now not native to heaven. They win heaven by sacrifice, by metres, etc. (Çat. Br. IV. 3. 2. 5).

What, then, is the sacrifice? A means to enter into the godhead of the gods, and even to control the gods; a ceremony where every word was pregnant with consequences;[16] every movement momentous. There are indications, however, that the priests themselves understood that much in the ceremonial was pure hocus-pocus, and not of such importance as it was reputed to be. But such faint traces as survive of a freer spirit objecting to ceremonial absurdities only mark more clearly the level plain of unintelligent superstition which was the feeding-ground of the ordinary priests.

Some of the cases of revolted common-sense are worth citing. Conspicuous as an authority on the sacrifice, and at the same time as a somewhat recalcitrant priest, is Y[=a]j[.n]avalkya, author and critic, one of the greatest names in Hindu ecclesiastical history. It was he who, apropos of the new rule in ethics, so strongly insisted upon after the Vedic age and already beginning to obtain, the rule that no one should eat the flesh of the (sacred) cow ('Let no one eat beef.... Whoever eats it would be reborn (on earth) as a man of ill fame') said bluntly: 'As for me I eat (beef) if it is good (firm).[17] It certainly required courage to say this, with the especial warning against beef, the meat of an animal peculiarly holy (Çat. Br. III. I. 2. 21). It was, again, Y[=a]jñavalkya (Çat. Br., I. 3. I. 26), who protested against the priests' new demand that the benefit of the sacrifice should accrue in part to the priest; whereas it had previously been understood that not the sacrificial priest but the sacrificer (the worshipper, the man who hired the priest and paid the expenses) got all the benefit of the ceremony. Against the priests' novel and unjustifiable claim Y[=a]jñavalkya exclaims: 'How can people have faith in this? Whatever be the blessing for which the priests pray, this blessing is for the worshipper (sacrificer) alone.[18] It was Y[=a]jñavalkya, too, who rebutted some new superstition involving the sacrificer's wife, with the sneer, 'who cares whether the wife,' etc. (kas tad [=a]driyeta, ib. 21). These protestations are naïvely recorded, though it is once suggested that in some of his utterances Y[=a]jñavalkya was not in earnest (ib. IV. 2. 1. 7). The high mind of this great priest is contrasted with the mundane views of his contemporaries in the prayers of himself and of another priest; for it is recorded that whereas Y[=a]jñavalkya's prayer to the Sun was 'give me light' (or 'glory,' varco me dehi), that of [=A]upoditeya was 'give me cows' (ib. I. 9. 3. 16). The chronicler adds, after citing these prayers, that one obtains whatever he prays for, either illumination or wealth.[19] Y[=a]jñavalkya, however, is not the only protestant. In another passage, ib. ii. 6. 3. 14-17, the sacrificer is told to shave his head all around, so as to be like the sun; this will ensure his being able to 'consume (his foes) on all sides like the sun,' and it is added: But [=A]suri said, 'What on earth has it to do with his head? Let him not shave.'[20]

'Eternal holiness' is won by him that offers the sacrifice of the seasons. Characteristic is the explanation, 'for such an one wins the year, and a year is a complete whole, and a complete whole is indestructible (eternal); hence his holiness is indestructible, and he thereby becomes a part of a year and goes to the gods; but as there is no destruction in the gods, his holiness is therefore indestructible' (ib. ii. 6. 3. 1).

Not only a man's self but also his Manes are benefited by means of sacrifice.[21] He gives the Manes pleasure with his offering, but he also raises their estate, and sends them up to live in a higher world.[22] The cosmological position of the Manes are the av[=a]ntaradiças, that is, between the four quarters; though, according to some, there are three kinds of them, soma-Manes, sacrifice-Manes (Manes of the sacrificial straw), and the burnt, i.e., the spirits of those that have been consumed in fire. They are, again, identified with the seasons, and are expressly mentioned as the guardians of houses, so that the Brahmanic Manes are at once Penates, Lares, and Manes.[23]

The sacrifice is by no means meant as an aid to the acquirement of heavenly bliss alone. Many of the great sacrifices are for the gaining of good things on earth. In one passage there is described a ceremony, the result of which is to be that the warrior, who is the sacrificer, may say to a man of the people "fetch out and give me your store" (ib. i. 3. 2. 15; iv. 3. 3. 10). Everybody sacrifices, even the beasts erect altars and fires![24] That one should sacrifice without the ulterior motive of gain is unknown. Brahmanic India knows no thank-offering. Ordinarily the gain is represented as a compensating gift from the divinity, whom the sacrificer pleases with his sacrifice. Very plainly is this expressed. "He offers the sacrifice to the god with this text: 'Do thou give to me (and) I (will) give to thee; do thou bestow on me (and) I (will) bestow on thee'" (V[=a]j. S. iii. 50; Çat. Br. ii. 5. 3. 19). But other ends are accomplished. By the sacrifice he may injure his enemy, but in offering it, if he leaves too much over, that part accrues to the good of his foe (Çat. Br. i. 2. 1.7; 9. 1. 18).

The sacrifice is throughout symbolical. The sacrificial straw represents the world; the metre used represents all living creatures, etc.,--a symbolism frequently suggested by a mere pun, but often as ridiculously expounded without such aid. The altar's measure is the measure of metres. The cord of regeneration (badge of the twice-born, the holy cord of the high castes) is triple, because food is threefold, or because the father and mother with the child make three (Çat. Br. iii. 5. 1. 7 ff.; 2. 1. 12); the jagati metre contains the living world, because this is called jagat (ib. i. 8. 2. 11).

Out of the varied mass of rules, speculations, and fancies, a few of general character may find place here, that the reader may gain a collective impression of the religious literature of the time.

The fee for the sacrifice is mentioned in one place as one thousand cows. These must be presented in groups of three hundred and thirty-three each, three times, with an odd one of three colors. This is on account of the holy character of the numeral three. 'But [=A]suri (apparently fearful that this rule would limit the fee) said "he may give more"' (Çat. Br. iv. 5. 8. 14). As to the fee, the rules are precise and their propounders are unblushing. The priest performs the sacrifice for the fee alone, and it must consist of valuable garments, kine, horses,[25] or gold--when each is to be given is carefully stated. Gold is coveted most, for this is 'immortality,' 'the seed of Agni,' and therefore peculiarly agreeable to the pious priest.[26] For his greed, which goes so far that he proclaims that he who gives a thousand kine obtains all things of heaven (ib. iv. 5. 1. 11), the priest has good precept to cite, for the gods of heaven, in all the tales told of them, ever demand a reward from each other when they help their neighbor-gods. Nay, even the gods require a witness and a vow, lest they injure each other. Discord arose among them when once they performed the guest-offering; they divided into different parties, Agni with the Vasus, Soma with the Rudras, Varuna with the [=A]dityas, and Indra with the Maruts. But with discord came weakness, and the evil spirits got the better of them. So they made a covenant with each other, and took Wind as witness that they would not deceive each other. This famous covenant of the gods is the prototype of that significant covenant made by the priest, that he would not, while pretending to beseech } good for the sacrificer,[27] secretly do him harm (as he could by altering the ceremonial).[28] The theory of the fee, in so far as it affects the sacrifices, is that the gods, the Manes, and men all exist by what is sacrificed. Even the gods seek rewards; hence the priests do the same.[29] The sacrificer sacrifices to get a place in devaloka (the world of the gods). The sacrifice goes up to the world of gods, and after it goes the fee which the sacrificer (the patron) gives; the sacrificer follows by catching hold of the fee given to the priests (ib.. i. 9. 3. 1). It is to be noted, moreover, that sacrificing for a fee is recognized as a profession. The work (sacrifice is work, 'work is sacrifice,' it is somewhere said) is regarded as a matter of business. There are three means of livelihood occasionally referred to, telling stories, singing songs, and reciting the Veda at a sacrifice (Çat. Br. iii. 2. 4. 16).

As an example of the absurdities given as 'the ways of knowledge' (absurdities which are necessary to know in order to a full understanding of the mental state under consideration) may be cited Çat. Br. iv. 5. 8. 11, where it is said that if the sacrificial cow goes east the sacrificer wins a good world hereafter; if north, he becomes more glorious on earth; if west, rich in people and crops; if south, he dies; 'such are the ways of knowledge.' In the same spirit it is said that the sun rises east because the priest repeats certain verses ([=A]it. Br. i. 7. 4). No little stress is laid on geographical position. The east is the quarter of the gods; the north, of men; the south, of the dead (Manes; Çat. Br. i. 2. 5. 17); while the west is the region of snakes, according to ib. iii. 1. 1. 7. On account of the godly nature of the east ("from the east came the gods westward to men," ib. ii. 6. 1. 11) the sacrificial building, like occidental churches, is built east and west, not north and south. The cardinal points are elsewhere given to certain gods; thus the north is Rudra's.[30]

It has been said that the theological ideas are not clear. This was inevitable, owing to the tendency to identify various divinities. Especially noticeable is the identification of new or local gods with others better accredited, Rudra and Agni, etc. Rudra is the god of cattle, and when the other gods went to heaven by means of sacrifice he remained on earth; his local names are Çarva, Bhava, 'Beast-lord,' Rudra, Agni (Çat. Br. i. 7. 3. 8; M[=a]it. S. i. 6. 6). Indra is the Vasu of the gods. The gods are occasionally thirty-four in number, eight Vasus, eleven Rudras, twelve [=A]dityas, heaven and earth, and Praj[=a]pati as the thirty-fourth; but this Praj[=a]pati is the All and Everything (Çat. Br. i. 6. 4. 2; iv. 5. 7. 2 ff.). Of these gods, who at first were all alike and good, three became superior, Agni, Indra, and S[=u]rya. But, again, the Sun is death, and Agni is head of all the gods. Moreover, the Sun is now Indra; the Manes are the seasons, and Varuna, too, is the seasons, as being the year (Çat. Br. iv. 5. 4. 1; i. 6. 4. 18; iv. 4. 5. 18). Aditi, as we have said, is the Earth; the fee for an offering to her is a cow. Why? Because Earth is a cow and Aditi is Earth; Earth is a mother and a cow is a mother. Hence the fee is a cow.[31]

The tales of the gods, for the most part, are foolish. But they show well what conception the priests had of their divinities.

Man's original skin was put by the gods upon the cow; hence a cow runs away from a man because she thinks he is trying to get back his skin. The gods cluster about at an oblation, each crying out 'My name,' i.e., each is anxious to get it. The gods, with the evil spirits--'both sons of the Father'--attract to themselves the plants; Varuna gets the barley by a pun. They build castles to defend themselves from the evil spirits. Five gods are picked out as worthy of offerings: Aditi, Speech, Agni, Soma, the Sun (five, because the seasons are five and the regions are five). Indra and Wind have a dispute of possession; Praj[=a]pati, the Father, decides it. The heavenly singers, called the Gandharvas, recited the Veda to entice (the divine female) Speech to come to them; while the gods, for the same purpose, created the lute, and sang and played to her. She came to the gods; hence the weakness of women in regard to such things. Indra is the god of sacrifice; the stake of the sacrifice is Vishnu's; V[=a]yu (Wind) is the leader of beasts; Bhaga is blind;[32] P[=u]shan (because he eats mush) is toothless. The gods run a race to see who shall get first to the sacrifice, and Indra and Agni win; they are the warrior-caste among the gods, and the All-gods are the people (viçve, viç.). Yet, again, the Maruts are the people, and Varuna is the warrior-caste; and, again, Soma is the warrior-caste. The Father-god first created birds, then reptiles and snakes. As these all died he created mammalia; these survived because they had food in themselves; hence the Vedic poet says 'three generations have passed away.'[33]

Varuna is now quite the god of night and god of purification, as a water-god. Water is the 'essence (sap) of immortality,' and the bath of purification at the end of the sacrifice (avabh[r.]tha) stands in direct relation to Varuna. The formula to be repeated is: "With the gods' help may I wash out sin against the gods; with the help of men the sin against men" (Çat. Br. iv. 4. 3. 15; ii. 5. 2. 47). Mitra and Varuna are, respectively, intelligence and will, priest and warrior; and while the former may exist without the latter, the latter cannot live without the former, 'but they are perfect only when they coöperate' (ib. iv. 1. 4. 1).

Of the divine legends some are old, some new. One speaks of the sacrifice as having been at first human, subsequently changing to beast sacrifice, eventually to a rice offering, which last now represents the original sacrificial animal, man.[34] Famous, too, is the legend of the flood and Father Manu's escape from it (Çat. Br. i. 8. 1. 1 ff.). Again, the Vedic myth is retold, recounting the rape of soma by the metrical equivalent of fire (T[=a]itt. Br. i. 1. 3. 10; Çat. Br. i. 8. 2. 10). Another tale takes up anew the old story of Cupid and Psyche (Pur[=u]ravas and Urvaç[=i]); and another that of the Hindu Prometheus story, wherein M[=a]tariçvan fetches fire from heaven, and gives it to mortals (T[=a]itt. Br. iii. 2. 3. 2; Çat. Br. xi. 5. 1. 1; i. 7. 1. 11).[35]

Interesting, also, is the tale of Vishnu having been a dwarf, and the tortoise avatar, not of Vishnu, but of Praj[=a]pati; also the attempt of the evil spirits to climb to heaven, and the trick with which Indra outwitted them.[36] For it is noticeable that the evil spirits are as strong by nature as are the gods, and it is only by craft that the latter prevail.[37]

Seldom are the tales of the gods indecent. The story of Praj[=a]pati's incest with his daughter is a remnant of nature worship which survives, in more or less anthropomorphic form, from the time of the Rig Veda (x. 61.) to that of mediaeval literature,[38] and is found in full in the epic, as in the Brahmanic period; but the story always ends with the horror of the gods at the act.[39]

Old legends are varied. The victory over Vritra is now expounded thus: Indra, who slays Vritra, is the sun. Vritra is the moon, who swims into the sun's mouth on the night of the new moon. The sun rises after swallowing him, and the moon is invisible because he is swallowed ("he who knows this swallows his foes"). The sun vomits out the moon, and the latter is then seen in the west, and increases again, to serve the sun as food. In another passage it is said that when the moon is invisible he is hiding in plants and waters (Çat. Br. i. 6. 3. 17; 4. 18-20).

BRAHMANIC RELIGION.

When the sacrifice is completed the priest returns, as it were, to earth, and becomes human. He formally puts off his sacrificial vow, and rehabilitates himself with humanity, saying, "I am even he that I am."[40] As such a man, through service to the gods become a divine offering, and no longer human, was doubtless considered the creature that first served as the sacrificial animal. Despite protestant legends such as that just recorded, despite formal disclaimers, human sacrifice existed long after the period of the Rig Veda, where it is alluded to; a period when even old men are exposed to die.[41] The anaddh[=a]purusha is not a fiction; for that, on certain occasions, instead of this 'man of straw' a real victim was offered, is shown by the ritual manuals and by Brahmanic texts.[42] Thus, in Çat. Br. vi. 2. 1. 18: "He kills a man first.... The cord that holds the man is the longest." It is noteworthy that also among the American Indians the death of a human victim by fire was regarded as a religious ceremony, and that, just as in India the man to be sacrificed was allowed almost all his desires for a year, so the victim of the Indian was first greeted as brother and presented with gifts, even with a wife.[43]

But this, the terrible barbaric side of religious worship, is now distinctly yielding to a more humane religion. The 'barley ewe'[44] is taking the place of a bloodier offering. It has been urged that the humanity[45] and the accompanying silliness of the Brahmanic period as compared with the more robust character of the earlier age are due to the weakening and softening effects of the climate. But we doubt whether the climate of the Punj[=a]b differs as much from that of Delhi and Patna as does the character of the Rig Veda from that of the Br[=a]hmanas. We shall protest again when we come to the subject of Buddhism against the too great influence which has been claimed for climate. Politics and society, in our opinion, had more to do with altering the religions of India than had a higher temperature and miasma. As a result of ease and sloth--for the Brahmans are now the divine pampered servants of established kings, not the energetic peers of a changing population of warriors--the priests had lost the inspiration that came from action; they now made no new hymns; they only formulated new rules of sacrifice. They became intellectually debauched and altogether weakened in character. Synchronous with this universal degradation and lack of fibre, is found the occasional substitution of barley and rice sacrifices for those of blood; and it may be that a sort of selfish charity was at work here, and the priest saved the beast to spare himself. But there is no very early evidence of a humane view of sacrifice influencing the priests.

The Brahman is no Jain. One must read far to hear a note of the approaching ahims[=a] doctrine of 'non-injury.' At most one finds a contemptuous allusion, as in a pitying strain, to the poor plants and animals that follow after man in reaping some sacrificial benefit from a ceremony.[46] It does not seem to us that a recognized respect for animal life or kindness to dumb creatures lies at the root of proxy sacrifice, though it doubtless came in play. But still less does it appear probable that, as is often said, aversion to beast-sacrifice is due to the doctrine of karma, and re-birth in animal form. The karma notion begins to appear in the Brahmanas, but not in the sams[=a]ra shape of transmigration. It was surely not because the Hindu was afraid of eating his deceased grandmother that he first abstained from meat. For, long after the doctrine of karma and sams[=a]ra[47] is established, animal sacrifices are not only permitted but enjoined; and the epic characters shoot deer and even eat cows. We think, in short, that the change began as a sumptuary measure only. In the case of human sacrifice there is doubtless a civilized repugnance to the act, which is clearly seen in many passages where the slaughter of man is made purely symbolical. The only wonder is that it should have obtained so long after the age of the Rig Veda. But like the stone knife of sacrifice among the Romans it is received custom, and hard to do away with, for priests are conservative. Human sacrifice must have been peculiarly horrible from the fact that the sacrificer not only had to kill the man but to eat him, as is attested by the formal statement of the liturgical works.[48] But in the case of other animals (there are five sacrificial animals, of which man is first) we think it was a question of expense on the part of the laity. When the soma became rare and expensive, substitutes were permitted and enjoined. So with the great sacrifices. The priests had built up a great complex of forms, where at every turn fees were demanded. The whole expense, falling on the one individual to whose benefit accrued the sacrifice, must have been enormous; in the case of ordinary people impossible. But the priests then permitted the sacrifice of substitutes, for their fees still remained; and even in the case of human sacrifice some such caution may have worked, for ordinarily it cost 'one thousand cattle' to buy a man to be sacrificed. A proof of this lies in the fact that animal sacrifices were not forbidden at any time, only smaller (cheaper) animals took the place of cattle. In the completed Brahmanic code the rule is that animals ought not to be killed except at sacrifice, and practically the smaller creatures were substituted for cattle, just as the latter had gradually taken the place of the old horse (and man) sacrifice.

If advancing civilization results in an agreeable change of morality in many regards, it is yet accompanied with wretched traits in others. The whole silliness of superstition exceeds belief. Because Bh[=a]llabheya once broke his arm on changing the metre of certain formulae, it is evident to the priest that it is wrong to trifle with received metres, and hence "let no one do this hereafter." There is a compensation on reading such trash in the thought that all this superstition has kept for us a carefully preserved text, but that is an accident of priestly foolishness, and the priest can be credited only with the folly. Why is 'horse-grass' used in the sacrifice? Because the sacrifice once ran away and "became a horse." Again one is thankful for the historical side-light on the horse-sacrifice; but the witlessness of the unconscious historian can but bring him into contempt.[49] Charms that are said against one are of course cast out by other charms. If one is not prosperous with one name he takes another. If the cart creaks at the sacrifice it is the voice of evil spirits; and a formula must avert the omen. Soma-husks are liable to turn into snakes; a formula must avert this catastrophe. Everything done at the sacrifice is godly; ergo, everything human is to be done in an inhuman manner, and, since in human practice one cuts his left finger-nails first and combs the left side of the beard first, at the sacrifice he must cut nails and beard first on the other side, for "whatever is human at a sacrifice is useless" (vy[r.]ddhain v[=a]i tad yajñasya yad m[=a]nu[s.]am). Of religious puns we have given instances already. Agni says: "prop me on the propper for that is proper" (hita), etc, etc.[50] One of these examples of depraved superstition is of a more dangerous nature. The effect of the sacrifice is covert as well as overt.

The word is as potent as the act. Consequently if the sacrificer during the sacrifice merely mutter the words "let such an one die," he must die; for the sacrifice is holy, godly; the words are divine, and cannot be frustrated (Çat. Br. iii. 1. 4. 1; iv. 1. 1. 26).

All this superstition would be pardonable if it were primitive. But that it comes long after the Vedic poets have sung reveals a continuance of stupidity which is marvellous. Doubtless those same poets were just as superstitious, but one would think that with all the great literature behind them, and the thoughts of the philosophers just rising among them, these later priests might show a higher level of intelligence. But in this regard they are to India what were the monks of mediaeval times to Europe.

We turn now to the ethical side of religion. But, before leaving the sacrifice, one point should be explained clearly. The Hindu sacrifice can be performed only by the priest, and he must be of the highest caste. No other might or could perform it. For he alone understood the ancient texts, which to the laity were already only half intelligible. Again, as Barth has pointed out, the Hindu sacrifice is performed only for one individual or his family. It was an expensive rite (for the gaining of one object), addressed to many gods for the benefit of one man. To offset this, however, one must remember that there were popular fêtes and sacrifices of a more general nature, to which many were invited and in which even the lower castes took part; and these were also of remote antiquity.

Already current in the Br[=a]hmanas is the phrase 'man's debts.' Either three or four of such moral obligations were recognized, debts to the gods, to the seers, to the Manes, and to men. Whoever pays these debts, it is said, has discharged all his duties, and by him all is obtained, all is won. And what are these duties? To the gods he owes sacrifices; to the seers, study of the Vedas; to the Manes, offspring; to man, hospitality (Çat. Br. i. 7. 2. 1 ff.; in T[=a]itt. Br. vi. 3. 10. 5, the last fails). Translated into modern equivalents this means that man must have faith and good works. But more really is demanded than is stated here. First and foremost is the duty of truthfulness. Agni is the lord of vows among the gods (RV. viii. 11. 1; Çat. Br. iii. 2. 2. 24), and speech is a divinity (Sarasvat[=i] is personified speech, Çat. Br. iii. 1. 4. 9, etc). Truth is a religious as well as moral duty. "This (All) is two-fold, there is no third; all is either truth or untruth; now truth alone is the gods (satyam eva dev[=a]s) and untruth is man."[51] Moreover, "one law the gods observe, truth" (Çat. Br. i. 1.1. 4; iii. 3. 2. 2; 4. 2. 8). There is another passage upon this subject: "To serve the sacred fire means truth; he who speaks truth feeds the fire; he who speaks lies pours water on it; in the one case he strengthens his vital (spiritual) energy, and becomes better; in the other he weakens it and becomes worse" (ib. ii. 2. 2. 19). The second sin, expressly named and reprobated as such, is adultery. This is a sin against Varuna.[52] In connection with this there is an interesting passage implying a priestly confessional. At the sacrifice the sacrificer's wife is formally asked by the priest whether she is faithful to her husband. She is asked this that she may not sacrifice with guilt on her soul, for "when confessed the guilt becomes less."[53] If it is asked what other moral virtues are especially inculcated besides truth and purity the answer is that the acts commonly cited as self-evidently sins are murder, theft, and abortion; incidentally, gluttony, anger, and procrastination.[54]

As to the moral virtue of observing days, certain times are allowed and certain times are not allowed for worldly acts. But every day is in part a holy-day to the Hindu. The list of virtues is about the same, therefore, as that of the decalogue--the worship of the right divinity; the observance of certain seasons for prayer and sacrifice; honor to the parents; abstinence from theft, murder, adultery. Envy alone is omitted.[55]

What eschatological conceptions are strewn through the literature of this era are vague and often contradictory. The souls of the departed are at one time spoken of as the stars (T[=a]itt. S. v. 4. 1. 3.); at another, as uniting with gods and living in the world of the gods (Çal. Br.. ii. 6. 4. 8).

The principle of karma if not the theory, is already known, but the very thing that the completed philosopher abhors is looked upon as a blessing, viz., rebirth, body and all, even on earth.[56] Thus in one passage, as a reward for knowing some divine mystery (as often happens, this mystery is of little importance, only that 'spring is born again out of winter'), the savant is to be 'born again in this world' (punar ha v[=a] 'asmin loke bhavati, Çat. Br. i. 5. 3. 14). The esoteric wisdom is here the transfer of the doctrine of metempsychosis to spring. Man has no hope of immortal life (on earth);[57] but, by establishing the holy fires, and especially by establishing in his inmost soul the immortal element of fire, he lives the full desirable length of life (ib. ii. 2. 2. 14. To the later sage, length of life is undesirable). But in yonder world, where the sun itself is death, the soul dies again and again. All those on the other side of the sun, the gods, are immortal; but all those on this side are exposed to this death. When the sun wishes, he draws out the vitality of any one, and then that one dies; not once, but, being drawn up by the sun, which is death, into the very realm of death (how different to the conception of the sun in the Rig Veda!) he dies over and over again.[58] But in another passage it is said that when the sacrificer is consecrated he 'becomes one of the deities'; and one even finds the doctrine that one obtains 'union with Brahm[=a],' which is quite in the strain of the Upanishads; but here such a saying can refer only to the upper castes, for "the gods talk only to the upper castes" (Çal. Br.. xi. 4. 4. 1; iii. 1. 1. 8-10). The dead man is elsewhere represented as going to heaven 'with his whole body,' and, according to one passage, when he gets to the next world his good and evil are weighed in a balance. There are, then, quite diverse views in regard to the fate of a man after death, and not less various are the opinions in regard to his reward and punishment. According to the common belief the dead, on leaving this world, pass between two fires, agniçikhe raging on either side of his path. These fires burn the one that ought to be burned (the wicked), and let the good pass by. Then the spirit (or the man himself in body) is represented as going up on one of two paths. Either he goes to the Manes on a path which, according to later teaching, passes southeast through the moon, or he goes northeast (the gods' direction) to the sun, which is his 'course and stay.' In the same chapter one is informed that the rays of the sun are the good (dead), and that every brightest light is the Father-god. The general conception here is that the sun or the stars are the destination of the pious. On the other hand it is said that one will enjoy the fruit of his acts here on earth, in a new birth; or that he will 'go to the next world'; or that he will suffer for his sins in hell. The last is told in legendary form, and appears to us to be not an early view retained in folk-lore, but a late modification of an old legend. Varuna sends his son Bhrigu to hell to find out what happens after death, and he finds people suffering torture, and, again, avenging themselves on those that have wronged them. But, despite the resemblance between this and Grecian myth, the fact that in the whole compass of the Rik (in the Atharvan perhaps in v. 19) there is not the slightest allusion to torture in hell, precludes, to our mind, the possibility of this phase having been an ancient inherited belief.[59]

Annihilation or a life in under darkness is the first (Rik) hell. The general antithesis of light (as good) and darkness (as bad) is here plainly revealed again. Sometimes a little variation occurs. Thus, according to Çat. Br. vi. 5. 4. 8, the stars are women-souls, perhaps, as elsewhere, men also. The converse notion that darkness is the abode of evil appears at a very early date: "Indra brought down the heathen, dasyus, into the lowest darkness," it is said in the Atharva Veda (ix. 2. 17).[60]

In the later part of the great 'Br[=a]hmana of the hundred paths' there seems to be a more modern view inculcated in regard to the fate of the dead. Thus, in vi. 1. 2. 36, the opinion of 'some,' that the fire on the altar is to bear the worshipper to the sky, is objected to, and it is explained that he becomes immortal; which antithesis is in purely Upanishadic style, as will be seen below.

BRAHMANIC THEORIES OF CREATION.

In Vedic polytheism, with its strain of pantheism, the act of creating the world[61] is variously attributed to different gods. At the end of this period theosophy invented the god of the golden germ, the great Person (known also by other titles), who is the one (pantheistic) god, in whom all things are contained, and who himself is contain in even the smallest thing. The Atharvan transfers the same idea in its delineation of the pantheistic image to Varuna, that Varuna who is the seas and yet is contained "in the drop of water" (iv. 16), a Varuna as different to the Varuna of the Rik as is the Atharvan Indra to his older prototype. Philosophically the Rik, at its close, declares that "desire is the seed of mind," and that "being arises from not-being."

In the Br[=a]hmanas the creator is the All-god in more anthropomorphic form. The Father-god, Praj[=a]pati, or Brahm[=a] (personal equivalent of brahma) is not only the father of gods, men, and devils, but he is the All. This Father-god of universal sovereignty, Brahm[=a], remains to the end the personal creator. It is he who will serve as creator for the Puranic S[=a]nkhya philosophy, and even after the rise of the Hindu sects he will still be regarded in this light, although his activity will be conditioned by the will of Vishnu or Çiva. In pure philosophy there will be an abstract First Cause; but as there is no religion in the acknowledgment of a First Cause, this too will soon be anthropomorphized.

The Br[=a]hmanas themselves present no clear picture of creation. All the accounts of a personal creator are based merely on anthropomorphized versions of the text 'desire is the seed.' Praj[=a]pati wishes offspring, and creates. There is, on the other hand, a philosophy of creation which reverts to the tale of the 'golden germ.'[62] The world was at first water; thereon floated a cosmic golden egg (the principle of fire). Out of this came Spirit that desired; and by desire he begat the worlds and all things. It is improbable that in this somewhat Orphic mystery there lies any pre-Vedic myth. The notion comes up first in the golden germ and egg-born bird (sun) of the Rik. It is not specially Aryan, and is found even among the American Indians.[63] It is this Spirit with which the Father-god is identified. But guess-work philosophy then asks what upheld this god, and answers that a support upheld all things. So Support becomes a god in his turn, and, since he must reach through time and space, this Support, Skambha, becomes the All-god also; and to him as to a great divinity the Atharvan sings some of its wildest strains. When once speculation is set going in the Br[=a]hmanas, the result of its travel is to land its followers in intellectual chaos.[64] The gods create the Father-god in one passage, and in another the Father-god creates the gods. The Father creates the waters, whence rises the golden egg. But, again, the waters create the egg, and out of the egg is born the Father. A farrago of contradictions is all that these tales amount to, nor are they redeemed even by a poetical garb.[65]

In the period immediately following the Br[=a]hmanas, or toward the end of the Brahmanic period, as one will, there is a famous distinction made between the gods. Some gods, it is said, are spirit-gods; some are work-gods. They are born of spirit and of works, respectively. The difference, however, is not essential, but functional; so that one may conclude from this authority, the Nirukta (a grammatical and epexigetical work), that all the gods have a like nature; and that the spirit-gods, who are the older, differ only in lack of specific functions from the work-gods. A not uninteresting debate follows this passage in regard to the true nature of the gods. Some people say they are anthropomorphic; others deny this. "And certainly what is seen of the gods is not anthropomorphic; for example, the sun, the earth, etc."[66] In such a period of theological advance it is matter of indifference to which of a group of gods, all essentially one, is laid the task of creation. And, indeed, from the Vedic period until the completed systems of philosophy, all creation to the philosopher is but emanation; and stories of specific acts of creation are not regarded by him as detracting from the creative faculty of the First Cause. The actual creator is for him the factor and agent of the real god. On the other hand, the vulgar worshipper of every era believed only in reproduction on the part of an anthropomorphic god; and that god's own origin he satisfactorily explained by the myth of the golden egg. The view depended in each case not on the age but on the man.

If in these many pages devoted to the Br[=a]hmanas we have produced the impression that the religious literature of this period is a confused jumble, where unite descriptions of ceremonies, formulae, mysticism, superstitions, and all the output of active bigotry; an olla podrida which contains, indeed, odds and ends of sound morality, while it presents, on the whole, a sad view of the latter-day saints, who devoted their lives to making it what it is; we have offered a fairly correct view of the age and its priests, and the rather dreary series of illustrations will not have been collected in vain. We have given, however, no notion at all of the chief object of this class of writings, the liturgical details of the sacrifices themselves. Even a résumé of one comparatively short ceremony would be so long and tedious that the explication of the intricate formalities would scarcely be a sufficient reward. With Hillebrandt's patient analysis of the New-and Full-Moon sacrifice,[67] of which a sketch is given by von Schroeder in his Literatur und Cultur, the curious reader will be able to satisfy himself that a minute description of these ceremonies would do little to further his knowledge of the religion, when once he grasps the fact that the sacrifice is but show. Symbolism without folk-lore, only with the imbecile imaginings of a daft mysticism, is the soul of it; and its outer form is a certain number of formulae, mechanical movements, oblations, and slaughterings.

But we ought not to close the account of the era without giving counter-illustrations of the legendary aspect of this religion; for which purpose we select two of the best-known tales, one from the end of the Br[=a]hmana that is called the [=A]itareya; the other from the beginning of the Çatapatha; the former in abstract, the latter in full.

THE SACRIFICE OF DOGSTAIL ([=A]it. Br. vii. 13).

Hariçcandra, a king born in the great race of Ikshv[=a]ku, had no son. A sage told him what blessings are his who has a son: 'He that has no son has no place in the world; in the person of a son a man is reborn, a second self is begotten.' Then the king desired a son, and the sage instructed him to pray to Varuna for one, and to offer to sacrifice him to the god. This he did, and a son, Rohita, at last was born to him. God Varuna demanded the sacrifice. But the king said: 'He is not fit to be sacrificed, so young as he is; wait till he is ten days old.' The god waited ten days, and demanded the sacrifice. But the king said: 'Wait till his teeth come.' The god waited, and then demanded the sacrifice. But the king said: 'Wait till his teeth fall out'; and when the god had waited, and again demanded the sacrifice, the father said: 'Wait till his new teeth come.' But, when his teeth were come and he was demanded, the father said: 'A warrior is not fit to be sacrificed till he has received his armor' (i.e., until he is knighted). So the god waited till the boy had received his armor, and then he demanded the sacrifice. Thereupon, the king called his son, and said unto him: 'I will sacrifice thee to the god who gave thee to me.' But the son said, 'No, no,' and took his bow and fled into the desert. Then Varuna caused the king to be afflicted with dropsy.[68] When Rohita heard of this he was about to return, but Indra, disguised as a priest, met him, and said: 'Wander on, for the foot of a wanderer is like a flower; his spirit grows, and reaps fruit, and all his sins are forgiven in the fatigue of wandering.'[69] So Rohita, thinking that a priest had commanded him, wandered; and every year, as he would return, Indra met him, and told him still to wander. On one of these occasions Indra inspires him to continue on his journey by telling him that the krita was now auspicious; using the names of dice afterwards applied to the four ages.[70] Finally, after six years, Rohita resolved to purchase a substitute for sacrifice. He meets a starving seer, and offers to buy one of his sons (to serve as sacrifice), the price to be one hundred cows. The seer has three sons, and agrees to the bargain; but "the father said, 'Do not take the oldest,' and the mother said, 'Do not take the youngest,' so Rohita took the middle son, Dogstail." Varuna immediately agrees to this substitution of Dogstail for Rohita, "since a priest is of more value than a warrior."

The sacrifice is made ready, and Viçv[=a]mitra (the Vedic seer) is the officiating priest. But no one would bind the boy to the post. 'If thou wilt give me another hundred cows I will bind him,' says the father of Dogstail. But then no one would kill the boy. 'If thou wilt give me another hundred cows I will kill him,' says the father. The [=A]pri verses[71] are said, and the fire is carried around the boy. He is about to be slain. Then Dogstail prays to 'the first of gods,' the Father-god, for protection. But the Father-god tells him to pray to Agni, 'the nearest of the gods.' Agni sends him to another, and he to another, till at last, when the boy has prayed to all the gods, including the All-gods, his fetters drop off; Hariçcandra's dropsy ceases, and all ends well.[72] Only, when the avaricious father demands his son back, he is refused, and Viçv[=a]mitra adopts the boy, even dispossessing his own protesting sons. For fifty of the latter agree to the exaltation of Dogstail; but fifty revolt, and are cursed by Viçv[=a]mitra, that their sons' sons should become barbarians, the Andhras, Pundras, Çabaras, Pulindas, and M[=u]tibas, savage races (of this time), one of which can be located on the southeast coast. The conclusion, and the matter that follows close on this tale, is significant of the time, and of the priest's authority. For it is said that 'if a king hears this story he is made free of sin,' but he can hear it only from a priest, who is to be rewarded for telling it by a gift of one thousand cows, and other rich goods.

The matter following, to which we have alluded, is the use of sacrificial formulae to defeat the king's foes, the description of a royal inauguration, and, at this ceremony, the oath which the king has to swear ere the priest will anoint him (he is anointed with milk, honey, butter, and water, 'for water is immortality'): "I swear that thou mayst take from me whatever good works I do to the day of my death, together with my life and children, if ever I should do thee harm."[73]

When the priest is secretly told how he may ruin the king by a false invocation at the sacrifice, and the king is made to swear that if ever he hurts the priest the latter may rob him of earthly and heavenly felicity, the respective positions of the two, and the contrast between this era and that of the early hymns, become strikingly evident. It is not from such an age as this that one can explain the spirit of the Rig Veda.

The next selection is the famous story of the flood, which we translate literally in its older form.[74] The object of the legend in the Br[=a]hmana is to explain the importance of the Id[=a] (or Il[=a]) ceremony, which is identified with Id[=a], Manu's daughter.

"In the morning they brought water to Manu to wash with, even as they bring it to-day to wash hands with. While he was washing a fish came into his hands. The fish said, 'Keep me, and I will save thee.' 'What wilt thou save me from?' 'A flood will sweep away all creatures on earth. I will save thee from that.' 'How am I to keep thee?' 'As long as we are small,' said he (the fish), 'we are subject to much destruction; fish eats fish. Thou shalt keep me first in a jar. When I outgrow that, thou shalt dig a hole, and keep me in it. When I outgrow that, thou shalt take me down to the sea, for there I shall be beyond destruction.'

"It soon became a (great horned fish called a) jhasha, for this grows the largest, and then it said: 'The flood will come this summer (or in such a year). Look out for (or worship) me, and build a ship. When the flood rises, enter into the ship, and I will save thee.' After he had kept it he took it down to the sea. And the same summer (year) as the fish had told him he looked out for (or worshipped) the fish; and built a ship. And when the flood rose he entered into the ship. Then up swam the fish, and Manu tied the ship's rope to the horn of the fish; and thus he sailed swiftly up toward the mountain of the north. 'I have saved thee' said he (the fish). 'Fasten the ship to a tree. But let not the water leave thee stranded while thou art on the mountain (top). Descend slowly as the water goes down.' So he descended slowly, and that descent of the mountain of the north is called the 'Descent of Manu.' The flood then swept off all the creatures of the earth, and Manu here remained alone. Desirous of posterity, he worshipped and performed austerities. While he was performing a sacrifice, he offered up in the waters clarified butter, sour milk, whey and curds. Out of these in a year was produced a woman. She arose when she was solid, and clarified butter collected where she trod. Mitra and Varuna met her, and said: 'Who art thou?' 'Manu's daughter,' said she. 'Say ours,' said they. 'No,' said she; 'I am my father's.' They wanted part in her. She agreed to this, and she did not agree; but she went by them and came to Manu. Said Manu: 'Who art thou?' 'Thy daughter,' said she. 'How my daughter, glorious woman?' She said: 'Thou hast begotten me of the offering, which thou madest in the water, clarified butter, sour milk, whey, and curds. I am a blessing; use me at the sacrifice. If thou usest me at the sacrifice, thou shalt become rich in children and cattle. Whatever blessing thou invokest through me, all shall be granted to thee.' So he used her as the blessing in the middle of the sacrifice. For what is between the introductory and final offerings is the middle of the sacrifice. With her he went on worshipping and performing austerities, wishing for offspring. Through her he begot the race of men on earth, the race of Manu; and whatever the blessing he invoked through her, all was granted unto him.

"Now she is the same with the Id[=a] ceremony; and whoever, knowing this, performs sacrifice with the Id[=a], he begets the race that Manu generated; and whatever blessing he invokes through her, all is granted unto him."

There is one of the earliest avatar stories in this tale. Later writers, of course, identify the fish with Brahm[=a] and with Vishnu. In other early Br[=a]hmanas the avatars of a god as a tortoise and a boar were known long before they were appropriated by the Vishnuites.

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FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 1: In [=A]it. Br. I. 22, there is an unexplained antithesis of Rik, Yajus, S[=a]man, Veda, and Brahma; where the commentator takes Veda to be Atharva Veda. The priests, belonging respectively to the first three Vedas, are for the Rig Veda, the Hotar priest, who recites; for the S[=a]man, the Udg[=a]tar, 'the singer'; for the Y[=a]jus, the Adhvaryu, who attends to the erection of the altar, etc. Compare Müller, ASL. p. 468.]

[Footnote 2: It is the only literature of its time except (an important exception) those fore-runners of later S[=u]tra and epic which one may suppose to be in process of formation long before they come to the front.]

[Footnote 3: There are several schools of this Veda, of which the chief are the V[=a]jasaneyi, or 'White Yajus,' collection; the T[=a]ittir[=i]ya collection; and the M[=a]itr[=a]yan[=i] collection; the first named being the latest though the most popular, the last two being the foremost representatives of the 'Black Yajus.']

[Footnote 4: The different traits here recorded are given with many illustrative examples by Schroeder, in his Literatur und Cultur, p. 90 ff.]

[Footnote 5: Compare Weber, Ind. Streifen, II. 197.]

[Footnote 6: Weber, Lit. p. 73.]

[Footnote 7: The Çata-patha Br[=a]hmana (or "Br[=a]mana of the hundred paths") II. 2. 2. 6; 4.3.14.]

[Footnote 8: The chief family priest, it is said in the Çat. Br. II. 4. 4. 5, is a man of great influence. Sometimes one priest becomes religious head of two clans (an extraordinary event, however; only one name is reported) and then how exalted is his position. Probably, as in the later age of the drama, the chief priest often at the same time practically prime minister. It is said in another part of the same book that although the whole earth is divine, yet it is the priest that makes holy the place of sacrifice (III. 1. 1. 4). In this period murder is defined as killing a priest; other cases are not called murder. Weber, IS. X. 66.]

[Footnote 9: Barth, loc. cit. p. 42.]

[Footnote 10: He has analogy with Agni in being made of 'seven persons (males),' Çat. Br. X. 2. 2. 1.]

[Footnote 11: Compare M[=a]it. S. IV. 2. 12, 'sons of Praj[=a]pati, Agni, V[=a]yu, S[=u]rya.']

[Footnote 12: Çat. Br. I. 3. 4. 12; IV. 3. 5. 1.]

[Footnote 13: Interesting is the fact that only priests may eat sacrificial food and drink soma at this period. When even the king should drink soma, he is made to drink some transubstantiated liquor which, the priests inform him, has been 'made into soma' for him by magic, for the latter is too holy for any warrior really to drink (VII. 19; VIII. 20). But in the more popular feasts there are indications that this rule is often broken. Compare Weber, R[=a]jas[=u]ya p. 98.]

[Footnote 14: For the relations of the different castes at this period, see Weber, in the tenth volume of the Indische Studien.]

[Footnote 15: The Atharvan is not yet recognized as a Veda.]

[Footnote 16: And even the pronunciation of a word or the accent is fateful. The famous godly example of this is where Tvashtar, the artificer, in anger mispronounced indra-çátru as indraçatru, whereby the meaning was changed from 'conqueror of Indra' to 'Indra-conquered,' with unexpected result (Çat. Br. I. 6. 3. 8; T[=a]itt. S. II. 4. 12. 1).]

[Footnote 17: The word is a[.m]sala, strong, or 'from the shoulder' (?). In III. 4. 1. 2 one cooks an ox or a goat for a very distinguished guest, as a sort of guest-sacrifice. So the guest is called 'cow-killer' (Weber, Ved. Beiträge, p. 36).]

[Footnote 18: Compare ib. I. 9. 1. 21, "let the priest not say 'guard me (or us),' but 'guard this worshipper (sacrificer),' for if he says 'me' he induces no blessing at all; the blessing is not for the priest, but for the sacrificer." In both passages, most emphatically, yajam[=a]nasy[=a]iva, 'for the sacrificer alone.']

[Footnote 19: Ya[.m] k[=a]ma[.m] k[=a]mayate so 'sm[=a]i k[=a]ma[h.] sam[r.]dhyate.]

[Footnote 20: [=A]suri's name as a theologian is important, since the S[=a]nkhya philosophy is intimately connected with him; if this [=A]suri be not another man with the same name (compare Weber, Lit. p. 152).]

[Footnote 21: The regular sacrifices to the Manes are daily and monthly; funerals and 'faith-feasts,' çr[=a]ddha, are occasional additions.]

[Footnote 22: Each generation of Manes rises to a better (higher) state if the offerings continue. As a matter of ceremonial this means that the remoter generations of fathers are put indefinitely far off, while the immediate predecessors of a man are the real beneficiaries; they climb up to the sky on the offering.]

[Footnote 23: Compare Çat. Br. i. 8. 1. 40; ii. 6. 1. 3, 7, 10, 42; ii. 4. 2. 24; v. 5. 4. 28.]

[Footnote 24: This passage (ib. ii. 1. 2. 7) is preceded by a typical argument for setting up the fires under the Pleiades, the wives of the Great Bear stars. He may do or he may not do so--the reasons contradict each other, and all of them are incredibly silly.]

[Footnote 25: This last fee is not so common. For an oblation to S[=u]rya the fee is a white horse or a white bull; either of them representing the proper form of the sun (Çat. Br. ii. 6. 3. 9); but another authority specifies twelve oxen and a plough (T[=a]itt. S. i. 8. 7).]

[Footnote 26: Çat. Br. ii. 1. 1. 3; 2. 3. 28; iv. 3. 4. 14; 5. 1. 15; four kinds of fees, ib. iv. 3. 4. 6, 7, 24 ff. (Milk is also 'Agni's seed,' ib. ii. 2. 4. 15).]

[Footnote 27: Yet in [=A]it. Br. iii. 19, the priest is coolly informed how he may be able to slay his patron by making a little change in the invocations. Elsewhere such conduct is reprobated.]

[Footnote 28: For other covenants, see the epic (chapter on Hinduism).]

[Footnote 29: Çat. Br. iii. 4. 2. 1 ff.; iii. 6. 2. 25; iv. 3. 3. 3; iv. 4.1.17; 6. 6. 3; 7. 6, etc.; iii. 8. 2. 27; 3. 26; [=A]it. Br.. i. 24.]

[Footnote 30: ib. ii. 6. 2. 5. Here Rudra (compare Çiva and Hekate of the cross-roads) is said to go upon 'cross-roads'; so that his sacrifice is on cross-roads--one of the new teachings since the time of the Rig Veda. Rudra's sister, Ambik[=a], ib. 9, is another new creation, the genius of autumnal sickness.]

[Footnote 31: Çat. Br. ii. 2. 1. 21. How much non-serious fancy there may be here it is difficult to determine. It seems impossible that such as follows can have been meant in earnest: "The sacrifice, pray[=a]ja, is victory, jaya, because yaja = jaya. With this knowledge one gets the victory over his rivals" (ib. i. 5. 3. 3, 10).]

[Footnote 32: Although Bhaga is here (Çat. Br. i. 7. 4. 6-7, endho bhagas) interpreted as the Sun, he is evidently the same with Good Luck [Greek: typhlhos ghar ho Êlohhytos] or wealth.]

[Footnote 33: Çat. Br. iii. 1. 2. 13 ff.; l. 1. 2. 18; iii. 6. 1. 8 ff.; ii. 5. 2. 1; iv. 2. 1. 11; iii. 4.4. 3 ff.; 2. 3. 6-12, 13-14; iv. 5. 5. 12; 1.3. 13 ff.; iii. 2. 4. 5-6; 3. 2. 8; 7. 1. 17; iv. 2. 5. 17; 4. 1. 15; i. 7. 4. 6-7; ii. 4. 3. 4 ff.; li. 5.2.34; 5. 1. 12; 5. 1. 1 ff.; RV. viii. 104. 14. The reader must distinguish, in the name of Brahm[=a], the god from the priest, and this from brahm[=a], prayer. The first step is brahma--force, power, prayer; then this is, as a masculine Brahm[=a], the one who prays, that is, prayer, the Brahman priest, as, in the Rig Veda, x. 141. 3. Brihaspati is the 'Brahm[=a] of gods.' The next (Brahmanic) step is deified brahma, the personal Brahm[=a] as god, called also Father-god (Praj[=a]pati) or simply The Father (pit[=a]).]

[Footnote 33: Çat. Br. iii. 1. 2. 13 ff.; l. 1. 2. 18; iii. 6. 1. 8 ff.; ii. 5. 2. 1; iv. 2. 1. 11; iii. 4.4. 3 ff.; 2. 3. 6-12, 13-14; iv. 5. 5. 12; 1.3. 13 ff.; iii. 2. 4. 5-6; 3. 2. 8; 7. 1. 17; iv. 2. 5. 17; 4. 1. 15; i. 7. 4. 6-7; ii. 4. 3. 4 ff.; li. 5.2.34; 5. 1. 12; 5. 1. 1 ff.; RV. viii. 104. 14. The reader must distinguish, in the name of Brahm[=a], the god from the priest, and this from brahm[=a], prayer. The first step is brahma--force, power, prayer; then this is, as a masculine Brahm[=a], the one who prays, that is, prayer, the Brahman priest, as, in the Rig Veda, x. 141. 3. Brihaspati is the 'Brahm[=a] of gods.' The next (Brahmanic) step is deified brahma, the personal Brahm[=a] as god, called also Father-god (Praj[=a]pati) or simply The Father (pit[=a]).]

[Footnote 34: Compare M[=a]it. S iii. 10. 2; [=A]it. Br. ii. 8; Çat. Br. i. 2. 3. 5; vi. 2. 1. 39; 3. 1. 24; ii. 5. 2. 16, a ram and ewe 'made of barley.' On human sacrifices, compare Müller, ASL. p. 419; Weber. ZDMG. xviii. 262 (see the Bibliography); Streifen, i.54.]

[Footnote 35: Weber has translated some of these legends. Ind. Streifen, i. 9 ff.]

[Footnote 36: T[=a]itt. Br. iii. 2. 9. 7; Çat. Br. i. 2. 5. 5; ii. 1. 2. 13 ff.; vii. 5. 1. 6.]

[Footnote 37: Compare M[=a]it. S. i. 9. 8; Çat. Br. i. 6. 1. 1 ff. The seasons desert the gods, and the demons thrive. In Çat. Br. i. 5. 4. 6-11, the Asuras and Indra contend with numbers.]

[Footnote 38: Müller, ASL. p. 529.]

[Footnote 39: M[=a]it. S. iv. 2. 12; Çat. Br. i. 7. 4. 1; ii. 1. 2. 9; vi. 1. 3. 8; [=A]it. Br. iii. 33. Compare Muir, OST. iv. p. 45. At a later period there are frequently found indecent tales of the gods, and the Br[=a]hmanas themselves are vulgar enough, but they exhibit no special lubricity on the part of the priests.]

[Footnote 40: Idam aham ya èv[=a] smi so asmi, Çat. Br. i. 1. 1. 6; 9. 3. 23.]

[Footnote 41: RV. viii. 51. 2; Zimmer, loc. cit. p. 328.]

[Footnote 42: Compare Weber, Episch. in Vedisch. Ritual, p. 777 (and above). The man who is slaughtered must be neither a priest nor a slave, but a warrior or a man of the third caste (Weber, loc. cit. above).]

[Footnote 43: Le Mercier, 1637, ap. Parkman, loc. cit. p. 80. The current notion that the American Indian burns his victims at the stake merely for pleasure is not incorrect. He frequently did so, as he does so to-day, but in the seventeenth century this act often is part of a religious ceremony. He probably would have burned his captive, anyway, but he gladly utilized his pleasure as a means of propitiating his gods. In India it was just the other way.]

[Footnote 44: Substitutes of metal or of earthen victims are also mentioned.]

[Footnote 45: That the Vedic rite of killing the sacrificial beast (by beating and smothering) was very cruel may be seen in the description, [=A]it. Br. ii. 6.]

[Footnote 46: Çat. Br. i. 5. 2. 4.]

[Footnote 47: Sams[=a]ra is transmigration; karma, 'act,' implies that the change of abode is conditioned by the acts of a former life. Each may exclude the other; but in common parlance each implies the other.]

[Footnote 48: Weber, Indischt Streifen, i. p. 72.]

[Footnote 49: Çat. Br. i. 7. 3. 19: iii. 4. 1. 17.]

[Footnote 50: Çaf. Br. iii. 5. 4. 10; 6. 2. 24; 5. 3. 17 (compare 6. 4. 23-24; 3. 4. 11; 2. 1. 12); iii. 1. 2. 4; 3. 14; i. 7. 2. 9; vi. 1. 2. 14. The change of name is interesting. There is a remark in another part of the same work to the effect that when a man prospers in life they give his name also to his son, grandson, and to his father and grandfather (vi. 1. 2. 13). On the other hand, it was the custom of the Indian kings in later ages to assume the names of their prosperous grandfathers (JRAS. iv. 85).]

[Footnote 51: Were it not for the first clause it would be more natural to render the original 'The gods are truth alone, and men are untruth.']

[Footnote 52: In Çat. Br. ii. 4. 2. 5-6 it is said that the Father-god gives certain rules of eating to gods, Manes, men, and beasts: "Neither gods, Manes, nor beasts transgress the Father's law, only some men do."]

[Footnote 53: Çat. Br. ii. 5. 2. 20. Varuna seizes on her paramour, when she confesses. T[.a]itt. Br. i. 6. 5. 2. The guilt confessed becomes less "because it thereby becomes truth" (right).]

[Footnote 54: See Çat. Br.. ii. 4. 2. 6; 4. 1. 14; 1. 3. 9; 3. 1. 28: "Who knows man's morrow? Then let one not procrastinate." "Today is self, this alone is certain, uncertain is the morrow."]

[Footnote 55: Some little rules are interesting. The Pythagorean abstinence from m[=a][s.][=a]s, beans, for instance, is enjoined; though this rule is opposed by Barku V[=a]rshna, Çat. Br. i. 1. 1. 10, on the ground that no offering to the gods is made of beans; "hence he said 'cook beans for me.'"]

[Footnote 56: Animals may represent gods. "The bull is a form of Indra," and so if the bull can be made to roar (Çat. Br. ii. 5. 3. 18), then one may know that Indra is come to the sacrifice. "Man is born into (whatever) world is made (by his acts in a previous existence)," is a short formula (Çat. Br.. vi. 2. 2. 27), which represents the karma doctrine in its essential principle, though the 'world' is here not this world, but the next. Compare Weber, ZDMG. ix. 237 ff.; Muir, OST. v. 314 ff.]

[Footnote 57: Though youth may be restored to him by the Açvins, Çat. Br.. iv. i. 5. 1 ff. Here the Horsemen are identified with Heaven and Earth (16).]

[Footnote 58: Cal. Br. ii. 3. 3. 7. Apropos of the Brahmanic sun it may be mentioned that, according to Ait. Br. iii. 44, the sun never really sets. "People think that he sets, but in truth he only turns round after reaching the end of the day, and makes night below, day above; and when they think he rises in the morning, he having come to the end of the night, turns round, and makes day below, night above. He never really sets. Whoever knows this of him, that he never sets, obtains union and likeness of form with the sun, and the same abode as the sun's." Compare Muir, OST. v. 521. This may be the real reason why the Rig Veda speaks of a dark and light sun.]

[Footnote 59: Çat. Br.. i. 4. 3. 11-22 ('The sinner shall suffer and go quickly to yonder world'); xi. 6. 1 (compare Weber, loc. cit. p. 20 ff.; ZDMG. ix. 237), the Bhrigu story, of which a more modern form is found in the Upanishad period. For the course of the sun, the fires on either side of the way, the departure to heaven 'with the whole body,' compare Çat. Br. i. 9. 3. 2-15; iv. 5. 1. 1; vi. 6. 2. 4; xi. 2. 7. 33; Weber, loc. cit.: Muir, loc. cit. v. p. 314. Not to have all one's bones in the next world is a disgrace, as Muir says, and for that reason they are collected at burial. Compare the custom as described by the French missionaries here. The American Indian has to have all his bones for future use, and the burying of the skeleton is an annual religious ceremony.]

[Footnote 60: Compare RV. iv. 28. 4: 'Thou Indra madest lowest the heathen.' Weber has shown, loc. cit., that the general notion of the Br[=a]hmanas is that all are born again in the next world, where they are rewarded or punished according as they are good or bad; whereas in the Rig Veda the good rejoice in heaven, and the bad are annihilated. This general view is to be modified, however, by such side-theories as those just mentioned, that the good (or wise) may be reborn on earth, or be united with gods, or become sunlight or stars (the latter are 'watery' to the Hindu, and this may explain the statement that the soul is 'in the midst of waters').]

[Footnote 61: There is in this age no notion of the repeated creations found in later literature. On the contrary, it is expressly said in the Rig Veda, vi. 48. 22, that heaven and earth are created but once: "Only once was heaven created, only once was earth created," Zimmer, AIL. 408.]

[Footnote 62: When the principle of life is explained it is in terms of sun or fire. Thus Praj[=a]pati, Lord of beings, or Father-god, is first an epithet of Savitar, RV. iv. 53. 2; and the golden germ must be fire.]

[Footnote 63: Schoolcraft, Historical and Statistical Information, i. 32. As examples of the many passages where 'water is the beginning' may be cited Çat. Br. vi. 7. 1. 17; xi. 1. 6. 1. The sun, born as Aditi's eighth son, is the bird, 'egg-born,' RV. x. 72. 8.]

[Footnote 64: Among the new curators of Atharvan origin are, for instance, the sun under the name of Rohita, Desire (Love), etc., etc.]

[Footnote 65: Illustrations of these contradictions may be found in plenty apud Muir iv. p. 20 ff.]

[Footnote 66: Nirukta, vii. 4; Muir, loc. cit. p. 131 and v. 17.]

[Footnote 67: Neu-und Vollmonds Opfer, 1880. The D[=i]ksh[=a], or initiation, has been described by Lindner; the R[=a]jas[=u]ya and Vajapeya, by Weber.]

[Footnote 68: The water-sickness already imputed to this god in the Rig Veda. This tale and that of Bhrigu (referred to above) show an ancient trait in the position of Varuna, as chief god.]

[Footnote 69: This is the germ of the pilgrimage doctrine (see below).]

[Footnote 70: Perhaps (M. ix. 301) interpolated; or the first allusion to the Four Ages.]

[Footnote 71: These (compare afri, 'blessing,' in the Avesta) are verses in the Rig Veda introducing the sacrifice. They are meant as propitiations, and appear to be an ancient part of the ritual.]

[Footnote 72: A group of hymns in the first book of the Rig Veda are attributed to Dogstail. At any rate, they do allude to him, and so prove a moderate antiquity (probably the middle period of the Rik) for the tale. The name, in Sanskrit Çunasçepa, has been ingeniously starred by Weber as Cynosoura; the last part of each compound having the same meaning, and the first part being even phonetically the same çunas, [Greek: kunhos].]

[Footnote 73: Ait. Br. viii. 10, 15, 20.]

[Footnote 74: The epic has a later version. This earlier form is found in Çat. Br. i. 8. 1. For the story of the flood among the American Indians compare Schoolcraft (Historical and Statistical Information), i. 17.]

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