Volume I Part 21 (2/2)
The first and oldest source of our knowledge of Indo-Aryan myths is the Rig-Veda, whose nature and character have been described. The second source is the Atharva-Veda with the Brahmanas. The peculiarity of the Atharva is its collection of magical incantations spells and fragments of folklore. These are often, doubtless, of the highest antiquity.
Sorcery and the arts of medicine-men are earlier in the course of evolution than priesthood. We meet them everywhere among races who have not developed the inst.i.tution of an order of priests serving national G.o.ds. As a collection, the Atharva-Veda is later than the Rig-Veda, but we need not therefore conclude that the IDEAS of the Atharva are ”a later development of the more primitive ideas of the Rig-Veda”. Magic is quod semper, quod ubique, quod ab omnibus; the ideas of the Atharva-Veda are everywhere; the peculiar notions of the Rig-Veda are the special property of an advanced and highly differentiated people. Even in the present collected shape, M. Barth thinks that many hymns of the Atharva are not much later than those of the Rig-Veda. Mr. Whitney, admitting the lateness of the Atharva as a collection, says, ”This would not necessarily imply that the main body of the Atharva hymns were not already in existence when the compilation of the Rig-Veda took place”.(1) The Atharva refers to some poets of the Rig (as certain hymnists in the Rig also do) as earlier men. If in the Rig (as Weber says) ”there breathes a lively natural feeling, a warm love of nature, while in the Atharva, on the contrary, there predominates an anxious apprehension of evil spirits and their magical powers,” it by no means follows that this apprehension is of later origin than the lively feeling for Nature. Rather the reverse. There appears to be no doubt(2) that the style and language of the Atharva are later than those of the Rig. Roth, who recognises the change, in language and style, yet considers the Atharva ”part of the old literature”.(3) He concludes that the Atharva contains many pieces which, ”both by their style and ideas, are shown to be contemporary with the older hymns of the Rig-Veda”.
In religion, according to Muir,(4) the Atharva shows progress in the direction of monotheism in its celebration of Brahman, but it also introduces serpent-wors.h.i.+p.
(1) Journal of the American Oriental Society. iv. 253.
(2) Muir, ii. 446.
(3) Ibid., ii. 448.
(4) Ibid., ii. 451.
As to the Atharva, then, we are free to suppose, if we like, that the dark magic, the evil spirits, the incantations, are old parts of Indian, as of all other popular beliefs, though they come later into literature than the poetry about Ushas and the morality of Varuna. The same remarks apply to our third source of information, the Brahmanas. These are indubitably comments on the sacred texts very much more modern in form than the texts themselves. But it does not follow, and this is most important for our purpose, that the myths in the Brahmanas are all later than the Vedic myths or corruptions of the Veda. Muir remarks,(1) ”The Rig-Veda, though the oldest collection, does not necessarily contain everything that is of the greatest age in Indian thought or tradition.
We know, for example, that certain legends, bearing the impress of the highest antiquity, such as that of the deluge, appear first in the Brahmanas.” We are especially interested in this criticism, because most of the myths which we profess to explain as survivals of savagery are narrated in the Brahmanas. If these are necessarily late corruptions of Vedic ideas, because the collection of the Brahmanas is far more modern than that of the Veda, our argument is instantly disproved. But if ideas of an earlier stratum of thought than the Vedic stratum may appear in a later collection, as ideas of an earlier stratum of thought than the Homeric appear in poetry and prose far later than Homer, then our contention is legitimate. It will be shown in effect that a number of myths of the Brahmanas correspond in character and incident with the myths of savages, such as Cahrocs and Ahts. Our explanation is, that these tales partly survived, in the minds perhaps of conservative local priesthoods, from the savage stage of thought, or were borrowed from aborigines in that stage, or were moulded in more recent times on surviving examples of that wild early fancy.
(1) Muir, iv. 450.
In the age of the Brahmanas the people have spread southwards from the basin of the Indus to that of the Ganges. The old sacred texts have begun to be scarcely comprehensible. The priesthood has become much more strictly defined and more rigorously const.i.tuted. Absurd as it may seem, the Vedic metres, like the Gayatri, have been personified, and appear as active heroines of stories presumably older than this personification.
The Asuras have descended from the rank of G.o.ds to that of the heavenly opposition to Indra's government; they are now a kind of fiends, and the Brahmanas are occupied with long stories about the war in heaven, itself a very ancient conception. Varuna becomes cruel on occasion, and hostile. Praj.a.pati becomes the great mythical hero, and inherits the wildest myths of the savage heroic beasts and birds.
The priests are now Brahmans, a hereditary divine caste, who possess all the vast and puerile knowledge of ritual and sacrificial minutiae. As life in the opera is a series of songs, so life in the Brahmanas is a sequence of sacrifices. Sacrifice makes the sun rise and set, and the rivers run this way or that.
The study of Indian myth is obstructed, as has been shown, by the difficulty of determining the relative dates of the various legends, but there are a myriad of other obstacles to the study of Indian mythology.
A poet of the Vedas says, ”The chanters of hymns go about enveloped in mist, and unsatisfied with idle talk”.(1) The ancient hymns are still ”enveloped in mist,” owing to the difficulty of their language and the variety of modern renderings and interpretations. The heretics of Vedic religion, the opponents of the orthodox commentators in ages comparatively recent, used to complain that the Vedas were simply nonsense, and their authors ”knaves and buffoons”. There are moments when the modern student of Vedic myths is inclined to echo this petulant complaint. For example, it is difficult enough to find in the Rig-Veda anything like a categoric account of the G.o.ds, and a description of their personal appearance. But in Rig-Veda, viii. 29, 1, we read of one G.o.d, ”a youth, brown, now hostile, now friendly; a golden l.u.s.tre invests him”. Who is this youth? ”Soma as the moon,” according to the commentators. M. Langlois thinks the sun is meant. Dr. Aufrecht thinks the troop of Maruts (spirits of the storm), to whom, he remarks, the epithet ”dark-brown, tawny” is as applicable as it is to their master, Rudra. This is rather confusing, and a mythological inquirer would like to know for certain whether he is reading about the sun or soma, the moon, or the winds.
(1) Rig-Veda, x. 82, 7, but compare Bergaigne, op. cit., iii. 72, ”enveloppes de nuees et de murmures”.
To take another example; we open Mr. Max Muller's translation of the Rig-Veda at random, say at page 49. In the second verse of the hymn to the Maruts, Mr. Muller translates, ”They who were born together, self-luminous, with the spotted deer (the clouds), the spears, the daggers, the glittering ornaments. I hear their whips almost close by, as they crack them in their hands; they gain splendour on their way.”
Now Wilson translates this pa.s.sage, ”Who, borne by spotted deer, were born self-luminous, with weapons, war-cries and decorations. I hear the cracking of their whips in their hands, wonderfully inspiring courage in the fight.” Benfey has, ”Who with stags and spears, and with thunder and lightning, self-luminous, were born. Hard by rings the crack of their whip as it sounds in their hands; bright fare they down in storm.”
Langlois translates, ”Just born are they, self-luminous. Mark ye their arms, their decorations, their car drawn by deer? Hear ye their clamour?
Listen! 'tis the noise of the whip they hold in their hands, the sound that stirs up courage in the battle.” This is an ordinary example of the diversities of Vedic translation. It is sufficiently puzzling, nor is the matter made more transparent by the variety of opinion as to the meaning of the ”deer” along with which the Maruts are said (by some of the translators) to have been born. This is just the sort of pa.s.sage on which a controversy affecting the whole nature of Vedic mythological ideas might be raised. According to a text in the Yajur Veda, G.o.ds, and men, and beasts, and other matters were created from various portions of the frame of a divine being named Praj.a.pati.(1) The G.o.d Agni, Brahmans and the goat were born from the mouth of Praj.a.pati. From his breast and arms came the G.o.d Indra (sometimes spoken of as a ram), the sheep, and of men the Rajanya. Cows and G.o.ds called Visvadevas were born together from his middle. Are we to understand the words ”they who were born together with the spotted deer” to refer to a myth of this kind--a myth representing the Maruts and deer as having been born at the same birth, as Agni came with the goat, and Indra with the sheep? This is just the point on which the Indian commentators were divided.(2) Sayana, the old commentator, says, ”The legendary school takes them for deer with white spots; the etymological school, for the many-coloured lines of clouds”. The modern legendary (or anthropological) and etymological (or philological) students of mythology are often as much at variance in their attempts to interpret the traditions of India.
(1) Muir, Sanskrit Texts, 2nd edit., i. 16.
(2) Max Muller, Rig-Veda Sanhita, trans., vol. i. p. 59.
<script>