Volume II Part 13 (1/2)

CHAPTER XVII. G.o.dS OF THE ARYANS OF INDIA.

Difficulties of the study--Development of clan-G.o.ds-- Departmental G.o.ds-Divine patronage of morality--Immorality mythically attributed to G.o.ds--Indra--His love of Soma-- Scandal about Indra--Attempts to explain Indra as an elemental G.o.d--Varuna--Ushas--The Asvins--Their legend and theories about it--Tvashtri--The Maruts--Conclusions arrived at.

Nothing in all mythology is more difficult than the attempt to get a clear view of the G.o.ds of Vedic India. The perplexed nature of the evidence has already been explained, and may be briefly recapitulated.

The obscure doc.u.ments on which we have to rely, the Vedas and the Brahmanaa, contain in solution the opinions of many different ages and of many different minds. Old and comparatively modern conceptions of the deities, pious efforts to veil or to explain away what seemed crude or profane, the puerilities of ritual, half-conscious strivings in the direction of monotheism or pantheism, clan or family prejudices, rough etymological guesses, and many other elements of doubt combine to confuse what can never have been clear. Savage legends, philosophic conjectures, individual predilections are all blended into the collection of hymns called the _Rig- Veda_. Who can bring order into such a chaos?

An attempt to unravel the tangled threads of Indian faith must be made.

The G.o.ds of the Vedas are, on the whole, of the usual polytheistic type, though their forms mix into each other like shadows cast by a flickering fire. The ideas which may be gathered about them from the ancient hymns have, as usual, no consistency and no strict orthodoxy. As each bard of each bardic family celebrates a G.o.d, he is apt to make him for the occasion the pre-eminent deity of all.* This way of conceiving of the G.o.ds leads naturally (as thought advances) in the direction of a pantheistic monotheism, a hospitable theology which accepts each divine being as a form or manifestation of the supreme universal spirit. It is easy, however, to detect certain attributes more or less peculiar to each G.o.d. As among races far less forward in civilisation, each of the greater powers has his own special department, however much his wors.h.i.+ppers may be inclined to regard him as really supreme sovereign.

Thus Indra is mainly concerned with thunder and other atmospheric phenomena: these are his department; but Vayu is the wind or the G.o.d of the wind, and Agni as fire or the G.o.d of fire is necessarily not unconnected with the lightning. The Maruts, again, are the storm-winds, or G.o.ds of the storm-winds; Mitra and Varuna preside over day and night; Ushas is the dawn or the G.o.ddess of dawn, and Tvashtri is the mechanic among the deities, corresponding more or less closely to the Greek Hephaestus.

* Muir, v. 125. Compare Muir, i. 348, on the word _Kusikas_, implying, according to Benfey, that Indra ”is designated as the sole or chief deity of this tribe ”. Cf, also Hang, Ait. Br., ii. 384.

Though many of these beings are still in Vedic poetry departmental powers with provinces of their own in external Nature, they are also supposed to be interested not only in the worldly, but in the moral welfare of mankind, and are imagined to ”make for righteousness ”. It is true that the myths by no means always agree in representing the G.o.ds as themselves moral. Incest and other hideous offences are imputed to them, and it is common to explain these myths as the result of the forgotten meanings of sayings which originally were only intended to describe processes of nature, especially of the atmosphere. Supposing, for the sake of argument, that this explanation is correct, we can scarcely be expected to think highly of the national taste which preferred to describe pure phenomena like dawn and sunset in language which is appropriate to the worst crimes in the human calendar. It is certain that the Indians, when they came to reflect and philosophise on their own religion (and they had reached this point before the Veda was compiled), were themselves horrified by the immoralities of some of their G.o.ds. Yet in Vedic times these G.o.ds were already acknowledged as beings endowed with strong moral attributes and interested in the conduct of men. As an example of this high ethical view, we may quote Mr. Max Muller's translation of part of a hymn addressed to Varuna.*

* Rig-Veda, ii. 28; _Hibbert Lectures_, p. 284.

”Take from me my sin like a fetter, and we shall increase, O Varuna, the spring of thy law. Let not the thread be cut while I weave my song! Let not the form of the workman break before the time.... Like as a rope from a calf, remove from me my sin, for away from thee I am not master even of the twinkling of an eye.... Move far away from me all self-committed guilt, and may I not, O king, suffer for what others have committed. Many dawns have not yet dawned; grant me to live in them, O Varuna.” What follows is not on the same level of thought, and the next verse contains an appeal to Varuna to save his wors.h.i.+pper from the effect of magic spells. ”Whether it be my companion or a friend who, while I was asleep and trembling, uttered fearful spells against me, whether it be a thief or a wolf who wishes to hurt me, protect us against them, O Varuna.”* Agni, again, the G.o.d of fire, seems to have no original connection with righteousness. Yet even Agni** is prayed to forgive whatever sin the wors.h.i.+pper may have committed through folly, and to make him guiltless towards Aditi.*** The G.o.ddess Aditi once more, whether her name (rendered the ”boundless”) be or be not ”one of the oldest names of the dawn,”**** is repeatedly called on by her wors.h.i.+ppers to ”make them sinless”. In the same way sun, dawn, heaven, soma, and earth are implored to pardon sin.

* An opposite view is expressed in Weber's Hist, of Sansk.

Literature.

** Rig- Veda, iv. 12, 4; viii. 93, 7.

*** For divergent opinions about Aditi, compare _Revue de l'Histoire des Religions_, xii. 1, pp. 40-42; Muir, v. 218.

**** Max Muller, _Hibbert Lectures_, p. 228.

Though the subject might be dwelt on at very great length, it is perhaps already apparent that the G.o.ds of the Vedic poetry are not only potent over regions of the natural world, but are also conceived of, at times, as being powers with ethical tendencies and punishers of mortal guilt.

It would be difficult to overstate the ethical n.o.bility of certain Vedic hymns, which even now affect us with a sense of the ”hunger and thirst after righteousness” so pa.s.sionately felt by the Hebrew psalmists. How this emotion, which seems naturally directed to a single G.o.d, came to be distributed among a score, it is hard to conjecture. But all this aspect of the Vedic deities is essentially the province of the science of religion rather than of mythology. Man's consciousness of sin, his sense of being imperfect in the sight of ”larger other eyes than ours,” is a topic of the deepest interest, but it comes but by accident into the realm of mythological science. That science asks, not with what feelings of awe and grat.i.tude the wors.h.i.+pper approaches his G.o.ds, but what myths, what stories, are told to or told by the wors.h.i.+pper concerning the origin, personal characteristics and personal adventures of his deities.

As a rule, these stories are a mere _chronique scandaleuse_, full of the most absurd and offensive anecdotes, and of the crudest fictions. The deities of the Vedic poems, so imposing when regarded as vast natural forces, or as the spiritual beings that master vast natural forces, so sympathetic when looked on as merciful G.o.ds conscious of, yet lenient towards, the sins of peris.h.i.+ng mortals, have also their mythological aspect and their _chronique scandaleuse_.*

* Here we must remind the reader that the Vedas do not offer us all these tales, nor the worst of them. As M. Barth says, ”Le sentiment religieux a ecarte la plupart de ces mythes ainsi que beaucoup d'autres qui le choquaient, mais il ne les a pas ecartes tous” (_Religions de l'Inde_, p. 14).

It is, of course, in their anthropomorphic aspect that the Vedic deities share or exceed the infirmities of mortals. The G.o.ds are not by any means always regarded as practically equal in supremacy. There were great and small, young and old G.o.ds,* though this statement, with the habitual inconsistency of a religion without creeds and articles, is elsewhere controverted. ”None of you, O G.o.ds, is small or young; you are all great.”** As to the immortality and the origin of the G.o.ds, opinions are equally divided among the Vedic poets and in the traditions collected in the Brahmanas. Several myths of the origin of the G.o.ds have already been discussed in the chapter on ”Aryan Myths of the Creation of the World and of Man”. It was there demonstrated that many of the Aryan myths were on a level with those current among contemporary savages all over the world, and it was inferred that they originally sprang from the same source, the savage imagination.

In this place, while examining the wilder divine myths, we need only repeat that, in one legend, heaven and earth, conceived of as two sentient living beings of human parts and pa.s.sions, produced the Aryan G.o.ds, as they did the G.o.ds of the New Zealanders and of other races.

Again, the G.o.ds were represented in the children of Aditi, and this might be taken either in a high and refined sense, as if Aditi were the infinite region from which the solar deities rise,*** or we may hold that Aditi is the eternal which sustains and is sustained by the G.o.ds,**** or the Indian imagination could sink to the vulgar and half-magical conception of Aditi as a female, who, being desirous of sons, cooked a Brahmandana oblation for the G.o.ds, the Sadhyas.*****

* Rig-Veda, i. 27,13.

** Ibid., viii. 30; Muir, v. 12.

*** Max Muller, _Hibbert Lectures_, p. 230.

**** Roth, in Muir, iv. 56.

***** _Taittirya Brahmana_, i. 1, 9, 1; Muir, v. 55, 1, 27.

Various other G.o.ds and supernatural beings are credited with having created or generated the G.o.ds. Indra's father and mother are constantly spoken of, and both he and other G.o.ds are often said to have been originally mortal, and to have reached the heavens by dint of that ”austere fervour,” that magical asceticism, which could do much more than move mountains. The G.o.ds are thus by no means always credited in Aryan mythology with inherent immortality. Like most of the other deities whose history we have been studying, they had struggles for pre-eminence with powers of a t.i.tanic character, the Asuras. ”Asura, 'living,' was originally an epithet of certain powers of Nature, particularly of the sky,” says Mr. Max Muller.** As the G.o.ds also are recognised as powers of Nature, particularly of the sky, there does not seem to be much original difference between Devas and Asuras.*** The opposition between them may be ”secondary,” as Mr. Max Muller says, but in any case it too strongly resembles the other wars in heaven of other mythologies to be quite omitted. Unluckily, the most consecutive account of the strife is to be found, not in the hymns of the Vedas, but in the collected body of mythical and other traditions called the Brahmanas.****