drals where the ancient Aryans first sang the hymns of the Rig-Veda—as they are still sung in the "thousand-pillared" halls of Hindu temples—their sonorous chants reverberating from tree to tree like the drone of a mighty organ. It was there that Indra, crashing with his thunderbolt, and the Maruts, the Storm Winds, chafing the tops of cedar and pine, lighted Agni's sacrificial fire; when Rudra, "the Roarer,"[1] rushed like a fiery serpent down the deep ravines, clearing a path through the jungles and seasoning the soil for the Aryan ploughmen, but often in his rage taking their cattle or human victims as his toll; hence he had to be propitiated by voluntary burnt offerings and sacrifices.
In sequestered groves, among the mountains, the Vedic Rishis, sheltered from the raging elements, guarded the shrine of the sacred fire precious to the Aryan homestead and listened to the Devas whispering in the tree-tops the secrets of the universe; or worshipped them at the foot of their Himālayan thrones—the mystic Lotus-flowers of the cosmic lake,[2] pink or crimson when the dawn flushed on them in the East, golden when Sūrya sank in glorious majesty in the West, and silvery white when King Soma or Chandra reigned at night. The imagery of this ancient Himālayan poetry, the ritual of the Aryan mountain-forest cult, and the religious teaching which grew out
- ↑ Rudra, the Vedic form of Siva, seems to have been regarded as the destructive aspect of the Fire-spirit. In Rig-Veda I. cxiv. he is invoked as "the accomplisher of sacrifices, the tortuous," "the destroyer of heroes," and prayers are offered that his "cow-killing and man-slaying weapon" may be averted.
- ↑ The "sea of milk" of Vedic and Puranic mythology is no doubt a poetical simile for the vast stratum of low-lying fleecy clouds which sometimes collects over the Himālayan valleys, the snow-peaks rising above it being compared by the Aryan poets to the lotus-flowers blooming in the Himālayan lakes.
