are, however, obliged to admit that in his case the personification is more thorough, and that, while the other anthropomorphic divinities were ever and anon liable to be confounded with the elements of which they were personifications, Indra was subject to nothing analogous, his personality being, as they would say, far more fixed, far more profoundly modified and transformed by the anthropomorphism to which they assume it to have been subjected: in other words, Indra was far more human than the elemental gods, and, in fact, so much so that no one has been able to say with any great probability what he was originally a personification of. In a word, the evidence, such as I have been able to find adduced, leaves the personification resting on no solid foundation, it being, to say the least of it, just as probable that, in point of origin and history, Indra should be regarded as a deified man.
The following things concerning him are worth noticing by way of comparison with Gwydion and Woden:
1. As the Norsemen of the Wicking period fixed their gaze on the warlike side of Woden's character, so, according to one of the most recent expounders of Vedic religion, Indra was above all things the warrior-god of the Aryans of India.[1] His spoils are for men, and it is on their behalf that he fights.[2] He is metaphorically a wall
- ↑ I refer to M. Bergaigne and his work entitled La Religion Védique d'après les Hymnes du Rig-Veda (Bibliothèque de l'Ecole des Hautes Études: Paris, 1878, 1883), i. p. xvi.
- ↑ Ibid. ij. 172, 178 (Rig-Veda, i. 55, 5, vij. 32, 14, vij. 32, 17, viij. 43, 13, viij. 45, 40-1, x. 120, 4).
