CHAP. I.
with undecaying supports, and which trembled and bowed down in
the presence of the deities. Sometimes he was the all-pervading
spirit, sometimes a material and tangible firmament; and thus again
the question arose of the origin of matter. Of his own ignorance the
Hindu was perfectly conscious, and he had already begun to think
that this ignorance extended even to the gods themselves. "Who
can tell whence this creation arose? The gods are subsequent to its
production. Who then knows whence it sprung? He who in the
highest heaven is its ruler, he knows, or perhaps not even he."[1] So
far as this question was answered at all, it was answered by Greek
and Hindu in the same way. In the Hesiodic theogony, Chaos,
Gaia, and Tartaros are beings apparently self-existent; or at the least
the scheme begins with Chaos, and no parents are assigned to Gaia
and Tartaros, or to Eros, who immediately follows, and precedes the
birth of Erebos[2] and Nyx, of Aither and Hemera The Hellenic
poet had brought with him from his primeval home the tradition
which he shared with the Hindu : but having given utterance to it,
he bestowed no further thought upon it. With the latter the position
of Kama, the representative of the Hesiodic Eros, determines the
character of his philosophy. The desire ((
Greek characters)), which in the Aristotelian Ethics must precede all moral action, is as essential to the
divine as to the human mind, and thus Kama is the being through
whom the world is fashioned, when as yet there existed only the one.[3]
The Wish of Teutonic mythology answers more closely to the
Hesiodic Eros than to the Vedic Kama. The Homeric poet knew
that men always have a need of the gods;[4] but he was not, like the
Hindu, always conscious of the need, always striving to know more
of that mysterious power, always yearning for the time when he
should no more see through the glass darkly.
Section II.— VARUṆA and MITRA.
The solid Heaven. As Dyaus is the god of heaven in its dazzling purity and brightness, so is Varuna also the heaven as serving, like the Hellenic Ouranos, to veil or cover the earth. It is true that in the Hesiodic theogony Ouranos is united with Gaia, whereas it is not Varuna but
- ↑ R. V.' x. 129; Muir, ibid. 553.
- ↑ Erebos was the name used to denote
the dark western land through which
the shades of the departed pass on their
way to Hades. There can be little
doubt that the word is not Aryan; and
it may be traced not improbably to the
Assyrian erio(
symbol characters), to descend. At all
events, the Arabs are the people in the
West of Asia; and Algarve is the
Estreinachira, the westernmost region,
of the Iberian peninsula.
- ↑ Muir, ibid. Max Müller, Sanskrit Literature, 559, et seq.
- ↑ (Greek characters)Od. iii. 48.
