The Mythology of All Races/Volume 6/Indian/Chapter 1

by Arthur Berriedale Keith

INDIAN MYTHOLOGY

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CHAPTER I

THE ṚGVEDA

GODS OF SKY AND AIR

IN his Nirukta (the oldest extant Vedic commentary, written about 500 B.C.) Yāska tells us that earlier students of the mythology of the Ṛgveda had resolved all the deities into three classes according to their position in the sky, in the atmosphere, or on the earth; and he further treats all the different members of each class as being only divergent aspects of the three great gods, Agni ("Fire") on earth, Indra ("Storm") or Vāyu ("Wind") in the atmosphere, and Sūrya ("Sun") in the sky. This apportionment of the universe is, in fact, widely accepted in the Ṛgveda, where, as a rule, a threefold distribution is preferred to the simpler view which contrasts the earth with all that is seen above it. To the division immediately over the earth are referred the manifestations of wind, rain, and lightning, while solar phenomena are assigned to the highest of the three parts. Each of these three classifications may again be subdivided into three: thus it is in the highest luminous space or sky that the "fathers" (the kindly dead), the gods, and Soma reside. In the atmosphere also there are three spaces, or often only two—one the heavenly and one the earthly—and in either case the highest is sometimes treated as if it were the heaven or sky itself. Like the earth it has rocks and mountains; streams (clouds) flow in it; and the water-dripping clouds are constantly compared to and identified with cows. It seems clear that the earthly as well as the heavenly portion of the atmosphere is above, not below, the earth, so that the sun does not return from west to east under the earth, but goes back by the way it came, turning its light side up to the sky and thus leaving earth in darkness. The earth, conceived as extended, broad, and boundless, is compared in shape to a wheel, but no ocean surrounds it, as in Greek and later Indian mythology. The earth has four points, or five when we include the place where the speaker stands.

An older conception is that of the earth and the sky alone as constituting the universe. In that case the idea of the shape of the earth varies, for when it is united with the sky, it is compared to two great bowls turned toward each other; while from another point of view earth and sky are likened to the wheels at the ends of an axle. So closely united are the pair that, as a deity, Dyāvāpṛthivī ("Sky and Earth") is far more frequently invoked than either Dyaus ("Sky") or Pṛthivī ("Earth"). The joint deity can claim six hymns in the Ṛgveda, the Earth only one, and the Sky none. Even in her solitary hymn (v. 84) the Earth is praised for sending the rain from her cloud, though that is, as a matter of fact, her husband's function. The two are called the primeval parents, who make and sustain all creatures; and the gods themselves are their children: they are the parents of Bṛhaspati ("Lord of Devotion") and with the waters and Tvaṣṭṛ ("Fashioner") they engendered Agni. Yet with characteristic impartiality they are said themselves to be created, for a poet marvels at the skill which wrought them, and others attribute their fashioning to Indra, to Viśvakarman ("All-Maker") or to Tvaṣṭṛ. They are far-extending, unaging, yielding milk, ghee (clarified butter), and honey in abundance. The one is a prolific bull, the other a variegated cow; and both are rich in seed. They are wise also, and they promote righteousness and accord protection and aid to their worshippers.

The constant problem of the fashioning of the world is expressed in many ways. With the suns Varuṇa measures the world; Indra made the wide expanse of earth and the high dome of the sky after measuring the six regions; or, again, the earth is said to have been spread out, as by Agni, Indra, the Maruts (storm-deities), and other gods. The similitude of a house leads to the question from what wood it was fashioned, and the doors of this house of the world are the portals of the east, through which comes the morning light. Both sky and earth are often said to be propped up, but the sky is also declared to be rafterless, and the marvel of its being unsupported is remarked. The earth is made fast with bands by Savitṛ (a form of the sun), and Viṣṇu fixed it with pegs. In the last and latest book of the Ṛgveda, however, these simple concepts are replaced by speculations in which mythology passes into philosophy. The most important of these theorizings is that contained in x. 129, which tells that nothing existed in the beginning, all being void. Darkness and space enveloped the undifferentiated waters. By heat the first existing thing came into being, whereupon arose desire, the first seed of mind, to be the bond of the existent and the non-existent. Thus the gods had their origin, but at this point the speculation concludes with an assertion of doubt. The hymn itself runs thus, in Muir's metrical rendering:^[1]

"Then there was neither Aught nor Nought, no air nor sky beyond.
What covered all? Where rested all? In watery gulf profound?
Nor death was then, nor deathlessness, nor change of night and day.
That One breathed calmly, self-sustained; nought else beyond It lay.
Gloom hid in gloom existed first—one sea, eluding view.
That One, a void in chaos wrapt, by inward fervour grew.
Within It first arose desire, the primal germ of mind.
Which nothing with existence links, as sages searching find.
The kindling ray that shot across the dark and drear abyss,—
Was it beneath? or high aloft? What bard can answer this?
There fecundating powers were found, and mighty forces strove,—
A self-supporting mass beneath, and energy above.
Who knows, who ever told, from whence this vast creation rose?
No gods had then been born,—who then can e'er the truth disclose?
Whence sprang this world, and whether framed by hand divine or no,—
It's lord in heaven alone can tell, if even he can show."

As in this hymn the gods are said to come into being after the creation of the universe, so in other philosophic hymns they are brought into existence from the waters, and in one place they are divided into groups born from Aditi ("Boundless"), the waters, and the earth. The Ādityas in particular are constantly derived from Aditi. Yet speculation is free and changes easily: Dawn is the mother of the sun and is born of Night, by reason of temporal sequence; while for local causes Sky and Earth are the all-parents. Or the greatest of a class is parent of the rest, as the storm-god Rudra ("Roarer") of the Rudras, the wind of the storm-gods, Sarasvatī of rivers, and Soma of plants. A certain mysticism and love of paradox result in a declaration that Indra produced his parents, Sky and Earth, or that Dakṣa (a creator-god) is at once father and son of Aditi. Similar vagueness prevails regarding men. They must be included in the general parentage of Sky and Earth, but the priestly family of the Aṅgirases are sprung directly from Agni, and the sage Vasiṣṭha is the child of Mitra and Varuṇa by Urvaśī, an Apsaras, or heavenly nymph. Yet they are also descended from Manu, son of Vivasvant, or from Yama, the brother of Manu, and his sister Yamī, and this pair claim kinship with the Gandharva (celestial bard) and the water-nymph.

There is too little distinction between gods and men for us to be surprised that the gods were once mere mortals, or that there are ancient as well as more recent gods. How they won immortality is uncertain: Savitṛ or Agni bestowed it upon them, or they obtained it by drinking soma, whereas Indra gained it by his ascetic practices. Yet it seems clear that they did get it and that when the gods are called unaging, it does not mean, as in the mythology of the epic, that they endure only for a cosmic age; for this latter concept is bound up with the philosophy which sees no progress in the world and which, therefore, resolves all existence into a perpetual series of growth and passing away.

Many as are the names of the gods, there is much that they have in common as they are presented to us in a poetry which has gone so far as to recognize an essential unity among the multiplicity of the divine forms. "The bird—that is, the sun—which is but one, priest and poets with words make into many," we are told, and "Priests speak in diverse ways of that which is but one: they call it Agni, Yama, Mātariśvan." Yet this is not so much monotheism as pantheism, for we learn that Aditi is everything, gods and men, that which has been and that which shall be; and that Prajāpati ("Lord of Creatures") embraces all things within himself. From this point of view it is easy to understand the fact^[2] that here and there one god is treated as if he were the highest god, or that one god can be identified with any of the others, and all the others be said to be centred in him. There is no real monotheistic strain in a declaration that "Agni alone, like Varuṇa, is lord of wealth." The same syncretism is seen in the constant addressing of prayers to groups of gods, in the stereotyping of the invocation of the gods in pairs, and in the reckoning of the gods as thirty-three, i.e. three sets of eleven each in the sky, the waters of the air, and the earth.

Normally, and subject to certain exceptions, the gods are conceived as anthropomorphic; they wear garments, carry weapons, and drive in cars. Yet their personality is very differently developed in the several cases: Indra is much more anthropomorphic than Agni, whose tongue and whose limbs merely denote his flames. The abode of the gods is in the highest realm of sky, and the offerings of men are either carried thither to them by Agni or, in a concept which is perhaps older, they are deemed to come to the straw on which the pious worshipper has set out his gifts. The food which they eat is that of man—milk, barley, butter, cattle, sheep, and goats—chosen now and then for special fitness, as when Indra, often called a bull, receives hecatombs of bulls. The drink of the gods is the soma.

Of feuds among the gods we hear little or nothing: Indra alone reveals traits of disorderliness, perhaps not unnatural in one who boasts of having drunk himself into intoxication with soma. He seems once to have fought with all the gods, to have shattered the car of Dawn, and even to have slain his father; and he actually quarrelled with his faithful henchmen, the Maruts. To their worshippers the gods are good and kind, and for them they slay the demons, with whom they wage a war which is triumphant if seemingly incessant. They richly bless the sacrificer and punish the niggard. They are true and not deceitful, although Indra again departs from the highest standard by his use of wiles, even without a good end to justify the means. Moral grandeur is practically confined to Varuṇa, and the greatness and the might of the gods are extolled far more often than their goodness. Their power over men is unlimited: none may defy their ordinances or live beyond the period allotted by them, nor is there aught that can subdue them, save in so far as they are said sometimes not to be able to transgress the moral order of Mitra and Varuṇa.

The pantheon which the Ṛgveda presents is essentially artificial, for as regards by far the greater part of the collection it contains hymns used in the Soma ritual, whence it gives only an imperfect conception of the gods as a whole. Thus, excepting in the tenth book, which contains a short group of hymns (14-18) constituting a sort of collection for Yama (the primeval man and the king of the departed), we learn nothing of the dead and very little of the spirits. Moreover, it is only in quite inadequate measure that we meet with the more domestic side of religion or with the belief in magic and witchcraft in their application to the needs of ordinary life. We cannot, therefore, feel any assurance that the comparative importance of the gods as they might be judged from their prominence in the Ṛgveda affords any real criterion of their actual position in the life of any Vedic tribe, though doubtless it does reflect their rank in the views of the group of priestly families whose traditions, united in a whole, are presented to us in the Ṛgveda. From the text itself it would seem that Indra, Agni, and Soma are by far the greatest gods; then come the Aśvins (the twin celestial "Horsemen"), the Maruts, and Varuṇa; then Uṣas ("Dawn"), Savitṛ, Bṛhaspati, Sūrya, Pūṣan ("Nourisher"); then Vāyu, Dyāvāpṛthivī, Viṣṇu, and Rudra; and finally Yama and Parjanya (the rain-god). Even this list, based on numerical considerations, is open to objection, for some of the deities, such as Varuṇa, are obviously greater, though less closely connected with the sacrifice, so that, despite their true rank, they are less often mentioned than others, such as the Aśvins, who are more frequently invoked in the sacrifice.

Of the gods of the sky Dyaus ("Sky") corresponds in name to Zeus, and like Zeus he is a father. Indeed, this is by far the most important characteristic of Zeus's counterpart in the Ṛgveda. Uṣas ("Dawn") is most often the child mentioned, but the Aśvins, Agni, Parjanya, Sūrya, the Ādityas, the Maruts, Indra, and the Aṅgirases are among his offspring, and he is the parent of Agni. Normally, however, he is mentioned with Earth in the compound Dyāvāpṛthivī, and on the solitary occasion when he is hailed in the vocative as Dyauṣ pitar ("Father Sky," the exact equivalent of the Greek Ζεῦ πάτερ and the Latin Iuppiter), "Mother Earth" is simultaneously addressed. Scarcely any other characteristic is ascribed to him; it is simply stated that he is a bull who bellows downward, or a black steed decked with pearls (i.e. the dark sky set with stars), that he smiles through the clouds, and that he bears the thunderbolt. Thus he is hardly anthropomorphized at all, whether named alone, or when conjoined with earth, and his worship is little removed from the direct adoration of the sky as a living being. No moral attribute belongs to him, nor is there any trace of sovereignty over the world or the other gods. The position of power and elevation which Greek mythology ascribes to Zeus is not accorded in full to any Vedic deity, but in so far as Zeus has a parallel, it is in Varuṇa, not in Dyaus.

In comparison with Dyaus Varuṇa has far more anthropomorphic traits. He wears a golden mantle and a shining robe; with Mitra ("Sun") he mounts his shining car; in the highest heaven they abide in a golden mansion, with a thousand pillars and a thousand doors; and the all-seeing Sun, rising from his abode, goes to the dwellings of Mitra and Varuṇa to tell of the deeds of men; the eye of Mitra and Varuṇa is the sun, and Varuṇa has a thousand eyes. Both gods have fair hands, and Varuṇa treads down wiles with shining foot. Yet no myths are told of him, and the deeds ascribed to him are all intended to show his power as a ruler. He is lord of all, both gods and men—not only an independent ruler, a term more often given to Indra, but a universal ruler, an epithet used also of Indra, though peculiarly Varuṇa's. Moreover, the terms Kṣatriya ("Ruler") and Asura ("Deity") are his, the first almost exclusively, and the second predominantly. As Asura he possesses, in company with Mitra, the māyā, or occult power, wherewith they send the dawns, make the sun to cross the sky, obscure it with cloud and rain, or cause the heavens to rain. The worlds are supported by Varuṇa and Mitra; Varuṇa made the golden swing (the sun) to shine in the heaven and placed fire in the waters; the wind is his breath. He establishes the morning and the evening; through him the moon moves and the stars shine at night; he regulates the months of the year. He is only rarely connected with the sea, for the Ṛgveda knows little of the ocean, but his occult power keeps the ever-flowing rivers from filling it up. Despite this, Varuṇa and Mitra are greatly concerned with the waters of the atmosphere and make the rain to fall; they have kine yielding refreshment and streams flowing with honey.

So great is Varuṇa that neither the flying birds nor the flowing rivers can reach the limit of his dominion, his might, and his wrath. The three heavens and the three earths alike are deposited in him; he knows the flight of the birds in the sky, the path of the ships, the track of the wind, and all secret things. The omniscience and omnipotence, no less than the omnipresence, of Varuṇa receive admirable expression in a hymn which, by

PLATE II

Idol Car

In the worship of many deities an important occasion is their ceremonial visit to other divinities, and for this purpose elaborate vehicles are requisite for their conveyance. This car, whose wheels are of stone, has been chosen to illustrate the intricacy of Indian carving in wood. After Architecture of Dharwar and Mysore, Photograph L.

accident, is preserved only as degraded into a spell in the Atharvaveda (iv. 16), and thus rendered by Muir:^[3]

"The mighty Lord on high, our deeds, as if at hand, espies:
The gods know all men do, though men would fain their deeds disguise.
Whoever stands, whoever moves, or steals from place to place,
Or hides him in his secret cell,—the gods his movements trace.
Wherever two together plot, and deem they are alone,
King Varuṇa is there, a third, and all their schemes are known.
This earth is his, to him belong those vast and boundless skies;
Both seas within him rest, and yet in that small pool he lies.
Whoever far beyond the sky should think his way to wing,
He could not there elude the grasp of Varuṇa the king.
His spies descending from the skies glide all this world around,
Their thousand eyes all-scanning sweep to earth's remotest bound.
Whate'er exists in heaven and earth, whate'er beyond the skies,
Before the eyes of Varuṇa, the king, unfolded lies.
The ceaseless winkings all he counts of every mortal's eyes:
He wields this universal frame, as gamester throws his dice.
Those knotted nooses which thou fling'st, o god, the bad to snare,—
All liars let them overtake, but all the truthful spare."

With Mitra Varuṇa is a barrier against falsehood, and in one passage he, together with Indra, is said to bind with bonds not made of rope. Mitra and Varuṇa hate, drive away, and punish falsehood, and they also afflict with disease those who neglect their worship. On the other hand, Varuṇa is gracious to the repentant sinner; like a rope he unties the sin committed and pardons the faults of the forefathers not less than those of the children. He is gracious to those who thoughtlessly break his ordinances. No hymn addressed to him fails to include a prayer for forgiveness. He can take away or prolong life by his thousand remedies; he is a guardian of immortality, and in the next world the righteous may hope to see Yama and Varuṇa. He is a friend to his worshipper and gazes on him with his mental eye.

Mention is often made of the ordinances of Varuṇa, which even the immortal gods cannot obstruct. Both he and Mitra are called "Lords of Ṛta," or "Holy Order," and "Upholders of Ṛta," an epithet which they share with the Ādityas or with the gods in general. They are also termed "Guardians of Holy Order," a term used likewise of Agni and Soma, and "Followers of Holy Order," an epithet given predominantly to Agni. This "Order" must, therefore, be regarded as something higher even than Varuṇa, and it is clearly the Asha of the Avesta. Its first aspect is cosmic order: the dawns shine in accordance with Ṛta and rise from Ṛta's abode; the sun, with the twelve spokes of his wheel (the months), moves in accord with Ṛta; it is Ṛta that gives the white cooked milk to the red raw cow. The sacrifice is under the guardianship of Ṛta; Agni is the observer of it and is its first-born. Prayers take effect in accordance with Ṛta, and the pious sacrificer claims that, discarding witchcraft, he offers with Ṛta. In the sphere of man Ṛta is a moral order and, as truth, it stands in perpetual opposition to untruth. When Agni strives toward Ṛta, he is said to become Varuṇa himself; when Yama and Yamī contend on the question whether incest may be allowed to the first pair of mankind, it is to Ṛta that Yama appeals against his sister's persuasions. The same features mark Ṛta in the Avesta, and the antiquity of the concept may be very great.^[4] Unlike the Greek Moira,^[5] or Fate, we never find Ṛta coming into definite conflict with the will or wish of the gods, and the constant opposition of Anṛta ("Disorder") shows that the idea is rather one of norm or ideal than of controlling and overriding fate. This may be due to the transfer of Ṛta to the moral from the physical world, or to the fact that, even as applied to the physical world, full necessity of cause and effect was not accepted.

It is perfectly clear that Varuṇa corresponds in character and in the epithet Asura too closely with Ahura Mazda, the great deity of the Iranians, to be other than in the nearest relation to him, nor can there be much real doubt that the physical basis of the god is the broad sky. Mitra is, indeed, so faint a figure apart from him that it would be difficult to be certain that he is the sun, were it not for the undoubted solar nature of the Persian Mithra.^[6] Yet if Mitra is the sun, the sky is naturally the greater deity, and this not only well accounts for the connexion of Varuṇa with the waters, which, from the Atharvaveda onward, becomes his chief characteristic, but also accords with the attributes of a universal monarch. Nor is there anything in the name of the god to render this view doubtful. It seems to be derived from the root vṛ, "to cover," and to denote the covering sky, and many scholars have maintained that the name of the Greek deity Ouranos^[5] can be identified with it.

The antiquity of Mitra and Varuṇa has been carried back to about 1400 B.C., when their names occur on an inscription as gods of the Mitanni in northern Mesopotamia, but whether they were then Aryan or Iranian or Vedic gods is not clear.^[7] It has been suggested, however, that the peculiar character of Varuṇa is due, like the character of Ahura Mazda, to borrowing, during the Indo-Iranian period, from a Semitic people, and that he and Mitra and the other Ādityas, seven in all corresponding to the Amesha Spentas of Iran,^[8] were in origin the moon, the sun, and the five planets. Yet this view does not accord well with the physical side of Varuṇa in the Ṛgveda, in which his connexion with night is only slight; the Indians' knowledge of the five planets is very doubtful; and the Amesha Spentas seem purely abstract and Avestan deities. Nor is it necessary to see in Varuṇa's spies the stars, or in his bonds the fetters of night; both are the necessary paraphernalia of an Indian king, and, when thought of concretely, his fetter seems to be disease, in special perhaps dropsy.

Indra occurs in the same record of the Mitannian gods, and this shows that even then he must have been a great god. In the Ṛgveda there can be no comparison between Varuṇa and Indra in moral grandeur, but the latter is far more often mentioned and is clearly by all odds the more popular god. Indeed, in one hymn (iv. 42) the claims of the two divinities seem to be placed before us in their own mouths, Varuṇa as the creator and sustainer of the world, and Indra as the irresistible deity of battle; and the poet seems inclined to recognize the pre-eminence of Indra. Yet there is no real evidence, save perhaps a certain diminution of mention in the tenth book of the Ṛgveda, that the worship of Varuṇa was on the decline in this period, and the real source of the loss of his greatness is to be traced to the growth of the conception of the creator god, Prajāpati or Viśvakarman, at the end of the period of the Ṛgveda and in the following epoch. Driven thus from his high functions, Varuṇa became connected with the night and the waters.

Mitra has but one hymn addressed to him alone (iii. 59), and in it he is said to bring men together when he utters speech and to gaze on the tillers with unwinking eye. The characteristics of assembling men and regulating the course of the sun confirm the view that, as suggested by the Persian evidence, he is a solar god. The name is used repeatedly to denote "friend," but it is not proved that the god is derived from that application of the term.

Mitra's indefinite character and lack of personality may be due in part to the co-existence of his rival Sūrya as the sun-god par excellence. Sūrya is constantly the actual solar element and is conceived in many forms, as a bird, a flying eagle, a mottled bull, the gem of the sky, the variegated stone set in the heaven. He is also the weapon of Mitra and Varuṇa, or the felloe of their car, or the car itself. He shines forth in the lap of the dawns and is the son of Aditi, and his father is Dyaus, even though many other gods are said to produce the sun. He triumphs over the darkness and the witches, drives away sickness and evil dreams, and prolongs life. His evil power as burning heat is not known to the Ṛgveda, unless it be hinted at in the myth that Indra overcame him and stole his wheel, which may point to the obscuration of the sun by the storm, here possibly regarded as tempering its excessive heat, though it is equally susceptible of the opposite interpretation. In another aspect Sūrya is Savitṛ, the "Impeller" or "Instigator," the golden-handed, the golden-tongued, with chariot of gold. He it is who

PLATE III

Sūrya

As the text-books enjoin, the Sun-God is "clad in the dress of the Northerners [i.e. Persians], so as to be covered from the feet upward to the bosom. He holds two lotuses growing out of his hands, wears a diadem and a necklace hanging down, has his face adorned with ear-rings, and a girdle round his waist." His figure thus suggests Iranian influence, especially as the sacred girdle was worn by the Magas, who traced their descent to the Magians of Persia. While the sun-cult was known in India in the Vedic period, it received new life from Iran. From a sculpture at Moḍherā, Gujarāt. After Burgess and Cousens, The Architectural Antiquities of Northern Gujarat, Plate LVI, No. 5. See also pp. 138-39, 183-84.

wins immortality for the gods, length of life for man, and raises the Ṛbhus (the divine artificers) to immortality. In the usual exaggeration of the poet it is declared that Indra, Mitra, Varuṇa, Aryaman, and Rudra cannot resist the will and independent rule of Sūrya. He is closely connected with Pūṣan and Bhaga, and one verse (III. lxii. 10),

"May we attain that excellent glory of Savitṛ the god:
So may he stimulate our prayers,"^[9]

has become the most famous in Vedic literature and is used to preface all Vedic study. Once he is called Prajāpati, "Lord of Offspring," or of the world; yet it seems undoubted that he is not a mere abstract god in origin, but the active power of the sun elevated into a separate deity.

Pūṣan, the "Nourisher," is also, it would seem, allied in origin to Savitṛ. His personality is indistinct: he wears braided hair (like Rudra) and a beard; and in addition to a spear he carries an awl or a goad. His car is not drawn by horses, as one would expect, but by goats; and his food is gruel. His connexion with pastoral life is shown by his epithets. He loses no cattle, but directs them; he saves and smooths the clothing of sheep; and he is also the deliverer, the guardian of the way, who removes the wolf and the robber from the path. Accordingly it is he who conducts the dead to the fathers, just as Agni and Savitṛ take them to where the righteous have gone; and he fares along the path of heaven and earth between the two abodes. Like Sūrya and Agni he woos his mother and his sister, and receives from the gods the sun-maiden in marriage, whence in the wedding-rite he is asked to take the hand of the bride and lead her away and bless her. He is often invoked with Soma and Indra, but most frequently with Bhaga and Viṣṇu. He is called glowing and once bears the name Agohya ("Not to be Concealed"), which is elsewhere Savitṛ's epithet. He is also the "Prosperer" par excellence and may well represent the sun in its aspect as beneficent to the flocks and herds of men, gracious to them in marriage, and the leader of their souls in death to the world of the sun and heaven. The Avestan Mithra has the characteristics of increasing cattle and bringing them back home.

Yet another form of the sun is Vivasvant, the father of Yama and of Manu, and thus in a sense the forefather of the human race. He is identical with the Avestan Vīvanghvant, the father of Yima, who first prepared the haoma,^[10] and in the Ṛgveda also he is connected with the sacrifice. His messenger is Agni or Mātariśvan; in his abode the gods rejoice; and Soma, Indra, and the Aśvins are his close companions; yet his nature must have had a dread trait, for a worshipper prays that the arrow of Vivasvant may not smite him before old age. He shines out at the beginning of the dawn as Agni, nor is it improbable that he is no more than the rising sun. His character as sacrificer, which is not as prominent in the Ṛgveda as in the Avesta, can easily have been a special development, while, if he was no more in origin than the first of sacrificers like Manu in the Ṛgveda, his celestial character becomes difficult to explain.

Much more faint are the figures of Bhaga ("Bountiful"), Aṁśa ("Apportioner"), Aryaman ("Comrade"), and Dakṣa ("Skilful"), who with Mitra and Varuṇa are hailed in one hymn (II. xxvii. 1) as the Ādityas. Aryaman is a faint double of Mitra, but is the wooer of maidens. Aṁśa is practically a mere name, but is called bountiful. Bhaga is the giver of wealth whom men desire to share, and Dawn is his sister. In the Avesta his name is Bagha, an epithet of Ahura Mazda, and it corresponds to the Old Church Slavonic word bogŭ, "god." Dakṣa is born of Aditi, although he is also her father. His existence is probably due to the fact that the Ādityas are called "having intelligence" for their father, thus giving rise to the conception that Dakṣa is a person.

The Ādityas, however, are a group of uncertain number and sense. Once only in the Ṛgveda are they said to be seven, and once eight, the eighth being Mārtāṇḍa, the setting sun, whom Aditi throws away and then brings back to the gods. Mitra, Varuṇa, and Indra are called Ādityas, and the same name is given to Savitṛ and to Sūrya. Sometimes the Ādityas form a group in conjunction with other gods like the Maruts, Rudras, Vasus, and Ṛbhus, or again they seem occasionally to include all the gods. From Varuṇa they appear to have derived the moral duties of punishing sin and rewarding the good; they spread fetters for their enemies, but protect their worshippers as birds spread their wings over their young. They are bright, golden, many-eyed, unwinking, and sleepless, kings with inviolable ordinances, pure, and overseers of Holy Order.

In comparison with his future greatness Viṣṇu appears of slight importance in the Ṛgveda, in which only five hymns and part of a sixth are given to him. His great feat is his triple stride, the third of which places him beyond the ken of man or the flight of birds. Yet it is also described as an eye fixed in heaven, where there is a well of honey, where Indra dwells, and where are the many cows desired of the worshipper. In his striding Viṣṇu moves swiftly but also according to law; he is an ordainer who, like Savitṛ, metes out the earthly spaces; or, again, he sets in motion, like a revolving wheel, his ninety steeds with their four names, who can be nothing else than the year. These traits reveal him beyond doubt as a sun-god, whether his name be explained as "the Active," from the root viṣ, or as "One Who Crosses the Backs of the Universe."^[11] His three strides were interpreted by Aurṇavābha, one of the earliest expounders of Vedic mythology, as the rising, culminating, and setting of the sun, but Śākapūṇi, another exegete, already gave the far more probable version of earth, atmosphere, and sky.

The steps taken by Viṣṇu are for man in distress, or to bestow on him the earth as a dwelling-place, or to make room for existence, and in this conception lies, no doubt, the germ of the dwarf incarnation of Viṣṇu. His closeness to man is also attested by his connexion with Indra and the Maruts. Urged by Indra, Viṣṇu, having drunk of the soma, carried off one hundred buffaloes and a brew of milk belonging to the boar (i.e. Vṛtra), while Indra, shooting across the cloud-mountain, slew the fierce boar. In the period of the Brāhmaṇas Viṣṇu is conceived as assuming the form of a boar, and the way for such transformations is paved by the view of the Ṛgveda (VII. c. 6) that in battle Viṣṇu assumes a different shape and has to be asked to reveal his own form to the worshipper. Though, therefore, not yet in Vedic circles one of the great gods, his relation to man, his close connexion with the three worlds, and his power of change of form are traits which explain that in other circles he may have been a much greater deity.

Among the gods listed in the Mitanni inscription we find the Nāsatyas, thus confirming the early existence of the divine pair who in the Avesta have degenerated into a demon, Nāonghaithya. Their normal name in the Ṛgveda is the Aśvins ("Horsemen"), though they are also called "the Wonder-Workers" (Dasra), and later mythology has invented Dasra and Nāsatya as the names of the pair. They are beautiful, strong, and red and their path is red or golden. They have a skin filled with honey and touch the sacrifice and the worshipper with their honey-whip. Their chariot alone is described as honey-hued or honey-bearing, and it also has the peculiarity of possessing three wheels, three felloes, and all the other parts triple. The time of the Aśvins' appearance is at dawn; they follow dawn in their car; at the yoking of their car the dawn is born; but yet, despite this, they are invoked to come to the offering not only at the morning but also at noon and at sunset. Their parentage is not definitely decided: they are children of Sky or of Ocean, or of Vivasvant and Saraṇyū, or of Pūṣan; and though normally inseparable like the eyes or the hands, nevertheless they are once or twice said to be variously born or born here and there. They are wedded to a deity described as Sūryā, the sun-maiden, or the daughter of the Sun, and it is for her perhaps that their car has three seats and three wheels. In the marriage-rite they are accordingly invoked to conduct the bride home on their chariot, and they are also asked to make the young wife fertile, while among their feats is to give a child to the wife of a eunuch, to cause the barren cow to yield milk, and to grant a husband to the old maid. Moreover they are physicians who heal diseases, restore sight to the blind, and ward off death from the sick. The decrepit Cyavana they released from his worn-out body, prolonged his life, made him young again and the husband of maidens. By means of their winged ship they saved Bhujyu, son of Tugra, from the log to which he was clinging in the midst of the ocean. They rescued and refreshed Atri, whom demons had bound in a burning pit. At the prayer of the she-wolf they restored his sight to Ṛjrāśva, whom his father had blinded for slaying a hundred and one sheep and giving them to the wolf. They gave a leg of iron to Viśpalā when her leg was cut off in battle. They placed a horse's head on Dadhyañc, who told them in reward where the mead of Tvaṣṭṛ was; and they rescued Rebha from death, befriended Ghoṣā, who was growing old childless in her father's house, gave Viṣṇāpu back to Viśvaka, and saved the quail from the wolf's jaws. Many other names of protégés are mentioned, and the deeds recited may have been historical in some cases, while mythical traits doubtless exist in others.

The Indian interpreters of the early period were at a loss to decide the nature of the Aśvins, whom they regarded as heaven and earth, sun and moon, day and night, or even as two kings who were performers of holy acts. It is clear that in essence they are one with the Dioskouroi^[12] and with the two sons of the Lettic god who came riding on steeds to woo for themselves the daughter of the Sun or the Moon and who, like the Dioskouroi, are rescuers from the ocean. The older identification with sun and moon has been supported, and they have been regarded merely as succouring giants who have no mythical basis, but the more probable view is either that they represent the twilight (half dark, half light), or the morning and the evening star. The latter interpretation offers the grave difficulty of the contrast between the unity of the Aśvins and the diversity of the two stars, which is only slenderly diminished by the curious traces of separate birth and worship in the Ṛgveda.

There is but one goddess of the celestial world, the maiden Uṣas, the most poetical figure in the whole pantheon. Decking herself in gay attire like a dancer, she displays her bosom, and like a maiden adorned by her mother she reveals her form. Clothed in light, she appears in the east and shows her charms; immortal and unaging, she awakes before the world. When she shines forth, the birds fly up, and men bestir themselves; she removes the black mantle of night and banishes evil dreams and the hated darkness. She follows ever the path of Order, though once she is asked not to delay lest the sun scorch her as a thief or an enemy. She is borne on a car with ruddy steeds or kine, and the distance which the dawns traverse in a day is thirty yojanas (leagues). She is the wife or the mistress of the Sun who follows her, but sometimes is also his mother; she is the sister of Bhaga, the kinswoman of Varuṇa, and the mightier sister of Night. She is likewise closely associated with Agni, as the fire of the sacrifice which is lit at dawn, and with the Aśvins, whom she is besought to arouse. Her name denotes "the Shining" and is in origin one with Aurora and Eos.^[13]

Of the gods of the atmosphere by far the greatest is Indra, whose name occurs among the list of Mitannian gods. He is more anthropomorphic than any other Vedic deity. His head, his arms, and his hands are mentioned, as is his great belly in which he puts the soma; he moves his jaws after drinking soma, and his lips are beautiful. His beard waves in the air, he has tawny hair and beard. His long, strong, well-shaped arms wield the thunderbolt, which was fashioned for him by Tvaṣṭṛ or Uśanas. This is his chief weapon, and it is described as a stone, as hundred-jointed and thousand-pointed, hundred-angled, sharp, and metallic; rarely it is said to be of gold. Occasionally he bears a bow and arrows, hundred-pointed and winged with a thousand feathers, and sometimes he carries a goad. He travels in a golden chariot drawn by two or more horses, as many as eleven hundred being mentioned. He is a gigantic eater and drinker; at his birth he drank soma and for the slaying of Vṛtra he drank three lakes or even thirty. He eats the flesh of twenty or a hundred buffaloes, and when he was born the worlds quaked with fear. His mother is described as a cow and he as a bull; she is also called Niṣṭigrī, and he willed to be born unnaturally through her side. His father is Dyaus or Tvaṣṭṛ; from the latter he stole the soma and even slew him and made his mother a widow; more than this he fought against the gods, perhaps for the soma. His wife Indrāṇī is mentioned, and he is often called Śacīpati, or "Lord of Strength," whence later mythology coined a wife Śacī for him. He is closely connected with the Maruts and with Agni, and is actually identified with Sūrya.

The might and power of Indra are described everywhere in terms of hyperbole. He is the greatest of the gods, greater even than Varuṇa, lord of all that moves and of men, who won in battle wide space for the gods. Occasionally he bears Varuṇa's title of universal ruler, but more often he has his own of independent ruler. The epithet "of a hundred powers" is almost his alone, and his also is that of "very lord." The deed which wins him his high place is the feat, ever renewed, of slaying the dragon which encompasses the waters. He smites him on the head or on the back, he pierces his vitals. After slaying Vṛtra he lets loose the streams; he shatters the mountains, breaks open the well, and sets the waters free; he kills the dragon lying on the waters and releases the waters. He cleaves the mountain to liberate the cows; he loosens the rock and makes the kine easy to obtain; he frees the cows which were fast within the stone; he slays Vṛtra, breaks the castles, makes a channel for the rivers, pierces the mountain, and makes it over to his friends the cows. Again, however, he wins the light by his deed; he gains the sun as well as the waters by freeing the demons; when he slew the chief of the dragons and released the waters from the mountain, he generated the sun, the sky, and the dawn; he finds the light in the darkness and makes the sun to shine. He also wins the dawns; with the sun and the dawn he discovers or delivers or wins the cows; the dawns again go forth to meet Indra when he becomes the lord of the kine. Moreover he gains the soma and he establishes the quaking mountains, a feat which the Brāhmaṇas explain as denoting that he cut off their wings. He supports the earth and props up the sky, and is the generator of heaven and earth.

Indra, however, does not war with demons only, for he attacked Uṣas, shattered her wain with his bolt, and rent her slow steeds, whereupon she fled in terror from him, this being, perhaps, a myth of the dawn obscured by a thunder-storm or of the sunrise hastening the departure of the lingering dawn. Indra also came into conflict with the sun when he was running a race with the swift steed Etaśa, and in some unexplained way Indra caused the car of the sun to lose a wheel. He also seems to have murdered his father Tvaṣṭṛ, and, though the Maruts aid him in his struggle with Vṛtra, in a series of hymns we find a distinct trace that he quarrelled with them, used threatening language to them, and was appeased only with difficulty.

Other foes of Indra's were the Paṇis, who kept cows hidden in a cave beyond the Rasā, a mythical stream. Saramā, Indra's messenger, tracks the kine and demands them in Indra's name, only to be mocked by the Paṇis, but Indra shatters the ridge of Vala and overcomes his antagonists. Elsewhere the cows are said to be confined by the power of Vala without reference to the Paṇis and are won by Indra, often with the help of the Aṅgirases. Vala ("Encircler") is clearly the name of the stronghold in which the cows are confined.

As becomes so great a warrior, Indra is a worthy helper to men on earth. He is the chief aid of the Aryans in their struggles against the Dāsas or Dasyus, and subjects the black

PLATE IV

Indra

The deity appears crowned as king of the gods and enthroned on his vāhana ("vehicle"), the elephant Airāvata. The middle one of his left hands holds the thunderbolt. He is further characterized by the multitude of marks on his body, which originally represented the yoni (possibly because of the fertility which the rain brings to earth), though later they were changed into eyes. The heavy beard shows the Persian influence in the painting. From an oil-painting of the Indo-Mughal school in the collection of the Editor. See pp. 32-35.

race to the Aryan; he leads Turvaśa and Yadu over the rivers, apparently as patron of an Aryan migration. Moreover he assists his favourites against every foe; and his friend Sudās is aided in his battle with the ten kings, his foes being drowned in the Paruṣṇī. To his worshippers he is a wall of defence, a father, mother, or brother. He bestows wealth on the pious man, and, as with a hook a man showers fruit from a tree, so he can shower wealth on the righteous. He is the lord of riches and at the same time is "the Bountiful One," whence in later literature the epithet Maghavan becomes one of his names. He richly rewarded a maiden who, having found soma beside a river, pressed it with her teeth and dedicated it to him. Yet he has few moral traits in his character and is represented as boasting of his drinking feats. Indeed it is most significant that we have proof, even in the Vedic period, of men doubting his existence.

It is almost certain that in Indra we must see a storm-god, and that his exploit of defeating Vṛtra is a picture of the bursting forth of the rain from the clouds at the oncoming of the rainy season, when all the earth is parched, and when man and nature alike are eager for the breaking of the drought. The tremendous storms which mark the first fall of the rain are generally recognized as a most fitting source for the conception of the god, while the mountains cleft and the cows won are the clouds viewed from different standpoints. But Indra appears also as winning the sun, a trait representing the clearing away of the clouds from the sun after the thunder-storm, with which has been confused or united the idea of the recovery of the sun at dawn from the darkness of night. That some of the terminology reflects an earlier view that Vṛtra is the winter^[14] which freezes the stream, and that Indra is the sun, is not proved, nor need we hold that the poets of the Ṛgveda really meant only that the god freed the rivers from the mountains and did not realize that the mountains were clouds, as even the commentators on the Ṛgveda knew.

In the Ṛgveda we find a close parallel of Indra, though in a faded form, in Trita Āptya. He slays the three-headed son of Tvaṣṭṛ as does Indra; Indra impels him and he Indra, who is twice said to act for him. He is associated with the Maruts, but especially with soma, which he prepares; and this last feature associates him with Thrita in the Avesta, who was the "third man," as his name denotes, to prepare soma, the second being Āthwya. His slaying of the demon identifies him with the Thraētaona of the Avesta, who kills the three-headed, six-mouthed serpent, and he has a brother Dvita, "Second," while Thraētaona has two, who seek to slay him as in the Brāhmaṇas his brothers seek to murder Trita.^[15] The parallelism points strongly to his identification with the lightning which is born among the waters, as his second name, Āptya ("Watery"), indicates; but he has been held to be a water-god, a storm-god, a deified healer, and the moon. In all likelihood much of his glory has been taken from him by the growth of Indra's greatness.

The lightning seems also to lie at the base of the deity Apāṁ Napāt, who likewise appears in the Avesta,^[16] where he is a spirit of the waters, dwelling in their depths and said to have seized the brightness in the abysses of the ocean. He is also "Son of the Waters," born and nourished in them, but he shines and is golden, and is identified with Agni, who is often described as abiding in the waters of the air. The identification with a water-spirit pure and simple is, therefore, improbable, nor has he any clear lunar characteristics. Yet another form of the lightning is Mārariśvan ("He that Grows in his Mother"), the thunder-cloud. He is the messenger of Vivasvant and he brings Agni down to men, as the Prometheus of India; by friction he produces Agni for the homes of men. The lightning may likewise be represented by the "One-Footed Goat" (Aja Ekapād), which is occasionally mentioned among aerial deities, the goat symbolizing the swift movement of the flash and the single foot the one place of striking the earth, although this obscure god may also be a solar phenomenon. With Apāṁ Napāt and Aja Ekapād occurs the "Serpent of the Deep" (Ahi Budhnya), who is born in the waters and sits in the bottom of the streams in the spaces, and who is besought not to give his worshippers over to injury. Such an invocation suggests that there is something uncanny about the nature of the god, and his name allies him to Vṛtra, whose beneficent aspect he may represent, the dragon in this case being conceived as friendly to man.

The other great aspect of the air, the wind, is represented by Vāta or Vāyu, the former being more markedly elemental, the latter more divine. So Vāyu is often linked with Indra, being, like him, a great drinker of soma, but Vāta is associated only with Parjanya, who is, like himself, a god of little but nature. Vāyu, the son-in-law of Tvaṣṭṛ, is swift of thought and thousand-eyed; he has a team of ninety-nine or even a thousand horses to draw his car; he drinks the clear soma and is connected with the nectar-yielding cow. Vāta rushes on whirling up the dust; he never rests; the place of his birth is unknown; man hears his roaring, but cannot see his form. He is the breath of the gods; like Rudra, he wafts healing and he can produce the light. The identification with the Eddie Wodan or Odhin is still unsubstantiated.

Parjanya personifies the cloud, flying round with a watery car and drawing the waterskin downward. He is often viewed as a bull or even as a cow, the clouds being feminine. He quickens the earth with seed, and the winds blow forth and the lightnings fall; he is a thunderer and a giver of increase to plants, to grass, to cows, mares, and women. He is even called the divine father whose wife is the earth, and he is said to rule over all the world; he produces a calf himself, perhaps the lightning or the soma. He is sometimes associated with the Maruts and is clearly akin to Indra, of whom he later becomes a form. It is doubtful if the Lithuanian thunder-god Perkúnas can be identified with him.

The waters are also hailed as goddesses on their own account and they are conceived as mothers, young wives, and granters of boons. They nourish Agni and they bear away defilement and purify; they bestow remedies and grant long life. They are often associated with honey, and it may be that they were sometimes regarded as having the soma within them.

Though Rudra, the prototype of Śiva, is celebrated in only three hymns of the Ṛgveda, he already bears remarkable traits. He wears braided hair, like Pūṣan; his lips are beautiful, and his colour is brown. His car dazzles, and he wears a wonderful necklace. He holds the thunderbolt and bears bow and arrows; and his lightning-shaft shot from the sky traverses the earth. He generated the Maruts from Pṛśni, and himself bears the name Tryambaka (VII. lix. 12), denoting his descent from three mothers, presumably a reference to the triple division of the universe. He is fierce and strong, a ruler of the world, the great Asura of heaven, bountiful, easily invoked and auspicious, but this latter epithet, Śiva,^[17] is not yet attached to him as his own.

None the less, Rudra is a very terrible deity and one whose anger is to be deprecated, whence he is implored not to slay or injure in his wrath the worshippers, their parents, men, children, cattle, or horses. His ill will is deprecated, and his favour is sought for the walking food, and he is even called man-slaying. On the other hand, he has healing powers and a thousand remedies; he is asked to remove sickness and disease; and he has a special remedy called jalāṣa, which may be the rain. This side of his nature is as essential as the other and lends plausibility to the view that he is the lightning, regarded mainly as a destroying and terrible agency, but at the same time as the power by which there is healing calm after storm and as propitious in that the lightning spares as well as strikes. Yet his nature has also been held to be a compound of a god of fire and a god of wind, his name denoting "the Howler" (from rud, "to cry"), as the chief of the spirits of the dead who storm along in the wind, and as a god of forest and mountain whence diseases speed to men.

Rudra's sons are the Maruts, the children of Pṛśni, the storm-cloud, the heroes or males of heaven, born from the laughter of lightning. All are equal in age, in abode, in mind, and their number is thrice seven or thrice sixty. They are associated with the goddess Indrāṇī, though their lovely wife is Rodasī, who goes on their car. They are brilliant as fire; they have spears on their shoulders, anklets on their feet, golden ornaments on their breasts, fiery lightnings in their hands, and golden helmets on their heads. Spotted steeds draw their chariots. They are fierce and terrible, and yet playful like children or calves. They are black-backed swans, four-tusked boars, and resemble lions. As they advance they make the mountains to tremble, uproot trees, and like wild elephants hew the forest; they whirl up dust, and all creatures tremble before them. Their great exploit is the making of rain, which they produce amid the lightning; and a river on earth is styled Marudvṛdhā ("Rejoicing in the Maruts"). They are close associates of Indra, whose might they increased when they sang a hymn; singing they made the sun to shine and clove the mountain. Not only do they help Indra to slay Vṛtra, but now and then the exploit seems attributed to them alone; yet they failed him once in the moment of struggle, whence, it seems, a quarrel arose. When not associated with Indra they exhibit, in less degree, the malevolent side of their father Rudra. Thus they are implored to avert the arrow and stone which they hurl; their wrath, which is like that of the serpent, is deprecated; and evil is said to come from them; although, again like Rudra, they have healing remedies which they bring from the rivers Sindhu, Asiknī, the sea, and the mountains.

There can be little doubt that the Maruts are the storm-gods, the winds in this qualified use. The only other view of importance is that they are the souls of the dead who go in the storm-wind,^[18] but of this at least the Ṛgveda has no hint; nor is the etymology from mṛ, "to die," enough to serve as a base for the explanation, since their appellation may equally well come from a root mṛ, "to shine," or "to crush," either of which meanings would well enough accord with their figure. In later days they sank from their estate, as we shall see, and became the celestial counterparts of the Vaiśyas, the common folk of earth as distinguished from the two higher castes of Brāhmans (priests) and Kṣatriyas (warriors). Finally they degenerated into mere wind-godlings, their very name becoming a synonym for "wind"; and at the present day memory of them has all but vanished.

 

1. Original Sanskrit Texts, v. 356, note.
2. This is what F. Max Müller (Ancient Sanskrit Literature, London, 1859, pp. 526 ff.) called "henotheism."
3. Original Sanskrit Texts, v. 64, note.
4. See M. Bloomfield, Religion of the Veda, pp. 12, 126 ff. For the Iranian Asha see infra, pp. 260, 264.
5. For Ouranos see Mythology of All Races, Boston, 1916, i. 5-6, and for Moira see ib. pp. 283-84.
6. For the Iranian conceptions of Ahura Mazda and Mithra see infra, pp. 260-61, 275 ff., 287-88, 305 ff.
7. See H. Winckler, in Mitteilungen der deutschen Orientgesellschaft, No. 35 (1907); E. Meyer, "Das erste Auftreten der Arier in der Geschichte," in Sitzungsberichte der königlich-preussischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1908, pp. 14-19, and Geschichte des Altertums, I. ii. 651 ff. (3rd ed., Berlin, 1913); H. Jacobi, in JRAS 1909, pp. 721 ff., H. Oldenberg, ib. pp. 1095 ff., J. H. Moulton, Early Zoroastrianism, London, 1913, pp. 6 ff.
8. For the Amesha Spentas see infra, p. 260.
9. R. T. H. Griffith, Hymns of the Rigveda, ii. 87.
10. See infra, pp. 282, 294, 304.
11. See M. Bloomfield, in American Journal of Philology, xvii. 428
12. See Mythology of All Races, Boston, 1916, i. 26-27, 246-47.
13. See Mythology of All Races, Boston, 1916, i. 245-46.
14. See A. Hillebrandt, Vedische Mythologie, iii. 157 ff.
15. See Shāhnāmah, tr. J. Mohl, Paris, 1876-78, i. 69-70.
16. See infra, pp. 267, 340.
17. The word śiva means "auspicious."
18. See L. von Schroeder, Mysterium und Mimus im Rigveda, pp. 47 ff., 124 ff.